deep thoughts; publishing @ 18 Mar 2008 11:59 pm by bigfish
We’re live with torrents for Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, by Leander Kahney of Wired.com. Yes, we’re giving the electronic files away.
These are two beautiful books. One, Cult of iPod, won several design awards. Our designer, Derek Yee, did a really amazing job with both books and we’re very proud of them. If you haven’t seen them you’ll be impressed. The design of both of these books will stand up to book design anywhere.
We’ll be watching to see if making the electronic versions of these books available for free has any effect whatsoever on book sales. And if there is some noticeable effect whether it’s a positive one. I hope so because I think P2P can be a very good and powerful too.
In today’s electronic world we can choose to fight a losing battle with DRM, or we can take a counter-intuitive approach and turn things on their head.
First off, all of the PDFs that we sell are DRM free, and they have been from the beginning. We trust our readers and we think that they should have the same rights in an electronic book that they have in a printed book.
But there’s a political issue here as well. I think that publishers (music and book) are spending too much time circling the wagons and not enough time thinking of ways that they can use technology to advantage. Certainly, our move here is a bit unusual, but someone has to take the plunge. May as well be us. After all, we were the first publishers in the United States to come out publicly against the DMCA. Time to put our money where our mouth is, as they say.
By the way, on a personal note, I admit that the experience of posting these two torrents into the wild tonight was an odd one. I’ve been in publishing for just over 20 years and my training has not been to give books away. But I think there’s something to this and logic tells me that if we increase the visibility of our titles, we’ll sell more books.
At the same time, this has been a very empowering experience. Rather than agonize over the appearance of electronic versions of our titles on torrent sites (I have, and I’ve tried to stop them), I think it’s worth trying to use P2P to help us to increase the visibility of our titles in a crowded market. (I can’t stand those Windows help files anyway.)
We believe that when people read our books they’ll see how they good they are, and they’ll buy them. It happens to us all the time at almost every show that we go to. Many people buy literally armloads of our books. It’s kind of amazing, in a good way.
Stay tuned. And please, share!
Kostenlose Bücher für Mac Fans…
Wie der Verlag No Starch Press in seinem Blog bekannt gibt, stellt er die beiden Titel The Cult of Mac und The Cult of iPod als DRM-freie PDF-Dateien zum kostenlosen Download zur Verfügung.
Interessanterweise wurde als Downloadplattform Bittorr…
[...] Francisco publisher No Starch Press has stared experimenting with giving away their books for free on BitTorrent. Today they have seeded two of the popular titles that they publish, [...]
[...] been in publishing for just over 20 years and my training has not been to give books away,” writes Pollock on the No Starch blog. “But I think there’s something to this and logic tells me that if we increase the [...]
[...] Francisco publisher No Starch Press has stared experimenting with giving away their books for free on BitTorrent via The Pirate Bay. Today they have seeded two of the popular titles that [...]
[...] are the links to the torrent downloads (Cult of Mac, Cult of iPod), here is the link to the No Starch blog post, and here is a link to their online store, in case you want to purchase the actual [...]
[...] Starch Press, a San Francisco-based publisher, is giving away two of their most popular books for free on BitTorrent via the Pirate Bay, hoping that this will [...]
Did you check out Mininova CD (http://www.mininova.org/distribution)? Seems to me that’d be a nice fit.
[...] Starch Press’ Bill Pollock uploaded the torrent to The Pirate Bay himself, as he writes: “I think that publishers (music and book) are spending too much time circling the wagons and [...]
[...] látszik a hÃr, hogy ingyenesen letölthetÅ‘ a Wiredes Leander Kahney két kultusz könyve. A kiadó úgy döntött, hogy egy kis PR sosem árt, és feltöltötték a Cult of Mac-et és a Cult of iPod-ot a Piratebayre. Még pofás ascii art [...]
[...] Starch Press’ Bill Pollock uploaded the torrent to The Pirate Bay himself, as he writes: “I think that publishers (music and book) are spending too much time circling the wagons and not [...]
[...] buy it. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that the publisher No Starch Press has decided to give away the PDF version of the book. Now I can sample it on my smartphone [...]
[...] No Starch Press is giving away their books for free on The Pirate [...]
[...] distributor, O’Reilly, did back in March 2006, publisher No Starch Press is experimenting with free e-books. Leander Kahney’s Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod have been seeded via BitTorrent and are now [...]
Hey, just downloaded it… good luck to your causes. I’m sure I’ll like the book just judging by its cover now. Cheers!
[...] rights management (DRM) of electronic assets are still raging. In the words of Bill Pollock from No Starch Press : But there’s a political issue here as well. I think that publishers (music and book) are [...]
[...] [The Cult of Mac] Download [The Cult of iPod] Read [No Starch Press] Via [Torrent [...]
[...] Starch Press’ Bill Pollock uploaded the torrent to The Pirate Bay himself, as he writes: “I think that publishers (music and book) are spending too much time circling the wagons and [...]
[...] Pollock of No Starch Press has some interesting things to say about this project [...]
[...] Cult of Mac y Cult of iPod disponibles en la red torrent (enlace) De acuerdo que No Starch Press es “geek friendly”, pero eso no quita que han dado un [...]
[...] Si queréis leer la entrada de primera mano, visitad el blog de la editorial. [...]
Cult of Mac / iPod als kostenlose PDFs…
Zwei Klassiker der Apple-Literatur werden ab sofort verschenkt: Leander Kahneys Cult of Mac und Cult of iPod. Die beiden Bücher werden als gezippte PDF-Datei via Bittorrent verteilt: Hier geht’s lang.
……
[...] been in publishing for just over 20 years and my training has not been to give books away,” writes Pollock on the No Starch blog. “But I think there’s something to this and logic tells me that if we increase the [...]
[...] Recently the two broadcasters took a new step in the right direction by releasing their work on Bit Torrent, DRM-free. First of was the Swedish pc-magazine called Allt om PC . Their latest issue is now available on The Pirate Bay, link to the torrent. Last week No Starch Press released the joyful news that their quite famous books Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod was now available on The Pirate Bay. The company wrote on their site about their decision to release the two books on The Pirate bay as an experiment. The want the see if this decision has any positive affect on their book sales. “In today’s electronic world we can choose to fight a losing battle with DRM, or we can take a counter-intuitive approach and turn things on their head.” Read the rest of the entry here. [...]
Very nice, thank you!
[...] är Paulo Coelho, Jan Kallberg och Rosetta Sten. Bokförlaget The No Starch Press har dessutom lagt ut två böcker på The Pirate Bay.Att kunna leva av inkomster genererade av sin blogg, kan i praktiken innebära [...]
[...] is a fun, smaller, technology oriented publisher. As such, it is hardly surprising they would be willing to experiment with direct distribution through BitTorrent. They are releasing two titles, both by Leander Kahney noted Wired.com columnist; Cult of Mac and [...]
[...] Weâ??re Giving Books Away | Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod – Weâ??re live with torrents for Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, by Leander Kahney of Wired.com. Yes, weâ??re giving the electronic files away. [...]
So how did giving books away work out for you? I’m a writer looking to increase my readership–am vitally interested to know how giving away efiles affected hard copy sales.
[...] Starch is no stranger to experimenting with digital formats. In 2008, the publisher made available copies of my Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod books on the Bittorrent file-sharing networ… (which saw tens of thousands of [...]
[...] Starch is no stranger to experimenting with digital formats. In 2008, the publisher made available copies of my Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod books on the Bittorrent file-sharing networ… (which saw tens of thousands of [...]
I cannot believe this will work!
The concept of open source publishing is a parallel universe to that of open source software. The latter is no longer a new concept/paradigm, yet the former believes it’s breaking new ground. More importantly, for those who neither understand the former nor the latter, it’s still all about: “But, what’s the business model?”