The Crow Who Could Fly by in Books / August 3rd, 2006
(early download link for those too impatient to read the rest)
Much like the Pig book, this is for kids. Well, and the occasional tech company CEO (you might have to read it extra slow for them, tho).
The Crow Who Could Fly is about a crow who, much to his surprise, learns to fly while trying to steal some cheese. After that, his whole life becomes centred around exacting payment from all the other flying creatures of the world… because, well, he invented flying, so they should pay him something for it, shouldn’t they? Things don’t go quite the way he expects, but that’s what it’s like being an innovator, I guess…
This book actually predates the Pig in my brain. I’ve been wanting to make a silly story about the absurdity of patent abuse, and I finally figured a way to make it make sense. This is like very subtle social engineering for your kids: if you read this to them NOW, we may not have to endure 1-click stupidity in the future. Or maybe we will. I’m trying to be optimistic here.
My kids once again think this is good enough to let loose. There is a crazy squirrel hiding on every page for the wee ones to find, which was a demand by my younger one. Calling out “Lolipop Jones!” at random intervals is completely optional.
The book is free as I can figure, under the Creative Commons ShareAlike license. If you like it, please consider sending me a dollar or two via the PayPal donate link inside the book (or on this site). Corrupting an entire future generation of citizens is hard work: with your help, I’m sure I can get the operators of the Pirate Bay anointed as kings by the end of 2007.
As with my other projects, 50% of the profits go to Oxfam. That’d be 50% of the donations, too.
I will jump straight into the selling of the book under the same terms as the Pig book, so if you want to get a paper copy, feel free to buy it via the options on the side. $18.99+shipping. For more on my crazy pricing, check out my earlier blog post.
I hope you enjoy this book, too, and with any luck I’ll be back fairly soon with a totally different kind of story that you’ll really like!
Drop me a line if you have any questions or brainstorms. I always try and sorta reply.
Update! Translations! Boy you guys are fast! If you want to take a crack at it, download the raw text here, do your thing, and send it back to me so I can assemble the final product (it’s easier than trying to fight with page layout yourself).
The translations ALREADY UNDERWAY are: Chinese
The translations DONE are: German, Hungarian, Spanish
August 4th, 2006 at 8:54 am
very cool story. funny and lighthearted but sobering.
August 6th, 2006 at 7:13 am
Ai.. A new book, and a translation of that book finished already, and I still havn’t completed the Norwegian translation of the first book yet!
Well, it’s on it’s way anyways, I’m just not the fastest knife in the drawer..
Anyways, remember telling me that you would add a little line at the end of the book saying
“Dear parents,
to learn about DRM and why it is bad for technology/culture/consumers/people/something.. please visit
http://www.eff.org/IP/fairuse/“
Or something to that extent? Well, I just downloaded the book again and it didn’t say anything like that. Does that mean that you won’t add it and that the print versions won’t have it either? I really think you should have just a small notice like that..
And I saw that the pdf still says that the book is under a CC NC SA licence. Hasn’t that been changed to a CC SA licence?
August 6th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
@athoos: Sorry, I didn’t notice there was a comment here before! Thanks for your kind words! I’ve been wanting to make this one for a while now, so I’m glad it came out okay.
@børge: The DRM note at the end of the book was… er… well, it was there for a while, but I got a VERY negative reaction to it. I think it was partly because of the presentation in the PDF (it stands out a lot more when it’s on the last page all by itself)… I had it online for about 9 days and in that time I got at least 15 nastygrams a day from people who said they REALLY didn’t appreciate the “political” message in a kids book. I’m trying to decide on a way to balance the need to inform with the bad-taste-in-mouth reaction, but at least for the PDF, I’ve removed it for now.
The Fundable action hasn’t (and likely won’t) reach the goal, so technically the license is supposed to be CC-NC-SA… but I figured I might as well switch it anyway. I’m waiting on this special bibliographic stuff from Library and Archives Canada right now that I have to stick into the copyright page, and when I do that, I’ll update the license too. With all the translations and all the other book-ish stuff going on, it’s getting hard to tell when a version is actually “done”
There are so many things about writing/publishing books I didn’t know, and I’m learning them all in the wrong order
August 6th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
@athoos: Sorry again, I didn’t realize that was you
September 1st, 2006 at 8:48 am
Read it just after The Pig ….. and loved it (the penguin with the C++ book totally cracked me up!) I definitely want these to be among the first books my little niece reads when she starts.
It’s great that someone is taking the message that old economic ideas which originated in the Age of Scarcity can’t be applied to non-rivalrous goods, and making it accessible.
Or maybe they’re just kids’ stories about not being mean to people. Either way it’s great.
November 23rd, 2006 at 11:29 am
Back from Italy to translate the crow too! Tonight i’ll start the job, and tomorrow i’ll post you everything!
CIAO!
Laura