Betrayal and Loyalty

Sometimes, something happens that hits you in the gut. When it happens twice, you sit back and say WTF?

Earlier this month in a post about Amazon removing its tagging system, I talked a little bit about people, who I knew, maliciously tagging Alter Ego's books. I found out about it in the middle of January, roughly two weeks before the tagging system disappeared.

I admit it hurt. The people I recognized were fellow writers. Either these people had discovered that Alter Ego was me and did the malicious tagging on purpose, or these people didn't care they were affecting the sales of a total stranger. Either way, it made me question these people's integrity. It made me question my friendship with them.

In a way, I was glad that I hadn't made a screen shot of the tagging. That I could put the whole thing behind me and resume writing.

Then this week, more weird shit happened. Someone went through Amazon, downloaded Alter Ego's books, and returned them. It wasn't all at once. The buys were spaced about an hour apart, long enough to read one of the novellas and return it before downloading the next one. People forget that Amazon shows us indies real-time stats.

It made me wonder who was doing it and why. It made me wonder if one of these same people were trying to fuck with my sales again. Or was this someone new thinking they were going to mess with some smut bitch?

What I don't think the culprit realized is that Alter Ego has fans. Loyal fans. And other writers friends. When Alter Ego mentioned both incidents online, these fabulous, lovely people went to work. Tweeting her. FBing her. Promoting the hell out of her work and dissing the idiots who pulled such evil stunts.

Despite the crap of the last six weeks, Alter Ego's sales are doing good. Damn good, thanks to the loyal fans and friends.

These are people I would bend over backward to help. These are people who deserve my loyalty in return. These are people who have renewed my faith in the human race for a little while longer.