Mr K, a NYC high-school English teacher in a “high poverty” school is raising money to buy a set of copies of my book Little Brother for his grade nine students, who “do so uncritically with very little knowledge of their rights as users, architects.” I’m humbled and honored by Mr K’s faith in my book to help his students, and I’ve contributed to the project. One of my readers, Chris Holmes, is growing a mustache to support Mr K’s kids — who knew facial hair could do so much good!
Mr K, a NYC high-school English teacher in a “high poverty” school is raising money to buy a set of copies of my book Little Brother for his grade nine students, who “do so uncritically with very little knowledge of their rights as users, architects.” I’m humbled and honored by Mr K’s faith in my book to help his students, and I’ve contributed to the project. One of my readers, Chris Holmes, is growing a mustache to support Mr K’s kids — who knew facial hair could do so much good!
Hey, German Little Brother fans! The Rowohlt German edition of the book has been short-listed for LovelyBooks’s Leserpreis –die besten Buecher 2010, and you can vote for it!
Hey, German Little Brother fans! The Rowohlt German edition of the book has been short-listed for LovelyBooks’s Leserpreis –die besten Buecher 2010, and you can vote for it!
Santiago Benejam Torres converted Axxon’s fan-translation of Little Brother to ePub, and is making it available gratis on his site. Thanks, Santiago!
Update: I’ve just heard from Eduardo Hojman, my editor at Puck, that the Spanish edition of Little Brother will be published on March 7, under the title, “PEQUEÑO HERMANO”! It’ll be distributed worldwide — through Spain and Latin America.
Santiago Benejam Torres converted Axxon’s fan-translation of Little Brother to ePub, and is making it available gratis on his site. Thanks, Santiago!
Update: I’ve just heard from Eduardo Hojman, my editor at Puck, that the Spanish edition of Little Brother will be published on March 7, under the title, “PEQUEÑO HERMANO”! It’ll be distributed worldwide — through Spain and Latin America.
I’m honored and delighted to learn that Quill and Quire, the Canadian publishing industry journal of record, has named For the Win one of its five notable YA novels for 2010. Thanks, Q&Q!
Here’s the first installment of my reading of Charlie Stross’s and my gonzo Singularity novella Appeals Court. It’s the sequel to Jury Service, the first thing Charlie and I ever wrote together. We’re about to start work on Parole Board, the thrilling conclusion, which Tor will be publishing as a novel under the title Rapture of the Nerds, a title we nicked from the brilliant Ken MacLeod.
Mastering by John Taylor Williams: wryneckstudio@gmail.com
John Taylor Williams is a full-time self-employed audio engineer, producer, composer, and sound designer. In his free time, he makes beer, jewelry, odd musical instruments and furniture. He likes to meditate, to read and to cook.
In my latest Guardian column, “News Corp Kremlinology: what do the Times paywall numbers mean?” I have a good rummage around the mysterious figures released by The Times earlier this month on the performance of its vaunted pay-for-news scheme. The Times released the numbers with a lot of triumphant accompaniment, but I’m not clear on whether their figures can be taken of indication of anything, except, perhaps, a reluctance to report in full on their experiment’s performance.
Here’s what the Times will say: about 50,000 of the current paid users are on a monthly subscription of some sort: £8.66, £1, or free with a TalkTalk subscription. They will not disclose how many £1 trial users turn into £8.66 users, or how many sustain their £8.66 subscription into the second or third month. However, the anonymous official spokesperson did say that whichever users are remaining after three months are more than 90% likely to stump up for a fourth month. From this, I think we can safely assume that lots less than 90% of paid users stick around for a second month, and of those, less than 90% sustain themselves for a fourth month.
But the Times isn’t saying.
The remaining 50,000, of course, are people who paid £1 for a single day’s access. Some number of these converted to monthly subscribers.
Some number bought a second article. How many? The Times isn’t saying.
So, best case: there are 50,000 paid subscribers, all of whom got there by paying £1 for an article, converted immediately to £1 monthly subscriptions and now pay £8.66 every month (or £9.99 in the case of iPad users who want to pay extra for the privilege of not being allowed to access the website).
Worst case: 50,000 people tried a day pass and left. 20,000 TalkTalk subscribers got a free subscription with their phone which they may or may not know or care about. 5,000 people use it with an iPad.
75,000 people tried a £1 month trial. 40,000 of them signed up for a second month, 30,000 of them for a third, and 25,000 stayed on for a fourth month.
News Corp Kremlinology: what do the Times paywall numbers mean?
