Last week, I finished recording the audio version of The Happiest Days of Our Lives. I’m not sure what our release date is, but it’s in the near future. Like the audio version of Just A Geek, it’s a superannuated super-annotated version, with lots of asides and commentary. I think you’re going to like it.
It was a lot of work to do both of my audiobooks, but I think I’ve been able to create two experiences that are unique and special. They’re vastly different from just listening to me read the text; David Lawrence (my friend and producer) and I ended up having extended discussions during the recording of both books, and I broke away from the text frequently to add what we called “audio footnotes” to the experience.
This is a very time-consuming process – recording Just A Geek took seven weeks, for example – but I think it’s worth the effort. If I’ve done it right, the listener should end up feeling like we’re sitting in a room together, where I’m reading the book, and occasionally putting it down to relate some story or tangent that isn’t in the text. Also, I’m smoking a pipe, wearing an ascot, and petting a cat.
People frequently ask me if I’ll put my audiobooks on Audible, or sell them through the iTunes Music Store (I think that’s the same thing, but these are the questions I get. Don’t shoot the messenger!) I haven’t made them available there partially because Audible wants to take an enormous cut of the sales price, but mostly because Audible infects and cripples all of their files with DRM, even if the publisher and rights holder doesn’t want them to.
Let’s talk about DRM for a moment. It’s no secret that I hate it, and I believe that treating your customers like they’re thieves is no way to run a business. “But what about piracy?” You ask, “and where can I get a stylish ascot like yours?”
I’m not that worried about piracy, to be completely honest with you. I agree with Cory Doctorow that obscurity is a greater threat to an artist than piracy, but I also trust my customers more than the average publisher, because I believe I have a different relationship with them (you) than the average publisher has with, say, me. Maybe this is a little naive, but hear me out.
I’m in a unique position among creators. I feel like we (meaning me and you who are reading this) share a relationship that most creators don’t get to share with their audience. I mean, I can read a Stephen King book and enjoy it, but I have no real expectation (reasonable, anyway) of ever meeting him or exchanging ideas with him. I can watch How I Met Your Mother every week, but it’s incredibly unlikely I’ll ever get to talk with Neil Patrick Harris about how awesome Barney is. Because I feel a more personal relationship with all of you who’ve supported me by buying my books and watching my work on television, I don’t worry that much about piracy. I don’t believe that anyone who reads my blog and is interested in hearing me perform my work would deliberately steal from me any more than they’d walk into a friend’s house and take money out of their wallet. (Awkward note: this doesn’t mean we’re friends, but you get that, right?)
David and I check the usual places from time to time, and we’re willing to aggressively have stuff taken down if we need to, but here’s the remarkable thing: we’ve never found anything. That means that we’re very bad detectives, it’s just not worth pirating, or the people who have bought my audiobooks have honored my request to share them with friends, but don’t share them with the whole Internet.
Anyway, this is on my mind today because of today’s xkcd:
I’m not getting rich off of my books and my audiobooks, but it’s a very big and significant part of how I support my family. I’m incredibly lucky to make a living being an artist and a creator, and I couldn’t do it if you all chose to steal my stuff instead of buying it. It’s getting harder and harder to make a living these days, and I know that money is tight for everyone, so thank you for not being dicks.
If I have anything to say about it, you’ll never have to pirate from me to have a collection of my work that you can count on. I’m never going to infect anything I create and publish myself with DRM. I don’t believe in it, I hate it as a consumer, and so far, my fundamental belief in the goodness and honesty of people has been affirmed (cue someone finding it all over some tracker in 3 . . . 2 . . .)
Oh, and my stylish ascot? It doesn’t really exist. It’s a glamour. Don’t tell anyone, though, okay?
I don’t think you meant “superannuated”, since it’s got negative connotations and means “very, very old”. Perhaps “superannotated” or even “superawesome”?
On the subject of Kindle-compatible eBook versions… what if you sold two versions with one purchase, but only charged for one? One would be the DRM’d file that would work on the kindle, the other would be plaintext or strict xhtml that has no DRM at all. The effort in making both should be minimal, but the customer would get both something for the Kindle /and/ a safe, non-DRM’d copy, so you wouldn’t have to worry about them possibly being unable to access what they paid for.
Wil, I think it is easier to get on iTunes in DRM-free plus format than you think!
I believe there are web labels that will handle most of it for you. E.g. there’s a young french guitar player who goes by the name of “MattRach”: he posted videos on YouTube and now has his tracks DRM-free on iTunes – world wide, if I’m not mistaken.
I’m sure something similar should work for you as well.
I haven’t read all the comments, so maybe this has been asked and answered, if so I apologize, I’ll slowly work my way through the comments over the course of the working day, but my question is this: Where can I get your audiobooks? Are they only on CD? Do you sell them online anywhere? Emusic in their new(ish) audio book section?
I’m totally going to buy this audiobook. I was unfortunate enough to be stuck on Jury Duty for 3 weeks & I was fortunate enough to have the “Just a Geek” audiobook on my iPod to get me thru.
I’m almost positive the Kindle (don’t have one, just wish!) will happily display ordinary PDFs. Of course, that’s not really making it “for” the Kindle, but Kindle users could use it!
I make computer games and I hate DRM too. As well as being pirated. I kind of have the same setup as Wil, with a small (much much smaller than Wheatonia) fan club that will always buy my stuff. That’s a good anti-piracy measure, except one thing: half my audience is kids. Lemme tell ya, kids have no morals. They’re like little demons. I’ve dealt with a lot of fan-caused piracy!
Yay for another audio book! I have been wondering if you were going to do another one. I listen to audio books on my drives to visit my parents a number of states away. My husband and I loved “Just a Geek.” I hope this one comes up before Christmas so we can listen to it on that trip (*hint hint*)
I definitely agree on the DRM thing. I have tried very hard to be honest when regarding work done by artists but itunes made it so hard to do. I have actually lost a number of things that I purchased legally from them. I found the best thing to do was to go back to the old fashioned way and buy CDs then rip them to my computer. It is also nice then to have a hard copy should something bizarre happen to my computer.
I really don’t see why Wil should bother with anything besides self-distribution. I found it completely trouble-free to buy and download the JAG audiobook.
All the major eBook competitors support unencrypted formats – though unfortunately they don’t support all the same ones. Although not the prettiest option, a straight text file would play on any of them (Kindle, Sony eBook, iLiad, Hanlin and Cybook). There are applications for reading txt files on PDAs as well.
As much as I appreciate object of ire in that XKCD cartoon, I don’t like the conclusion that you might as well get stuff without paying because it implies there aren’t options. Although he nods to Amazon’s MP3 service, there are a lot of other possibilities. Rhapsody and Napster are offering DRM free downloads. And it irks me that the indies don’t get more credit for being all over DRM-free music downloads long before the majors ever considered it – eMusic of course, CD Baby offers artists the option of selling MP3s, and tons of others – Audio Lunchbox, Bleep, Magnatune, Jamendo, Smithsonian Global Sound, Beatport… Protesting DRM doesn’t mean squat if we don’t support indies and self-publishers who do it right.
I own all 3 books and loved reading them all -Happy to support, Wil.
Superannuated? Is it an antique book already? Perhaps you are putting the book on CD and then running over it with your car to give it that “I just found this in my attic underneath my broken model of the Millenium Falcon” look?
Or did you mean super-annotated? Super-inundated [with awesomeness]? Perhaps it’s super-anodized, coated with gold-pressed latinum? Oh, please be the latter…
By the way… I ordered THDOOL and have yet to receive it. I will of course order the audio book when it’s released, but where oh where is my Happiest Days!?
Wait… isn’t this customer service? It’s ok… I’ll hold…
While I have no problems with a group of gamers sharing a PDF of ours in the same way as sharing a book I do hate the torrent problem.
We have had to in the past ask for files to be removed from some places and I guess in the future it will happen again – thats the name of the game I suppose.
So I do see the need some people have with DRM but at the same time I hate it and find it a pain in the arse.
Each to their own I guess here.
Rog.
Can we pre-order the audiobook to be sure you don’t run out before we get to order?
May I please ask one more stupid question today?
A friend brought up an interesting point the other day, just after we got kicked out of Guitar Hero because the disk was scratched. If we were to send the disk to the publisher and ask for a new one, would they send it to us, or require us to buy a completely new copy?
This led to the question — when you buy a game, movie or music CD, what are you buying? I pay $60 for a game — do I own the disc, the digital media, or both? Or am I just renting it until it fails? I think most publishers would have you believe the latter — that if the disk becomes unusable because your POS game system scratches the disk, you must fork over another $60 to play the game. I don’t like that.
If I own the disk, then I should be able to make multiple copies and do what I want with it. Obviously, the publisher does NOT want that. If I own the rights to use one copy of the digital content, then I should at any time make a copy for backup purposes, and if the disk gets ruined, request a new copy (for a nominal disk-replacement fee, of course).
However, what do you suppose would happen if I were to call them and ask for a replacement? Game over.
I don’t have a problem with the concept of DRM. Unfortunately, like communism, it will never truly work, mainly because the only “rights” DRM protects is that of the publisher. There is no provision to protect MY “digital rights.”
And until then, DRM can go fuck itself.
You sir are a light in a dark room, and THAT is the reason I’d not pirate anything from you not our rapidly deepening friendship.
Which btw, now that we’re non-pirate friends can I sleep on your couch next month? I’ve been looking to take a vacation in California and it’d really help out. Thanks pal!
đŸ˜‰
We may need to coordinate our vacations, Thane9… I was hoping to use his couch myself. Unless, of course, he has a large sofa-bed, then I don’t mind sharing…
One criticism I have about 10quicksteps is that — unless I overlooked it — they don’t list the price of the audiobook/CDs until you hit “buy”. It’d be nice if the prices were listed with the description.
Wil on Dr.Horrible. That’d be neat.
Hey m k glass! Actually, I think all console game companies will replace discs for a very nominal fee. Some will even do it free at their own expense (once you go to your own expense of mailing in the bad disc). I’ve had one replaced in the past. Look in the manual for the customer support number, you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised.
And absolutely copyright laws allow you to make all the backups you want for your own use! Of course, DRM prevents that and that’s one of the many stupid things about it.
Got it! Love buy-then-download stuff for the instant gratification option (and working for an ISP with >500K/sec download speeds). Audio is perfect! No hiss, no background noise, good bitrate. Get it folks, you’ll not regret it! I’ve listened to five minutes and already feel I got value for money.
Hi Wil!
I found this post of yours touching and inspiring. As opposed to you, I’m making all my works of art available under freely-distributable licences (including Public Domain, MIT-X11-Licence, CC-by, CC-by-sa, etc.) so people can share them, re-use them, cite/quote them, build upon them and enjoy them. In short – to enrich the commons. Of course, I didn’t really try to make a living out of them yet.
See what I wrote about it for more information:
* http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/case-for-file-swapping/
* http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/philosophy/closed-books-are-so-19th-century/
I did a bit of the Google and found this interesting article about iTunes and publishing:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/564768.html
A bit more than meets the eye, but definitely worth pursuing. What do you have to lose, WW?
Ah, “WW” in an ascot. It just works.. đŸ™‚ Say with the snottiest Brit accent you can imagine:
” Say, old chap! (holding a smoldering pipe of long bottom) Nice ascot, WW. What what!”
I’m sorta necroposting, and only scanned the first page of comments, so hope this isn’t the twentieth time you’ve heard this:
The DRM-free way to make your books available on Kindle is to distro it as a PDF. Then users can download it via Whispernet wireless for a dime or via USB for free.
For details, check out the section just above the [note: affiliate link] Kindle product details for more info.
Okay so Laura beat me to it. Anyway, here’s a way to get your book onto the Kindle (from Baen’s web site):
http://www.webscription.net/t-kindle.aspx
The background that lets that page make sense is this:
**Amazon owns Mobipocket.
**The free Mobipocket Reader can make .prc/.mobi formatted ebooks that work on Amazon’s Kindle and don’t have DRM.
**Baen publishes .prc/.mobi (and other format) ebooks without DRM.
**Therefore you could publish .prc/.mobi ebooks without DRM that work on Kindle. QED
Maybe Baen would like to add your books to their e-publishing empire? Probably wouldn’t hurt to ask.
BTW .prc is more “native” than PDF for the Kindle. PDF has to be converted to .prc first, and the automated conversion process for PDF is rarely clean.