“How many Google employees are at this party?”

The question hangs in the air at the Babycastles arcade in Manhattan, where Julian Assange’s silver-haired visage is being projected onto the walls via video stream. Assange is taking questions about his new book, When Google Met Wikileaks, which rails against the company’s ever-expanding ambitions, its ties to the surveillance state, and the increasingly intimate relationship between Silicon Valley and the US political machine in Washington.

Seeing no hands raised in the packed room, Assange offers an incentive: 20 percent off sticker price for Google employees. “And we’ll mail the book to you in a brown paper bag,” he adds with a grin, the audience’s laughter echoing faintly through the stream’s audio. And yes, you can buy it with bitcoins.

This is how you throw a book launch party when you’re an international fugitive that’s been holed up in an Ecuadorean embassy for the past two years.

Read the full write-up on Mother Board