When a Writer Assumes the Role of Gatekeeper for Other Writers

Yes, I'm late posting today, but I wanted to think long and hard about what I wanted to say.

I thought while I bought a Batman outfit at Build-a-Bear for the teddy bear DH gave me for our fifth wedding anniversary. I thought while I decided on my birthday chocolate at Godiva's. I thought while I checked at Yankee Candle to see if they had any Witch's Brew left. (They didn't, but I'm definitely getting Cherries in Snow for Christmas!) I thought while I ate my birthday breakfast of a classic Cinnabon and Starbuck's black ice tea.

I didn't think when I saw a brand-new Ghoulia doll at Toys R' Us. I just squealed in delight, which made the clerk's day. We chatted about the New Hallowthanksmas retail season while it stormed like crazy outside.

But once the rain died and I could safely make it to the car without getting electrocuted or Ghoulia getting soaked, I started thinking again. So what caused all this thinking?

Libby Fischer Hellman is pissed off about EVERYONE self-publishing. Her sales are down! No one can find her books among the tsunami of swill! And everyone else needs to just stop publishing!

After reading her blog one more time before I started to write this post, all I can say is Genius Kid never threw a tantrum like this even in his Terrible Twos.

What's even sadder is that I've never heard of Libby Fischer Hellmann before her post was excerpted over at The Passive Voice (and her post caused a firestorm of comments over there). Is this how she wants to introduce herself to potential readers?

Because that's what other writers are. They are readers, too.

I wouldn't dream of stating on my blog that no other writer can publish because no one's buying my books. That simply DOES NOT MAKE SENSE!

Do I think writers should learn their craft before they publish? Hell, yeah. I don't know an indie writer who doesn't believe that. But once a writer is past the initial craft stage, the game changes.

If no one's buying my books, that means I'm not doing a good enough job entertaining my readers. That's no else's fault but my own. It means I need to step up my game, not "everyone needs to be gentle with poor widdle Suzan."

The whole point of indie publishing my books is that they're niche. I know they are niche. The Big 5 don't see how they can make any money on such a small market segment, but I do see how I can. And I have. And I wrote things that tickled me, and obviously tickled a few other people or they wouldn't have bought them. Or read them. Or asked when's the next one coming out.

I don't believe we writers are in competition with each other because readers are varied in their tastes and voracious. We're definitely not in competition with people too lazy to learn their craft or who plagiarize other writers, which, to me, is the real swill.

It's going to take me 120-150 hours of butt-in-chair time to write Zombie Goddess, plus another 40 or so hours of editing time. (That's me personally; that's not counting the editor and beta reader's time.) The average reader will whip through it in 4-5 hours.

What's the reader going to say if I tell her she can't read anybody else's work while I write the next novel? She's going to say, "Fuck you!" and rightly so.

Also, readers are very good about finding what they like. I've been choosing my own books since I was six. I'm pretty damn sure other readers can choose their own material as well.

So I'm going to keep writing and publishing whether Ms.Hellmann likes it or not. And if my zombie tabloid reporter is outselling her female PI, then maybe she needs to step up her game instead of whining.

FINALLY! Blood Sacrifice is out!!

I stayed up last night until effing four in the morning, but dammit, this book was getting uploaded! (Many thanks to Pepsi, Inc. LOL)

It seems appropriate that Alex and Phil's book comes out Halloween week since they literally go to Uku Pacha, the Incan Underworld.

I'll be posting sales links as they go live during the next couple of days (yes, I'm talking to you, Barnes & Noble). I want to thank all of my readers for your incredible patience!

Blurb
Alex Stanton is done being Phillippa Mann’s whipping boy. She made it perfectly clear she preferred him only when his body temperature was human. And he would keep his distance from the Amazon if his vampire master didn’t value Phil’s business relationship.

But when someone breaks into Phil’s antique shop and steals a replica of an Incan artifact called a tumi, Alex discovers she’s in deep trouble. The tumi isn’t a fake after all, and the original owner wants it back. Can he and Phil mollify a ticked off god of death long enough to find the thief and retrieve the god’s property, or will the Incan deity decide he’ll take their souls in exchange for his lost weapon?

Novel, approximately 76,000 words or 277 printed pages

Sales Links
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Smashwords

Brand New BAMF Girls Club! Episode 12!

That's right! Just in time for Halloween, Katniss learns she's been training for the wrong reality show! (And watch the end of the episode for a hint of Episode 13's special guest star!)

The Jonathan Moeller Interviews of S&S 28 Contributors - Part 4

Yesterday, Jonathan posted my interview. Show Jonathan some love! Stop by and leave a comment!

P.S. There's a snippet of "Justice" for you to check out.

Status Report - October 2013

As the Celtic year winds down (yes, folks, Halloween, or Samhain if you will, was the Celtic equivalent of New Year's Eve except with a lot less glitter and champagne), I'm looking at what I've accomplished.

Sales have been down over September and October, just like they have been for the last three years. Why? Because readers are dealing with school, kids, fall activities like football, and holidays. Oh, and October is when trad publishing unleashes a flurry of paper books, especially hardbacks, in preparation for the Christmas rush.

A lot of folks in indie world are panicking, but they've panicked every fall for the last three years.What they need to be looking at is the long-term implications. The initial gold rush in self-publishing is over. Thank Djehuti!

Why do I say that? Because the people who aren't serious about writing as a career are starting to give up. That doesn't mean the rest of us can relax. If anything, we need to up our game. We not only have to be better than other indies, we have to be better than trad published books in our production values.

Fortunately, that's not hard. *grin*

Here's some of the data you're looking for:

After Amazon's August surge, Apple sales are still beating the house that Bezos built as far as my books go in September. Barnes & Noble sales have dropped thanks their schizophrenic board of directors and total lack of direction. Frankly, I can't blame Nook owners for not wanting to invest any more money in their devices. Kobo and Smashwords sales have been non-existent since April. Sony is the retailer that surprises me because I'm starting to see 2-3 actual sales per month for the second half of 2013.

Total sales in August = 215
Total sales in September = 139
Total sales for October as of the 22nd = 74

I place a lot of the blame for October on Congress' shoulders because of the stupid-ass government shutdown. There was a marked increase in sales after 16th, and not just because Alter Ego published a new novella on the 18th.

The rest of the year will be interesting. Blood Sacrifice will be published by Halloween. Sword and Sorceress 28 with my short story "Justice" will be released November 2nd. Alter Ego will put out her first novel in December as well as the last novella of her current BDSM series. That will bring my total releases up to ten for the year.

And I've officially made more money in 2013 than I did in 2012, and I've still got two more months to go.

All-in-all, I think I've done pretty good this year for an average mid-lister.

The Jonathan Moeller Interviews of S&S 28 Contributors - Part 3

Last Thursday, Jonathan interviewed the fabulous Melissa Mead. Check it out here!

Star Wars - The Condensed Version

The complete Star Wars movie saga told in less than five minutes. This version is WAY better than George Lucas'. Wasup!

Wise Ink Travels to the 2013 Writer's Digest Conference West

The ladies of Wise Ink, Dara Beevas and Amy Quale, report their findings at Writer's Digest conference. It's amazing to me the about-face by the trad publishing establishment in the last year.

The Kernel, Kobo, and the Great Erotica Blow-up of 2013

Yes, I know I don't normally write a Thursday blog, but I wanted to record the shitstorm that happened over the last week while it's still fresh.

Once upon a time, which was actually Wednesday, October 9, 2013, a little U.K. rag called The Kernel ran a piece by Jeremy Wilson, vilifying Amazon as the purveyors of pornography. Specifically, they named erotica books that allegedly contained underage sex, incest, non-consensual sex and bestiality, four of the biggest no-no's in erotica because these are usually illegal in real life.

There's two things you need to understand before I continue:

1) The Kernel is so bad it makes the U.S.'s National Enquirer look like the epitome of top journalism.

2) Most traditional publishers, including those in newspapers and magazines, have a bad case of ADS, aka Amazon Derangement Syndrome, a term coined by the Passive Guy, the well-known, pro-indie publishing blogger of The Passive Voice, to describe the rampant trashing of Amazon in the publishing industry by those traditional pundits who still use Amazon's services to sell their merchandise.

On Saturday, October 12, 2013, The Daily Mail latched onto the so-called "story", but they added Barnes & Noble, W.H. Smith, and Waterstones (all brick and mortar stores with an online presence) into the lambasting of porn sales. Yes, this is the same Daily Mail singer Amanda Palmer mocked for reviewing her boobs instead of her singing.

That same day, the BBC (British Broadcasting Network which is the state-run television network) jumped on the bandwagon. They only focused on Amazon and the contents of the original Kernel story. According to the Amazon spokesperson's statement to the BBC, all books mention in the original story had been removed.

***
A legal side note to explain something: the U.K. does not have any equivalent to the U.S.'s First Amendment guaranteeing a right to freedom of speech. What the U.K. does have is the Obscene Publications Act, which makes the retailer liable if a shopper accidentally encounters material that would outrage public decency.

On top of the OPA, Prime Minister David Cameron is pushing a far-reaching law that would prevent anyone in the U.K. from accessing any kind of sexually explicit materials, not just child pornography. This proposed law has been jokingly referred to as the Great Firewall of London, but it would have some serious ramifications for writers, retailers and consumers if it is enacted.
***

At some point on Sunday, October 13, 2013, W.H. Smith shut down their website. I don't mean just the e-book portion but the entire fucking thing. Here's the screen shot of the holding page as I write this at 1 AM CDT on Thursday, October 17, 2013:

As you can see, more finger-pointing started. W.H. Smith blamed Kobo for the content of their e-books. Nevermind that W.H. Smith had been making money off that content for some time.

Kobo, in turn, started deleting books from their online sales site. But it wasn't just the books mentioned in The Kernel and The Daily Mail articles. Nor was it a deletion of erotica titles. It was a wipe of small/micro press and indie books regardless of the genre. Specifically targeted were books handled by distributor Draft2Digital (D2D) and those uploaded through Kobo's Writing Life.

One of the writers hit was thriller author and pro-indie pundit David Guaghran. The guy does NOT write erotica.

[DISCLOSURE: Two of Alter Ego's erotica titles handled by D2D are no longer available through Kobo. Both the Suzan Harden and Alter Ego erotica titles distributed through Smashwords, Inc., are still available on Kobo's website.]

On Monday, October 14, 2013, at 9:26 AM, I received the following e-mail from D2D's CEO Kris Austin:

Dear Suzan Harden:

We have discovered that over the weekend Kobo removed all books published through our account. While we have received no official word concerning this issue, we believe this is related to recent articles in the media concerning erotica titles available at WHSmith and Kobo’s storefronts.

However, Kobo’s response to this situation seems to have been removal of all books for any publishers (including distributors) that have offending titles until they find a solution.

I deeply regret that authors who have released books that are not erotica have been affected by this situation as well.

We are working aggressively to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and we will keep you updated as we learn more information.

Sincerely,
Kris Austin
President and CEO
Draft2Digital, LLC

Late Monday afternoon, Kobo finally made a statement concerning the removal of D2D books.

Defense of indie writers from the Kernel's hatchet job started early. The Digital Reader came back with some valid points.

On the IndieReader, Michelle Fox describes the witch hunt going on over at Amazon. Apparently, The Kernel didn't do their research. A couple of the books they mentioned didn't have the things they described. Kernel writer Wilson claimed author Chelsea Fox's book, Dog Gone It, supposedly had acts of bestiality. His reasoning? There was a dog on the cover.

Since the story went viral, The Kernel has taken down several of the alleged bad books on their page. Why? The U.K.'s laws concerning libel and slander are a lot more stringent than the U.S.'s. Writers like Chelsea Fox could have a hell of a payday if they decide to pursue actions against The Kernel.

Even though Chelsea's book was originally removed, it's now back up on Amazon (at least the U.S. website).

In the meantime, Amazon is doing more than taking down the books named by The Kernel and The Daily Mail. Erotica superstar Selena Kitt has a spectacular rundown over at One-Handed Read. While not mentioned by the British tabloids, one of her bestselling books, Babysitting the Baumgartners was removed from Amazon. She had to change the title only in the data base, not on the cover or text, to get Amazon to put it back on sale.

My thoughts on all of this? Major overreaction on the parts of the retailers. Smashwords has had an adult content filter on their website almost from day one. Why the mass purging when a little forethought could have saved these retailers a lot of trouble?

Because Amazon, Kobo, et. al. are only going through the motions. They WANT you to find these erotic books. They WANT to sell these books. Erotica makes them a BUTTLOAD of cash every year. I know because I've been making a buttload of cash since I created Alter Ego.

Right now, they're calming the pearl-clutchers as my friend Angie refers to the holier-than-thou assholes like Jeremy Wilson, knowing that writers will rename their books and upload them again when the kerfluffle dies down. THE RETAILERS DON'T GIVE A FLYING RAT'S ASS. Not about the writers. Not about the consumers. Not about Jeremy Wilson and drama mamas of his ilk.

Welcome to capitalism, baby! Ain't it great?

The S&S 28 Interviews, Part 2

Fellow fantasy writer Jonathan Moeller interviews his fellow contributors to the Sword and Sorceress anthologies. Here's last Thursday's interview with Catherine Soto.