HOORAY FOR TECHNICAL WIZARDRY

Following my post the other day entitled Bugger Technical Problems, I'm pleased to announce that my new website is now back up. And I'd like to say two things, first about the new website and second about the technical genius of my webmaster who fixed me up, when the problems were NOT his fault. (Or mine.)

So, the new website. For years, I had a website designed and hosted by the wonderful

BUGGER TECHNICAL PROBLEMS

Damn. On the day that I'm supposed to be involved in an event about author promotion, what happens? First I lose my voice and then my whole bloody author website decides to vanish. Yes, I have a clever webmaster sorting it out but it's going to take some time, even though he is so obliging that he works silly hours. GRRRR.

Meanwhile, should anyone want to find my new author website it is at a

Guest Post by Lee Goldberg

I've known Lee Goldberg for years. He's a good writer, a good blogger, and a good all-around guy. One of the things I admire about him is his ability to debate, and his zero tolerance for BS.

If you haven't read Goldberg, The Walk is a great place to start. He's been blogging about ebooks for as long as I have, and he's got a somewhat different take on what's happening.

Here's Lee...

It’s astounding to me how much, and how fast, the publishing world has changed in the last nineteen months. On June 5, 2009, I began my Kindle publishing adventure with a post on my blog.
Here’s an excerpt:

My friend author Joe Konrath has done extraordinarily well selling his unpublished books on the Kindle, making $1250 in royalties this month alone. That's very impressive […] Joe is making a lot of assumptions based on the admirable success of his own Kindle titles. It's a big, big, BIG leap to think, just because his book has done well, that Robert W. Walker (or any other mid-list author) will sell 500 copies...or even 50 copies...of his out-of-print books on the Kindle each month. But just for hell of it, I decided to follow Joe's advice and put my out-of-print 2004 novel THE WALK and a short story collection, THREE WAYS TO DIE, up on Amazon for sale on the Kindle and see what happens…

A lot happened. I ended up putting my entire, out-of-print backlist – nine novels and two non-fiction books – on the Kindle. But let’s jump forward to February 2, 2010, when I wrote on my blog:

January (2010) was my best month yet in sales & royalties for my out-of-print books on the Kindle. THE WALK remained my best-selling title with 536 copies sold […] All told, I made $775 in Kindle royalties this month [...] I credit the jump in my sales to all the people who got Kindles as Christmas gifts and were eager to test drive their new toy for as little money as possible. I suspect my sales will slowly decline once the novelty of the Kindle wears off.

To say I was wrong would be a massive understatement.

I’m selling many more books than I did a year ago, but the big game-changer was Amazon upping the royalty rate in July 2010 from 35% to 70% for books priced at $2.99 and above.

This January, if sales continue at the current pace, I will sell about 3100 books this month and earn $6600 in royalties.

That’s a 166% increase in sales and a whopping 751% jump in royalties.

In just one year.

On out-of-print books that I wrote years ago that were earning me nothing before June 2009.
If those sales hold for the rest of the year, I will earn $77,615 in Kindle royalties, and that’s not counting the far less substantial royalties coming in from Amazon UK, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble and CreateSpace.

Even if my sales plummet tomorrow by fifty percent, I’ll still earn about $38,000 in royalties this year…and I’d be very, very happy with that.

My most profitable title, in terms of hours worked and pages written, is THREE WAYS TO DIE, a collection of three previously published short stories. In print, it’s a mere fifty-six pages long, but it’s selling 24 copies-a-day on the Kindle, earning me about $1500-a-month. That means I could potentially earn $18,000 this year just from those three short stories alone.

That is insane.

But what would be more insane is if I took my next, standalone, non-MONK book to a publisher instead of “publishing” it myself on the Kindle.

That’s right. I’d rather self-publish. This from a guy who for years has been an out-spoken, and much-reviled, critic of self-publishing. But that was before the Kindle came along and changed everything. I was absolutely right then…but I’d be wrong now.

The Kindle offers mid-list writers a real option to consider before they sign their next, shitty contract extension with their publisher…and it has given new opportunity to every mid-list author who has been dropped…and it has dramatically re-energized the earnings potential of every published author’s out-of-print back-list.

That’s incredibly exciting. I believe that any midlist author who isn’t self-publishing, either their back list or new work, is making a costly mistake.

If a publisher came to me today and offered me a typical, mass market paperback deal for THE WALK, I wouldn't take it...because I don't see a scenario where I'd end up making more money on the book than I am making right now (selling about 1101 copies a month, earning $2268 in royalties) . I make more in one month from Kindle sales than I did during the two years that the book was in print in hardcover.

And unless I’ve got a book I think has the potential to be a blockbuster, a novel that could break me out of the mid-list and into the upper-ranks of mystery/thriller writers, I don’t see a scenario where taking an original novel to publisher makes financial sense for me anymore.

But I’m an established, professional author…there are a million copies of my 11 MONK books in print. I have a big back list I can exploit. It’s any easy decision for me to make.

But unlike my friend Joe, who is going to accuse me of clinging desperately to old paradigms that are no longer relevant, even today I still wouldn’t recommend self-publishing for a first-time author.

If you’ve never been in print before, I believe you’d be a fool not to take a mid-list paperback or a hardcover deal…even a terrible one…over self-publishing on the Kindle. Financially, you might make less (either in failure or modest success)...but the difference will be more than made up for in editing, marketing, wider readership, wider name recognition, and professional prestige (and that prestige does mean something, whether you want to admit it or not).

You can always go back to self-publishing... and when you do, you will be bring that wider readership, name recognition, and professional prestige with you. But a book deal doesn't come along every day, and that's still going to mean something for a long time yet...and I suspect it still will even if half the bookstores in America close tomorrow.

Of course, that’s assuming you have an agent or publisher interested in your work. What if you don’t? What if you just want to get your work out there?

You better be damn sure your book is up to professional standards.

If your book is awful, amateurish slop, you can embarrass yourself, create negative word-of-mouth, and seriously harm the reputation you are seeking to build.

There’s a gold rush mentality right now when it comes to authors and ebooks (which I am probably stoking with this article) and, like gold fever, it’s making people stupid. Keep in mind that for every Joe Konrath and Amanda Hocking, there are thousands of authors who will be lucky if they can give away ten books-a-month at 99 cents each.

The majority of self-published books are unreadable crap… and that hasn’t changed just because it’s easier now to self-publish than ever before. If anything, it’s made things much worse.

Just because you can publish for free with a mouse-click doesn’t mean that you should.

But because of articles like this one, people with no discernible writing talent, or even basic writing skills, are rushing to get their atrocious, unpublishable garbage onto the Kindle as fast as they can.

The slush pile has gone digital and has unleashed a tsunami of swill onto Amazon and Smashwords. It’s going to get even harder for authors to get their books noticed by readers, who I fear are going to quickly discover that most self-published stuff is awful and, as a result, will be far less likely to take chances on writers they have never heard of… even at 99 cents.

I don’t have a solution to the problem…but I don’t intend to let the tsunami bury me and my work. I’m always looking for ways to get bring new readers to my books.

That’s one of the reasons I will continuing writing the MONK books as long as they remain success. I believe the “dead tree” editions and ebook versions of my MONKs bring thousands of new readers to my work.

It’s also one of the reasons why I’ve joined with Max Allan Collins, Bill Crider, Vicki Hendricks, Harry Shannon, Joel Goldman, Dave Zeltserman, Paul Levine, Ed Gorman, and Naomi Hirahara to launch TopSuspense.com, a site where readers can find professionally written ebooks by highly-acclaimed, award-winning novelists in a variety of genres.

This year, I intend to put at least two original novels on the Kindle, one of which will be the first in a series of books written with several well-known collaborators and a few new authors.

The publishing and bookselling businesses are in turmoil. Publishers are dropping authors, cutting advances, grabbing rights, and cutting print runs. Barnes & Nobles and Borders are struggling, closing stores and cutting back on orders. And beloved independent booksellers, like the Mystery Bookstore in Los Angeles, are folding, unable to compete any longer.

It’s very sad and troubling.

And yet, this is also an incredibly exciting time to be an author…as long as you are motivated, out-going, and entrepreneurial.

For once, I feel like I actually have some control over my publishing career and that my success or failure will be due the decisions that I make, not someone else’s poor choices or lack of enthusiasm.

I am enormously grateful to Joe for leading me down this path…but most of all, I’m thankful for the readers, bloggers and fellow authors who continue to support my work.

Joe sez: I agree with 95% of everything Lee has said here. What's refreshing is that when he and I originally began discussing ebooks, he thought I was full of shit. But he put his money where his mouth was, and tried it out for himself. Then he drew similar conclusions, and wound up changing his mind.

The most difficult thing a person can do is change their mind. Lee gets a lot of flack for his opinions, but he always backs up his opinion with facts. If the facts change, his opinion changes. That's the mark of a very smart guy.

However, I disagree with him on a few bits, because he's clinging desperately to old paradigms that are no longer relevant.

While I agree that a lot of writers are putting crappy ebooks up on Kindle, and that there is a learning curve to becoming a good writer--a learning curve that previously required gatekeepers (agents and publishers) to vet new writers and nurture them along on their path to becoming competent, I disagree that publishers are still needed.

Agents are still needed. Mine sells my subsidiary rights, and is doing a great job with that.

Vetters are still needed. It's impossible for a writer to improve unless they know what they're doing wrong. This requires a second pair of eyes.

But that second pair of eyes doesn't have to be a publisher.

The vetters can be readers.

I've already seen several examples of this. But first, let's go back in time and look at something called pulp fiction.

Years ago there was a gold rush similar to the gold rush we're no seeing with ebooks. Except this one was paper, not e-ink.

Cheap paper allowed for the printing of mass quantities of paperback books and magazines. As a result, millions of these suckers were produced, feeding the country's voracious appetite for inexpensive fiction.

Of course, with a demand this big, the editors of these magazines, and the editors for these new paperback lines, needed to find writers to meet their quota.

As a result, quite a few writers who later became big bestsellers got their start in pulps. And guess what? A lot of their early stories weren't very good.

But the more they wrote, the more they improved. Sure, they sometimes had editors to help them. But unlike today, those writers were learning on the job. They got paid to learn their craft, making a living until they were good enough to go from pulp mags to novels.

Me? I have my peers vet me. I also have fans who are beta readers who spot typos and errors.

But what about green newbies who don't have bestselling author friends or loyal fans?

I've followed a few authors on Kindle who originally published some pretty unpolished stuff. But the readers point it out, usually with a bad review, and then more often than not the mortified writer goes back and fixes it.

The reader has become the vetter.

Is it ideal? No. Ideally, writers would only self-publish flawless work. Both both Lee and I originally put ebooks on Kindle with formatting errors in them, which were pointed out to us and we fixed. We learned on the job.

Yes, it is necessary to have a second pair of eyes on your work. But those eyes don't have to be an editor at a Big 6 house.

Taking a shitty publishing deal with shitty royalties just because it offers you the opportunity to learn has some merit, but I really believe these things can be learned independently of taking a shitty deal. If the writer can even get a shitty deal these days, with the way the industry is imploding.

If I were a newbie, I wouldn't sit on a manuscript, hoping to be discovered by an agent, when there is a perfect opportunity to test-market my writing on Amazon.

Lee also said: (readers) are going to quickly discover that most self-published stuff is awful and, as a result, will be far less likely to take chances on writers they have never heard of… even at 99 cents.

Again, I disagree. I give readers more credit than that. This isn't a once-bitten/twice shy scenario. Every reader has read bad books, but it hasn't soured them on reading.

With Amazon reviews, star ratings, and preview features, bad books aren't going to sell well. The Readers (aka vetters, aka gatekeepers) will warn others against trash, and reward good books with lots of ratings and increased sales.

There is a LOT of crap on the Internet, a LOT of worthless, if not outright dangerous, websites. But that doesn't stop people from surfing.

There is a LOT of crap on Youtube. But that doesn't stop the good videos from rising to the top and going viral. The bad ones don't take away from the good ones. It isn't a zero sum game.

There can also be a lot of crap on Amazon, and it won't hurt those writing good fiction. Lee is an example. Right now, The Walk has been in the top 2000 for 18 months. It doesn't matter that there are a million other Kindle ebooks on Amazon. People are still finding him.

I've told Lee that the best thing he could do for his career is stop writing Monk books and start writing expressly for Kindle. It's a big risk in a bird-in-the-hand way, but I'm pretty sure the risk would pay off for him if he did it.

The more good books you list on Amazon, the more you'll sell.

The readers will see to it.

WORKING AS A WRITER IN THE 21st CENTURY

This is the title of an event I'm involved in today. The event is organised by the Association of Scottish Literary Agents for their clients and I'm chairing a panel of three authors with a wide range of published work and a variety of promotional methods to propel their books and careers to success. I have specifically been asked to add my own experience and comments, rather than simply chairing

Guest Post by Aaron Patterson

Surfing the interwebs, I've found that the most vocal opponents to writers self-publishing seem to be:

Writers.

When I began self -pubbing two years ago, I had my reservations. I didn't believe it would ever be my sole source of income (especially one where I make $1200 a day, which I'm currently doing.)

But many writers have shown this to not only be an obvious alternative to traditional publishing, but a preferable one. There is money to be made, readers to be discovered, publicity to be garnered. All it takes is trying it.

And yet, all over the world wide web, I see writers repeating and restating the same tired argument against self-pubbing: If you do it, you probably won't sell many books.

What amazes me about this is it is coming from traditionally published authors who fail to see the irony of that statement.

If you've been traditionally published, you have first-hand experience about how truly few books you can sell within the system. You also know the hard work, sacrifices, tireless promotion, and luck it took to sell in those paltry numbers.

But Stockholm Syndrome reigns supreme in this business. Writers cannot wrap their minds around the fact (and it is a fact, not a hypothesis) that publishing houses aren't needed anymore. They make excuses for publishers, and call writers like me exceptions.

While I've never said that self-pubbing is a guaranteed ticket to wealth, I've seen enough evidence to realize that writers can and will make more money self-pubbing than they will going the traditional route. You have just as much of a chance selling a book on Kindle as you do signing with one of the Big 6 and selling a book in a bookstore. And actually, according to my numbers, your chances are better on Kindle.

Some writers have conducted their own experiments, putting up a single ebook, pricing it too high, and after a month have concluded there is no money to be made.

That isn't following the formula. And there is a formula. The majority of those who succeed are publishing multiple titles at low prices with good covers, and it is taking several months, or even years, to find an audience.

Until you've done that, you can't say self-pubbing doesn't work. All that doesn't work is your poor attempt at an experiment.

But don't take my word for it. In the past few days, I've featured guest posts from self-published authors selling as well, or better, than I am.

Today's post is from Aaron Patterson, who regularly smokes me on the Kindle bestseller lists.

From Rags to Royalties
by Aaron Patterson

I believe eBooks are the future for publishers and authors alike. I find many in both camps are resistant to the idea; some are outright against it. I hope my story will shed more light on the subject and will inspire other authors and aspiring writers.

I am 31 years old and worked in construction for eleven years. Reading has always been an addiction. Growing up, I was the stereotypical odd duck—home schooled, introverted and painfully shy. I was the kid who read two to three books a day, the kid who wanted to be a writer but never thought I had what it took.

In 2008, I decided to try my hand at a novel. I sat down with no formal training, no writing experience or any idea what I was doing. I just had all these stories and I knew they had to get out. A month later, I finished my first book, Sweet Dreams.

I set out to learn everything I could about the publishing industry. After a year of research, I almost gave up; the publishing world was a mess! I didn’t want to waste two years sending out query letters with little guarantee of success. So I decided to self publish and started my own company. To this day, I haven’t submitted a single query letter. I figured the best thing to do was start selling some books to see what the public thought of my writing.

In December 2008, Sweet Dreams was officially published online and in print. I uploaded it as an eBook on Amazon, not really understanding the potential of such a market. The initial eBook price was $14.99; and I sold only 12 a month for 6 months. But, because I was a new writer, I believed building a fan base was more important than the bottom line, so I dropped the price to $4.99. That month I sold 48 eBooks.

This is when my little brain started working. I released my second book, Dream On, in December, 2009 and dropped the price of Sweet Dreams to $0.99. This is when many authors begin to roll their eyes and mutter that my shenanigans were “devaluing the market.”

Here is a breakdown for Sweet Dreams:

In the first month at its new price point, I sold 102 eBooks.
The next month, 250.
Then, 340, 550, 700, 850, 900, 1000 and 1200.

I eventually readjusted the prices of both my novels to $2.99. I expected my sales to drop, but my numbers went up instead: I sold 2600. In December, I sold 3200, and my sales continue to climb.

I never really thought anyone would read my book, let alone publish it. But here I am, making a living as a full time writer and helping others do the same. My story is proof that you don’t need a big publisher to be a successful author. J.A. Konrath is not “an anomaly.” Anyone can do what we have done. By means of online marketing, blogs, Facebook and Twitter, we are able to reach out to fans. And because of eBooks, I’m building my own future.

To you, the author: The power is now yours if you choose to take it. The question is, will you?

Aaron’s blog: www.theworstbookever.blogspot.com
Twitter: @mstersmith
Web site: www.StoneHouseInk.net

Books:
Sweet Dreams
Dream On
19 (A Digital Short)
The eBook on eBooks (a Digital Short)
In Your Dreams (Coming 2011)
Airel (Coming 2011)

Joe sez: Patterson did what all writers should be doing. He tried it for himself, then experimented over a long period of time in order to find the sweet spot that maximized sales. He also continues to innovate, and has rereleased Sweet Dreams as a double ebook, pairing it with The Remains by Vincent Zandri. That's a smart way to cross-pollinate fans, and also doubles Aaron's virtual shelf space, allowing him to be more easily discovered.

So to all the naysayers who continue to beat the tired drum of traditional publishing, and continue to insist that self-pubbed author will sell in tiny numbers and never make any money, I say: try it.

You may not hit a homerun. But many baseball players have long and lucrative careers hitting infield grounders over and over again, and over the years those stats accrue. If you write good books, with good covers, and release them at low prices, you WILL make more money and you WILL sell more books than you would selling traditionally. Ebooks are forever. Print books are not. Infinite will earn more than finite. Just be in it for the long haul, don't shy away from experimenting, and start now.

Forever is a long time. But if you don't start until tomorrow, you lost the money and the head start you could have had today.

Guest Post by Selena Kitt Part 2

As promised, I'm going to continue hosting guest bloggers who have done exceptionally well self-pubbing. In the upcoming weeks I'll have posts by Terri Reid, Aaron Patterson, and Stephen Leather.

It's 11am on the 14th of January, and so far this month I've sold 9319 ebooks and 392 self-pubbed print books.

This is the California Gold Rush of 1849. Will everyone get rich? No. But damn near everyone who tries will make more money than they would if they try the traditional publishing route.

Selena Kitt has posted here once before, about Amazon's removal of her erotic incest fiction from their website. A month has now passed. This is her follow-up:

Banned by Amazon
by Selena Kitt

They say the only bad publicity is no publicity. Perhaps they’re right.

In mid-December, Amazon decided to ban three of my books (Back to the Garden, Under Mr. Nolan’s Bed and Naughty Bits) because they were in “violation of their content guidelines.” I could deduce (Sherlock that I am) that the common theme in all three was erotic (consensual and adult, I might add) incest. Then I discovered that several more authors had received the same notice from Amazon, and their books, too, dealt with taboo topics.

Now, I’m a big supporter of free speech and intellectual freedom and my hackles get raised when we start walking down slippery slopes like these. Censorship in general, whether it comes from a government or a corporation, is abhorrent to me.

Principles aside, though—those three books earned me roughly $3000 a month on Amazon Kindle. That was nothing to sneeze at and I was understandably angry. Why had they removed these books and yet left books like Daddy Helps Out, which, if reviews are to be believed, involves incestuous sex with an eight-year-old? (That book is still on Amazon’s shelves a month later, by the way). I wanted and demanded an explanation.

What I received from Amazon was silence. For a week, no one would talk to me or return my calls. I talked to other authors whose taboo books had been removed and they, too, were getting the silent treatment. To me, this spoke to Amazon’s poor business ethics. If they were making a new policy, why wouldn’t they contact publishers and tell them about their new guidelines, give them time to prepare their authors and make other arrangements? Anthologies that contained offending material, for example, could have been reworked and re-uploaded instead of being removed, without any penalty in loss of ranking. Amazon didn’t give anyone that opportunity. Instead, they clandestinely removed titles, informed authors and publishers days or weeks later, and most importantly, refused to tell anyone what they were doing or why.

I finally talked to an “executive customer service representative,” who gave me the runaround (we literally talked in circles for half an hour) about Amazon’s content guidelines. She told me that Amazon was refusing to tell anyone, now or in the future, how or why any book violated their content guidelines. But while she wouldn’t give me the reason that my titles had been removed, when I asked if "all titles that violated the content guidelines in a similar way" were going to be removed, she confirmed that yes, that was their intention.

Then when I asked if Amazon had any intention of removing books that violated their content guidelines in other ways, she said that while they would exercise their right to revisit their policy, she thought it was now pretty well set. Of course, that was before two gay male books with “rape” in the titles were removed. And then, just a few weeks later, Amazon told the author they would be restored to the site.

Just what in the world is going on over at Amazon?

No one knows. And their backhanded removal of books and stonewalling practices aren’t helping. Look, I shop at Amazon. I enjoy the variety and convenience as much as anyone else. I also love my Kindle. But my estimation of them has gone down considerably. I don’t like the way they have handled this situation, but it isn’t the first time they’d done something like this. Look at what they did with the ped0phile book. And Wikileaks. And then there was that “technical glitch” that stripped gay and lesbian titles of their rankings last year. Oops.

Honestly, I have no objection to retailers deciding what they will or will not sell in their stores or on their sites. Wal-Mart does this. And I choose not to shop at Wal-Mart. Their choice, my choice, free country. However, a distributor like Amazon has an obligation not only to their customers, but to their vendors as well.

If you’re a business, and you’re going to make a policy, then your vendors and customers have a right to know where you stand. Wal-Mart makes it public knowledge to vendors and customers that they don’t accept music with explicit lyrics, for example. But Amazon hasn’t made any such statement about books. And Amazon’s arbitrary removal of books, lack of transparency and waffling on their decisions doesn’t inspire much confidence in their business practices.

And I’m in business with Amazon.

Before this incident, I would say I was 80% happy with that relationship. There were a few issues I wasn’t thrilled about, the same ones other authors complained of—things like not allowing authors to offer books for free, for example. But Amazon was the heavy hitter, the only game in town when it came to big numbers. I was earning a majority of my income with them, and while I had my complaints, there wasn’t much I could do about them.

For example, when Amazon switched my books from their Mobipocket feed over to Amazon DTP, they took six months to do it. They hadn’t anticipated that someone with excellent rankings would lose those in making the transfer to DTP and might be a little upset about that fact. (Doh!) But they were determined to switch all Mobipocket books over, so they had their tech people develop a program that would transfer the rankings. That took them six months. And when they did transfer my titles, it didn’t work. I lost a considerable amount of rankings due to their technical glitch, and my books dropped from being in the top ten in erotica to the top twenty-five or fifty, and they still haven’t recovered. Ouch.

Again, although I was angry and disappointed, there wasn’t much I could do about it. Amazon was still the biggest online book retailer around, and if I wanted to sell my books in large quantities, theirs was the only place that offered that kind of opportunity.

But maybe that won’t be the case for too much longer.

I did a survey with Amazon about six months ago. They were calling high-earning self published authors for feedback about their experience with Kindle DTP. I was asked, at the time, to keep the conversation confidential, but since Amazon currently refuses to offer me an explanation about my books and I didn’t sign anything legally binding about nondisclosure, I really don’t feel obligated to keep quiet about it anymore.

During that survey, the Kindle DTP representative I talked to was thrilled with and actually pretty smug about the market share that Amazon Kindle had cornered. I confirmed, with my personal numbers, that they earned me about 80% of my sales. That was true at the time.

Last month, all that changed.

I sold 18,000 books on Barnes and Noble after Amazon “banned” my books (from December 15th or so until the end of the month). And 4000 of those were copies of banned titles. Erik Sherman over at CBS was interested in this information (he’s diligently been covering this issue since it started while the rest of the press seems to just ignore it) and did a blog post about the power of “banning” a book.

So I earned double from Barnes and Noble what I made from Amazon in December. And I’m sure I can (oh so ironically) thank Amazon in part for this shift. Banning books always makes people interested—"What could be so bad that it had to be banned? Maybe I’ll have to check that out…" So I’m sure there were people who heard my book had been removed and went over to Barnes and Noble (the biggest online retailer next to Amazon) to buy it.

But I also think it may indicate a real shift in the market. I think it also had something to do with the holiday season and the new color Nook and people getting ereaders for Christmas. I think ebooks are just starting to get going, and perhaps this upswing in Barnes and Noble sales (and the news seems to support this idea as well) is an indication that Amazon won’t always be the big dog (i.e. bully) on the block anymore.

And frankly, I’m actually a little relieved. Amazon might not have had a monopoly on ebooks, but a “majopoly” is still a bad thing for the free market. I’ve always said (in my Chicken Little way) that it’s dangerous to keep all your eggs in one basket. Someone once remarked on this blog that Joe Konrath was “working for Amazon now.” Up until last month, that’s been primarily true for me as well, and it made me a little nervous. Of course, right now I’m working for Barnes and Noble. My hope, though, is that in the future, things even out a little more in the market so that Google Editions and Amazon and Barnes and Noble (and Borders, if they survive) and whoever else is going to come onto the scene as an ebook player, are on more equal footing.

I know that all of them are going to have their problems and issues. Amazon totally messed up my rankings, but Barnes and Noble was much more prepared, it seems, in that department. The books that came over to Barnes and Noble from my Fictionwise feed did so seamlessly, with no loss in rankings at all. Why couldn’t Amazon have done that? Of course, Amazon’s accounting is up to date, real-time sales, to the hour, but Barnes and Noble has been hit and miss, to say the least. I have no idea how much I’ve sold with them in January so far, because their reports don’t say – although they assure me that “all sales are being recorded correctly.” Let’s hope so.

I think it’s hard to have confidence in any big company, and small and indie publishers and authors need to stick together to keep calling the big boys on their incongruent business practices. Yes, a business has a right to make a policy—but do they have a right not to tell you what that policy is and how they’re going to enforce it? I’m sorry, but I just have to call Amazon out on that one.

For example, most publishers (and Amazon is a publisher now, whether they like it or not) are clear about what they do and don’t accept. This is even more true for erotic publishers in the ebook world.

At Excessica, we’re very clear:

No sexual situations featuring characters under the age of eighteen

No bestiality (fantastical creatures exempt)

No necrophilia (fantastical creatures exempt)

No incest

Yes, we added that last guideline recently, thanks to Amazon’s ham-handed censorship tactics. We have caved and self-censored in anticipation of Amazon’s rejection of future work. It’s unfortunate—and I’m sure it’s exactly what they intended.

I’ve also personally self-censored my books, releasing a new version of Under Mr. Nolan’s Bed without the father/daughter incest titled, “Plaid Skirt Confessions,” and a different version of Naughty Bits without the sibling incest titled, “Foreign Exchange.” I’ve clearly stated in the descriptions that they are reworked versions of the originals, so readers will know.

And now we’re in the business of censoring ourselves. Big Brother has won that round, I’m afraid.

But at least when it comes to business practices, we are still being clear about our policies. I don’t think it’s all that hard to do and it’s certainly not too much to ask. If we can do it, so can Amazon. I hope that, at some point, they do. Or if they continue to refuse and act without transparency, I hope the free market will work and they get knocked off their high horse so they’re not the only viable ebook game in town anymore.

My sales at Barnes and Noble last month has given me a glimmer of hope in that regard.

In the meantime, I’m going to cash my December royalty check and hope that B&N doesn’t decide to follow Amazon down their slippery slope and start banning books from their virtual shelves as well.

AGE AND UNAVAILABILITY

The other day, Catdownunder blogged about her distress at being told by a publisher that her age (dunno, don' care),  location (Adelaide), and the fact that for various reasons she would not be able to do much publicity, meant that she should forget the idea of being published. Several of us, myself included, waded in indignantly, although there were one or two commenters agreeing with the