#DRM-free

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Cory Doctorow Humble Bundle

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

It's been 21 years and 29 days since Tor Books published my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. In the years since, Tor has published every one of my novels, sending me around the USA and Canada to talk about them. Now, they've teamed up with Humble Bundle to sell 18 of my ebooks on a name-your-price basis, with part of the proceeds going to benefit EFF:

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/cory-doctorow-novel-collection-tor-books-books

I've been associated with EFF even longer than I've been published by Tor! My first novel came out while I was working EFF's first-ever booth at CES. I split my time between the booth and my motel room, where I paid $0.25/call to dial up to Earthlink's local number and manage the launch-day publicity. Over the years, I've benefited immensely from Tor's editorial and publicity departments, working with brilliant publishing people like Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Patty Garcia, Dot Lin, Laura Etzkorn, Elena Stokes, Sarah Reidy, Lucille Rettino, and of course, Tor founder Tom Doherty.

But I like to think that it was a two-way street. Tor and I have come a long way together on ebooks: most visibly, they allowed me to publish several novels under Creative Commons licenses (my first book was the first ever CC book, coming out just weeks after the licenses themselves launched). As my editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden said at the time, "Ebooks have the worst hours-in-meeting-to-dollars-in-revenue ratio of anything in my publishing career. Why not?"

https://craphound.com/down/download/

Just as important – but less visible – was Tor's willingness to let me insist that all my books be published without DRM, meaning that anything you buy on say, Amazon, can be moved to any reader program if you decide to start getting your ebooks elsewhere. This worked so well that in 2012, Tor became the first major publisher in the world to ban DRM on all its ebooks, flying me, John Scalzi and Charlie Stross to New York City to announce it this at a big, splashy event at Book Expo America:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130512022634/https://tor.com/blogs/2012/06/tor-books-announces-e-book-store-doctorow-scalzi-a-stross-talk-drm-free

Tor's unique status as the sole major DRM-free publisher in the world was well timed! That same year, I curated the very first Humble Ebook Bundle, which was very top-heavy with Tor titles, and raised more than $1,000,000 for the writers, publishers and charities associated with it:

https://web.archive.org/web/20121017215636/http://www.humblebundle.com/

That opened the floodgates to a series of Humble Bundles, tempting other major publishers to dabble with DRM-free, including Simon and Schuster:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-I5QyAfglU

And Harpercollins:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHMLfeCrCrE

Now, 12 years after that inaugural Humble Ebook Bundle, I find myself honored by being the subject of a bundle of my own (it helps that I've written a hell of a lot of books in the intervening years). Included in the bundle are (nearly) all of my Tor novels and novellas: The Lost Cause; "The Canadian Miracle" (a Lost Cause story); Red Team Blues; Radicalized; Walkaway; "Party Discipline" (a Walkaway story); Pirate Cinema; Rapture of the Nerds (with Charlie Stross); For The Win; Makers; Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town; Eastern Standard Tribe, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Little Brother, Homeland, Attack Surface, and "Lawful Interception" (a Little Brother story).

(The sole exclusion is The Bezzle, which came out two weeks ago and is already a USA Today national bestseller!)

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Also included in the bundle is Poesy the Monster Slayer, my 2020 picture book for the littlies:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627/poesythemonsterslayer

All these books are delivered as DRM-free epub files. The Bundle runs for the next three weeks, and the minimum buy-in is $18 – that's just $1/book (full retail value is $187). Of course, you can name a higher price, and, as with all Humble Bundles, you can adjust the final split to share out the money between me, EFF, and the Humble folks.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/03/humbly-bundled/#eff-too

[hanakogames]

Save 50% on pretty-much-everything for Black Friday 2023

[bornangelauthor]

eBooks Now on my website!

DRM-Free and from the author so there's no paying the Corporations and you can have your books anywhere you want to read them!

If you like DRM-Free Ebooks, I now have Ebooks listed on my website store. These books are Fast passed, character driven, Paranormal/Urban Fantasy with Paranormal Romance, Crime thriller, and a twist of Mythology with a heaping ton of Paranormal creatures though the focus is Angels both created and born. Also featuring Fated Mates, Serial killers, Vigilante Justice, and more!

Comp titles for the Born Angel Universe:

If you like The Dresden Files, The Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Novels, The Sookie Stackhouse Series, ACOTAR, Vampire Diaries, Vampire Academy, Succubus Blues, the Mercy Thompson Series, Immortal Instruments, Dark Hunters, and Good Omens. You're sure to LOVE these series.

[savingcontent]

GOG Winter Sale is not slowing down, with Chicken Assassin: Reloaded the giveaway game

Continue reading GOG Winter Sale is not slowing down, with Chicken Assassin: Reloaded the giveaway game

[catgirlforeskin]

I’m like one of those egg-cracker girls but for tabletop. Nothing is more satisfying than convincing a GM to stop running 5e for their group and start a different rpg, and hearing about how their mewling worms of players complain but ultimately go along with it because lord knows none of them have the spine to find a new group or GM themselves.

Remember that when your DnD players give you all the work, they also give you all the power. Each will whimper and beg like a dog when you crack the whip and tell them they’re learning Mausritter this week, you need only wield it

[cakesmelons]

You remember the harem timeline where dream fucking dies? No? Too bad 'cause I gotta rush- **sonic speeds to school

[unpretty]

serial reader is a neat app idea but i'd like it better if i could pop my own epubs in there

[hapigairu]

I don't really care about DA, but everytime I see content about the newest entry, this is what my brain imagines:

[melonymint753]

[krissiefox]

UGH. Wish I knew about this ahead of time.

Well, at-least we know nobody should feel bad for yo-ho-ho-ing any one of these games now. Fuck you warner bros.

(also considering warner bros keeps putting out harry potter games, I think that's just another reason people should "shiver me timbers" their games.)

[netscapenavigator-official]

I know this is an improper use of this meme format, but

I’m honestly tired of Tumblr Dot Com users trying to promote CDs, DVDs, and BDs are the best way to “own your media” in 2024. They’re not. They never were. They never will be. (You stupid sluts.)

With the exception of M-Discs. M-Disc BDs, and the even rarer format (M-Disc DVDs), are adequate for archiving. In fact, it’s what they’re designed to do. But good luck finding some that won’t blow the bank. And they’ll most likely be 128 GB or less, so you’re still better off just running two cheap Walmart HDDs in parallel.

[decepti-thots]

this is getting actually silly now tbh

[g66lol]

These days, almost all of us are creating media and sharing it online.

One problem is finding good music that doesn't infringe on copyrights. 

Even if you're not trying to monetize your creations, platforms like YouTube and Twitch will put ads on anything you create that uses copyrighted music.

I hear some podcast hosts are doing this now, too.

I'm starting a record label that ONLY provides music that is #DRMFree and #CreativeCommons.

You go to the website, choose a genre you like and listen to some music.

Then you buy the albums you like or even just individual songs.

It's immediately available for download and you can then put them in whatever creations you want.

You own the music forever.

Don't worry about your Twitch and YouTube videos being demonetized.

With our DRM-Free Creative Commons music, you'll be able to use your music as you please, on any device you want.

Buy some music now to help raise funds to get the record label off the ground:

If you prefer #InstrumentalHipHop, check out the beatMage: https://megabyteghost.bandcamp.com/album/a-day-at-the-carnival-with-the-beat-mage

If you like #Industrial music, check out megabyteGhost: https://megabyteghost.bandcamp.com/album/dead-mans-switch

And if you like #DarkAmbient music, check out Prefecture.Audio: https://megabyteghost.bandcamp.com/album/prefecture-audio-ii-swamp

[metamatar]

i wonder if other people have this weird relationship with digital objects too but i can't really think of my lovingly organised music or book collection on my hard drive as something i own or something that is mine. most of it is pirated so maybe that adds to it? i just think of it as a really opinionated archive. the possibility of infinite replication makes it something that automatically belongs to everyone. its just a subset of the commons.

[savingcontent]

Cozy up and keep warm with the classics or new releases in the GOG Winter Sale - on now

Continue reading Cozy up and keep warm with the classics or new releases in the GOG Winter Sale – on now

[molags-balls]

I downloaded the GOG edition of Skyrim Special Edition as it’s still on 1.6.629. It has been so much more stable than the Steam version and idk why. I have the exact same mods but it loads up faster and has less stutter.

Plus it’s DRM free. You get an offline installer so you can actually own the game. Since it’s DRM free you don’t need to connect to Bethesda for the Anniversary Edition creations. They’re included as a separate offline installer. It also makes updates optional.