[Plura-list] Kickstarting the "Chokepoint Capitalism" audiobook

[Cory Doctorow]

Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/17/chokepoint-capitalism/

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Tomorrow (Aug 18), I'll be at the launch for Vice Motherboard's new "Terraform" sf anthology in Venice, CA:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/terraform-book-release-party-vice-ft-cory-doctorow-geoff-manaugh-tickets-399204109237

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Today's links

* Kickstarting the "Chokepoint Capitalism" audiobook: We wrote a book that Amazon won't sell.

* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

* This day in history: 2012, 2017, 2021.

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

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🏄🏾 Kickstarting the "Chokepoint Capitalism" audiobook

My next book is *Chokepoint Capitalism*, co-written with the brilliant copyright expert Rebecca Giblin: it's an action-oriented investigation into how tech and entertainment monopolies have destroyed creators' livelihoods, with detailed, shovel-ready plans to unrig creative labor markets and get artists paid.

http://www.beacon.org/Chokepoint-Capitalism-P1856.aspx

Ironically, the very phenomenon this book describes - "chokepoint capitalism" - is endemic to book publishing, and in audiobook publishing, it's in its terminal phase. There's no way to market an audiobook to a mass audience without getting trapped in a chokepoint, which is why we're kickstarting a direct-to-listener edition:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/chokepoint-capitalism-an-audiobook-amazon-wont-sell

What is "chokepoint capitalism?" It's when a multinational monopolist (or cartel) locks up audiences inside a system that they control, and uses that control to gouge artists, creating toll booths between creators and their audiences.

For example, take Audible: the Amazon division controls the vast majority of audiobook sales in the world - in some genres, they have a 90%+ market-share. Audible requires every seller - big publishers and self-publishers alike - to use their proprietary DRM as a condition of selling on the platform.

That's a huge deal. DRM is useless at preventing copyright infringement (all of Audible's titles can be downloaded for free from various shady corners of the internet), but it is *wildly effective* at locking in audiences and seizing power over creators. Under laws like the USA's Digital Millennium Copyright Act, giving someone a tool to remove DRM is a felony, punishable by 5 years in prison and a $500k fine.

This means that when you sell your audiobooks on Audible, you lock them to Audible's platform...forever. If another company offers you a better deal for your creative work and you switch, your audience can't follow you to the new company without giving up all the audiobooks they've bought to date. That's a lot to ask of listeners!

Amazon knows this: as their power over creators and publishers has grown, the company has turned the screw on them, starting with the most powerless group, the independent creators who rely on Amazon's self-serve ACX system to publish their work.

In late 2020, a group of ACX authors discovered that Amazon had been systematically stealing their wages, to the tune of an estimated $100,000,000. The resulting Audiblegate scandal has only gotten worse since, and while the affected authors are fighting back, they're hamstrung by Amazon's other unfair practices, like forcing creators to accept binding arbitration waivers on their way through the chokepoint:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/03/somebody-will/#acx

I have always had a no-DRM policy for my ebooks and audiobooks. Amazon's Kindle store - another wildly dominant part of the books ecosystem - has always allowed authors to choose whether or not to apply DRM, but in Audible - where Amazon had a commanding lead from the start, thanks to their anti-competitive acquisition of the formerly independent Audible company - it is mandatory.

Because Audible won't carry my DRM-free audiobooks, audiobook publishers won't pay for them. I don't blame them - being locked out of the market where 90%+ of audiobooks are sold is a pretty severe limitation. For a decade now, I've produced my own audiobooks, using amazing narrators like Wil Wheaton, Amber Benson and Neil Gaiman.

These had sold modestly-but-well, recouping my cash outlays to fairly compensate the readers, directors and engineers involved, but they were still niche products, sold at independent outlets like Libro.fm, Downpour, and my own online storefront:

https://craphound.com/shop

But that all changed in 2020, with the publication of *Attack Surface*, an adult standalone novel set in the world of my bestselling YA series *Little Brother*. That time, I decided to use Kickstarter to pre-sell the audio- and ebooks and see if my readers would help me show other creators that we could stand up to Audible's bullying.

Holy shit, did it ever work. The Kickstarter for the *Attack Surface* audiobook turned into *the most successful audiobook crowdfunding campaign in world history*, grossing over $267,000:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/attack-surface-audiobook-for-the-third-little-brother-book

Which brings me to today, and our new Kickstarter for *Chokepoint Capitalism*. We produced an independent audiobook, tapping the incomparable Stefan Rudnicki (winner of uncountable awards, narrator of 1000+ books, including Ender's Game) to read it.

We're preselling the audiobook ($20), ebook ($15), hardcover ($27), and bundles mixing and matching all three (there's also bulk discounts). There's also the option to buy copies that we'll donate to libraries on your behalf. We've got pins and stickers - and, for five lucky high-rollers, we've got a very special artwork called: "The Annotated Robert Bork."

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/chokepoint-capitalism-an-audiobook-amazon-wont-sell

Robert Bork was the far-right extremist who convinced Ronald Reagan to dismantle antitrust protection in America, and then exported the idea to the rest of the world (Reagan tried to reward him with a Supreme Court seat, but Bork's had been Nixon's Solicitor General and his complicity in Nixon's crimes cost him the confirmation).

Bork's dangerous antitrust nonsense destroyed the world as we knew it, giving us the monopolies that have wrecked the climate, labor protections and political integrity. These monopolies have captured every sector of the economy - from beer and pro-wrestling to health insurance and finance:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

"The Annotated Robert Bork" is a series of five shadow-boxes containing two-page spreads excised from Bork's 1978 pro-monopoly manifesto *The Antitrust Paradox*, which we have mounted on stiff card and hand-annotated with our red pens. The resulting package is a marvel of museum glass and snark.

Bork's legacy is monopolistic markets in every sector of the world's economy, including the creative industries. *Chokepoint Capitalism* systematically explores how tech and entertainment giants have rigged music streaming, newspapers, book publishing, the film industry, TV, video streaming, and others, steadily eroding creators' wages even as their work generated more money for the monopolists' shareholders.

But just as importantly, our book proposes things we can do *right now* to unrig creative labor markets. Drawing on both existing, successful projects and promising new experiments, we set out shovel-ready ideas for creators, artists' groups, fans, technologists, startups, and local, regional and national governments.

Artists aren't in this struggle alone. As we write in the book, chokepoint capitalism is the final stage of high-tech capitalism, which atomizes workers and locks in customers and then fleeces workers as a condition of reaching their audiences. It's a form of exploitation that is practiced wherever industries concentrate, which is why creators can't succeed by rooting for Big Tech against Big Content or vice-versa.

It's also why creative workers should be in solidarity with *all* workers - squint a little at Audible's chokepoint shakedown and you'll recognize the silhouette of the gig economy, from Uber to Doordash to the poultry and meat-packing industries.

40 years of official pro-monopoly policy has brought the world to the brink of collapse, as monopoly profits and concentrated power allowed an ever-decreasing minority of the ultra-rich to extract ever-increasing fortunes from ever-more-precarious workers. It's a flywheel: more monopoly creates more profits creates more power creates more monopoly.

The solutions we propose in *Chokepoint Capitalism* are specific to creative labor, but they're also examples of the kinds of tactics that we can use in every industry, to brake the monopolists' flywheel and start a new world.

I hope you'll consider backing the Kickstarter if you can afford to - and if you can't, I hope you'll check out one of the copies our backers have donated to libraries around the world:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/chokepoint-capitalism-an-audiobook-amazon-wont-sell

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🏄🏾 Hey look at this

* Closing Down the Billionaire Factory https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/closing-down-the-billionaire-factory

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🏄🏾 This day in history

#10yrsago RIAA budget shrinks nearly 50% over two years https://torrentfreak.com/riaa-revenue-dwindles-as-labels-cut-back-120817/

#10yrsago Major American firms pay more in CEO compensation than they do in fed tax https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0817/Companies-paid-CEOs-more-than-they-paid-in-taxes

#10yrsago Batman Earth One: rebooting the bat https://memex.craphound.com/2012/08/17/batman-earth-one-rebooting-the-bat/

#5yrsago Steve Bannon calls left-wing reporter out of the blue and unloads on alt-right and GOP https://prospect.org/power/steve-bannon-unrepentant/

#5yrsago Homeopathic infant teething products contain dangerous levels of deadly nightshade https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/08/fda-slams-more-homeopaths-for-playing-fast-and-loose-with-toxic-chemicals/

#5yrsago Texas Republicans will now require women to carry “rape insurance” if they need abortions https://www.vice.com/en/article/paaga8/texas-women-will-now-be-forced-to-take-out-rape-insurance-for-abortion

#5yrsago Charlottesville white supremacist strips off uniform and insists it’s just for lulz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnXBeQwmmrc

#1yrago Big Oil caught lying about methane https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/17/king-bullet/#methanescan

#1yrago Sandman Slim's final adventure: King Bullet brings in Richard Kadrey's masterpiece for a hell of a landing https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/17/king-bullet/#sticking-the-dismount

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🏄🏾 Colophon

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

* The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. Yesterday's progress: 512 words (33298 words total)

* The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, a nonfiction book about interoperability for Verso. Yesterday's progress: 504 words (29639 words total)

* Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. (92849 words total) - ON PAUSE

* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

* Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, WAITING FOR EXPERT REVIEW

* Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review's 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION

* Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FINAL DRAFT COMPLETE

* A post-GND utopian novel, "The Lost Cause."  FINISHED

* A cyberpunk noir thriller novel, "Red Team Blues."  FINISHED

Currently reading: Analogia by George Dyson.

Latest podcast: View a SKU: Let’s Make Amazon Into a Dumb Pipe https://craphound.com/news/2022/07/31/view-a-sku-lets-make-amazon-into-a-dumb-pipe/

Upcoming appearances:

* Launch for Motherboard's Terraform anthology, Vice offices (Los Angeles), Aug 18
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/terraform-book-release-party-vice-ft-cory-doctorow-geoff-manaugh-tickets-399204109237

* Radical Interoperability: An Internet Disassembly Manual, Aug 29 15h (Burning Man Center Camp)

* Chokepoint Capitalism: a Better Deal for Creative Labor, Aug 30, 13h (Burning Man Palenque Norte, 915 and E)

* Interview with Bunnie Huang on the Precursor and Trusting Trust, Aug 31, 12h (Burning Man Liminal Labs, 945 and Rod's)

* Canadians Connected (Ottawa), Sept 15
https://member.cira.ca/Events/CanadiansConnected/About.aspx

* Unfinished Live (NYC), Sept 21-24
https://live.unfinished.com/

Recent appearances:

* DRM Secretly Polices You (Daily Tech News Show)
https://dailytechnewsshow.com/2022/07/29/drm-secretly-polices-you-dtns-4327/

* Bricking Tractors (Inside Agri-Turf)
https://inside-agriturf.captivate.fm/episode/bricking-tractors-with-cory-doctorow

* Blockchain, Bitcoin & Selling The Brooklyn Bridge (MMT Podcast):
https://pileusmmt.libsyn.com/135-cory-doctorow-blockchain-bitcoin-selling-the-brooklyn-bridge

Latest book:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59 (print edition: https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books:

* Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin, nonfiction/business/politics, Beacon Press, September 2022

* Red Team Blues: "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books, April 2023

This work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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