If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Audiobooks are hands-down the most enshittified aspect of publishing, which is why I make my own audiobooks and pre-sell them on Kickstarter, which is how I get around the fact that Amazon refuses to carry my audiobooks:
http://disenshittification.org
Why are audiobooks so enshittified? Because they have the two essential characteristics for enshittification:
1) They are digital, which means the rules for them can be shifted on a per-customer, per-usage basis; and
2) They are controlled by a monopoly, Amazon, whose Audible division is responsible for 90% of popular audiobook sales.
Amazon refuses to sell any audiobook unless it is first wrapped in the company's proprietary encryption (AKA "Digital Rights Management" or "DRM"). This DRM permanently locks Audible's audiobooks to the apps it approves, because US copyright law makes it a felony to tamper with that DRM. That means that neither the author nor the publisher can authorize you to take your Audible purchases to a rival platform, and if they try, Audible can have them imprisoned for up to five years:
Which is why none of my books are for sale on Audible. I'm not gonna submit to conditions that will let Audible take you, my reader, hostage. Not only does that make you vulnerable to whatever evil shit Amazon thinks up (remember a couple years ago, when they experimented with putting ads in the audiobooks you paid for?!), but that also makes me (and every other author) vulnerable, because if you can't leave Audible, neither can we:
Which is why I do these Kickstarters for my audiobooks! Since 2013, I've either paid narrators (like Wil Wheaton and Amber Benson) to perform my books, or I've gone into Skyboat Media's studios myself, to record under the expert direction of the legendary Gabrielle de Cuir:
https://skyboatmedia.com/
That's what I did this time, recording my forthcoming book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It in early August. Since then, I've been working with my trusty sound engineer John Taylor Williams to polish that recording to perfection. Now, I'm selling that pre-selling that audiobook on a Kickstarter where you can also pre-order the hardcover, ebook, as well as an extremely limited edition art-book collecting the collages I made for my Pluralistic.net newsletter while developing the ideas behind Enshittification:
The audiobooks and ebooks I sell through my Kickstarters are sold without any DRM, and also without any "terms and conditions." You are buying these books, not "licensing" them. That means you can do anything with these books that copyright law allows: sell 'em, give 'em away, lend 'em to a friend. Just don't violate copyright law and we're cool.
This book, Enshittification, synthesizes all the essays, speeches and panels I've done on the subject of platform decay into a single, coherent argument designed to be accessible to everyone, even (especially) your normie friends who know that everything sucks but don't understand why and are paralyzed about what to do about it.
The book's not out until October – it'll be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (US/Canada) and Verso (UK/Commonwealth), but it's already getting fantastic early notices. The Financial Times has already longlisted it for 2025's best business book of the year:
https://www.ft.com/bookaward
It's gotten starred reviews and raves from trades like Kirkus, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly, and we've sold foreign rights in more than a dozen countries, all over the world. There's also a 2026 graphic novel edition (adapted by Koren Shadmi) coming from First Second's 23rd Street Books.
Just as exciting is the Enshittification documentary, which is currently in pre-production, directed by Emily James (Just Do It), edited by Kurt Engfehr (Fahrenheit 9/11) and produced by Eve Marson (Web of Make Believe: Death, Lies and the Internet). You can pre-purchase tickets to the theatrical run and a DRM-free download here; your early support will help raise the $75,000 we need for principle photography:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/one-time-137256536
We recorded a sizzle reel at the Teardown conference in Portland last spring, and Kurt's edited it into an amazing trailer:
The documentary is a road-movie, with a crew following me on tour and interviewing me and other experts on the subject (think Inconvenient Truth, but for platform decay). We've got quite a tour planned: I'll be in Boston (with Randall "XKCD" Munroe); DC (with former CFPB chair Rohit Chopra); New Orleans; Chicago (with Kara Swisher); LA (with The American Prospect's David Dayen); Calgary; San Francisco; Portland; Seattle (with Ed Zitron); Vancouver; Calgary, Montreal, Toronto, New York City (with Lina Khan); Miami; Burbank; Lisbon; London; Hay-on-Wye; and Madison, CT. Other tour dates are still being finalized – more details to follow.
I developed enshittification as a series of posts on Pluralistic.net, my blog/newsletters/social media feed. Each edition of Pluralistic goes out with a graphic, usually a collage I've made from public domain and Creative Commons materials:
Making these collages has turned into one of my major creative outlets, and dozens of readers have asked if I would ever do a book of them. Then, last year, I got to talking to Creative Commons CEO Anna Tumadóttir about her plans for CC's 25th anniversary and we cooked up a plan to publish a little book of my Pluralistic collages to give to major donors as a premium. Anna needed 400 of these, but my printer gives me a quantity break at 500 copies, so I'm making 100 signed, numbered copies available for backers of this Kickstarter.
The books are gorgeous. Cyberpunk icon and electronic art impresario Bruce Sterling wrote me a wonderful introduction. It's designed by John D. Berry, president of the Association Typographique Internationale, a legend of type and book design:
https://johndberry.com/biographical-note/
For production, I've tapped Pasadena's Typecraft, a 118-year-old printer who ran the book on 100lb Mohawk paper. It's a gorgeous little 4.75" x 6.75" paperback, and this is the only run I plan on doing (though if people like it, I might do future volumes collecting more collages).
One of the things I love about these campaigns is the chance to work with so many wonderful partners. There's Skyboat Media and director Gabrielle de Cuir; editor John Taylor Williams of Wryneck Studios; Emily, Kurt and Eve working on the documentary; John Berry, Bruce Sterling and Typecraft for my art book. I'm also working with some of my favorite booksellers in the world to fulfill print book orders: in LA, I've got Secret Headquarters (the best comics shop in the world!), who'll fulfill US orders as well as worldwide orders for signed books and Canny Valley. For Canadian hardcover orders, I'm working with Winnipeg's McNally-Robinson. For EU orders, I'm once again working with Berlin's magnificent Otherland Books. Orders in the UK will be fulfilled directly by Verso. Working with local shippers means we don't have to fuck around with the Trump tariffs.
Enshittification is the product of my open-access publishing program. I don't charge anything for the essays I publish nearly every day on Pluralistic.net, and I release them under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license, which lets anyone reproduce and adapt them, including commercially. Releasing my work this way means that it gets spread far and wide, which means everything to me, and I'm so glad to see everyone from scrappy progressive news sites to Conde Nast taking my work and reprinting it widely.
Readers frequently ask me how they can support my work, whether I have a Patreon or some other way to accept donations. I don't have anything like that. What I have, instead, are these books, which I can't seem to stop writing. The best way to thank me for my work is to buy the books, in any (or every) format. Selling books benefits a whole community of people who are important to my work, including my publishers and agents, and also all the people who work on publishing, fulfillment and production with me. These people don't just work on my projects, of course: they have many partners of their own.
When you buy my books, you help ensure that I'll keep doing what I do – and you help all my partners keep doing what they do. And the best way to support my work is to back it on these Kickstarter campaigns. The extraordinary generosity of my Kickstarter backers since 2020 has made a huge difference to my artistic career and my family's financial stability. If you backed one of those campaigns, I thank you, sincerely. And whether you've backed before, I hope you'll consider backing this one:
my best friend ha'aheo is a filmmaker and storyteller who has released multiple short documentaries including the above. they and their adoptive brother and housemate, 3 māhū living in honolulu, have been struggling with the conditions of their housing due to the negligence of their landlord for over a year now, and while ha'a is trying to recover from an acute back injury they are now also being forced to deal with the aftermath of the storms that have been hitting oahu. one of their rooms was flooded and it's caused serious water damage in a house where i can personally vouch the floor was already threatening to give way in at least one location back in january. they've been trying to move for months but now it's truly urgent, but housing on oahu is more expensive than ever and like so many indigenous hawaiians they are being priced out of safe housing on their 'āina by american expats and military members. if you have some money to spare this month please consider donating, these are some of the most incredible people on earth and i know that any support they receive is multiplied tenfold in their tireless work for their community.
Mutual Aid Ask for safe housing after mold exposure
Myself and my housemates — thre… Kaliko Aiu needs your support for Help Access Safe
It was around eight o'clock on 28 August 2000, just past the frenzy of the New York rush hour when a subway train rattled down the track into 14th Street station, in the Chelsea district of Manhattan. Danny Stewart, 34, was late for dinner with his partner, Pete Mercurio, 32.
As Danny was hurrying out of the station something caught his eye. "I noticed on the floor tucked up against the wall, what I thought was a baby doll," he says.
He ran back down the stairs and realised that the doll was in fact a baby boy, wrapped in a dark sweatshirt, with his tiny legs sticking out.
This was before the time when everyone had a mobile phone and Danny was afraid to pick up the baby in case he was hurt. So Danny ran up the stairs to the street to a payphone and called 911.
"I found a baby," he blurted out. Then he told the police where he was located and ran back to check the baby was still OK. He waited for what seemed like ages.
Pete bolted out of the apartment to the subway station, arriving as the police were carrying the baby away to be taken for a check-up at the hospital. After Danny had given his statement, the two of them left.
But before too long Danny received an invitation to attend a family court hearing, to testify how he had found the baby. When this took place, in December 2000, the judge asked Danny if he could stay for the entire hearing. He waited for the police to give their testimony, and then the judge addressed Danny again.
"She says, 'Mr Stewart, I want to let you know what's happening here, in instances where we have a baby that has been abandoned, we want to place them in pre-adoptive foster care as quickly as possible.'
"In my head, I'm thinking, 'Well that makes sense,'" says Danny. "And then the next thing out of her mouth was, 'Would you be interested in adopting this baby?'"
Danny looked around, all eyes were on him. "I think most of the mouths dropped in the courtroom, including mine. I said, 'Yes, but I don't think it's that easy,' and the judge smiled and she said, 'Well, it can be.'"
"I had not had thoughts of adopting," says Danny, "but at the same time, I could not stop thinking that… I did feel connected, I felt like this was not even an opportunity, it was a gift, and how can you say no to this gift."
Outside the courtroom Danny telephoned Pete to tell him the news.
Over the next week they had what Danny says were tense conversations. "I didn't want my life to change. I was happy the way we were and this was just going to change everything," Pete says.
Danny convinced Pete to come with him and visit the baby at his foster home.
When they arrived they said they noticed very quickly it was not an ideal place for him to be. He had painfully sore and infected nappy rash from his belly button all around his hips and thighs to his back.
When it was Pete's turn to hold the baby, an "instant wave of warmth" came over him, he says.
After that, the adoption process began quickly. There were home visits, background checks and lots of questions to answer.
Danny, Pete and baby Kevin soon settled into family life together. Danny remembers how Kevin loved books. Every night they would read bedtime stories or sing him to sleep while stroking his head.
The family love visiting the national parks together, taking part in outdoor activities such as kayaking and supporting their favourite baseball team, the New York Mets.
(Full article)
In 2020, Mercurio wrote a children's book about his family called Our Subway Baby. An animated short film based on their life story, 18 Months, was released in June 2025:
