Claire Ryan's Blog, page 17

Hachette’s Price Hike

I can, of course, understand the need for businesses to protect their revenue streams. What I cannot understand, and likely never will, is when a business chooses a short term high revenue stream instead of a longer term low revenue stream that will be more beneficial to them.

Such is the case with Hachette’s price hike in licensing ebooks to libraries (and Random House’s hike before them).

Here’s the story in a nutshell: libraries were looking forward to being able to license more of Hachette’s catalog for their patrons. Hachette decided that they wanted a 220% increase in fees first. Here’s Maureen Sullivan of the American Library Association:

“When Hachette announced it was stepping back into the library ebook market this past May with pilots that would bring a selection of its recent bestsellers to millions of library patrons, the ALA welcomed this news,” she said in a prepared statement. “Leaving our meeting with them, we were pleased that they recognized libraries as strong partners—as direct customers and marketers of their titles, as well as integral community institutions that must be supported as a fundamental cornerstone of literacy. After these tentative steps forward, we were stunned to learn that Hachette plans to more than triple its prices for ebook sales to libraries starting October 1.”

Hachette’s response after the predictable outcry:

“We believe these terms fairly reflect the value to the library customer, that the ebooks will not need periodic replacement as do print copies, and there is no limit on amount of borrowing activity per ebook copy.”

Here’s The-Digital-Reader’s rundown of the state of the major publishers with respect to libraries:

2 major publishers which charge high prices (Hachette, Random House)
2 major publishers which won’t sell at all (Macmillan, Simon & Schuster)
Penguin, which is only selling ebooks to libraries grudgingly and with support for the Kindle explicitly blocked
HarperCollins, which imposed a 26 checkout limit for library ebooks

Now, tell me what’s wrong with this picture.

The Elephant in the Room

If you said ‘the stink of fear’, then congratulations! You officially have more business sense than the major publishers. And they are very clearly afraid. More specifically, they’re still afraid of ebooks cannibalizing sales of print books, so much so that they’re willing to make the terms of ebook lending for libraries untenable in comparison. They’re effectively pricing libraries out of the market, because the library budgets for ebooks are not going to rise by 220% in comparison. Conclusion: they don’t want libraries to lend ebooks at all, because lending an ebook might mean someone doesn’t buy an ebook instead.

Notice how Penguin is blocking the most popular e-reader around, and there’s a 26 checkout limit on HarperCollins books. These are artificial restrictions, there only because Penguin fears Amazon’s dominance and HC doesn’t want libraries to be able to lend the same ebook out indefinitely without paying for it over and over.

All of these publishers want to make sure that ebooks don’t get too popular. They make money on hardcovers. They could be making twice that with cheap ebooks, but that would mean thinking about a long term strategy – and top of that list, for me at least, would be making arrangements with the libraries for a flat fee for a certain number of ebooks, for example.

Just think about their response above, for god’s sake. ‘Ebooks will not need periodic replacement’? That means they need to charge less, not more, because it costs them nothing to send a new copy out to a library. They already have as many as they’ll ever need.

The Good News

Oh, there is good news. Just not for the major publishers.

Librarians are not idiots. They’re also not for-profit organizations. Again, here’s what Sullivan says:

“Libraries must have the ability to purchase a wide range of digital content at a fair price so that all readers have full access to our world’s creative and cultural resources, especially the many millions who depend on libraries as their only source of reading material.”

Independent publishers and authors can grab a huge amount of goodwill by approaching libraries and offering them their books. I’d certainly offer my local library a digital and print copy of my book for free. Self-publishers already know that getting attention for their work is half the battle – if they can do so in a venue that has zero competition from the majors, so much the better.

The biggest danger to the traditional publishing industry is irrelevance. This kind of move only accelerates that, because it makes it harder for people to read their books.

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Authors and Trademarks

Well, well, well, here’s an interesting situation.

An author of a graphic novel series called Carnival of Souls has sued HarperCollins and sent out Cease and Desists over reviews of a book called Carnival of Souls. The author, Jazan Wild, has trademarked the term ‘Carnival of Souls’ in reference to graphic novels, novels, and comics, and he believes that HC’s new book infringes on this trademark – hence the lawsuit and the C&Ds sent to review blogs.

Yes, very interesting… Let’s talk a little about trademarks. Here are my thoughts.

Not Copyright

Yes, I have to clarify this. Copyright is something else. Trademarks are literally marks under which you trade; they’re identifying marks intended to guide consumers in particular fields so that they don’t get confused about what they’re buying. Take Apple, for example – if you were to start a business called Apple Computers, you’d likely be infringing on Apple’s trademarks because you are confusing consumers, intentionally or otherwise, and they may buy computers from you thinking that they’re actually from the major manufacturer of Macs. This can damage Apple’s reputation.

Businesses like trademarks because they protect them from the bad press of substandard knock-offs. Consumers like trademarks because it means they know what they’re buying. Although trademark-bullying does exist, and Apple does do it, trademarks are useful things.

Why Defend Them?

Companies defend trademarks because, of course, they don’t want their products confused with someone else’s and their reputation damaged as a result. They also don’t want their trademark to be diluted, i.e. their trademark name or symbol becomes the default for a product of that type. This happened famously to Xerox, the company that makes copiers – to xerox something became the default term used for copying in general, and thus they lost their trademark. Losing it means they can’t, for example, stop a competitor using the term when marketing their own copiers. It’s all about the meaning, see – if a trademarked name is so widespread that it means something generic to the public at large, instead of a particular company’s product, then it can’t be a trademark. The likelihood of confusion is too high because the general usage of it means something else.

Companies don’t like dilution. Although it likely means that their marketing worked far too well if the name is ubiquitous, it also means that they can’t protect their reputation any more and their marketing becomes worthless.

What About Authors?

So, here’s the thing – you, as an author, probably don’t need a trademark. What do trademarks do? They identify a product to a consumer and let you protect yourself from knock-offs. You’re an author selling a book. What should your trademark be?

It really all depends on what you want to protect. Do you want to protect your name, in case someone tries to publish books in your genre while pretending to be you? That’s actually happened, to Nora Roberts in this case, and her name is not trademarked – but she didn’t need a trademark to get those books taken down. (J.K. Rowling does have a trademark on her name – but the trademark is her signature, which is used on the books and on various Harry Potter merchandise. Presumably this is to stop people faking it to sell Harry Potter books at a higher price as well.)

What if the reverse is true – you’re a relatively unknown author, and suddenly a bestseller with the same name, writing in the same genre and about the same subject comes out of nowhere? Well, that gets a bit strange. If you have a common name, it can’t be trademarked, so it’s not as if they can sue you to make you stop using your name. If you have an exotic, unique name, they can’t trademark it without your consent because it refers specifically to you.

(Even if they were going to try, regardless of the kind of name involved, the resulting shitstorm they’d provoke from trying to force a struggling author to stop using their own name on their own books would make any legal team turn white with fear – as well as painting the bestseller author as a possible plagiarist/identity thief.)

Do you want to protect your book title? Well, you can’t. A single title of a work cannot be trademarked. A series can, however, which is were this particular case comes from.

Are you a self-publisher, with a publishing company just for your books, and it has a logo you want to protect? Well… why? The author is the brand. The author has always been the brand when it comes to books. The name and logo of your company is not likely to need protection unless you turn into a bestseller or start taking on lots of other authors.

Going to Trial

So, let’s take Jazan Wild and his Carnival of Souls series, against Carnival of Souls by Melissa Marr. There’s a number of factors to examine when determining whether trademark infringement has occurred, according to US law anyway. It’s all based on whether there is a likelihood of confusion for consumers. Here’s the different elements that have to be examined:

Strength of the mark
Proximity of the goods
Similarity of the marks
Evidence of actual confusion
Marketing channels used
Type of goods and the degree of care likely to be exercised by the purchaser
Defendant’s intent in selecting the mark
Likelihood of expansion of the product lines

Okay, the strength – that’s how well known it is. In this case, not really – the first few google hits are for the 1962 horror film of the same name. The proximity of the goods would be how close they are in type – they’re both books, but telling very different stories. Then there’s similarity – none, apart from the words. Evidence of actual confusion? I don’t know, I can’t find any, but that’s not to say it doesn’t exist – just that it’s unlikely. They both use the Internet in for marketing, but everything does these days.

Type of goods and degree of care… er… well, the author is the brand, remember? I can’t imagine someone looking at Jazan’s graphic novel and thinking ‘Yes! This is obviously my favorite author’s new steampunk release!’ The defendant’s intent is the same – the title wasn’t picked to ride on the fame of the previously published comic series, because it doesn’t really have any by all accounts. Amazon has seventy-two hits in Books for “Carnival of Souls”, and more than a few are for a series of poetry books, by the way.

The likelihood of expansion? Probable, I guess.

I don’t think Jazan has much of a case, to be honest. It comes down to whether a consumer would be confused over what they were buying, and I personally don’t believe there would be any confusion here.

On the C&Ds

Now, here’s where it gets stupid – leaving all the legal stuff aside, Jazan has no right to ask reviewers to pull a review of Marr’s book over the infringement. This is nominative use, in theory, even though it’s a step removed from that. Here’s how it breaks down: you can refer to a trademark without infringing it or diluting it if you need to describe the company or product. Nominative use is there so that people don’t have to contort themselves into literary pretzels in order to talk about Apple iPads, for example.

The reviewers in question are looking at a particular book, with a particular name, in the context of criticism of that book. The name of the book could be infringing a trademark, but the reviewers can’t review the book without telling the reader the name of the book. It’s not the reviewers’ fault if the book infringes, nor is it their responsibility to censor themselves simply because there’s a dispute. Free speech, and all that. It doesn’t matter as long as they’re clear about what they’re referring to, and they are.

In Summary

I think someone got some bad legal advice here. Jazan’s probably going to do nothing but dig himself into a hole, and probably empty his bank account in the process.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and this is my own opinion on this case.

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Writer’s Week

Emily Suess is running Writer’s Week, an event where writers can come out of the woodwork and get lots of information and other fun stuff from various publishing professionals. I’ll be contributing a guest post this Friday on covers, and I designed the cover for the short story, called ‘Ten Mississippi’. This story is being sold to in aid of the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, so do consider picking up a copy.

(The story itself was written in a round robin style by me and three other authors, and edited by Emily. I’m very glad for the opportunity to help out.)

Keep an eye out for more info this week.

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The Danger of New Services

I have the greatest respect for Kristine Kathryn Rusch. I read every post on the Business Rusch and I expect any serious author to do the same, such is the value of her knowledge and experience.

Her latest post is about e-book companies who take royalties in lieu of an up-front fee in order to publish an author’s work. Her opinion of them is very clear: avoid them like the plague, and on your head be it if you decide to go through them.

This is interesting because the Raynfall Agency, as I have envisioned it, is exactly that: a company that takes royalties in lieu of an up-front fee in order to publish an author’s work. You may ask how I feel about her essentially warning away all authors from my business.

My opinion on it is thus: she is absolutely right, and you should listen to her.

New and Untested

It would be really easy to be offended about being tarred with the same brush, as it were, but I have neither the energy or patience for that kind of absurdity. I know my own business well enough, and my whole operation is here for comment and discussion. What Kris says is right, down to the last word – most companies out there that do this kind of thing are not good deals for authors, and they are right to be wary as hell. If anything, it means the onus is on me to build trust and confidence, because this kind of business is new, untested, and ripe for abuse.

Here is how I will do it. I will go through the various points she brings up in the article, and see how I compare.

It wasn’t until I dug into that e-publishing service’s Terms of Use that I figured out what was going on. The bestselling romance writer didn’t write that post on her Facebook page. The e-service did. They handled all social media related to books for the author.

A huge no. Anyone who’s read my book on marketing knows this much: I refuse to do an author’s marketing for them, for various reasons. I may ask for access to social media accounts in order to do things like update a Facebook cover or Twitter background, but technical support is as far as it goes and I will never, ever post on them. I’ve told authors to change their passwords after I’m done so that I will not have access in the future.

My contract stipulates that I may provide technical support if needed, but only at the author’s request.

That’s not the scary part. The scary part is the Terms of Use that she had to agree to in order to go with this company.

Let me repeat: she agreed to a Terms of Use. She did not sign a contract.  She didn’t sign anything. To go into the website proper, you must click on the “agree” button for the Terms of Use. The only warning that writers will get about this horrible Terms of Use—and it is horrible—is on the FAQ, which states:

The Terms of Use look long and boring, but it’s essential that you read and understand them when you use [our company].

I have a contract which must be signed, and I ask that authors have a lawyer look at it so they are comfortable with it. I’m actually considering putting it up as a PDF download here for authors to read in the interests of transparency.

Then the next point says this:

The Service will evolve over time, and accordingly this Agreement may need to change over time. We reserve the right to change the terms of the Agreement at any time in our sole discretion. Changes to the terms of this Agreement will be effective on the date posted at the Website, unless we specify otherwise.

Neither I nor the author can change the terms of my contract without the agreement of the other. One book, one contract, no exceptions.

So let’s say I missed the changes. Most people would. We would be subject to this in the same provision:

Your continued use of our Services after we post changes will constitute your acceptance of these changes.

And in the next clause, the one on termination, there’s this:

All provisions of this Agreement that, by their nature, are intended to survive the termination of this Agreement will survive.

This is why I hate Terms of Use. They’re always one sided and frequently nuts. This, obviously, is not in my contract. Mine doesn’t change without the agreement of both parties, like, you know, all sane contracts the world over.

And then this POS gets even worse. Let’s say  you do cancel. Do you get the e-pub or MOBI files of your e-book, the one that  you paid for through 15% of your royalties? Nope. Those files are proprietary to this service.

Part of my termination clause stipulates that all production files for a book are packaged up, sans Raynfall markings, and delivered to the author by email, FTP, Dropbox, or whatever digital means is most convenient. This includes the epub, mobi, Scrivener files/docs, cover vectors… literally everything that went into making the final product, plus whatever copies of the final product I created. (I keep an archive copy).

By the way, the service doesn’t pay for copyedits or proofreading, and so you get charged for those services by a flat fee separately. If you read the bestselling romance writer’s supposed Facebook post, you can see why this service doesn’t do copy edits. But really, there’s no one at the service who knows how to design covers either, certainly not covers worthy of a New York Times bestselling author.

My contract stipulates that I handle the production, start to finish, like any other publisher, unless the author decides to bring in a third party or handle part of it themselves (which I have to sign off on, obviously). No extra fees.

Remember how it says up at the very top that the Terms of Use can change without notice? Well here’s a quote about royalty payments from farther down in the Terms of Use.

If you are not in breach of your obligations under this Agreement, for each eBook sold to an end user through the service, [this POS company] will pay you the applicable royalty set forth at [our website], net of refunds, bad debt, any applicable taxes charged to a customer or applied with respect to sales to a customer (including without limitation any VAT or sales tax) and our fee for managing the sale of your eBook through the Service (the “Management Fee”) as set forth at [on the FAQ page]. If your List Price for an eBook is higher than permitted by us or at any Retailer, we or that Retailer will be entitled to deem it modified so that it is equal to the maximum List Price permitted when calculating Royalties.

I don’t get the bad debts thing, I honestly don’t. Other than that, this is gibberish to me. Again, my contract doesn’t change without agreement, etc. My royalty structure is pretty straightforward: Amazon (or whoever) pays me royalties for sales of a book. I take my cut, which is 50% if the production cost isn’t covered and 10% otherwise. I pay the remainder to the author within thirty days. This is the same regardless of the price, and I don’t change the price without the author’s consent.

No extra fees, no net, no whatever. I don’t understand why anyone would make this so complicated.

If we terminate this Agreement in whole or in part because you have breached your representations and warranties or our Content Guidelines, you forfeit all Royalties not yet paid to you with respect to the eBooks subject to the termination….Our exercise of these rights does not limit any other rights we may have to withhold or offset Royalties or to exercise other remedies.

Okay. Those Content Guidelines? They’re also on the website—in a different place than the Management agreement and the FAQ—and subject to change at any time. So again, the service can change the guidelines to hang onto your money after you’ve terminated the service.

This clause actually makes me feel ill. The author forfeits royalties if they want to cancel the agreement? Good grief…

On termination, I take the book off Amazon or any other service. Even after termination, the author is entitled to the royalties from their book while it was sold under Raynfall, according to the usual 50/50 or 10/90 split depending on the production cost recovery. But even if I am owed money – and I would be, if that cost were not covered yet – there is no way in all the hells I’d hold back royalties for it. It’s asking for major trouble.

This, again, is part of my contract. Of the royalties accrued by a book, only my portion can go towards the production cost. The author’s portion is theirs alone. (Now, the author may still have to pay whatever of the production cost isn’t covered yet if they want to terminate the contract early, but that is handled separately from royalties to keep everything clear and above board.)

But wait! It gets even worse. The service might have other unnamed rights to withhold or hang onto your royalties and/or to pursue other remedies. Since this is in the royalty portion of the Terms of Use, that means that the word “remedy” most likely means money. The service might determine, because you violated their content guidelines, that you have to repay all of the money they ever paid you as a remedy.

Still want to sign with a company like this? At least five New York Times bestselling romance writers have. And 700 people at last count clicked the “like” button on that bestselling romance writer’s Facebook page.

That number makes me nauseous. I can’t even think about a company that acts like this. It’s like it’s designed to milk authors for money.

Nothing in this agreement holds the e-publishing service to anything. They don’t have to publish your books. They don’t have to return your books. They don’t have to pay you. They have no liability if they leave out twenty-five pages in the middle of one of your books or put someone else’s name “accidentally” as the author of that book.

They have no liability if they rewrite the entire book and keep it under your name.

My contract stipulates a publishing date. If the book isn’t published by that date, the contract automatically ends according to the termination clause. If I don’t address errors in my work on the production within thirty days, the contract automatically ends according to the termination clause. If I or the author knowingly breaks the contract, the contract automatically ends according to the termination clause.

Bottom line here, I have obligations when I sign this. So does the author. If either one of us doesn’t fulfil those obligations, then the contract finishes. Nothing else is even remotely fair. And we both have to sign off on the final product, so there’s no chance I’ll rewrite the book (HAH!) and keep it under their name.

A final word on all this

So many writers are giving 15% of their royalties to e-service providers to format their books without signing any agreement or contract at all. It’s either done by e-mail or worse, by phone or in person.

If the whole thing breaks down, then it’ll be a he-said she-said in court.

Think these things won’t go to court? Of course they will. The services are too new right now for any case to hit any docket. By 2020, we’ll see a bunch of these cases, or we will know people who have sued such and such company and lost their writing time down the rabbit hole of legal troubles.

If you don’t have the time to self-publish and you don’t have the money to pay someone up front, then don’t do it. That’s so much better than signing with one of these scam artists.

All I can say is that you need to read this article in full. And yes, I know what I’m quoting here – this is Kris saying not to use a business like mine. I am okay with this because I’m pretty sure of two things: one, I am not a scam artist or an idiot, and two, I am probably in the minority in that respect when it comes to this kind of business. I’m quoting this here because it’s more important that authors not be scammed.

It would be easy to be offended, and it would be easy to make loud proclamations to the effect that I’m not like those others. That would be telling, not showing, wouldn’t it? Just so much meaningless hot air. In truth, the only way forward for an honest businessperson in this area is to be vigilant, to prove themselves worthy of an author’s trust every day. Yes, this is a new area, but integrity in business never goes out of style.

As for me, well,  it doesn’t say ‘Fair and Equitable Publishing’ at the top of this page for nothing.

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Five on Friday: Interesting Times

Required reading for the week!

The Department of Justice slaps down the arguments of the big publishers in the ongoing price-fixing lawsuit.

Courtney Milan highlights instances where the ‘special snowflake’ argument has generally failed when applied to price-fixing accusations.

J.A. Konrath talks to Melinda DuChamp on money-making by indie publishing, with a side order of digs at traditional publishing (as per usual).

Techdirt talks about how piracy is being increased by Hollywood’s refusal to offer legal digital formats for sale.

Support indie authors!

Once again, I have been attracted by a cover. Authors, take note: covers DO make a difference even online, so don’t half-ass them! Today’s indie author up on the chopping block is Tessa Van Wade, and her book is The Southerner’s Daughter. Not my usual fare, but I’m a sucker for action/adventure of all kinds, so I took a quick look after seeing the rather elegant typeface.

Cover? – It works very well in thumbnail, but a little rough around the edges in higher resolution. Still, I do like the typeface a lot.
Blurb? – Hoo boy. It ain’t working. It’s a very bad sign if the blurb has grammar errors. It needs shaping up.
Social media? – Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, of all things, but then Tessa isn’t just an author. I’m recommending Pinterest as well to round out the list.
Web design? – a professional, self-hosted site that’s more than enough to impress me, design-wise, but not without issues. She’s suffering from the usual problem of the Amazon widget displaying her books being cut out by adblockers. The site needs some better organization as well – no book covers uploaded anywhere? Problem!

Room for improvement, but some good marketing efforts going on here. Everyone have a good weekend!

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So You Just Want to Write

I’ve heard and read this a few times. It’s what every author wants, isn’t it? They just want to write. There’s so much work involved in getting a book to market, work that cuts into writing time. Handing it off to a publisher – or overpaying an outfit like AuthorHouse to do it – probably seems like a pretty good deal if it means more writing time.

To that I have to say: if all you want to do is write, why not just start a blog and write away? No covers needed, no special formatting – just you, the blank screen, and your audience.

“But Claire, you don’t understand! We want to make money by writing!”

Well now, that’s a different story.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is a big difference between writing, and writing for a living. The bones of it is thus: anyone can just write for their own enjoyment and for the enjoyment of others, and many do. Writing for a living means that there is a transaction involved, an exchange of money for a product, that goes above and beyond the enjoyment.

Writing as a business isn’t just writing. It’s writing plus business – and the business portion is everything you do to convince readers that your writing is worth paying for.

This holds true no matter what kind of writing you’re selling. The uncomfortable reality of it is that you will never escape the business side of it if your aim is to make money by writing; you need to become acquainted with the roles of marketer, salesperson, manager and analyst to succeed. You need to adopt the mentality of profit and loss, cost effectiveness, market forces and sales trends. Much of the advice handed out to first-time business owners also applies to authors seeking to start their career, regardless of whether they self-publish or grab a book contract.

The Bare Necessities

Marketing.

Oh no! I said that word again! I’m sure many of you will be either recoiling in fear or shaking your head. Let me just say this much: you’ve probably got some wrong-headed ideas about what marketing actually is. In short, it’s all the things you do to encourage people to buy your book – and this includes writing more books as well as all that social media stuff that everyone either loves or hates. It’s all kinds of things you never really thought about, but in small ways they let the world know that you’re a writer, you have books, and readers could be interested in buying and reading those books.

Bottom line here, you need to get the word out about your books somehow or you just won’t make any sales, so you need to allocate some time to this. Try everything once and watch your sales while you do it – eventually you’ll figure out what works and what doesn’t. But please – be sensible about it. Profit and loss, remember? If tweeting about your book all day doesn’t get your sales, then stop doing it and do something else.

Your website.

In my experience as a web designer with standards, authors tend to have the most awful sites in the world. I am begging you, get a professional to at least give you an opinion on your site. Your site is the first contact many people have with your business (that of selling books). Do NOT half-ass it. This will take some time to keep it updated, but it’s worth it, trust me.

If you’re an indie – covers and editing.

You’re selling a product. Shouldn’t that product be worth the money that people pay for it? Publishers can handle the quality control for you, up to a point, but the indies are on their own in that department. So – make your product shine, as far as you’re able, and at the very least get a professional to look it over. You’ll either spend time doing it yourself or working with someone else, but either way you need to allow for this time as well.

Financials

Alright, you may not be good at finance or money, but you need to keep track of this. Seriously. You need to know how much you’re selling versus how much you’ve spent on your product. You need to look at graphs of your sales. You need to understand, in very precise terms, just how much money you get from publishing and where it’s coming from. Do NOT half-ass this either. Get an accountant if you have to. Schedule time once a month at the absolute minimum to go over your finances.

It’s Not All Bad

Okay, no more doom and gloom… When you’re running a business to make money, you’ll just have to deal with lost writing time, but honestly? It’s not all bad.

What’s technology good at? Efficiency. The tech you use every day can help you reclaim some of that lost time by automating or scheduling tasks, especially when it comes to things like marketing and finance. Take Twitter, for example – you can schedule your tweets at the start of the week, then jump onto Twitter during the week if you want to respond or get involved in a particular conversation. I use a browser plugin to quickly post articles to Twitter/Facebook/various bookmarking sites. Rafflecopter just started up a neat new service to make running a giveaway very easy and fast. Goodreads, and Amazon’s author pages, automatically pull your posts into their system for displaying to potential readers.

WordPress blog posts can be scheduled. Reports from your site on how much traffic you’re getting can be emailed out regularly. Libre Office has a few plugins that scan a document for common grammar errors. If there’s a way of doing a repetitive task by hand, chances are someone’s thought of a way of doing it by computer in a tenth of the time. What I’m saying is that you should also explore different ways of doing the same thing, if only to work out how to do it quickly. (I also recommend that you learn to touch type, if you can’t already.) Get it right and you won’t lose as much writing time as you think.

Never forget, however, that you are running a business if you want to sell your writing. It’s not as easy as just writing, but the business side of it will demand some of your attention no matter what you do – and it’s more important to get that business stuff right than it is to get more writing time in.

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Piracy is Not the Bogeyman

If the LendInk fiasco has taught us anything, it is this: when authors are faced with the prospect of someone getting their work for free, their initial reaction is one of panic. It’s possible that this is a learned reaction, from big media companies that make a huge deal about piracy. I think many of the authors involved were independent, and didn’t have the benefit of a publisher’s legal guidance. The end result was predictable, if nothing else; authors saw their books listed on the site, got no response from the owner, and assumed the worst immediately.

It is also the wrong reaction, and here is why.

“What about lost sales?”

No. Stop. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. You get to complain about lost sales when you can prove that piracy is causing them. You are a business person; step up to the plate and act like it by relying on the one thing we know works – facts, figures, solid information and statistics – instead of your gut reaction.

“It’s morally wrong!”

Oh please. That’s not an argument. It’s a justification, if anything, and it’s your gut reaction talking again. Everyone disagrees about what should be considered morally wrong. The bottom line here is that the only thing that should count is whether actual harm is caused. So, see point one about facts, figures, etc etc – if you can prove harm, then you can point to that instead of talking about morality.

“It’s against the law!”

Yes, it is. (Non-commercial copyright infringement is a civil case, however, not a criminal one.) This means you need to really do your homework and be 100% sure of your facts before throwing accusations and legal threats around – and, again, you need to know that it’s actually worth your time and money to enforce your rights. Businesses make the decision every day not to pursue legal action because it’s not a good use of their resources, both now and in the long term, and the crime in question has had a negligible effect on their bottom line. Again, back to point one – get the facts straight, know exactly what piracy is costing you in actual dollars, and compare that to what you’ll spend in legal bills.

“People need to know that that behavior is unacceptable!”

That ship has long since sailed. The music, movie and TV industries have been there, done that and bought the T-shirt. They have thrown millions at re-education. It simply doesn’t matter. People just don’t value infinitely copyable digital files in the same way as physical objects. They don’t rationalize the act of copying a file and giving it to their friend as something bad. By extension, they frequently don’t rationalize the act of downloading a file as something bad. They know they shouldn’t, and they’re certainly not stupid or ignorant, but that generally has no effect on their behavior. They want to read this book, see this TV show, listen to this album. They can’t get it in their region, they can’t afford it, it’s DRM restricted and won’t work for them. They’ve been using piracy to solve those problems for as long as the Internet has been capable of delivering large files to the masses. If you think you can successfully change the behavior of a large population so that they will not pirate any more, then go sell your ideas to the MPAA and RIAA – you’ll become a millionaire faster that way.

“If we can stamp out piracy -”

I generally don’t listen to whatever comes after this statement, because the speaker clearly doesn’t know anything about piracy if they’re talking like this. Let me spell it out: you are talking about something that (a) may not be a problem (see point one regarding facts and statistics) and (b) cannot be solved. DRM doesn’t work and will never work. The biggest torrent site on the planet has defied every legal, illegal and technical threat thrown at it, to say nothing of the hundreds of others who keep a lower profile. Companies with multi-million dollar budgets have employed very smart people and probably bribed many politicians, and they have yet to find a way to even put a dent in the rate of piracy worldwide. Again, if you think you know a way, go sell it to them and make millions that way instead of writing.

Frankly, I know my opinions are not all that popular when it comes to piracy, but I at least have done the research. Authors need to do the same and act in an informed manner – and, above all else, they need to get out of this mindset that the world will end if they don’t stop their books being pirated. This fear is what lead to LendInk getting taken down. The reality is far more benign – piracy probably can’t ever be stopped, but it also probably doesn’t have much of an effect on sales, and, for most indie authors, it’s quite literally nothing to write home about.

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Five on Friday: Good Causes

Required reading for the week!

LendInk, the site that was taken down last week due to a moral panic over piracy, is looking for donations to get back online.

Neal J. Riley on libraries buying their ebooks directly from smaller publishers in the face of resistance from the larger ones.

Paul Alexander from the IndieReader on why he went independent.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch on royalty statements and contract terms again.

Support indie authors!

Today’s author was spotted on Twitter, initially, and I just happened to jump in and take a look at her work. Step forward Eden Baylee, and her latest collection of erotica novellas called Spring into Summer. I don’t read erotica – not yet, at any rate – but Eden’s book struck me pretty quickly as a tailor-made holiday read, and I always appreciate properly targeted and marketed books.

Cover? – disembodied female legs out by the pool, with a touch of flowery color. Very appropriate.
Blurb? – This is a set of four novellas in one, so the blurb was always going to be difficult, but I’d need more than a line for each to really be hooked.
Social media? – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Goodreads. Great to see someone making the best use of social networking.
Web design? – a wordpress blog and nothing to write home about, design-wise, but it’s serviceable (and believe me, that’s more than I’ve been seeing lately on author websites).

Everyone have a good weekend – and if you want to step up to the Five on Friday chopping block, all you have to do is contact me at info@raynfall.com. (Independent and self-published authors only.)

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An Update to the LendInk Author List

I’ve decided to go through the list and record who among the guilty have apologised for the LendInk fiasco. I’m checking this by doing a google search for the author’s name, ‘lendink’ and a combination of keywords – ‘sorry’, ‘apology’ apologize’. I’ll update the list as and when I find more links. (I’ll continue hunting in the morning, as it’s past midnight here.)

Sharon Cathcart - apologized
Robin Helm – nothing
John Davis – nothing, apparently posted unrepentant blog post then removed it
Debbie Bennett – apologized
Shawn Lamb - nothing, apparently posted unrepentant blog post then removed it (main instigator?)
OG Tomes – nothing/unrepentant
Douglas R. Cobb – in contact with reader, possible apology?
CG Brumby – apologized, but no mention of whether she retracted the C&D she sent
Imran Siddiq – apologized, according to Techdirt
Jeanette Baird Vaughan - unrepentant, then trying to weasel out of the backlash, it seems, with a non-apology
Buck Stienke
Ken Farmer
Dawn Sinclair
Joyce Godwin Grubbs
Tony Riches
Rebecca Treadway
Lisa Kz
Mari Passananti
Melody Peugh
Stephen Dafoe
Karen Kennedy Samoranos
Gerry Huntman
Rhea Rhodan
Kai Starr (Kaichi Satake)
Anne Barnhill
Vicki Batman
James F. Ross
Scarlet Hunter
Alisha Paige
Merris Hawk
Cathie Dunn
Roscoe James
Trish Marie Dawson
Mark Patton
Sandra Peddle
Bill Wilbur
Rachel Lyndhurst
Melinda Hammond
David Naughton-Shires
Electa Scott Graham
Kate McCormick
Seumas Gallacher
Juliet Cardin
Benita Brown
Julie Parker
Jenny Woodall
Pam Mangol Bitner
Liz Ringrose
Anne Polhill Walton
Lesley Cookman
M.m. Bennetts
Prue Batten
Chrystalla Thoma
Karl Jones
Anna Jacobs
Deborah Gafford
Nely Cab
Tessa Berkley
Nan O’Berry
Lauren Gilbert
Naty Matos
Tory Michaels
Cerian Williams Hebert
Karen Cino
LaVerne Clark
Erin Dameron-Hill
Kissa Starling
Emily Harvale
Rosalind Smith-Nazilli
Paula Martin
Melanie Pearce
Trace Rybarczyk Broyles
Trevor Belshaw
Pam Howes
Deb Harris
Gayl Taylor
Nanette Del Valle Bradford
Ella James
Raven McAllan
Linda Gillard
Virginia McKevitt
Morticia Knight
Judith Arnopp Novelist
Heather Nelson
Ruth Watson-Morris
Rebecca Rynecki
Victoria Pearson Writer
Maxi Shelton
David J Howe

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Hachette, what are you thinking?!

I’ve just seen the truly bizarre news that Hachette, one of the big publishing houses, is demanding that any author with titles published by Tor in some territories and Hachette in others keep the DRM on their ebooks.

Tor have recently begin to offer DRM-free books, in a move that further boosts my respect for them as one of the few publishers who know what they’re doing. Hachette, apparently, are worried that the availability of DRM-free copies of ebooks in some regions, and they feel that they can dictate terms to their authors as a result.

The arrogance of this literally takes my breath away.

Authors, Take Note!

Cory Doctorow has a more succinct explanation of this whole mess, but the one essential point you need to take away from it all is this: Hachette is willing to throw your reputation and sales under a bus because they’re deluded about piracy. Doctorow makes the most pertinent argument about it – the reader may not remember who published an ebook when it doesn’t work on their Kindle due to DRM, but they WILL remember the author. That’s why it’s important.

I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it again here for the umpteenth time: DRM is a fool’s game and actively detrimental to the end goal of selling books. It’s so trivial to crack that it won’t even slow down any dedicated pirates, and it certainly won’t stop someone from scanning the book into a computer or just typing it out. Remember the Harry Potter series, and how J.K. Rowling was absolutely opposed to ebooks, so much so that there were no legal options to buy them anywhere? Remember how high quality pirated copies were and are still available?

I hope Hachette get a pretty big backlash to this. They have no right to pressure authors to accept worse terms with other publishers just to please them, and the fact that they’re even asking says volumes about them as a business.

My recommendation: avoid them like the plague until they back off this.

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