Cory Doctorow - With a Little Help

J Devitt rolled all the audio files into one big M4B file for iOS devices — thanks, J!

40K, an Italian publisher, have brought out a standalone ebook version of my novella Chicken Little, publishing it simultaneously in English and Italian with some lovely illustrations. They’re starting it off at a low price (which will go up on Nov 16): $0.99 in the Kindle store; £0.86 in the UK Kindle store; €0.99 in the German Kindle store; and €0.99 for the Italian edition in Bookrepublic (use discount code 7ATE9).

Cory Doctorow’s novella ‘Chicken Little’ does an excellent job of updating and commenting on some of the themes that informed Pohl & Kornbluth’s classic novel ‘The Space Merchants’. Doctorow’s updated high-tech take on Pohl’s take on Jonathan Swift’s ‘struldbrugs,’ creatures who have immortality but not eternal youth, continuing to age through their extended lives, is particularly ingenious.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see this one show up on an award ballot next year.” -Gardner Dozois, Locus Magazine

“Chicken Little” also appears in my CC-licensed short story collection With a Little Help and was reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection

Daniel Krause interviewed me in Booklist about my DIY short story collection, With a Little Help, on the occasion of that book being listed in the Ingram catalog, which’ll make it easy for libraries to get copies.

Seattle’s kick-ass University of Washington bookstore is the latest local store to start selling my DIY science fiction short story collection, With a Little Help, printing it on demand from their Espresso Book Machine. They’re even giving away some copies to celebrate.

Amsterdam’s excellent American Book Center is now carrying my DIY science fiction short story collection, With a Little Help, in its inventory; they’ve got a print-on-demand machine that’ll print and bind a copy in any of the four covers (they’ll also ship within Europe and abroad).

Last week, New York’s McNally-Jackson Books started printing and carrying my DIY short story collection, With a Little Help using their on-site print-on-demand machine. Now, the most excellent Harvard Bookstore has begun to do the same, retailing the book in its Cambridge, Mass store.

I’ve teamed up with McNally-Jackson, a most excellent indie bookstore in Soho, NYC, to print and sell my DIY short story collection With a Little Help right in the store, using an Espresso book-machine. You can order them here, or buy them in-store. It’s similar to the deal I’ve struck with The University of Melbourne’s Custom Book Centre for sales and distribution in Australia in New Zealand. I’m really excited to see how this works out, as there are plenty of amazing stores in the USA with Espresso machines with whom I’d be delighted to make similar arrangements.

My new DIY short story collection With a Little Help has garnered a positive writeup and review in the Wall Street Journal, thanks to Tom Shippey:

So far so good, but “With a Little Help” shows that Mr. Doctorow isn’t starry-eyed about what will happen next. State bureaucracies can use technology as well as individuals, and a struggle has already started over who will control the Internet. The evil side of the IT revolution is that the state can check on everything, and its data-banks get bigger all the time. Who has not cracked a joke in an email, or made some electronic comment, that could be taken the wrong way? Once you’ve attracted attention, the story “Scroogled” points out, “scroogled” is exactly what you could be.

Another Doctorow thought: Computer-guided traffic could be much more efficient, right? But would it be fair, or would the road clear magically for government apparatchiks and guys with the right microchip, while all the lights turn mysteriously red for those on some secret gray-list? The story “Human Readable” puts both sides of the argument.

Whatever the future, here and now Mr. Doctorow’s stories offer compelling images of the way it’s going to be. Venture capitalists? Forget them, says “Other People’s Money.” Big money is dumb money. Much easier, says one old-lady manufacturer to a smart young gigafund manager, for her to make and market her own product, and keep the money (just like Mr. Doctorow), than for him to find and fund a hundred products and take a rake-off. He only deals in six-figure multiples, and that’s no good: not nimble enough. And he has to get a return on all those billions, poor outdated soul.

The Author as Agent of Change