Just finished listening to a short CBC piece in which SciFi author and BoingBoing.net contributor Cory Doctorow ‘splains how much sense it makes for books to be discoverable via Google Book Search and the like, and how he’s more sucessful commercially for having given away copies of his books. He points out that people don’t not buy his books becuase they’re available for free, they don’t buy them because they don’t know about his books. But if and when they discover his books online, many folks end up buying a copy.
I learned about the CBC interview thanks to LibVibe, the newest library-news podcast. I think I like LibVibe; it’s short and on topic, though it takes me a few seconds each episode to get in to my “Marv listening mode”. See, Marv has professional (AM, I’d guess) radio experience, and he really puts his voice into it. Give it a listen, you’ll see what I mean. You can listen to episodes right from his website, no downloading necessary.
Back to the interview with Cory. If you’ve heard Cory speak before, there’s not much new here, but if you haven’t please give it a listen (~18 minutes). The interview is conducted by Jian Ghomeshi, who did the excellent 3-part TV series for the CBC back in May called The End, and which apparently I somehow neglected to blog about. In The End, Jian explores possible futures for Radio, TV, and Print. It’s with this third episode that the Doctorow interview closely aligns. The reason I mention this tie-in is that while it’s obvious to me that Jian is familiar with the subject, and I think even talked to Cory for the series, Cory is obviously in standard “explain it all from the beginning” mode, almost immediately steering the interview to his own agenda. I guess that’s ok, as most people who are listening probably should hear it all, but I was struck with the skill that Cory had in getting to talk about his topic right from the get-go. I don’t think I’d want to be on the other debate team 😉
Incidentally, you can watch all three episodes of The End from the CBC website – check the bottom of the left navigation column for the links. If you’re in Canada or a border state, the website says they’re re-running the series on Aug 21-23 as well.