I will admit to some insider knowledge of Cory’s plans and relief that he is finally publicizing parts of what is a very ambition business plan. There is much here that should be familiar by now due to similar experiments by other creatives, most notably Trent Reznor. I would expect Cory to also share what hard date he is able to collect after the fact to give us as complete a case study as possible. Oh and I must start saving my pennies for one of the hand bound editions.

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I was very pleased to see a link to Michael Mandiberg’s post on the subject on the Creative Commons blog. Michael has a new design book out for which he successfully negotiated a Creative Commons license for the print edition (from a very large publisher as it turns ). He has distilled his experience down into ten recommendations. He provides a good number of links to substantiating material useful in answering questions and concerns publishers may have about public licensing.

I especially like:

2. Know that your publisher is scared

Publishers saw what happened to the music industry. Sales of print books are down across the board. Publishers know things are going to change, but they don’t know what that change is going to be. Know that your publisher is willing to experiment. “Inspire them to be leaders.” (ironic, but serious)

And:

4. Pitch it with facts

…

And explain the the 75/22/3 breakdown:

“David Blackburn, a Harvard PhD candidate in economics, published a paper in 2004 in which he calculated that, for music, “piracy” results in a net increase in sales for all titles in the 75th percentile and lower; negligible change in sales for the “middle class” of titles between the 75th percentile and the 97th percentile; and a small drag on the “super-rich” in the 97th percentile and higher. Publisher Tim O’Reilly describes this as “piracy’s progressive taxation,” apportioning a small wealth-redistribution to the vast majority of works, no net change to the middle, and a small cost on the richest few”

I encourage you to read the rest if you’ve been asked this question or are a creator considering it for yourself. I plan on keeping this link handy and trying to retain as much of the post for off the cuff sharing as I can manage.

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They hit a pretty interesting milestone recently. They have recorded and released enough audio for 365 days of continuous listening. Given that most folks listen to audio of this sort for maybe a couple of hours a day, that is considerably more than a years worth of free audio.

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Ben Rosenbaum’s recent release of his short story collection, “The Ant King and Other Stories”, stands out, though. Ben is not unique in allowing derivative works in his license choice, but appears to being doing more than releasing the ebook for free and passively allowing works like translations. He’s started a contest explicitly to encourage remixing the work.

The details in a nutshell is he is giving readers six months to submit their works and he’ll reward his three favorites with signed and personalized hard cover editions. This sort of active engagement with an audience so far has been more common with independent musicians like Jonathan Coulton and Brad Sucks, perhaps because the idea of a remix of a song is a bit more obvious. Doing so has worked well for those artists, so hopefully it will also benefit Ben with some new and more interested readers.

I also recommend you check out the podcast of True Names, Ben’s collaboration with Cory Doctorow. I am a huge fan of this particular sub-sub-genre, stories of post-humans. Their collaboration brings a lot of unique and fun ideas to the mix, including a heavy bias towards deeply geek computer science conceits and inventive speculation on how completely virtualized humans may evolve into the far future.

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She is staging her own rush on the Amazon charts in just a few days, on August 25th, to celebrate the book’s launch with Swarm.  In anticipation of the book’s official launch and her attack on the charts, she has released the book as a PDF formatted electronic edition with a new short story set in the same universe.

She previously released the book a chapter at a time, with original artwork and links to audio easter eggs, as part of her enhanced feed to help promote the podcast.  This new electronic edition compiles all of the original chapters into one file, along with the new content.

I chatted with Mur briefly and asked her if she’d considered Feedbooks as well which I’ve written about here previously.  She was traveling but promised to look into it on her return.  While the PDF is a huge reward for existing fans and an incentive to potential ones as a free edition, I think it would be a superb addition to Feedbooks for those of us who use mobile devices or dedicated ebook readers.

If you are a fan of the novel’s podcast, either of the previous ebook editions, or either of the previous print editions, help Mur by purchasing the Swarm Press edition this Monday, the 25th.  If you are going to Dragon*Con, I encourage you to get the overnight shipping and take it with you.  Mur has a signing session at the convention and I am sure she’d be pleased to sign any or all editions you happen to have.

If you haven’t read or listened to Playing for Keeps, check out the web site and try one of the existing, free editions now so that if you enjoy it, you’ll consider helping Mur with her rush on Amazon.

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I was understandably intrigued when I saw a review on Wired for another e-book reader for the iPhone and iPod Touch, a free one called Stanza. It is roughly comparable, only lacking a few features that Annotater provides but possessing one that prompted me to share some thoughts.

What makes Stanza stand out is its integration with a site about which I am honestly surprised I had not heard previously, Feedbooks.

Feedbooks was founded in June of last year and provides a simple yet powerful service. At its core, the site offers the ability to generate PDF formatted electronic books on the fly from a variety of sources for just about every e-book reader on the market. You can also build a variety of different views into your books of interest as RSS feeds. Hence the name of the site.

Feedbooks republishes titles from Project Gutenberg making them easy to search and format for whatever device you posses. They also seem to have a considerable body of CC licensed books, most notably almost all of Cory Doctorow’s works. Authors can also publish their own books through the site. I am not sure if they offer explicit licensing support to authors doing so since I don’t have a title I can publish to test it. They offer a little bit of guidance to the reader on applicable copyright for books in their catalog though I wish they’d expose CC-licensed works more clearly. They do not appear to be using the CC badges and RDF metadata which would seem to be a natural fit with the site. It is early days for Feedbooks so maybe they will add that feature at some point.

You can also create customer newspapers based on existing RSS feeds. I use Bylines on my iPod Touch but for a device that doesn’t have a decent RSS aggregator application available, this feature may be of interest. It seems similar to how the Kindle handles RSS subscription from what I have read about that device.

Feedbooks seems like a great way to consume free and often public domain or openly licensed books for those of us with portable devices and they have done a remarkable job of supporting just about every reader available. For independent authors, they also offer a venue worth considering if you are already making your works available as free PDFs. If they have or add explicit Creative Commons license support, all the better.

Technorati Tags: ebooks, free

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I downloaded the file when I saw the story in April. Since then, though, I encountered a print copy in my favorite quasi-local independent bookstore, Constellation Books. If I was unaware of the free, CC licensed electronic version, though, I doubt I would have thought to pick it up. That’s one sale earned without even one word read.

That being said, I am thoroughly glad I did pick this book up. I am surprised to read Kessel categorized primarily as a science fiction and fantasy author. These stories truly span the gamut, though some do fall within the bounds of SF/F. Those that do are distinct and the best word I can use to really put my finger on that distinction is literary.

The stories are mostly character driven though there are some, like “Stories for Men” and the quarter of which it is a part are equally if not more idea driven. The more though provoking stories are written with a deft hand so that you never feel as though you are being lectured at.

Go ahead and give the free edition a look and see if you agree with me that Kessel’s work is well worth the read. And worth picking up a print copy.

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Curious that both programs could be described as cross subsidies to drive site traffic and that both were limited time offers. It is progress, I suppose, but still falls short of the incredibly high bar authors like Matthew Wayne Selznick and Cory Doctorow set by releasing their ebooks under a perpetual CC license.

Neil shares pretty much the entire letter from his publisher (scan down to the third section of the post), Harper Collins, with some relevant stats from Bookscan. The results are generally positive with the only ding coming, rightly so, in the frustration the majority of readers felt with the poor online format. There is hope, both on that front and that we’ll see more freely available works from Gaiman and his publisher again:

Given that Harper Collins sold a lot more of all my books while the free American Gods was out there, with sales of all my titles up 40% through independent bookshops, I think I can safely say that we’ll be doing it — or rather, something similar — again. And that the 56% of people who didn’t enjoy the online reading experience may be a lot happier with how we do it next time out.

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