Anyone who is a serious go player should buy the GoGod CD-ROM which has "Shape Up!" and other writings of mine included.

CD-ROM technology is horribly outdated.

First it's John Fairbairn releasing books only in a proprietary locked-in format that works only on a specific e-Ink device among dozens on the market;

A proprietary locked in format that works on all of the dozens of devices on the market...

Amazon has been very good about porting their software everywhere they can.

Edit: Maybe you skipped over the word "e-Ink" in my post?

First it's John Fairbairn releasing books only in a proprietary locked-in format that works only on a specific e-Ink device among dozens on the market;

then it's Charles Matthews releasing a book only as part of a huge database of game records;

I have bought printed books by both Fairbairn and Matthews. I'm not some kind of evil pirate. I just don't need GoGoD and I can't buy Shape Up from Gobase because Gobase is dead and I can't get it from a Korean website because I don't read Korean. I see only one solution for this...

Edit: I actually see two solutions. I could pirate Shape Up, or I could just live without it. Note that as far as Charles Matthews is concerned, the outcome is exactly the same - he doesn't get anything.

I can't get it from a Korean website because I don't read Korean.

http://www.badukworld.co.kr/biz/lesson2/shape/shape.html is, I guess, an online version posted with my co-author's consent.

I can't get it from a Korean website because I don't read Korean.

- CD-ROM technology is horribly outdated. If you have the kind of attitude that downloads over the Internet are not acceptable means to distribute content at this day and age I can tell you it's not piracy that's making biggest cut to your sales. It's the world moving on. You might want to check out the smartphone app market. I can imagine some go players wanting to read your book on their tablet computer.

Anyway, I got discouraged a while ago as a go writer. The GoGod disc is a fantastic tool; and if you are going to be technically snobbish, you are hampering your development as a player, however much street cred your premium hardware gets you.

You raise an interesting question. But its interest is mainly for go publishers. I'm not one of those, and my dealings with go publishers, and would-be go publishers, in the past, were unsatisfactory, to put it mildly. I don't "have" any sales of this work. I think I sold about five copies of "Shape Up!", total.

The main issue seemed to be this, in the past. Go publishers in English didn't have a large, thriving market, when it was just books: a print run of say 3000 would take 10 years to clear the warehouse. The books that would really raise the standard of Western go weren't what the publishers were concerned with; easier to reproduce material produced for go fans in East Asia. (Exception: James Davies for Ishi Press.)

Now the chance of electronic distribution ought to have changed matters. Western go authors weren't exactly encouraged in that past time, though (I except JF, who would be hard to discourage, and he has some stories to tell ...) There have been some other problems built into go material since the mid-60s (false analogies with chess, for one).

I think go material has still not yet been fully "localised" for the Western market. I hope it will be.

Anyway, I got discouraged a while ago as a go writer. The GoGod disc is a fantastic tool; and if you are going to be technically snobbish, you are hampering your development as a player, however much street cred your premium hardware gets you.

if you are going to be technically snobbish, you are hampering your development as a player

Should we look forward to GoGoFD (Go Games on Flash Drive)?

...completely medium-agnostic, platform-agnostic Go Games.

CMAPAGG.

Hmmm, doesn't quite roll off the tongue as eloquently as GoGoD, but then I grew up in Minnesota.

Agnostic? Hmmmm.

How about GoGoDless?

This comment annoys me, for two reasons.

Firstly, are you aware that CD-ROM drives are being slowly phased out by some large computer manufacturers? I don't think I remember the last time I held a CD or a DVD in my hand, because they're useless lumps of plastic that have since been superseded, but more importantly than my opinion is that this opinion is very widespread. This means that it's (slowly) becoming harder and harder to buy machines that will read CDs. It is technological snobbery to publish valuable resources in only a single medium which some people cannot access. It is not technological snobbery to ask for it to be made more widely available.