[Doctorow-L] A German audiobook Kickstarter (you can ignore this if you don't speak German!)

[Cory Doctorow]

Through a weird set of circumstances, I've found myself owning a German audiobook of my novel Red Team Blues. If you're a German-speaking fan of my work (and judging from the origin of the payments for my previous Kickstarters, there's thousands of you), I hope you'll consider pre-ordering the German audiobook. If you don't speak German (or even if you do), you can get a bargain on the DRM-free English ebook and audiobook of Red Team Blues through my latest Kickstarter!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-auf-deutsche-drm-freie

Here's what happened: as you know, I don't allow my ebooks or audiobooks to be sold with DRM. All the people involved with publishing my books know this, and over 25 years, they've gone to enormous lengths to help me live my principles through my work.

However, it was inevitable that eventually someone would forget that I - alone among the thousands of authors published by all my publishers - have this weird stipulation. Unfortunately, that's what happened when my German publisher commissioned an audiobook for their edition of Red Team Blues. Even more unfortunately,no one noticed this until after more than EUR10,000 had changed hands and the book had been recorded.

This left us all in a very awkward position, because Audible, Apple Books and Audiobooks.com refuse to carry books without DRM, and there was no way my publisher could make back their investment unless they could sell on the dominant audiobook platforms.

Though both my German publishers and my agent offered to eat the loss, I didn't want that - it was an honest mistake. Besides, I have a way to reach thousands of my German-speaking fans and direct-sell this DRM-free audiobook to them.

So that's why I've launched this short Kickstarter campaign, to sell Uve Teschner's beautifully narrated audiobook of Jürgen Langowski's translation of Red Team Blues. You can hear a one-hour preview (all of Chapter One) here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8e2or8ze_4

I'm confident that I can make a go of this, but I'll need your help (particularly if you speak German!). My German is terrible (I grew up speaking Yiddish, and have forgotten most of that, so while I can make German-adjacent noises sufficient to check into a hotel or order dinner, I can't exactly promote a Kickstarter campaign auf Deustsche).

Please help spread the world, and if you or someone you love speaks German, please consider backing the campaign!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-auf-deutsche-drm-freie

-Cory