I'm a one man show, a maverick, a loner, the oddball. It's really nothing new to me. For days I had struggled with exactly what I was going to do, with what I was going to try to do. In the end I had pretty much resolved myself with staying a part of what I saw as pretty much was the "Great Circle Of Hypocrites". Pay Pal had done its thing and there was no sign of revolution or rebellion. No backlash from the world of independent writers to say, "Hell no, we're not standing for this crap!" Just business as usual. So I was going to plug on and be business as usual. Write a funny little article. Do my story to make fun of Pay Pal and Mark Cocksucker, and explain how I was going to stick it to the system by continuing to sell my stories through ARe and smile each time Pay Pal had to disperse a payment to me through their system for the smut I had written they found acceptable.
That was until I got home this afternoon and saw that it was Read An e-Book Week. And wow, in honor of Read An e-Book Week I see all these other people who are left over at Smashwords who were apparently unaffected by the Great Pay Pal Purge are offering all sorts of deals and shit to drive traffic to Smashwords and get people to buy their shit. So, I suppose all the shit these people have written are works of art that are so great and so grand they will never, ever be touched by Pay Pal, so why should they ever worry about standing untied with some dirty old porn writers? Of course that's not to say that there aren't writers out there who aren't doing things, like passing around an e-petition I'm sure that eBay and Pay Pal will do nothing more than wipe their asses with once they're presented with it, then ask if anyone has a copy of the First Amendment they can use to finish the job with.
So not that it amounts to anything, but this writer has made the decision not to be a part of the Great Circle Of Hypocrites. I have pulled my library from All Romance eBooks and OmniLit.Com. I have also removed all "Featured Creature" links to that go directly to Smashwords. I do know a couple of you are solely distributed through Smashwords, which is unfortunate. I am willing to carry the links for those works if they are on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but I refuse to do any direct linking to Smashwords or any other company that is going to let an outside vendor blackmail them into writing the publishing guidelines they want, when they are not a publisher, especially when the publishers in question have no backbone to stand up to those outside parties and are too greedy to hire their own internal accounting department.
I am and always have been a writer. I wrote when the only audience I had was myself, and if worse comes to worse I will do so again, but I do not foresee this happening, because I am determined to stand up for myself and others, whether the rest of you choose to do so or not, whether you have the balls or backbone to do so or not, whether you feel the writers and works being discriminated against are worthy or being stood up for or not. I will have an audience. There is an e-book market for the stories Pay Pal feels are unfit, and if this whole thing is a set up to clear the market for eBay to start it own restriction free ePublishing service I promise you I will never be on it. I've been published in eBook format for just over a year, and personally I've come too far to hold back, and I'm not going to hold back. What's coming from me is out there, and I can promise if nothing I've ever written has never offended you before you might want to hold on to your blue hairs, granny, because there's no turning back, I had already decided I wasn't going to turn back, and the events of the past couple of weeks have really cinched and set me on that course more than I was before.
So that's it basically. Yes, there's still old Smashwords links on old post and reviews, but only because I'm not going to take the incredible amount of time it will take to go through and remove all of them. Yes all those ARe and OmniLit links are there on my stuff too, but they're dead links to nowhere, because I'm done there. I have my freedom and self respect. Being an independent author means everything to me, they're not just casual words, I take them to heart. I have the freedom to chose what I want to write and how long it's going to be and how far it goes. It's never been about the money, and if it ever came down to it I would go back to Cat-Literotica or Flushstories or even lowest common denominator sites like XN to get my stories out. However, I don't think it will come to that, not even if I have to sell my stories as eBooks door-to-door.
Anyway, that's pretty much it. That's what I'm doing. Again, I may be a one man show, but again, it's nothing new to me. I have my dignity and self-respect, and still no more and no less than I had the day before. Everyone else can take what you want from this and do what you want, as long as you feel what you're doing is the right thing for yourself and your craft, that's all I think I can leave you with.
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| Master Vyle |
Lol...FlushStories, I know that place...personally, I think it's a bit early in the game to be doing anything like pulling out completely from sites you've been on for some time, I can understand your feelings and sympathize, but as I said, I think it's still early...people have to realize that these decisions affect all writers, not just erotic writers, and I agree that the word and corresponding actions don't always get around as quickly as we would like...
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Alan.
Are your stories available in ePub still?
ReplyDeleteI respect the stand you are taking, though my own views are different. I still support Smashwords because I do believe Mark Coker is doing the best he can to fight this thing without wrecking his own business, which is doing a lot to give authors a way to distribute their work which is much more equitable than all those rip-off artists out there.
Personally I think there is far more to object to with the way Amazon do business than Smashwords. And they themselves are giving in to the same kind of censorship. It's just that, like eBay, they are too slack to police it very consistently. But I have a friend whose work, which she continued to sell on other sites including Smashwords, was banned by Amazon. The difference is that Smashwords has the decency to keep writers informed of what is happening and listens to feedback while Amazon simply thinks, "People will buy from us anyway, so why should be we give a shit."
But the main thing which matters to me is that I still be able to buy your books in the format which I can read on my eReader. I hate having to read something in Kindle on my computer.
Oh, Auss, my stories will always be available in every format I can make them available in. It's how I can thump my chest hard and call myself independent. I make the files. Not Amazon. Not B&N. And not anyone else. When I say if it comes down to me selling the files door to door, I'm serious. My view of Smashwords is very narrow and was narrow before this shit started. Coker. You may want to research what his thoughts are on a majority of works published on Smashwords (also pre-Pay Pal shit hitting the fan). As for Amazon. I've always said they can actually shit less about the content, unfortunately you have your Selena Kitts and Esmerelda Greens making a huge deal about having incest or beastiality in their stories, putting it in their titles, putting it in their tags, advertising it all over the place, and then Amazon has no choice but to pull them off when the moral minority complains when what Amazon wants them to do is shut the fuck up and remain low key because they want to rake in their share of the profit as long as they can, just as they do with the known plagairizers in their system.
ReplyDeleteI think with my friend Kendall Swann it was probably a case of someone reading her story and complaining about it because the title was tame - Naked Cheerleader. I think their problem with it was probably because the main character was referred to in the story at one point as "almost eighteen". But Smashwords still sells a compilation with that story in it, and Amazon sell a book from Olympia Press which, according to the reviews on Amazon, tells the story of the sexual adventures of a twelve year old girl.
ReplyDeleteIn some ways I think that inconsistent censorship is worse than consistent censorship because writers don't know where they stand.
Of course the best thing is total independence from corporations when that is possible. I'm a big believer in anarchism and think that the best relationship between writers and readers is one unmediated by hierarchical organisations, whether they be governments or retailers.
But I'm happy to make use of those structures to spread my anarchistic ideas as long as I can. :o)
That's right Auss, basically fuck 'em all, but everyone has their own principals and convictions they stand by, and their own way of doing things. Certainly I don't expect everyone to do what I think is best, nor do I necessarily think less of someone becuase we don't see eye to eye on the best way to approach this subject. I'm more pissed at ARe right now, especially considering the fact that Pay Pal was not their only avenue of payment distribution.
ReplyDeleteYou've never been alone in this. At the same time you were thinking no one else was taking a stand or speaking out I was doing the same thing. Then I started seeing all kinds of other indie authors speaking out and ranting about the PayPal Purge (Yes, I used this same phrase myself independently from you just the other day and was surprised to read you using it in here - like minds...) and was heartened by this outcry. We are here and we are making waves as much as the great ocean about us will allow.
ReplyDelete