AI Theft Settlement

[NOTE: Everything below is opinion, NOT LEGAL ADVICE. I am not licensed to practice law.]

I don't know how many of you have been following the Bartz V. Anthropic case, but last week a tentative settlement had been reached.

Anthropic is an AI modeling firm. The problem is they've downloaded tons of pirated books to train their AI models. (The biggest irony in all this? Amazon is one of Anthropic's investors.)

William Alsup, the judge in the case recently declared that Anthropic's use of copyrighted works were a fair use, but he deemed their use of pirated copies to be illegal.

[DISCLOSURE: Five of my own pirated books were used by Anthropic.]

So what does this all mean?

First of all, find out if your books are listed in LibGen, one of the pirate sites used. The Atlantic put together a search engine to use. The other known pirate site is Pirate Library Mirror.

If any of your books are on the LibGen list, contact the law firm representing the plaintiffs here and fill out the contact form.

Your books MUST BE registered with the  U.S. Copyright Office to be accepted in the planitiffs' class action suit!

And here's where most writers get confused. There's a HUGE difference in damages from a copyright infringement and a REGISTERED copyright infringement. If you don't understand the difference, I strongly recommend The Copyright Handbook by Stephen Fishman. Or talk to an IP attorney who specializes in copyright. Yes, the IP attorney will charge you for a consultation, but if you understand your rights and responsibilities as a creator, it will be totally worth the money!

Things a getting uglier as the billionaires steal our sweat. We little people need to look out for ourselves and each other.

Bye-Bye Vella!

Another one of Amazon's bright ideas has bit the dust. Kindle Vella, their attempt at serialized fiction, has officially been cancelled.

Vella was launched at the end of May, 2021. It was Amazon's attempt to latch onto the serialized fiction made popular by platforms like Radish.

However, a number of things went wrong from the beginning. Amazon never really promoted the service, especially to the Gen Z consumers who love this stuff. They gamified the system where readers had to buy tokens in order to read scenes or chapters. Customers couldn't read the episodes on their Kindle devices or apps for the first two years Vella existed. And to top off the problems, the token system meant the readers were paying more for a story than they were for a 70-100K word novel.

Is Amazon losing touch with the average consumer? In a single word, yes. The average consumer is no longer Amazon's core customer. AWS, Amazon's computing division, makes far more money than the consumer goods division. The only reason the Amazon store still exists is because there's never enough money for rich men. They must have it all.

That same reasoning means the execs no longer have a real plan as far as books go. They're throwing things at the proverbial wall to see what sticks. "Hey, Radish is making money, so we should do this thing we don't understand, too!"

Um, no, that's not a business plan. That's guessing. It's definitely not a strategy.

For those of you who have Vella episodes you haven't read yet or have tokens you haven't spent yet, you've got until February 2025 to spend, download, and or read your purchases. (Amazon has not announced the specific date, so I'd do it before the 1st.)

After that, let's see what Amazon throws at the wall next.

Amazon's New Policy

Today's post is a little late, but it's live, right? LOL DH and I had to be up early for medical labs this morning. We went out for a pleasant breakfast in a sit-down brunch place called the Toasted Yolk, a wonderful little restaurant. We got home and each went to do their thing.

And I fell asleep on my recliner. Whoops! At least I woke up in time for tonight's JV Soccer Teacher's Appreciation Event since I had announcing duties.

However, I wanted to talk a little bit about Amazon's new ID verification policy.

Amazon began requiring identification verification from sellers over a year ago thanks to the INFORM Consumers Act. This law applies to all online marketplaces, from Target to Etsy, to provide the necessary information regarding sellers to consumers.

There's been a spate of con jobs going on with online stores where shoddy goods are delivered to the consumers. Or even, nothing at all is delivered, and the consumer has lost their money to some fly-by-night scam artist.

Now, the process has moved to KDP. If you're starting your writing/publishing career, you will now need to provide a qualifying picture ID when you sign up for Amazon.

For those of us who joined KDP in the early days, or maybe started when KDP was still DTP, Amazon is slowly going through and verifying our identities. From what I've been able to learn, the priority is based on the volume of sales.

However, if you change how you do business (for example, I'm in the process of switching from a sole proprietorship to an LLC), you're verification will happen when you enter your name change under your Account info on Amazon.

This is something to be aware of because eventually Amazon or some other service will tap you on the shoulder and say, "ID, please."

Like many other folks, my concern is privacy. I understand the need for consumer protection, but I don't want my information in place where someone can steal my identity. Amazon claims it deletes the copies of your driver's license or passport, but do they really?

It's one of those things that bothers me when it comes to Amazon these days.

Like Doctor Leonard Hofstadter, I Cannot Catch a Break

The third-party I used for links for readers to be able to access their respective Amazon stores for one of my books shut down at the end of January. No warning whatsoever. *sigh*

I didn't discover the  problem until I started to update the links on my websites on Friday.

Amazon has now realized we need one link for their multiple stores. Especially since the company insists on making indie books available in all the stores. Duh!

So it's going to cut into my writing time this week to figure out and set up the new links. A bad week since I also planned to finish up the taxes.

I hadn't touched any of the ice cream, leftover from before Christmas, in our freezer until this weekend when I discovered the link issue. Unfortunately, GK didn't eat off of it while he was on leave. Maybe I need to switch to something healthier. Like oatmeal.

Lots and lots of oatmeal.

So much better than rabbits and mice.

Unrealistic Return Expectations of of the Indie Writer - 9 Years Later

Below is an essay I posted on my blog almost nine years to the day. It bears repeating because the same ridiculousness is rising again.

Take a look at the previews of the books from some of the authors bitching about returns. There's more than a couple with some really bad editing and formatting. Fix your damn problems, people, before bitching about returns and bad reviews!

Hell, I got ripped for bad editing before. Did I blame the reviewer? No, I fixed the book he/she/they complained about.

I'd also like to point out my current Kickstarter campaign is running at a less that three percent backer cancellation rate. I'd much rather have a potential backer check out my other books and decide the brand new series isn't their cup of tea rather than give me a crappy review because of their buyer's remorse. I'm sure as hell not going to bitch them out publicly any more than I would bitch out the reader who returned A Question of Balance this year.

In fact, I'd like to say to that reader, "Thank for trying one of my books. I'm sorry it didn't meet your expectations."

**************

There's a petition circulating right now through Change.org asking Amazon to refuse refunds on e-books that have been read.

I understand the sentiment. No one wants to feel they've been taken advantage of. But there's major problems with this stance:

1) I doubt many of the signers of this petition have owned a retail store of any kind. When my husband and I looked into purchasing a brick-and-mortar store ten years ago, the statistics we received from the Small Business Administration said to expect 5% in returns. (When I find the blasted file in my office, I'll give you the source.)

According the the National Retail Federation ("NRF"), retail returns were expected to hit 8.7 percent during the 2008 Christmas shopping season, the height of the housing financial disaster. They actually hit 8.9 per cent and climbed over subsequent years.

According to Businessweek, retail returns hit a yearly average of 6 percent for 2007. A 2012 article by Businessweek said the yearly average was back down to 5 percent.

What does that mean for us indie authors? Alter Ego's first book, Book A, is my bestselling book to date. It also has the highest number of return. So, let's calculate it

Total books sold through Feb. 2013 = 1558
Total returns through Feb. 2013 = 9
Percentage of returns = 0.57 %

Not even the national average of 5%, but a tenth of that. If I add in my other seventeen books, the percentage drops even lower. That's damn good!

If your return percentage is higher than 5%, you need to take an honest, objective look at your book. Is the cover or blurb misleading? Are you calling it a romance when it doesn't have a "happily ever after" or "happy for now" ending? Is the beginning polished to perfection and the middle or ending need a major overhaul? Your readers may be feeling cheated or misled and want their money back. Not all of them leave nasty 1-star reviews.

2) Changing the policy punishes people who are not cheating the system. Haven't you ever accidentally clicked on something you shouldn't have? Have you ever bought a book where the formatting was so screwed up it was unreadable? The NRF survey for Christmas of 2012 estimates that 4.6% OF THE RETURNS are fraudulant. In other words, only 23 fraudulent returns out of every 10,000 sales.

That means out of all my sales, statistically speaking, less than one of them was a fraudulent return.

Were any of them fraudulent? Yes, I suspect two were because Book A was bought on Day 1 and returned on Day 2 when suspiciously Book B was bought...and then returned on Day 2 when Book C was purchased. So, is punishing these two idiots worth pissing off 1,556 other customers?

In my opinion, no, it's not.

3) Are you absolutely sure the book has been read? The reason I say this is? Sure, Amazon can track where you leave off on your Kindle, but both my mom and mother-in-law jump to the end of the file and READ THE END FIRST. If they don't like how the writer ends the story, they don't read the rest.

Yeah, I've had the argument with Mom thirty years ago that reading the end first ruins the book. I don't dare say a word to the MIL. LOL

4) Contrary to popular belief, Amazon does cut off customers who abuse their return policy.

5) Be very, VERY careful about throwing stones. Norwegian author Anne B. Ragde slammed e-book piracy in a 2010 article in Dagens Naeringsliv, only to have her own teenage son out Anne's music piracy.

Are there always going to be people who steal? Unfortunately, yes.

Will these people buy your books if you prevent them from stealing them? Probably not.

Will Amazon change its return policy? I have no fucking clue.

Will having print-only editions save your books from piracy? Seriously, do I have to explain to you what a scanner does?

I recommend that indie writers take a deep breath, grab their favorite beverage and get back to working on that current wip. I will because I know I have a thousand people waiting on Alter Ego's Book D.

The Latest Amazon Drama

The drama isn't just Amazon's though. Earlier this month, a series of bills were introduced in Congress that, if passed, could inhibit the power of several tech giants including Google, Apple, and Facebook, not just Amazon. 

Apple's already been in trouble for their conspiracy back in 2011 with five of the ten Big Six publishing companies in the U.S. Do you think they or anyone else backed down? Hell, no. Add in the shady shit Facebook was pulling in the last two presidential elections, plus more crap than I can list from the rest, and they've gotten the attention of the American politicians.

And not in the good way.

The following is my opinion, and just my opinion. So take it with a grain of salt, tequila, and a lime wedge.

A lot of my fellow indies believe Amazon is "too big to fail". They've gone exclusive with the company through the Kindle Unlimited program since Amazon has a rough 70% of the e-book market IN THE UNITED STATES. These indies really don't look at the rest of the world. It simply doesn't count.

If the U.S. government forces Amazon and the rest to split up like they did with Ma Bell in the '80's, we have no fucking clue what the outcome will be.

Other indies are seeing the writing on the wall and diversifying--both their genres and their retailers.

I've been diversifying as well. As much as I love urban fantasy stories, the genre was overrun years ago. Plus, a ton of writers jumped into BDSM romances after the success of Fifty Shades of Grey. It's hard to get any eyeballs when all the lemmings are writing the same shit.

But hey, I was told I didn't understand writing to market. Except what my fellow indies were doing was writing to trend. Then there were those indies who grouped together and decided what the new hot subgenre should be and would write it to death. Hell, recently someone suggested I join in and write Paranormal Women's Fiction, the latest "it" subgenre. I smiled politely and said I'd think about it.

I'm not going to. I like my supers and my sword and sorcery stories for now, though I'm dabbling with what is essentially a paranormal domestic comedy with the Soccer Moms of the Apocalypse series.

But does any of this sound familiar? Yep, we indies are repeating the same damn mistakes what is now the Big Five are doing.

That's not a good thing.

Anyway, if you're a writer, keep an eye on these bills. Whether you are trad, indie, or hybrid, they will affect you if they are passed. So start making some preliminary plans, and start saving your pennies.

I Need the Internet's Help!

I'm trying to put together some sales for the summer. That means lowering the prices at all the retailers. No problem, right?

Heck, I even emailed Amazon last Tuesday to ask them to price match Blood Magick at $0.00.

Which they did on all the stores.

For three days.

On Friday, the U.S. store raised the price. The weird part is if you are not in the U.S., and you log into the US Amazon store, you'll see the price set as free. But if you're in the U.S., you've got to pay.

So I'm asking you to please contact Amazon's customer service and complain. You can send them this link to show that Blood Magick is free on Barnes & Noble:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/blood-magick-suzan-harden/1102680302?ean=2940012615336

 Dang. I was hoping to make a big announcement on Wednesday, but I've got a wayward duck to wrangle.

Another Amazon Product - KDP Vella

This week, Amazon announced their new KDP Vella program. What is it? Well, it's a rip-off of the South Korean reading app Radish and the Candian reading website and app Wattpad. I'm going to stick with comparisons to Radish since it and Wattpad now have similiar structures, but Wattpad started mainly as a fanfic website.

For those who don't know what Radish is, it's a smartphone app that publishing serialized stories. It's a 21st version of the magazine and movie serialized tales going back to Charles Dickens and Buck Rogers. A reader buys tokens, and each episode costs X numbers of tokens. Writers get 50% of the pro-rated value of the cash value of all tokens bought in a particular month.

And Amazon has essentially copied all of Radish's terms. I know. I wasted the last two afternoons reading through and comparing them.

The thing is you can't just rip up a novel and publish it by chapters. Well, you can, but it may not be the best avenue for you. The episodes really do work a lot more like the old black & white Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials of the 30's and 40's.  There's a typical sequence: problem set-up, problem conplication, problem solution, and cliff-hanger intro for the next episode.

In fact, George Lucas followed the same basic set-up in the first two Star Wars trilogy. If you need a different genre, watch and break down Pretty Woman or the first season of Heroes TV show. Or check out any soap opera or telenovela.

Is KDP Vella worth it for writers? I don't know. I have a feeling income will be similar to KDP Unlimited. I think it will cost more for a reader in the long run. But Radish and Wattpad have made anticipation work for them.

Finally, I think it shows Amazon has reached maturity if they are following other companies now instead of leading the innovation. There were a lot of writers who used KDP Unlimited 1.0 as a serialized format when it started approximately seven years ago. However, Amazon intended KU to be a subscription service a la Scribed or the late Oyster. Amazon changed the terms a year later to KU 2.0, which paid per page read instead of per borrow. Otherwise, they would have created Vella six years ago.

Will I try it? I'm considering it, but the audience for the serialized phone stories are different than the audiences both Alter Ego and I currently have. I'd have to do subgenres neither names writes. If I change genres, I'm also considering a new pseudonym.

It'll be something I consider during the summer road trips to Texas to see Adorable Spawn.

Audiblegate

I've been quiet the last week in order to finish A Virtue of Child. However that doesn't mean things aren't happening in the publishing world.

I talked about Audible and their atrocious return policy last month. The return policy that essentially turned Audible into a subscription service.

Writers and publishers were steamed. Steamed to the point that The Authors Guild, which is primarily trad publishing folks, and the Alliance of Independent Authors, which is primarily indie folks as the name says, teamed up to tackle the issue.

Now, there's Audiblegate.com, a clearing house website that collects info about Audible's shitty practices. It promotes awareness to those who have been screwed over by Audible and a warning to those who haven't been yet. The website is run by two talented, brave women, Colleen Cross and Susan May. Check out the website. If you're having an issue with Audible and your royalties, contact them. Otherwise, I hope you'll support their campaign for author justice.

Side Note: If you're an author who's been screwed over by Audible, contact your state attorney general's office and file a complaint. Also, contact your state and federal legislators. Audible's serial disregard for their own contracts will be of interest to investigators looking into Amazon's overall business practices.

Audible and Its Return Policy

Audiobooks. Listeners love them, but they are fucking expensive to produce, especially if you're an indie author. That's why I haven't done any audiobooks yet.

ACX, Amazon's production arm, introduced a split- royalty program for the writer and the voice talent. However, many books don't make back their production costs. So a lot of voice talent refuse to do the split payments anymore.

I can't blame them. When I looked into the costs for producing an audiobook version of A Question of Balance, I was looking at $2,000.

Minimum.

That's a lot of work for little or no return.

But it's Audible's latest stunt that has the writers and publishers up in arms. Amazon ended up in a class-action suit filed by customers for how they charged and refunded monies. So executives at Audible went too far the other way. Customers could return the audiobook any time for any reason, or no reason at all.

For the price of one audiobook, customers could return and buy audiobooks multiple times. Suddenly, monies that had been already paid to authors and publishers were being charged against their accounts with no record of any returns.

Not only did the policy exist, Audible actively encouraged customers to use the company as a library for the price of one audiobook.

First of all, I have no problem with libraries or people using actual libraries. However, the writers and publishing believed they had made sales. Months later Audible then claimed the writers and publishers owed them money. There was no explanation why.

Transparency seems to be Audible's big problem.

And this isn't the first time they've ended up on writers' shit list. Two years ago, the Association of American Publishers went after Audible for showing the book's text while the audio played. Audible's parent company Amazon had already been in legal trouble for using the Kindle's text-to-speech function to do the opposite, read the book aloud.

The Authors Guild has teamed up with indie writers to pressure Audible to not dock the writers and publishers for returns. However, Audible hasn't delivered full accountability for the sales lost.

In my humble opinion, there's a recurring theme here. Amazon is turning into another conglomerate looking to screw whoever they can, just like Walmart did after their founder's death. It's a shame, but there's an end to everything. This is the chance for some other company to take over the audiobook field.

And I think it's already starting.

Amazon Causes Problems Again!

All right. I admit it's not all Amazon's fault.

Here's a HUGE lesson for any of you newbies who haven't started publishing yet. SET UP A BUSINESS ACCOUNT ON AMAZON BEFORE YOU PUBLISH YOUR FIRST BOOK!

You see, my big mistake back in 2011 was not doing that. I published under my personal account. At the time, I didn't know any better, but then most of us indies were a little clueless. We didn't know where indie publishing was going. Amazon didn't have the option to have a business account either.

 

Oh, I finally set up an account under my publishing company's name. There's some advantages to a business account that regular customer accounts don't have and vice versa. Things like generating codes for giveaways instead of gifting books. However, the Prime account costs twice as much.

And everything continued just fine until two weeks ago when Amazon allowed indie publishers to control series' links.

 

Don't get me wrong! I love the fact that we have more control over a series order, add a overall description, and link related books together.

However, the changes can only be applied if all of the individual books of the series are on the same account.

Oops!

Honestly, I've been moving books over for the last couple of years. Slowly.

The recent changes have forced me to accelerate my schedule. So if links aren't working (in the books or on the websites), it's because I haven't gotten them updated yet. But I swear I'm working on it.

And now you know how I'm spending my Thanksgiving vacation!

Amazon Has the Right Priorities

The other day, a guy on Facebook was bitching up a storm because he'd paid for an Amazon Prime membership, and he wasn't getting his damn book in two days.

*facepalm*

Talk about tone deaf. There's a fucking pandemic sweeping the planet, dude!

People need food, medicines, diapers, and soap. Amazon and a lot of other retailers that are still running are fulfilling necessity orders first.

And you know something? I'm okay with that. It took two weeks for my specialty color retaining shampoo and conditioner to get here. Those weren't an emergency, just a helpful tool to make my Midnight Amethyst color last longer.

It took a week for a drawing comics book to get here. Again, it's okay. It's a skill I'm working on in the age of corona. But it's definitely not an emergency.

An emergency is when you can't find formula anywhere for your infant. An emergency is when you can't feed peanut butter to your allergy-plagued toddler. An emergency is when your grandmother needs her insulin and grandpa his high blood pressure meds.

So, to all the folks working in warehouses, in shipping and delivering necessary items, in restocking shelves with food, THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF OUR HEARTS.

Wild, Wicked & Wacky Rewind from 2016

And 2016 wasn't much better than 2015. FYI--this post from February 17, 2016, has some swears.

=============

I haven't written for the last three days. Withdrawals are making me grumpy.

As I mentioned Monday, DH tried to be sweet and valentine-y on Sunday by taking me out for dinner and a movie. The one positive thing this week, even though the movie didn't live up to what we had hoped.

Monday was the truly sucky part. I took DH's dad (aka Papa) to a second opinion appointment in Toledo. Bless the doctor, he tried to make it as easy as possible on Papa, but he confirmed there is a tumor. I will subsequently refer to the tumor as Muffy because DH's family frown on me calling it Mother Fucker.

The confirmation meant being emotionally supportive for Papa for a few extra hours. (Not Muffy, however. Muffy can go to hell as far as I'm concerned.) I think some part of him believes since I got DH through his cancer, I'll get him through his.

By the time I got home Monday evening, I was exhausted. I could barely chop up the ham to add to the soup beans. Thank goddess, I picked something easy to make for dinner. I curled up on the couch and watched the Grammys for the rest of the evening.

Yesterday, I tried to do something semi-productive after sleeping thirteen hours. I went through the 150 e-mails that had piled up over the last two weeks as we dealt with moving the in-laws into an assisted living apartment. One of the e-mails was a rather threatening one from Amazon saying that I need to turn on my Kindle's wi-fi NOW for an upgrade, or my Kindle becomes a paperweight.

Um, okay? I confirmed it was in fact from Amazon, but the help page regarding this required OS upgrade didn't have a lot of details, so I e-mail a couple of questions to Amazon.

For a company that prides itself on customer service, they have some of the most computer/device illiterate people on the face of the planet. Granted, I did ask a couple of technical question, but Jesus Heronius Christ! They should at least know how big the OS download is vs. the size of my 2nd Gen. Kindle's harddrive space!

The e-mail I received in reply made absolutely no sense, as if the CS person didn't bother to read my original e-mail. But, hey! Since I had trouble with the fucking upgrade Amazon would give me a $5 credit to buy e-books.

*facepalm*

Whatever was supposed to go through the wi-fi didn't work right (long story, won't bore you with the details) so I tried calling Amazon. The second CS person Raven didn't listen to me either. Because my issue was outside of her realm, she started to obviously read from a script. Then, she wouldn't let me get off the phone because she hadn't finished reading her fucking script!

Yeah, I know. I should have just hung up. *sigh*

Anyway, I backed up my Kindle and figured out how to do the manual upgrade before I got the e-mail from Raven with the links to the manual upgrade's download.

As for my poor abused 2nd Gen Kindle, so far, so good. Everything seems to be working. But if I wanted to be condescended to, I would have called Apple.

Or my mother.

After that, I curled up on the couch once again and binged on Supernatural and The Librarians.

Now, it's Wednesday. I printed off the 1099s, etc., from e-mails that I'll need for taxes. I'm going to Panera's in a little bit to see if I can get some writing done before I delve into to tax forms over the weekend.

And maybe later, I'll find something I want to read with that $5 credit that'll make me forget about Papa's upcoming surgery.

Yeah, cancer sucks far worse than Amazon on their worst days.

Keeping Your Head Above Water - Part 2

Once upon a time, Amazon worked hard to give their customers what the customers wanted. The Amazon algorithms were built so that if anyone typed in "vampire romance" in the Books category of the search box, they would get a list of the most popular vampire romance novels. Ones that were the best-selling and/or most read.

Now the first couple of books are "Sponsored", i.e. the publisher who paid the most for the ad to pop up.

"That's not a big deal," a few of you are saying. It is when "pay to play" results in a lot of good books not even being show to customers.

In another example, I also collect Wonder Woman paraphernalia. When I type in "Wonder Woman" for the entire store, what show up first? All the editions of Spider-man: Far From Home because it's the big ticket item Amazon is currently pushing.

Amazon day-to-day management has allegedly done a complete 180. Consumer pleasure is no longer their driving goal. Maximizing profit is. That agenda was allegedly pushed by a few executive. The internal war resulted in situations like my Wonder Woman example, despite both the techs in Amazon subsidiary A9 and Amazon's own legal team protesting the move.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on this matter on September 16th of the year. (I posted the link but it is behind a paywall. Here's Gizmodo's breakdown of WSJ article and its follow-up if you don't feel like paying the WSJ.)

Once the cat was out of the bag, someone changed the A9.com link to point directly at the Amazon store. This type of squirrely behavior isn't going to help with the current EU antitrust probe into Amazon's activities.

"But-but my books are in KU!" you protest. "The reader only pays $9.99 to read everything!"

That's not the full story either. Amazon has changed their Prime subscription so unlimited borrowing is available to Prime members instead of having to may that additional $9.99. That means income for the Kindle Unlimited pot is down.

Another part is the backlash by readers for some of the scams that have been going through KU. Some readers refuse to subscribe anymore because of some of the problems. Other readers are angry their favorite authors have been caught and banned by Amazon.

All of the above combined is part of the reason both money page reads are down. Too many writers rely on Kindle Unlimited for their income. These writers have no additional income streams, and that's going to hurt them, especially if the US DOJ comes after Amazon for anti-trust violations.

Which is entirely possible considering the current president's personal hatred of Jeff Bezos. But hey, if the Amazon execs are that stupid to draw the DOJ's attention, the fault is totally on them.

So, what should writers do? Start looking at other retailers. I'm not saying take everything wide if you're not comfortable. There are medium points between KH and wide.

For example, only my 888-555-HERO series is currently in KU. All other series are wide. Next year, I plan to pull HERO out of KU and go wide with it while I put a new series into KU. That's right--a new series, not one of the older ones. In the meantime, the paperbacks of HERO are available at lots of retailers including Barnes & Noble  and Powell's.

This is merely MY plan. Other writers need to figure out theirs because there's no plan that's right for everyone.

YMMV

Cheaters Never Prosper

I've been avoiding the subject of a bunch of authors slammed by the Amazon ban hammer over the last year. Why? Because I wanted to see how things shake out.

Maybe it's because I used to be an attorney, but I never take anyone at their word anymore. All the parties in a lawsuit are after something. Something they don't necessarily want the judge, jury, mediator, or arbitrator to know. And no one is totally innocent.

But a few recent cases actually made me take Amazon's side.

Their TOS is pretty fucking clear. (Except for where the line between erotica and pornography is. These days, most of us who write in the erotica genre have a clue where the mines are in the field and know better than to cross them.) But here's the thing, Amazon ain't REQUIRED to carry anybody's shit.

Including mine. Which is why I've tried to keep my nose clean since the 2013 Pornocalypse.

But like Faleena Hopkins and others before them, there's a few bad actors who are trying to proclaim their innocence and accuse Amazon of picking on them. Some of their reasoning is rather disingenuous.

Michael Scott Earle lost his arbitration case against Amazon last week. His attorneys' press release on the matter was, at best, laughable. What the press release left out was that MSE tried to sneak his books back on Amazon through another publishing company prior to the arbitration.

Furthermore, MSE went all-Faleena in trying to trademark single words or common terms within pop culture. "Dragon Slayer" was denied by the USPTO. However, "Tamer" managed to get through. There's currently a lawsuit to overturn that approval backed by the Romance Writers of America, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and the Author's Guild.

Then there's Alexa Riley, or actually the two young ladies who use the pseudonym of AR. Back in July, a lot of people were surprised that Amazon would *gasp* ban a top-selling romance author!

However, Amazon did not ban all of AR's books. They only banned AR's self-published books, not the ones published by Harlequin.

The ladies haven't admitted to anything, though there's a lot of speculation and suspicion in the writer communities including accusations of book stuffing, i.e. including multiple stories in a file without labeling it as a bundle or anthology. I do know that they used words in erotica titles that were banned back in 2013, such as "virgin".

Whatever pissed off the Powers That Be at Amazon was exacerbated  when the ladies also tried an end-runaround of the ban by signing a distribution deal with Entangled Publishing. The AR books Entangled put up on Amazon near the end of August disappeared from the retailer within hours.

I'm going to stick with the same thoughts I had when the subjects come up, as they invariable do, on writer-related social media. Would you go into a casino and disobey their rules?

Seriously, what happens if you count cards in blackjack, exchange the dice on craps, or swap out the ball at the roulette table? If you're lucky, you only get banned from the establishment.

Well, it's Amazon's house and Amazon's rules. They can ban anyone they want for just about any reason they want. Just be happy the company isn't run by the Mob.

Time Crunches and Writer Stupidity

I've had my head down for the last couple of weeks in order to get A Matter of Death finalized and proofed before my formatter is out of the office for the rest of this month. DH and I went to see Rocket Man a month ago, and I haven't even had a chance to write up my review. So I haven't blogged much either.

So I'm doing my meerkat pose to see what's going on in the world.

And overall, it's pretty much a typical July in the publishing world.

Trad pub is slowing down as acquiring editors vacation on Mummy and Daddy's estate in the Hamptons. Smashwords is having their semi-annual sale. And Amazon does shit to their store.

Why Amazon updates right before their super-spectacular Prime Day is beyond me, but July's the month for all software roll-outs, and by gum, they're sticking to that schedule!

The other thing that happens right before Prime Day is scammer clean-up. So a bunch of top-selling authors had the ban hammer dropped on them.

Folks, piece of advice. It's Amazon's store and they can do whatever they want. Their rules are posted and/or easily found. Acting dumb when you're clearly violating the TOC doesn't become you.

And if you're a writer who's worried about your account, here's the rules. Simply stated:

1) Back/extraneous matter must be 10% or less of the total e-book file.

2) Don't have banned subjects in your books, which includes, but is not limited to, incest, rape, necrophilia, dubcon, etc.

3) Don't use trigger words in your title or description, which includes, but is not limited to, virgin, rape, daddy, etc.

4) Don't bookstuff.

5) Don't use click farms to increase your rank.

6) Don't buy thousands of your books to increase your rank, hit a bestseller list, etc. Also, don't giveaway cash or a cash equivalent in order for people to buy your books for you.

7) Don't use your books to promote contests or giveaways. They are illegal or have serious restrictions in many countries where Amazon sells books. Amazon ain't getting fined for your shit.


This isn't a complete list by any means. However, I have my own rule: don't do any of this shit, then whine when your Amazon account is terminated. You ain't getting any sympathy from this corner of the multiverse.

New Book Release!

Hero Ad Hoc (888-555-HERO #2) dropped this morning! If you're one of the folks who pre-ordered, a copy should be on your Kindle or Kindle app right now.

I'm so excited about this release because I'm alive, healthy, and sticking to my writing and publishing schedule. Considering a year ago, I was facing some serious and possibly life-ending news, I'm more excited about a release than normal.

Also, Hero De Novo (888-555-HERO #3) is now up for preorder on Amazon.

Don't worry. I leave the initial trilogy on a good note, though I leave it open for sequels. I'm enjoying this series too much not to write more books. *grin*

And if you need a bright spot on Tax Day and you haven't picked up the first book in the series, Hero De Facto, it's currently free on Amazon today and tomorrow.

If you're enjoying these books, I'd appreciate it if you would drop a quick review on Amazon or Goodreads.

Thanks so much for reading!

Super Bowl Commercials I Love

OMG! Harrison Ford! Cute dog! Alexa!

Pay to Play or Simple Fatigue

I feel I've been on the bench too long. I only released two books under my name in 2018. Alter Ego hasn't released anything in over two years. (She says it's hard to feel and write smexy when we're surrounded by pain, disease and death.) So neither of us are surprised our sales have dropped like the proverbial stone this year after coasting on fumes for the last five.

However, I'm hearing whispers that other indies are seeing huge drops in sales this year, drops they claim aren't due to the usual fall school/holiday downturn. And those that use internet ads (such as Amazon and Facebook) and book deal newsletters (such as Bookbub) are seeing lower returns than ususal. But if they stop advertising, their sales plummet.

From what I'm observing, there isn't any one problem. Here are the situations I'm seeing:

1) Amazon's Latest Updates

Amazon has rolled out updates to their online platform every year between the months of July and August since I started indie publishing. And every year, there's been bugs. In fact, there's a cadre who refer to the following month as Glitchtember as the bugs become known and obvious.

This year's Glitchtember has extended into the rest of the year. Amazon's efforts to force users to go to their country's associated store has led to a slew of books disappearing from the retail platform. What's more unusual is Amazon's admission that there was a problem!

But hey, if you're only selling books on Amazon, and Amazon isn't showing your book as available, you've lost that sale.

2) Online Advertising

It used to be that for a few bucks a day, you could advertise your wares on Google and make a ton of money. But Google uses an auction system for their ads, and as time went on, they sold more and more ads at higher and higher prices.

Then Facebook and Amazon jumped into the online ad business, using the same criteria as Google, and now the same problem is occurring as they, too, saturate buyers with ads. Even worse, more computer users are employing ad blockers to keep the multiple ads from slowing down their machines. Or from annoying the hell out of them.

Now, indie publishers are paying more and more to advertise and seeing less and less returns, but if they don't do ads at all, their sales crash. Resentment at the pay-to-play issue is building, but unfortunately, we're not going to see the free advertising we had in the beginning of the indie revolution again.

3) Bargain Book Newsletters

Amazon cracked down on reviewers and their bargain book newsletters years ago by eliminating their ability to monetize the freebies. As a result, many of those review/newsletter proprietors had to close up shop.

The handful left, like Bookbub, are charging more money to advertise through them and making it tougher to get a spot. And even when an indie publisher gets spot, they're not seeing the long-tail with their other books like they used to. Unfortunately, indies aren't just competing with each other for those newsletter slots.

4) Trad Publishing Copying Indie Methods

Nope, we're competing with trad publishers for those BookBub slots. They pay more, and they have a huge backlist to advertise. If you see a $1.99 book on BookBub, it's probably a backlist trad book.

But trad publishing is copying indies in other ways. Their covers are becoming simpler with titles and author large enough to read in thumbnail size. Backlist formatting is getting better rather than throwing up a cheaply, and shittily, OCR-scanned copy of the mass market paperback. In other words, the trad publishers are starting to get their act together when it comes to e-books.

5) Reader Fatigue

How many of you have downloaded hundreds, if not thousands, of free/cheap e-books? *raises hand* Yeah, that's coming back to bite us writers in the ass. Why buy a new book if a reader has a zillion still waiting to be read on their devices? We have to publish something so unique and brilliant they can't resist us, and that's a damn mountain to climb.

On the other side, something that's personal for me and other middle-age people I know--we're rereading old favorites. Between dealing with elderly parents, our own health issues, and launching our kids into a world that seems to headed for disaster, we reach for the comfort reads from childhood. I know I've been going through the Katherine Kurtz/Barbara Hambly/Mercedes Lackey novels from my teens and twenties while dealing with cancer this year.


So what does this all mean?

It means we have the level playing field we claimed we wanted when the indie revolution started. It means we need to step up our game when it comes to storytelling; we can't rely on gimmicks to sell our wares. It means that the e-book market in finally maturing, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

My attitude may change when I get back to publishing in January. But for right now, I don't think it's the end of the world.

Amazon Took Scammer to Court and Won!

If the recent account banning didn't stun scammers, maybe Amazon's lawsuit will make them think twice.

Last year, Amazon filed five arbitration demands against various people, accusing them of fraudulent behavior in the KDP biosphere. Such behaviors include fake reviews, paid reviews, fake accounts, and click-farming.

Amazon is usually rather quiet in its legal dealings, but last week, they filed a petition to confirm an arbitration award. They accused Thomas Glenn of manipulating book rankings through his marketing service. Glenn, a resident of the Dominican Republic, never answered the original claims against him, not did he appear at the arbitration proceedings.

What does this mean to Average Jane Writer?

First of all, don't buy reviews. Don't use click farms to increase page reads. Don't gift thousands of books in an attempt to hit some bestseller list.

Be very, VERY careful if you hire any outside marketing person or company. Ask questions of the people/company you're considering. Ask a LOT of questions. If they get pissy with you or refuse to answer your questions or give you bullshit answers, don't walk away. RUN!

Or as one of Sheldon's previous roommates said, "Run far. Run fast."

And if you do decide to do one of these things, ask yourself if it's worth losing your Amazon account or your writing career.