The first half of the book is great.
The second half has ads that take up more and more of the page until you reach a page that is just ads and a QR code.
When you scan the code, it takes you to a website asking you to pay a subscription for the remaining pages.
(If you rate five stars, they send a 10% discount code to your email and add you to a newsletter list without an unsubscribe button.)
LoL I thought you were serious for a second
Isn’t that the point though? The book enshittifies
Or am I missing the ironic tone?
Just a touch too close to reality. That was a beyond-awesome comment.
Do you have any screenshots? And is it the retail version or is it some early version? Retail’s supposed to only come out in October.
Whoosh
It’s a joke, mate.
Oh, woosh…
Expected release date: 7 October 2025
He has the first hour and a half (of 9) in his latest podcast, if you want a real preview: https://craphound.com/podcast/2025/08/28/enshittification-episode-500/
I decided to order the epub because no matter how I try, I can’t enjoy Wesley’s voice (sorry Will).FWIW Cory narrates this book. And he has a YouTube video embedded that has the first hour if you want to hear how it sounds.
I agree with you about Wesley (🤮), but that’s not really relevant to this book?
Cory recorded the audio himself to my understanding (listened to his appearance on the QAA podcast), and it sounds like his voice reading it on the linked podcast.
Wow, my brain really failed me here! I ALSO listened to Picks and Shovels recently, which was narrated by Will Wheaton, and somehow the voices got switched in my memory. You are correct, Cory recorded this himself.
It’s spelled “enshittification.”
He enshittified my favorite word!
Anyone read other books of his and if so, do you recommend them?
His ideas are fantastic. Execution and characterization are spotty. Been a while since I read anything of his, but IIRC, he has a tendency to dip into surrealism or absurdity that feels cringey instead of his artistic target.
In some ways, it’s similar to a lot of Golden Era SF. You read it for the ideas, not the story.
I do have a favorable opinion of him and his work. I’d really enjoy Doctorow being paired with a traditional fiction author and both being rode herd by a hardass SF editor.
I find the non-fiction stuff he writes good (e.g. The Internet Con, Chokepoint Capitalism). I believe this book is like that?
I found his fiction, based on the one book (The Lost Cause) I read, to be a bit juvenile in style (as in feels like a young adults kind of book) to the point I didn’t quite enjoy it, although the topics are interesting enough.
personally i read “Down and Out in the magic Kingdom” as well as the german translation “Backup”, which - while not masterpieces - were quite enjoyable.
I highly recommend the recent episode of the QAA podcast with Doctrow, it’s an amazing listen!
An older book I frequently refer to:
On Bullshit | Princeton University Press https://share.google/DaiZS6wG7SiOCdRcg
“One of the most prominent features of our world is that there is so much bullshit. Yet we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, how it’s distinct from lying, what functions it serves, and what it means.”
Dafuq is a share.google
Google has its own tdl now. Kinda fucked.
More importantly, why the fuck would anyone actively choose to help Google track their social circle/link usage?
Even wilder to me is that they own the *.new TLD. So they have shortcuts like sheets.new and doc.new, which take you to those respective documents in Google Focs. And that’s neat for people using them, and unfortunate for literally everyone else in the world who might want to make a fun *.new domain.
Everyone at ICANN deserves The Hague. Corrupt shitbags ruining the hope of computing for the good pf humanity.
They also own .here which I want a domain with so bad…
The yogurt company Fage has .fage.
Ordered.
This is Frickin sick.
I must get a copy, i love this authors writing. I also very much enjoy he respects the right of ownership and anti-drm
Audiobook? Bah, I remember when books were for reading.
“old man yells at cloud”
Him being an “old man” would be predicated on his incorrect assumption that the act of having a book read to you is somehow new and is not as old as books themselves.
He’s just a moron lmao
If you actually read the Kickstarter page, he’s selling a physical and ebook version of it as well.
Also, maybe practice reading a webpage before you act pretentious about book formats.
What? Oral book readings predate regular book reading as a widespread practice by literally thousands of years.
Yeah, but that was because in those days most people were actually illiterate, which in recent history we considered a bad thing and tried to avoid, but it seems to be making a comeback unfortunately.
(Nothing against audiobooks specifically, you gotta do what you gotta do, just suggesting the decline in literacy in general is worrisome)
Not true, even highly educated Roman and Greek elites would attend book readings. It was considered a leisure activity and was appreciated as the performance it was, same as today.
In fact today we have more reasons than ever to listen to audiobooks, the most significant of which is that it’s not legal nor advisable to read a physical book while driving a motor vehicle.
