Have E-Book Subscription Services Shot Themselves in the Head?

There's been a lot of shouting over the recent change to the Kindle Unlimited ("KU") payment plan. On the heels of Amazon's announcement came the news late yesterday that Scribd has eliminated all romance books from their subscription service. Apparently, the only exception are free books.

Why? Because romance readers are some of the most voracious readers of books in all forms. I know folks who can go through a book or more a day.

Think about it. If a subscriber only pays $9.99 a month, and they read 30 books a month, how can Scribd possibly pay each author their full retail amount? Even if the reader only read books that are in Scribd at $0.99, that's still a $17.70 payout to the writer/publisher after Scribd's and the distributor's fees.

I have to wonder if Scribd has notified their subscribers yet because I haven't heard a hue and cry from the readers. The news first broke late yesterday afternoon from publisher Bob Mayer from Cool Gus Publishing who got the news from their distributor D2D and from Mark Coker of Smashwords, another e-book distributor.

So what does this all mean?

It depends on why you put your books into a subscription service like KU or Scribd to begin with. In my case, I haven't put anything into KU because it requires exclusivity with Amazon, and I'm the rare indie author in that I make far more through other channels than I do Amazon. As for Scribd, or its major direct competitor Oyster, I only entered my Bloodlines and Secret of Magick series into their programs. It was an effort to promote them since my erotica/romance books under Alter Ego were doing just fine on sales at the time.

In my opinion, and this is only my opinion, I don't think Scribd or Oyster can be viable in the long run without lowering payments to writers/publishers, which is exactly what Amazon has done to keep KU going. If a writer depends on only one retailer or one methodology, such as borrows, for their income, I think they will be screwed in the long run. As always, YMMV.

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Edit to add: Here's Scribd's announcement. There's been a little grumbling on Twitter, but mainly from authors. Same on FB. It'll be interesting to see how the rest of the day goes.

Edit to add 2 11:15 pm EDT: Still more screaming from authors than readers about Scribd's changes on social media, but I did notice a handful of readers who are ticked about Scribd charging for free books. #Scribd

Surviving the 2013 Pornocalypse

While the 2013 Pornocalypse came to a head in October with a smear piece by The Kernel, the actual event has roots back to the beginning of the year.

In the first quarter, erotica writers noticed weird events like they were no longer showing up in the Top 100 on various retailers despite selling in record amounts. (And yes, indies do compare sales numbers with each other.) Several authors compared rankings/sales and discovered on Barnes & Noble, no erotica author was ranked higher the #126. It was too much of a coincidence.

At the same time, erotica no longer appeared in the Amazon search function if you searched from the main menu, even if you knew the author and title. Indies discovered their books were being slapped with the super-secret ADULT label. The problem was none of the authors knew what the criteria was.

Through experimentation, and a few assertive conversations with Amazon, Selena Kitt mapped out some of the issues and developed survival tips.

Things got a little better over the summer, then the Kernel attempted to take down Amazon with their smear piece. At which point, Amazon, Kobo and a few other retailers overreacted. The sad part is the fake alarm didn't really hurt the retailers, but it did fuck over a few thousand indie writers, most of which didn't publish erotica to begin with!

I talked about my personal issues in November. It didn't get any better in December. In fact at one point, I was banned from Amazon for six hours. Why? I asked very politely why Amazon wouldn't tell their long-time vendors what the changes in terms and conditions were because they weren't posting the info on the KDP website, but something had obviously changed.

To paraphrase the one sentence answer I received from Amazon:  We don't have to tell you shit.

(And people wonder why I don't go exclusive with Amazon.)

While retailers have the right to decide what they will and won't carry, it's the hypocrisy in their decisions aimed solely at indie writers that burns my britches. It burns Selena's too, and she goes in depth here. Unfortunately, we are not protected from corporate censorship, only government censorship. (Something a lot of Americans just don't get.)

So that means we need to play the corporate game if we want to use their retailers. Would it simply be easier for a company to have an adult filter that ADULTS can turn off if they so desire? Yes, it would, and it's exactly what Smashwords does. You know, it's pretty fucking sad when Mark Coker can outthink Jeff Bezos.

First, go read Selena's survival tips. I'll wait.

Now, here's things that have happened to me and erotica writers I know:

1) Selena's bad word list now applies to the descriptions, too. And here's the thing, THE WORDS CANNOT BE IN THERE. PERIOD. I've had two of my books banned because those particular words WERE TAKEN TOTALLY OUT OF CONTEXT.

For example, one story was about a rape survivor dealing with her boyfriends treating her like a porcelain doll. I asked politely for Amazon to reconsider, and then asked them to confirm this was the new policy. (P.S. This is the one where I got banned from the site for six hours for daring to question their policies.) I can say, "brutal sexual assault" but I can't say, "rape."

Both another writer and I used the the word, "forced", in a sentence that had nothing to do with sex. As in, "forced to leave the state to find a new job." Yet, Amazon laid down the hammer on those, too.

2) Beast erotica is the latest target of Amazon. Dinosaur porn is okay, but Bigfoot, centaurs, and satyrs aren't. Pseudo-incest? Forget it! Ironic that Flowers in the Attic is still available.

3) Covers? The policies concerning clothing and position don't make any sense whatsoever already, but things have been added to Selena's list. No partial boobs. No butt cracks. Ropes, handcuffs and whips are now verbotten. Hell, you can't even put an innocent puppy on your cover without being accused of bestiality.

The only good news to come out of this? The retailers aren't restricting actual content, just the packaging and themes.

So far.

Like I said in my November post, once we erotica writers get past the initial fallout, things will get back to normal.

Until the next Kernel writer gets rejected at a bar.

Breaking News - PayPal v. Smashwords

Here's a breaking story on MSNBC: Paypal, Visa and Mastercard have backed down from their stance on erotica e-books.

Lots of folks I admire, like Kris Rusch and Joe Konrath, believed this was just business and not censorship. But when the strike was against a genre predominantly written and consumed by women, then I believe it is censorship.

This DOES NOT mean I agree with the sale of legally banned stuff, like child pornography, which the finance providers are BOUND BY LAW not to facilitate. That's a whole 'nuther ball of wax.

But today's report relieves me to no end. It means I can continue to write and read some of the stuff I love.

And many, MANY thanks to Mark Coker for spearheading the efforts to stop this farce!

More on the PayPal/Smashwords Saga

Monday night I received an e-mail from a Faithful Reader concerning the PayPal situation. Not wanting to start a flame war, she wondered if I was being harsh blaming PayPal and whether another entity was to blame.

First of all, contrary to what others have accused me of, I don't feel it's right to repeat rumors. I will however offer an opinion on the evidence I have at the time. If I'm wrong, just show me the evidence.

Sure enough that same evening, I received another e-mail from Mark Coker. (For the record, these e-mails and the ones I mentioned on the previous post, were only sent authors with erotica titles under their account on Smashwords.)

According to Mark, he'd been in talks with the folks at PayPal. The folks at PayPal claim that the banks and credit card companies are pressuring PayPal about the same types of subject matters as mentioned before: incest/pseudo-incest, beastiality and rape.

Mark's major concerns are censorship and the fact the topics are not well-defined. Take rape for instance. The mandate handed down from PayPal (or the other U.S. financial institutions, depending on what's really going on behind the scenes) does not differentiate between rape as titillation and rape as a criminal act. Without such differentation, a great many top thriller authors would be banned as well.

Assuming PayPal folks are telling Mark the truth about who's behind this move, I second Mark's request of the following:

1) Blog, tweet, FB about this issue. Financial institutions have no business dictating terms to other businesses.

2) Contact your bank and credit company to protest such actions. Let's face it; they don't want to lose their customers.

3) Contact your U.S. representatives and senators protesting private companies efforts to censor books.

4) Contact your local news media and ask them to look into the matter.

Why am I seconding Mark's request? As my Faithful Reader pointed out in her e-mail Monday, it's too coincidental that this crap is happening during a presidential election year.

As of the time I type this, the deadline to remove material from Smashwords has been extended an indefinite period.

For additional takes on the PayPal situation, check out Sarah York's blog, Jane at Dear Author and Ryan Field's Blog..

One of my writer friends, Anna Kathryn Lanier is promoting a petition to PayPal to stop the censorship. I'd like to point out Anna DOES NOT write erotica, but she feels strongly about the censorship issue.

I don't envy Mark Coker, and I certainly don't blame him. This is business. His fledgling company needs contacts with financial providers as well as content providers. Trashing Mark is stupid and pointless and helps nothing. Please stop.

Furthermore, writing for profit is business. Plain and simple business no matter what YOU want it to be. My regular readers have heard me preach this time and time again--writing is business; treat it like one. I hope all of you take this to heart and be smart about how you deal with other companies. You can stand your ground without being an asshole.

Angry Sheep
Off her soapbox.