5 Ways Cory Doctorow is scaring traditional publishers

Nov 16 2009

For many people, it may seem wrong that one can get rich by giving stuff away for free. This is exactly what one science fiction writer and digital evangelist is doing – and he’s the traditional publishing industry’s worst nightmare. I’m referring to Cory Doctorow, a fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the co-editor of the blog BoingBoing and a science fiction author who sells and gives away his novels for free.

In this article Meet Publishers’ Enemy No. 1: Cory Doctorow from the Globe and Mail website, Doctorow takes direct aim at the traditional publishing industry:

“Right now, we have this vision of the publisher as a monolithic service entity that proves everything from typesetting and printing to distribution to sales support, marketing and PR,” he said. “But there’s no reason it has to do all those things in one go.”

Before the internet and the digital technology that has turned ebooks into a formidable force in the publishing world, traditional publishers were the gatekeepers to becoming a successful author. Cory Doctorow is changing that. He puts his money where his mouth is. Here are the many methods Doctorow uses to spread his work among readers:

Print publishing: His books can be found in regular bookstores in traditional print format.
Ebooks released at the same time as print books.
Under a creative commons license he allows readers to produce derived works based on his writings, such as fan fiction (he does not allow commercial usage under the CC license, however).
Also allows readers to circulate his ebooks freely under the CC license as long as it’s not for commercial purposes.
Records and posts an audio version of his work on his blog, free for anyone to listen to.

And Doctorow claims his ‘free’ strategy is working. He says giving away ebooks is boosting his print book sales. Doctorow also says that the problem for writers is not piracy, it’s obscurity. I agree. If no one knows who you are or your works, then you’ll always be a living example as the cliched starving writer.

Placing Cory Doctorow’s strategy into practice

Any author should take a serious look at placing Doctorow’s strategy into practice with distributing his/her own works. I’m vigorously working on finishing up a few short stories, which I plan on giving away for free on Smashwords, as well as a free download on my blog.

Heck, if people can stand my screeching, broken record of a voice, I might just record an audio version of my fiction. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself – one step at a time.

If you’re a writer and you use the ‘free’ model to distribute your work, leave a comment below and let us know how it’s working out for you (good or bad).

Read More: Author News, Publishing News, eBooks

2 Responses

I think it’s great Cory is doing what he is doing, but there seems to be some emphasis on the idea of Creative Commons in this article. But what I want to know (besides the creation of derivative works — which I haven’t seen at all, unless someone can point it out) why all the fuss about CC? I mean what is it an author can do with CC that an indies author can’t do under a traditional license? Let’s be honest, Cory has readers because he’s an excellent writer and because people can download his work for free (which is still completely possible with a traditional license), not because of CC.

BTW, I also have my work up on Smashwords. Absolutely wonderful place. Best of luck to you.

Made in DNA 11/22/2009 11:28 pm
Thank you for your comments! It is always great to hear from readers of my blog. I think CC is just an easy way for people of creative works to let the public know what they can and cannot do with those works. You’re right, CC is not the only way to give away novels (for example) for free.

As far as Smashwords goes, I’m a huge fan. I read a lot of short fiction from that site. Working on getting my own fiction on Smashwords as soon as possible.

Thanks again for your comment!

Brad Vertrees 11/23/2009 1:30 pm