The LendInk Fiasco

Did you hear about the LendInk fiasco? If so, were you even aware that LendInk existed before now? There are a bunch of ebook lending sites out there. Places that do not provide pirated copies of ebooks, but instead list books that are available for lending, and then match readers up to lend those books. For writers who publish through Amazon or Barnes & Noble, lending is already enrolled by default, though the writer can opt to have their books taken out. In fact, here's the skinny from Amazon KDP:

The Kindle Book Lending feature allows users to lend digital books they have purchased through the Kindle Store to their friends and family. Each book may be lent once for a duration of 14 days and will not be readable by the lender during the loan period. Lending is not available for Kindle books purchased on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es or Amazon.it.

All KDP titles are enrolled in lending by default. For titles in the 35% royalty option, you may choose to opt out of lending by deselecting the checkbox under "Kindle Book Lending," in the "Rights and Pricing" section of the title upload/edit process, but you may not choose to opt out a title if it is included in the lending program of another sales or distribution channel. For more details, see section 5.2.2 of the Term and Conditions.

Is this an awful thing? Absolutely not. You buy a paperback or hardcover book, read it, what do you do with it? Oftentimes, you'll lend it to a friend. That's what you do with books, either physical or digital.

Of course, not all writers understand this. And I guess earlier this month some writers stumbled across LendInk, saw their books listed, immediately assumed it was a pirate site, and freaked out. And mass hysteria ensued.

I can understand why some of these writers freaked out, but clearly they did not take the extra moment or two to actually research the website and see for themselves that there was no pirating going on. In fact, from what I understand (because the LendInk site is currently no more), the books were only listed on the website. Again, it wasn't a pirate site, so there were no actual files. But that didn't stop people from freaking out and creating a virtual riot.

Maybe I find this entire situation so ridiculous because of my views on pirating. While I don't necessarily agree with pirating, I don't really care much either that many of my ebooks are available on torrent websites. You can Google "robert swartwood torrent" and see for yourself. I know some writers who would piss their pants with rage to learn that their books were on ones of these sites. They would immediately send DMCA takedown notices. They would raise a battle cry. They would, in my opinion, be wasting their time, time that would be better spent on, you know, writing.

Anyway, so LendInk is no more, and many writers who didn't know any better right now feel a sense of vindication stopping a website that was, ultimately, helping to promote their work (from what I also understand, the books listed also included links to Amazon, so readers could, you know, buy the ebooks if they so wished).

These writers I'm talking about? They're the silly ones who give self-publishing a bad name. Their books might not suck completely, they might have decent cover art and formatting, and they might sell a lot of copies as they grow a readership. But despite all that, they also have no business sense. If they did, they would understand what they're signing up for when they publish through Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and would also understand that, in the end, lending is a good thing.

Again, that's just what you do with books.

Regarding Newsletters

Are newsletters effective in today's digital age of Twitter and Facebook? Hard to say. Just as Twitter and Facebook get updated constantly, people's email inboxes get flooded, so what are the chances a newsletter will have any more effect than any other social media? The reason I bring this up is because earlier this week I sent out my very infrequent newsletter with news of The Inner Circle’s upcoming release. Last year, I never thought a newsletter would be worth it, and who knows, maybe it still isn't. But then around the holiday, when my sales started picking up, and more and more readers started contacting me, I figured it wouldn't hurt to start a newsletter. So I did it the old fashioned way -- I created a form on my website where people could put in their name and email address and click submit, and then I would get an email notification, after which I would manually add their name and email address to a special address book in my email client.

As you can imagine, it wasn't my best idea. I knew there were several options for newsletter providers, but the trick was finding the right one. Most of the newsletters I get are for magazines or journals, very few author newsletters. And the author newsletters that I do get ... their quality varies drastically.

Anyhow, after much consideration, I ended up going with Your MailingList Provider. They seemed to provide just what I needed in a basic email newsletter. Initially you can sign up for free, but it's a limited service. I soon upgraded, though my upgrade wasn't by much (the price of the plans increase by how many email addresses you have on your list).

How does one get on my newsletter? By simply signing up. I know some authors will just add people to their newsletter if so-and-so emails them, but I've never liked that approach. Just because I email such-and-such, doesn't mean I want to be put on their newsletter list without my permission. So if someone does email me, I usually encourage them to sign up if they want to be the first to know about upcoming releases (or to have the option of getting advance copies of certain titles, such as The Inner Circle -- see what you missed by not being on my newsletter!?).

I'm sure many of the newsletter providers have some really cool features, and I'm sure they're basically all the same. The newsletter I sent out earlier this week was actually my second newsletter of the year, so I haven't really utilized the features much. Like, it tells me how many people actually opened the newsletter, how many clicks there were per open, what links were clicked and how many times. Even more, it tells me where in the world the newsletters were opened. The United States and United Kingdom and Canada are the top three, which weren't surprising to me, but apparently I have subscribers in France and Japan too. Say whaaaat? Finally, I can also tell what email programs were used to open the newsletter -- Yahoo, AOL, Outlook, even if the newsletter was opened on an iPad.

My point in mentioning all this?

Because it's friggin scary, is why. Talk about Big Brother. Only this is for some silly newsletter. Imagine the other tools used to spy on people on the Internet. I have Google Analytics running on this website, but I haven't checked it in over a year. I remember being fascinated by it, though. Like how it can give the location -- sometimes very specific location -- of vistors, and what kind of browsers they used, and whether they were on DSL or cable modem or mobile. Like I said, scary stuff.

Anyway, so far I'm quite happy with YMLP, though again, my experience is pretty limited. I am curious to know, though, does anyone think newsletters really work better than, say, Twitter or Facebook? Or even posting updates on this blog? Discuss.

New Series: First Lines By Major Authors

As a writer who designs his own ebooks, I am always curious to see what kind of formatting the major publishers do for their various books. So I download a lot of samples. Sometimes I even read the first few paragraphs of those samples. One first line in particular has always tickled me. I read it weeks ago and I still get a kick out of it. It's by a crime writer who has published many novels with different major publishers. A writer who has even won awards. A writer who really should know better. Or wait -- maybe his editor should know better? Maybe I'm wrong and the first line in question is amazing. Either way, from now on when I come across a particuarly great first line, I'll do my best to share it. For now, enjoy:

Hobbled by a flat tire, Ashlynn's fire-orange Mustang convertible limped to a stop on the main street of the abandoned farm town.

Remember, traditionally published books = quality.

An E-Pricing Revelation

For the longest time I dismissed the idea that, if you're e-publishing a short story, you should price it as much as a cup of Starbucks coffee. After all, it takes maybe ten, fifteen minutes to finish that cup of coffee. It might take just as long to read your story, if not longer, so why not price your short stories the same? Again, for the longest time I dismissed the idea, but I've been thinking a lot about it and you know what? It's a great idea! In fact, it gave me a whole new perspective on how to price my next novel.

The Inner Circle will be my longest novel yet, over 120,000 words, or over 400 pages. That's a long novel, and should take readers hours to read. In fact, if they read straight through, they might be able to finish the novel in ... what, six, seven, eight hours? I guess it all depends on reading speed. Still, if we can compare short story prices to coffee prices, I figure we can compare novel prices to ... how about airline prices?

Yes, I just checked Virgin America flights from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. That's about six hours, if not less, with no layover. And the price? Well, it depends on the time of day, but let's go with $300 one-way.

So, with that in mind, the price of The Inner Circle when it's release will be $299.

If you think about it, that's a bargain!

Major Publishing Cover Fail #673

Remember the podcast where Joseph D’Agnese and I discussed that hilarious video from Random House where they talked about all the great services they provide to their authors? One of those services, of course, is superb cover art. And while Random House does do some great covers, you would think for their major authors they would keep up a level of quality when it comes to those covers and make sure every one is a winner. Take Lee Child, for instance. They've branded him two different ways since he signed with them years ago (he'd originally been published by Penguin imprints in the US). Here are two of the first kind:

Here are two of the more recent kind:

I don't know about you, but I much prefer the more recent kind, though those still come across as rather bland. But that's usually what happens to the major blockbuster books -- the covers come off as bland, as the publisher tries to make the author's name and title as large as possible. But that's beside the point right now, and a blog post for another time. For now, I want to point out some of the recent paperback covers Random House has produced for the books of the previous branding (you know, the bull's-eye ones).

Personally, I think the rebranding with the paperbacks is great. They still manage to make the author name and titles as big as possible, but still manage to pull off some great images. Was it the same art director working on all three different brandings? Who knows. The point is, Random House is capable of doing some pretty great covers. I even like the one they did for Child's short story ebook that came out last year, Second Son, which maintains the recent branding:

Now, you'd think that they would stay with that design, right? They'd been doing it for the past several books, and even the upcoming release A Wanted Man has the same design.

Well, I'm sorry to inform you that doesn't seem to be the case. I saw the new cover for Child's next short story ebook tonight, and I was flabbergasted. Seriously. I gasted all over my flabber. Take a look.

I guess it maintains the same branding, but just in a very ugly way. But maybe Random House knows something we don't know. After all, they do care and take a lot of time to work with their authors to get the books right and ... oh, whatever. I can't even jokingly believe that bullshit either.

The thing is, I like Lee Child a lot. I like the Jack Reacher books a lot. But a cover like the one Random House did for Deep Down? Reacher deserves a hell of a lot more. What's more, so does the author.