Here’s part five of the podcast of my story in progress, MARTIAN CHRONICLES, being written for Jonathan Strahan’s YA Mars book, LIFE ON MARS.
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.
Over the weekend, two educators wrote to me to tell me about blogs that contain curricular material based on my books.
The first, from Donald Riggs at Drexel College in Philadelphia, contains links and supplementary material for students reading my second short story collection, Overclocked. Donald put the material together because Overclocked was Drexel’s book of the year, given to the entire freshman class (I visited campus in November and met with students, taught a writing program, and gave a lecture). He’s got a ton of good supplementary links and glossaries explaining the technical and genre terms for a lay audience.
The second, from Deborah Menkart at the Zinn Education Project: Teaching a People ’s History project is a recommendation for teachers whose students are working with Howard Zinn’s brilliant “Peoples’ History” books to include Little Brother in their works.
Coming from a family of teachers (both parents, brother) and serving on faculty at two universities at present (Open University, UK and University of Waterloo, Canada), I’m always intensely gratified when educators use my material with their students.
Over the weekend, two educators wrote to me to tell me about blogs that contain curricular material based on my books.
The first, from Donald Riggs at Drexel College in Philadelphia, contains links and supplementary material for students reading my second short story collection, Overclocked. Donald put the material together because Overclocked was Drexel’s book of the year, given to the entire freshman class (I visited campus in November and met with students, taught a writing program, and gave a lecture). He’s got a ton of good supplementary links and glossaries explaining the technical and genre terms for a lay audience.
The second, from Deborah Menkart at the Zinn Education Project: Teaching a People ’s History project is a recommendation for teachers whose students are working with Howard Zinn’s brilliant “Peoples’ History” books to include Little Brother in their works.
Coming from a family of teachers (both parents, brother) and serving on faculty at two universities at present (Open University, UK and University of Waterloo, Canada), I’m always intensely gratified when educators use my material with their students.
Over the weekend, two educators wrote to me to tell me about blogs that contain curricular material based on my books.
The first, from Donald Riggs at Drexel College in Philadelphia, contains links and supplementary material for students reading my second short story collection, Overclocked. Donald put the material together because Overclocked was Drexel’s book of the year, given to the entire freshman class (I visited campus in November and met with students, taught a writing program, and gave a lecture). He’s got a ton of good supplementary links and glossaries explaining the technical and genre terms for a lay audience.
The second, from Deborah Menkart at the Zinn Education Project: Teaching a People ’s History project is a recommendation for teachers whose students are working with Howard Zinn’s brilliant “Peoples’ History” books to include Little Brother in their works.
Coming from a family of teachers (both parents, brother) and serving on faculty at two universities at present (Open University, UK and University of Waterloo, Canada), I’m always intensely gratified when educators use my material with their students.
The Digital Democracy project and the All-Burma I.T. Student Union have just a few hours left in a Kickstarter project to translate my novel Little Brother in free electronic editions in four Burmese languages: Burmese, Karen, Chin and Kachin. As they write, “[the translation will] broaden the debate on using technology in the struggle for freedom against tyranny. By distributing electronic versions of the translated book, our goal is to inspire people from the country with Cory Doctorow’s compelling tale of a teen and his friends who take on Big Brother, using technology to challenge an authoritarian regime.”
They’re 64% of the way there as of this writing, and they need another $800 or so in the next 43 hours. I’m pretty excited by this novel use of goal-oriented online fundraising by activist groups, and the Burmese lot really seem to have a handle on how technology fits into their national struggles for justice.
The Digital Democracy project and the All-Burma I.T. Student Union have just a few hours left in a Kickstarter project to translate my novel Little Brother in free electronic editions in four Burmese languages: Burmese, Karen, Chin and Kachin. As they write, “[the translation will] broaden the debate on using technology in the struggle for freedom against tyranny. By distributing electronic versions of the translated book, our goal is to inspire people from the country with Cory Doctorow’s compelling tale of a teen and his friends who take on Big Brother, using technology to challenge an authoritarian regime.”
They’re 64% of the way there as of this writing, and they need another $800 or so in the next 43 hours. I’m pretty excited by this novel use of goal-oriented online fundraising by activist groups, and the Burmese lot really seem to have a handle on how technology fits into their national struggles for justice.
I’m doing an in-world Second Life interview with Mitch Wagner’s Copper Robot program next Wednesday, Dec 16, at 8AM Pacific/11AM Eastern/4PM UK. Hope to see you there!
WHEN: Wednesday, Dec. 16, 8 am Pacific time SPECIAL DAY AND TIME
WHERE: The lovely Seaside Theater, World2Worlds Island in Second Life, watch the live video on the Web, or listen to the playback later on this Web site.
In my latest Publishers Weekly column, I explain why I’m not even going to try to sell downloads of the audiobook of the my forthcoming experimental short story collection, With a Little Help: Apple won’t carry it without DRM; Audible won’t carry it without an abusive EULA; and all the major digital delivery systems are crufty and needlessly complicated.
For my next book, Makers, we tried again. This time Audible agreed to carry the title without DRM. Hooray! Except now there was a new problem: Apple refused to allow DRM-free audiobooks in the Apple Store—yes, the same Apple that claims to hate DRM. Okay, we thought, we’ll just sell direct through Audible, at least it’s a relatively painless download process, right? Not quite. It turns out that buying an audiobook from Audible requires a long end-user license agreement (EULA) that bars users from moving their Audible books to any unauthorized device or converting them to other formats. Instead of DRM, they accomplish the lock-in with a contract.I came up with what I thought was an elegant solution: a benediction to the audio file: “Random House Audio and Cory Doctorow, the copyright holders to this recording, grant you permission to use this book in any way consistent with your nation’s copyright laws.” This is a good EULA, I thought, as it stands up for every word of copyright law. Random House was game, too. Audible wasn’t. So we decided not to sell through Audible, which I was intensely bummed about, because I really like Audible. They have great selection, good prices, and they’re kicking ass with audiobooks.
