(My girlfriend independently came up with something similar: She uses libraries in reverse. She buys books, reads them, then — if they’re good enough to be worth reading, but not stunning enough that she feels she needs to keep a copy immediately on hand — donates them to her favorite library. Not quite the same result, since those probably go onto the resale shelf rather than directly into the collections, but it’s the same basic concept of “if you liked it, share it.”)

Marketing is free on BoingBoing. I think that there’s more to a publisher than just that. Having a relationship with a great editor who works for a great publisher has to be a great thing.

You should do an experiment where you offer a digital story or novella on line and let people pay what they want. I think five dollars is fair. There has to be a point where an author’s popularity enables them to cut out the publisher. Not paper, just digital. And it would be a very green thing to promote. This would not be good for the publishing industry. I wonder if you could just have an Editing Industry for E-books? You have to figure paper books are going to be thing of the past before long.

Ebooks are great, and its terrific of Cory to give them away free, but it’s still a printbook world and will probably be for some decades to come.

The music and movie industries have/do serve similar rolls.

It’s obvious that a digital transition is going to happen. The trick is going to be making it through while preserving the various necessary institutional processes.

Something like this, an experiment that explores the ideas of voluntary payments and digital works while at the same time trying to remain sensitive to the current industry process is very important.

Way to go Cory :)

Oh, and great book.

As an unexpected bonus, my Amazon Prime (free two-day shipping for a year for one fee) covered all the shipping costs. Sweet!

Great use of Economic Stimulus Money, send it to a UK based, Canadian author, who has vested interest in the details of US politics!

A lot of people think I work for the devil, if you think this you’re not alone. But these kids are going from a horrid environment to one that is more conducive to not being beaten and raped by family members. Sorry, I’m straying. I think it would be cool to offer this to them to read, if they read it and it provides some kind of comfort or relief to being scared or frustrated or any of the million emotions you get while being placed, it’s worth it.

This is a great idea Cory. I guess what I’m wondering is if I qualify for this, since I work in IT and am not a social worker. Also, would it be considered poor ettitquette if I were to have some of the social workers here and at the other offices in our region to submit thier names. Would be cool to have a few copies in case some get stolen.

Also, are there any other authors doing this sort of thing? Would be cool to get more books, we rely on state money to fund SRS and there isn’t a lot to go around; so all the books we have are donated from people. A lot of them are romance novels and inappropriate, more for the social workers themselves I think. Would be cool to get more age appropriate book for these kids.

(And Hellhead, no we don’t all think you work for the devil. SRS, CPS, whatever your state calls it provides a sadly necessary service, at the cost of getting blamed both for intervening too soon and too often and for not intervening fast enough or often enough.)

Regarding other authors — no not that I know of. Someone should set up a service, though.

You seem like a very pro-openness, pro-common sense, pro-privacy kind of guy…

Given that, how can you:

a) Promote the zipidee plug-in thing as a way to buy your book?! They wanted my *gmail PASSWORD* as a part of the sign-up process!! (They wanted it so they could spam everyone in my address book.)

b) Promote Amazon, originators of the one-click patent?

BTW, I started on Little Brother last night, and couldn’t stop until I finished. Great stuff!

I have usually read Cory’s books online and then bought a physical copy, largely out of a feeling of gratitude, but this model seems like a tastier way to do that.

I’m curious, though, why it would necessarily follow that a tip jar would put you at odds with your publisher. Surely you could come up with an equitable agreement to split any proceeds from the tip jar, yes?

I’m all about paying for the music, books, etc. that I consume – I’m very aware that there’s a lot going on behind the scenes to bring these products to us consumers. So I think it’s essential that we all work together to find a fair way to reciprocate when authors and artists produce materials for our consumption. It seems that the current trend is moving away from _direct_ reciprocation, and moving more toward a what-comes-around-goes-around type of thing.

The record is up at WorldCat, so far 119 libraries have listed the title.

Free access version of WorldCat record for LB:
http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3ALittle+Brother+au%3ADoctorow&qt=advanced

We are still waiting for our copies at my system, but I hope to be talking it up to my teens very soon. The Instructables will really help sell this to my non-readers. Thanks for adding that bonus Cory!

This afternoon, our school recieved a copy of Little Brother which was donated by a reader from Ridgefield, CT through this program. The Barnes and Noble desription says:

“I saw your request on Cory’s site; I loved the book, I’m glad I could share.”

Bless you, benefactor. And Cory, bless you, too. I’ve been walking around glowing for over an hour, book in hand. When people ask, I tell them that socio-economic networking is the best thing ever. And then we get to talk about stuff that really matters. And we all get a little closer, and a little more knowledgable, and a LOT more excited.

Thanks for making my job work better, for making our school easier and more fun, for connecting us to you and vice versa, for making the world. Thanks to everyone else, too, for everything else. Whee!

Off to find just the right kid and slip the book into her hand — from there, I’ll ask the kids to pass it along virally until the end of the year, and then we’ll see where the book, the ideas, and the way it arrived here can take us.