A brief admin announcement: after some difficult but necessary soul-searching on both our parts, Smashing Magazine has today made the ebook version of Understanding Privacy available on Amazon.

Here’s a button, because I like playing with this theme’s shortcodes.

That link goes to the American Amazon site. If you try it in your own, it should work in your own currency; for example, I can see it on the UK site in the king’s own sterling here. Try changing the .com in the URL to your national TLD.

Of course, you can still order the ebook version, or the ebook + gorgeous hard copy version, on Smashing’s own site.

If you’re new to my book, you can get to know it here.

You gotta do what you gotta do

Obviously I have very mixed feelings about this tough but necessary decision to “go corporate”.

The notion of my work being available only through a small team of real people doing good work obviously appealed to me, as did the idea of not feeding the corporate beast.

As for the amount of money this particular corporate beast keeps as its own cut of the sales, e.g. money that does not get paid to me, let’s not even talk about it.

Additionally, I’m fully aware that the more self-righteous elements of the digital rights and privacy communities will already be firing up their snide comments about this decision, condemning me, Smashing, and the book itself for hopping in bed with one of the worst privacy violators on the planet.

They are welcome to their opinions.

They are also welcome to spend seven years educating hostile audiences on privacy, unpaid, unreimbursed, unsupported, and out of pocket, then spend three pandemic-blighted years distilling that acquired knowledge into a book. They are also welcome to feel the weight of that unpublished book pressing down on their shoulders every moment of those three years. When all of that is done, they are welcome to feel their legs crumbling underneath them every 30 days when the monthly royalty statement comes in indicating single-figure sales (e.g. less than 10 copies per month sold).

And maybe then they can think about how they’d feel.

To the rest of you, thank you

For the <500 of you who have bought the book so far, I’m grateful for your support. Please do keep spreading the word. I’m proud of what we put into the world, even if it was for naught.