For decades, scammy "book doctors" and vanity presses spun a tale about how Big Publishing was too conservative and risk-averse for really *really* adventurous books, and the only way to get your visionary work published was to pay them to fill your garage with badly printed books that you'd spend the rest of your life trying to get other people to read:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/04/self-publishing/
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https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/04/self-publishing/
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Cory Doctorow
•https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/04/the-wulf/#underground-fave
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/3
But.
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-block-penguin-random-house-s-acquisition-rival-publisher-simon
This means that some good books definitely can't find a home in Big Publishing. If you miss with five editors, you can exhaust all your chances with the Big Five.
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Justice Department Sues to Block Penguin Random House’s Acquisition of Rival Publisher Simon & Schuster
www.justice.govCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/6
But even with these we-try-harder boutique publishers in the mix, there's a lot of space for amazing books that just don't fit with a "trad" publisher's program.
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Cory Doctorow
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https://memex.craphound.com/2006/09/25/gigantic-little-nemo-book-does-justice-to-the-loveliest-comic-ever/
And don't even *think* of asking to borrow my copy of Jack Womack's *Flying Saucers are Real!*:
https://memex.craphound.com/2016/10/03/flying-saucers-are-real-anthology-of-the-lost-saucer-craze/
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/8
https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#intermediation
Then there's last year's surprise smash hit, *Shift Happens*, a two-volume, 750-page slipcased book recounting the history of the keyboard. I own one. It's *fantastic*:
https://glennf.medium.com/how-we-crowdfunded-750-000-for-a-giant-book-about-keyboard-history-c30e24c4022e
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How We Crowdfunded $750,000 for a Giant Book about Keyboard History
Glenn Fleishman (Medium)Cory Doctorow
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https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/16/17566276/cockygate-amazon-kindle-unlimited-algorithm-self-published-romance-novel-cabal
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How a cabal of romance writers cashed in on Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Sarah Jeong (The Verge)Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Mendelsohn,_the_Boy_from_Mars
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novel by Daniel Pinkwater, published in 1979
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Cory Doctorow
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulnlSRbH80Y
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Enshittification, Disenshittification and the Bezzle: Cory Doctorow & Randall Munroe
YouTubeCory Doctorow
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(I hadn't.)
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Cory Doctorow
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https://www.rosemarykirstein.com/the-books/
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Cory Doctorow
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https://www.rosemarykirstein.com/2010/12/the-difference/
"I got it and it was pretty rough-looking, but the book was *so* good. I can't tell you what it was about, but I think you'll really like it!"
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Cory Doctorow
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https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-steerswoman-rosemary-kirstein/7900759
Holy *moly* is this a good novel! And yeah, there's a super interesting puzzle in it that I won't even hint at, except to say that even the book's *genre* is a riddle that you'll have enormous great fun solving.
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Cory Doctorow
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Without Randall's recommendation, I never would have even read this book closely enough to notice the glowing cover endorsement from Jo Walton, nor the fact that it was included in Broderick and Di Filippo's "101 Best SF Novels 1985-2010."
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Cory Doctorow
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This book is such an unexpected marvel, a stunner of a novel filled with brilliant world-building, deft characterizations, a hard-driving plot and a bunch of great surprises.
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/solo-reading-cory-doctorow-the-bezzle-tickets-876989167207
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Solo Reading / Cory Doctorow: The Bezzle
EventbriteAaron V. Humphrey
•Found the second book as an ebook a couple of years ago and since have read the rest of them. Second and third books are _amazing_. (First and fourth books are also good, but didn't blow me away quite as much.)
#RosemaryKirstein #Steerswoman
Cory Doctorowudostępnił to.
Cory Doctorow
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