Commercial German LITTLE BROTHER audiobook to be given away under CC license

Argon Verlag, publishers of the German audiobook edition of my novel Little Brother, are fed up with all the man-the-barricades talk about audiobook piracy. So they commissioned a very high quality reading of the German text, read by Oliver Rohrbeck, a beloved German voice-actor (star of the long-running radio drama Die Drei ??? and overdub voice of Ben Stiller). The abridgement is being sold on six CDs for €19.95.

Fans of the abridged reading and everyone else who is interested in the audiobook are being asked to pay in towards a full, free, unabridged release, also read by Rohrbeck. Once the total of €9000 is raised, the unabridged recording will also be released, free of charge, without DRM, under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license, free for all comers (if the total sum isn't raised by a set time, all the money is refunded).

What's even cooler is that the audiobook (and the German print book, from Rowohlt), co-exist happily with a free fan-translation of the novel by Christian Wöhrl and a free fan audiobook reading by Fabian Neidhardt. Fans are free to promote the work to other fans, for free, while commercial operators produce commercial editions.

I'm going on a multi-city tour of Germany in September and I'm hoping to meet Christian and Fabian so that I can thank them in person. I'm also hoping that fans of the free editions support my cool, sharing-friendly German publishers and reward them for their open attitude towards free and paid media.

What this is about

• [Anonymous]

  please link to a list of cities you will be visiting!

  .~.

• [Anonymous]

  that’s awesome news! i’m german and i grew up with ???, Oliver Rohrbeck has one of the most memorable voices i know. i hope you hit hamburg on your tour as well :)

• [Anonymous]

  I can very much recommend the version by Christian and Fabian, I have listened to it during my vacation and enjoyed it a lot! Thanks, Christian and Fabian if you’re reading this, great work!

• [LennStar]

  Add a list of the german cities and times here, please.

  For your statistics:
  I like reading too much to bother hearing or even buying an audiobook ^^ But I did buy the book after reading the downloaded version two times and read it the third time on paper.

  I downloaded all your other stories but they are not very much my liking. I didn’t buy them, but didn’t read them a second time, either. So:
  withour downloading: 0 sells, with dl 1 sell and a link to little brother in my Pirate Party Forum Account :D

• [ROSSINDETROIT]

  I looked forward to Little Brother and read it immediately upon release. I highly recommend it.

• [Anonymous]

  WIll there be a public event in Munich?

• [Jersey Tan Jill]

  I was always concerned that the free translated audio books would be crushed as soon as the publisher began work on a paid version.

  For example I was looking for a translated furniture book on Rocking Chair German Translation and came across some info acout DMCA, etc.

• [Anonymous]

  Are you going to be in Berlin?

• [Anonymous]

  i would be thrilled to see you coming to germany – i read all your books;O) please publish a list with dates and cities that you will attend.
  i’m looking forward to get an autograph.
  cu soon