Day: May 9, 2003

Particularly the death of William Gibson’s blogging. Great post today about Shadowrun (“the admixture of cyberspace and, spare me, *elves*, has always been more than I could bear to think about”) and about buying his books, in which he makes a nod back to the discussion I had with him in February at the start of his book tour:

When people are downloading your pirated texts for free, it means you’re already pretty widely distributed. I view downloading as a sort of natural, organic tax on reputation.

Buying used copies is ecologically correct and to be encouraged. The list price on a hardcover PATTERN RECOGNITION in Canada is $40. After GST and PST, that would be closer to $50. When people have the courage to shyly tell me they’re waiting for the paperback, I’m all the more amazed and flattered at the number of people who buy me in hardcover. I didn’t start buying new fiction in hardcover until I was in my thirties and owned a house. And most of the paperbacks I bought, up to that point, I bought used.