Little Brother, New York Times and Booksense bestseller!

'Scuse me while I bask: Little Brother, just hit the New York Times Kids bestseller list (#9) and the Booksense Children's Interest bestseller list (#14) and I'm about to splode with joy! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to all the readers who helped put it there!

(Image: Pablo Defendini's sketch for the Little Brother paperback)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Pablo Defendini

Congratulations, Cory! We’re all incredibly excited about LB around here!

@OKTAY #38â€” No worries, it didn’t sound like that at all. Since I used a picture of a pretty generic-looking camera as the reference model for the one on the cover, and the ‘camera-head’ meme is hardly original, it makes sense that there would be visual precedent. That being said, the camera-head is actually one of the things I’ve been re-doing over the last week, since I wasn’t 100% happy with it-it looks a bit bland to me (we’re not using this for any covers, but I’m repurposing it into a silkscreened poster, which I’ll probably print over the weekend). You sure brought back some cool childhood memories by summoning (!) Mandrake the Magician- I got sucked into a Google vortex looking through images (couldn’t find the Goliath strip ones, alas!). Thanks for the tip!
Bren

I’m excited for you, Cory. Congratulations! I liked the other cover – but hey, my taste sucks. Looking forward to reading this newest work…
Jake0748

Bask away my man. Congrats.
Mindbomb1973

Congrats Cory,

I read the book and thought it was awesome! The cover is great as well, look forward to reading your other works as well.

-J
Cory Doctorow

Thanks everyone!
Bastiaan

Cory, congratulations on all of this, I’m so glad it’s doing this well.

I must confess, I pirated the audio version of your book and listened to it during my commute for the past week. I’ve now got about 12 hours of podcasts to get up to date on so that should tell you something about how I liked the book… Anyway, I just ordered the hardcover off of Amazon, which by the way offers a much better price than the Dutch online stores, even with shipping from the US. I also got Scott Siglerâ€™s Infected to support him podcasting all of his stuff, which is awesome. Iâ€™m recommending your book to everyone around me who will listen so I hope Iâ€™ve redeemed my piracy(arr).

Furthermore, thanks for mentioning Neil Gershenfeld and the FabLab at the end of the book. Iâ€™m currently working in the Amsterdam FabLab at the Waag Society, promoting the democratization of personal fabrication and technology. Iâ€™ve spent today giving a workshop to design student on the virtues of using technology and interaction in their designs and I find all of the hacking stuff in the book very interesting. Iâ€™ve been looking into creating some workshops that may really tie in well with the subject, which may be a nice idea for a link to create.
fantasygoat

That cover is, like, a billion times better than the hardcover one.
Jeff

You’ve earned it. Love that cover. Keep up the great work.
kiddr01

well done – i look forward to reading it – and the cover is indeed awesome!
username

I agree with everyone else here — that cover is great, much better than the hc one. With all the positive comments I’m really looking forward to reading the book.
Brett Burton

What’s Little Brother?
Strixy

Congratulations! Looks like you’re #9 with a slingshot!
Spherical Time

Brilliant. Congrats, Cory.
Jake von Slatt

Just started reading this myself – it starts off like a cyberpunk Ferris Bueller’s day off and then gets darker – really cool stuff Cory!
Tenn

Mister Defendini-

Silkscreened posters sound great. How about shirts?
Oktay

Erm… re-reading my post, it might sound like I am implying the cover was stolen from Mandrake, which is definitely not the case. “Influenced” is the word I should have used, sorry for the confusion and/or offense this might have caused. “Almost exactly the same” wasn’t right either, given how objective memory is… sorry again!
SamSam

This cover is really good.
David Pescovitz

Congrats, Cory-o!
Takuan

Everyone be happy!

In these times the success of a book with such a topic means hope.

Also: buy it.
DKT

Congratulations!!!
Charlie Lesoine

Wow that cover design is WAY better than the other design.
Mark Frauenfelder

That’s great news, but I have to say I’m not surprised. I thought it was a terrific book on my first reading, and my second reading is just as enjoyable.
mutantcarrot

I love this cover!
Stefan Jones

Ditto comments on the cover. Maybe this one is geared for the adult-SF market?

Hey . . . something’s wrong. Five comments and no trolls showing up to bitch about Cory! A sudden plague of maturity?
Davin

This cover is really damn cool. The style is much more subversive and less XXXXTREME.

And congratulations!
pedmands

Nthing the cover. I like it much more than the other one (which incidentally reminds me of posters in my middle school cafeteria reminding me how awesome it is to get your daily dose of the food groups in).
Saisumimen

Gotta agree with the rest of the folks on here, this cover is approximately 10,005 times better (maybe 10,006!) than the original.
tastypopsicle

Higher res (for the first version) and more details about the cover can be found on Pablo’s site

Iâ€™ve had lots of fun putting this together, particularly including little easter eggs (hints: run the binary through a translator; check out the â€˜makerâ€™s brandâ€™ on the arphid on the spine, etc.).
midnightsimon

The book looks great – it really does!

But please! Enough book plugs already!
Tenn

There it is, clocking in at #9.

Does anybody realize yet that their voice is not going to be listened to, because the majority of us enjoy these book plugs? I LIKE THEM. It keeps me updated one a wonderful thing I am very interested in. Even if this was a place where the readers controlled the content- which we do NOT, this is a service to US by Cory and the rest- the book plugs would continue, because the majority of commenters do not complain.

That cover is gorgeous. I’m going to buy this version as soon as I see it. Let’s get it up higher, bOINGers!

And you know, you’re at no. 9 with FREE versions out. This totally disproves the idea that free literature cuts profits.
crayzieman

I read the free e-book and still bought a hardback copy, just to show my support. I also wanted a paper copy to be able to loan out to people. E-books haven’t quite caught on here, sharing them is a little difficult when the mere mention of e-books instigates a quizzical look.

I’ve been reading Corey’s books for years but this is the first one I bought. Not because of money issue but because I couldn’t find any bookstores around here that had his books. They’d always be sold out.

Also: I agree that the paperback cover is awesome. Wish you could bring out a cover replacement for hardbacks with that cover. I’d prefer it over the regular one.

Congrats on doing so well, keep it up, this book is fantastic.
Xopher

Beat me to it, Tenn. Of course no one who gives their book away could possibly get onto the best seller list with the same book!
Dustin Driver

OK OK! I’ll read it already! Sheesh!

Seriously though, congratulations! And I’m totally looking forward to diving into the novel. Cheers!
leriseux

congrats! thanks for your great work on and off-blog.
Adam Rakunas

@7 You know, I saw the first cover and thought “Frank Miller” because of the shadows and ink lines on the clothing. Yay for the new cover, yay for the bestsellingness, and yay for pixel-stained technopeasantry!
ephraimross

I figured you did your part by writing the book, so I’m doing my part to help put you there. I’ve bought a copy for every classroom in the high school where I teach, and a half dozen copies for my own classroom. A few students have read the e-text online, and another half dozen have purchased the book so far too impatient to wait for the copies I purchased to become available.

I cleaned out one of the local bookstores all by myself. So far the reaction has been amazing; students tend to rank you just above or below Harry Potter – depending on which conversations I overhear. Although this definitely hasn’t helped my reputation as a “liberal,” I’d say that by the time we reach summer vacation there will only be ten kids in the entire school who won’t have read it. Honestly. And while this might be a headache for the school IT administrator, it’s a good thing or america.

Thanks again for writing amigo.

much love,
ephraim
Antinous

Mazel tov!
Pablo Defendini

Hey Teresa! Oh I will…. I’m hitting the shop this weekend, shooting for having the first batch ready for when Cory comes to town next week. Hopefully all will go well.

@TENN- no plans for shirts, unfortunately. Just good prints on nice Rives BFK printmaking paper.
duus

congratulations!
Oktay

About the cover: it’s from Mandrake the Magician! I don’t have anything to back this up but it’s from a story in which a small town is taken over by a giant computer called Goliath that looks like a grain silo with a camera on top. The camera on the cover looks almost exactly the same as the cameras on Goliath and his drones. At the end of the story, a boy named David gets Goliath by hitting him in the “eye” using a slingshot, causing him to fall off a cliff (which is curious because earlier in the story, we see Goliath develop some sort of anti-gravity technology and fly out of the hangar he’s being kept in.)

Someone else must remember this… anyone?
akinari42

Congrats Cory! I absolutely loved the book and that credit is being given where it’s deserved. Also, the new cover is slick. Will definitely buy the book again in paperback just for for it’s sheer awesomeness.
Ape Lad

Congratulations! It’s on “to read with the kids this Summer” list.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

Hey, Pablo! Great to see you here. Make sure you print a lot of those posters, okay?