Real Life Vampires

Is it just me or have a large number of indie writers turned to writing how-to books for writers instead of writing fiction?

Yes, money's down for a lot of writers when it comes to fiction.

First of all, the complaints are coming at a normal time of the year. August-September is filled with parents and grandparents dealing with new schedules, new schools, and new kids' clothes. It's all our readers can do to deal with their own job, homework, and dinner before they collapse on the couch in exhaustion, only to run the same race the next day.

There's not too much you can do about the natural yearly highs and lows of books sales.

Secondly, I know I can't just put out a book and make a ton of dosh anymore, but I expected that with a maturing system. A lot of folks seem to think the gold rush should have kept going forever. Those writers with business experience realized it wasn't going to and made adjustments. Those who haven't? Well, they have seen a sharp decline in sales.

Why? Because there's a surplus of material. Hell, I've got 559 books in Kindle right now. I've read maybe 100 of them so far. That doesn't count the 1,000+ paper books, and the Nook and iBook books I haven't read yet.

Do I think people should stop writing? Nope. That's not my worry.

It's seems like more and more writers are supplementing their income by writing and selling industry-related how-to books. But a lot of these folks don't have the expertise they claim they have.

Or worse, they advocate gray hat or black hat tactics that will lose a new author not only their money, but their retailer accounts and their reputations.

"But, wait!" I hear some of you saying. "You put out a book on business planning a few years ago."

Yes, I did, but it was based on experience as a lawyer writing up business plans, both for personal use and for clients. By the same token, I took the book down when I didn't have enough time to update it properly. So much was changing so fast in the early days of indie publishing. The last thing any new writer needed was outdated information.

And that's probably the difference. I took my ethics seriously as an attorney, and I still do as a writer. I believe we should be making money from our art. Not from speaking engagements. Not from shilling get-rich-quick schemes to people with stars in their eyes.

Does this mean every self-help thing is bullshit? No, but take a hard, HARD look at who's offering it and what their bonafides are. And I don't mean their fucking Amazon rank. That number is irrelevant. It doesn't tell the whole story of someone's income, much less their entire career.

In any time of chaotic change, there are those looking to make a difference and those who want to suck those dreams and dollars from anyone. Take a hard look at what anyone, including me, is offering.

Ask the hard questions. Follow the money path. Who's actually profiting from your time and your money? What are you really getting from the services and/or products offered?

Most of all, remember that when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is too good to be true.

It's okay not to know everything. None of us does. But you and your work are the most important things, and you need to do everything in your power to protect them.

Good luck!

Pay the Writer

The latest scam making the rounds is where a writer ghostwrites a book for an established author and the writer pays the established author for the privilege.

Yep, you read that correctly.

For example, my friend Angie is nudging me to write Book 4 of the 888-555-HERO series. If I told her she could write the book but it would be published by me under my name, and she would have to pay me $1000 to do it, would she do it?

Angie's smart enough to tell me to fuck myself, and rightfully so. She understands money flows toward the author. I understand that concept. Probably, most of you reading this understands that concept.

But amazingly, there's a ton of writers who think paying for the privilege to write under someone else's name is their ticket to riches and glory.

I've had a couple of people get snippy with me, saying I'm anti-ghostwriter. I'm not. Some folks are awesome at ghostwriting.

A gal I used to know in Houston has ghostwritten a few celebrity memoirs. I admire her skill at capturing different people's voices. And she was paid handsomely by the celebrity or the publisher for writing those memoirs. She did not pay the celebrity or the publisher for the privilege of doing all the research and text for those books.

Cthulu dammit! Not even James Patterson is that evil! He pays his ghostwriters, not the other way around.

If you are doing the writing, you should be getting paid. Here's a snippit from Dreams with Sharp Teeth:

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.

Amazon on the Warpath or a Different Type of Conflict Diamond

While I was recovering from surgery over the past six weeks, Amazon cracked down on a few people scamming their Kindle Unlimited (KU) service.

(For those new to the world of indie publishing, a publisher can place their books in the Kindle Select program. While this gives the publisher access to special promotions, the books must be exclusive to Amazon and are automatically enrolled in KU. Readers pay $9.99 a month for KU, and they can read as many books as they wish within the program.)

From the advent of indie publishing, people have tried to con Amazon and/or readers. Private label rights was a big issue right from the beginning. Amazon yanked that crap pretty damn quick.

Since the start of KU, folks have been gaming the system to make the most bucks possible. Now, I don't have a problem with people making a buck or two. But I prefer doing it by writing an entertaining story that people want to read. Not by cheating readers, or retailers, out of their hard-earned money.

During the first iteration of KU (referred to as KU 1.0 by most indie writers), Amazon paid the publisher the full retail price once the customer read 10% of the book. Indie writers quickly figured out shorter works hit the threshold faster, triggering the payout sooner. Which meant a lot of short scenes that didn't even qualify as flash fiction were published on KU and irritated the hell out of readers.

Within a year, Amazon ditched the first version of KU for KU 2.0, a system that allegedly counted the number of pages read. Oh, the howls of outrage from the short story writers.

Until they figured out that Amazon COULDN'T actually count the number of pages the customer read. The number of cons to get the maximum amount of money by getting the readers to click to the end of the books exploded. Hell, I'm not even going to try to list them all here.

But Amazon couldn't ignore one major scam any longer. To do so would make them internationally liable.

It has to do with sweepstakes-style contests. Many countries have very strict laws governing these type of contests. In many more, these contests are very illegal. And since entrance was through Amazon's online store, they could/would be held equally guilty as the indie publisher.

A few indie writers went too far. It's one thing to offer a free e-book when a customer signs up for your newsletter. It's another when a indie writer offers to give away diamonds.

*facepalm*

Yeah, the diamond trade is pretty heavily regulated on an international level. I don't know what this author was thinking.

Or he wasn't thinking. He just wanted his readers to make money for him by clicking to the end of his books.

Amazon pulled everything he had down: e-books, print books, and audio books. All that potential income--gone. Just because someone got greedy.

So when someone offers you a sure-fire way of making thousands of dollars through e-book publishing, think twice, do your research, and read the terms of service on the retailer's webpage.

Because screwing people over may not bite you in the ass today or tomorrow, but one day, Karma will and she'll take a bigger chunk than a megalodon.

Scams, Scams and More Scams

There's another scam that's surfaced. This time, it's not a publisher creating a vanity imprint, but a distributor who wants to be God.

Autharium offers to distribute your book and you keep the copyright, but the catch? They keep all worldwide licenses of all types to your primary AND subsidiary rights for the length of the copyright!!!

You cannot get any rights back with permission from them. Period. If you sign with them, you have been royally fucked up the ass without the benefit of soap.

The Passive Voice has a breakdown of some of the terms. And please read the comments to understand further that this IS NOT A GOOD DEAL. Hell, Random House's Hydra imprint is gentler about screwing you over.

Speaking of which, apparently the bad publicity got to Random House. RH has revised their terms for Hydra and its sister imprints. Personally, I don't think they changed enough that I would sign with these imprints, but that's my opinion. Always read the fine print!

For even more laughs, J.A. Konrath talks about a survey Harlequin recently sent to its authors. Unfortunately, I have experience with these kind of corporate surveys. Despite their alleged claims of anonymity and a desire to improve, the suits are looking for the complainers in order to ditch them.

Once upon a time, I thought it would be so cool to write for Harlequin. But after hearing a few horror stories, the urge has committed suicide.

One more time, ladies and gentlemen, WRITING IS A BUSINESS! Treat it like one, and you'll be fine.

The Publishing Gold Rush Is Digging Up Lead

Writers refuse to learn basic business principles. Publishing companies refuse to learn basic business principles. And we wonder why the publishing industry is in such bad shape.

I've complained about Simon & Schuster teaming up with vanity press Author Solutions (which, by the way, is owned by Penguin).

This week, Kris Rusch vented her own frustration at writers refusing to take responsibility for their careers.

Now, yet another small publisher may be in the process of going the way of Triskelion (I don't even want to go there), Dorchester Publishing (extensive chronicling by Brian Keene) and Aspen Mountain Press (Samantha Combs's report of the efforts to save the company).

Now, it appears Silver Publishing sinking rapidly. A publisher paying late is never a good sign. When the publisher starts throwing around legal threats and writers are holding a fundraiser for the publisher, things are bad. There's been several flame wars over the matter already, and it'll probably get worse before Silver finally succumbs. The Erotic Romance Blog catalogs some of what's going on.

Unfortunately, where there's smoke, something burning hot usually lies underneath. The fingerpointing and spinning is too much like the other defunct publishers I mention above to not take this seriously.

If you're a writer wanting to contract with a publisher, for the love of Murphy, CHECK THEM OUT before signing the contract!

Dear CBS, The Defense Department Regrets to Inform You...

...that your publishers are dead because they were stupid."

Okay, I paraphrased Goose from Top Gun, but the end result is the same.

Simon & Schuster, a Big Six publisher which is a CBS subsidiary, has decided the only way to survive the epic upheaval in the publishing industry is to partner with...

Author Solutions?

Seriously?

S&S is that hard up that they go into business with one of the biggest vanity scam publishers in the f***ing world?

And you think calling your new scheme 'Archway' will hide the fact that it's a vanity scam?

This is part of the reson this blog is so late today. I wrote the first draft, then had to go back through a delete the f-bombs.

Which was pretty much every other word.

David Gaughran has an extensive run down of the epic stupidity of S&S.

What makes me incredibly sad is that I know some poor naive writer will spend his kids' college tuition for S&S/AS/Archway's "deal."

Sorry, folks, but publishing your own book should cost way less than $25,000.

Unless the fucking things are gold-plated.