I hate to say I told you so, Amazon, but…

Okay, I don’t hate to say it.

But I DID tell you so!

According to the numbers being thrown around, Amazon is alienating its ebook “power-buyer” audience by banning erotic fiction.

What!? People are buying PORN on their Kindles? *gasp*

Yes, yes they are. They’re buying a LOT of it. And I don’t know why this is such a surprise. Porn has driven every major new technology we’ve released. And this ain’t your mama’s porn.

Look, I don’t know how much the holier-than-thou reading our porn in the closet commentary while spouting morally indignant objections from customers influenced Amazon’s decision to ban certain books from their virtual shelves – however, I do know that while those folks are a vocal MINORITY, the Kindle “power-buyers” are a non-vocal MAJORITY – and they’re voting with their dollars.

They are taking their business elsewhere, Amazon.

Do you have any idea how much my sales increased at Barnes and Noble because Amazon “banned” my erotic books from their site? ONE HUNDRED TIMES. That’s right, I went from making about $1000 a month on Barnes and Noble to… *drumroll people* almost $100,000 in a month. Now, granted, that number has decreased since the whole banning thing also happened to coincide with the Nook’s crazy Christmas-buying extravaganza, but I’m still earning three times the amount on Barnes and Noble than I am on Amazon almost six months later.

The polls don’t lie. Readers are abandoning their Kindles for Nooks, especially the “power-buyers” that the publishing industry is drooling over. I could have told you months ago – in fact, I did – that the power-buyers were also erotica readers. And that while they might not email Amazon and protest about the book ban (although some did) in the numbers of the morally-objecting vocal minority – that Amazon was going to feel the sting of actual monetary loss when those erotica readers abandoned Kindle and went elsewhere to find their reading material.

Told ya so.

So is it a good payoff for Amazon, do you think? Was my $100,000 month just a drop in the bucket to the mega superstar? (Their cut would have been about $40K… but Barnes and Noble pocketed that money instead…)

Is Amazon too big to fail?

In this ebook game, I wouldn’t make assumptions like that, even if you are Amazon.

Selena Kitt

Erotic Fiction You Won’t Forget

www.selenakitt.com

LATEST RELEASE: A Modern Wicked Fairy Tale: Goldilocks

Mark Twain, who once wrote that “the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter” will now have the “N” word replaced with “slave” and the word “injun” replaced with “Indian” in his book, Huckleberry Finn. Oh, the irony.

Amazon, who came out and said, “Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable. Amazon does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts, however, we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions” removed not only the infamous ped0phile book that the statement was made in reference to, but then went on to begin removing books they deemed in violation of their “content guidelines.” Books involving incest disappeared. On December 13, 2010 a search result for Kindle books tagged with “incest” returned 650. As of January 5, 2011, that number had dropped to 511. Books involving bestiality were the next to go. Then they removed two gay male books that simply had “rape” in the title.

Oh the irony.

The L.A. Times did an interview recently with Russ Grandinetti, the “head of content for Amazon.com’s Kindle business,” wherein he reiterated Amazon’s mission statement: “Our vision is [to make] every book ever written, in any language, in print or out of print, all available within 60 seconds.”

Oh, Russ. Do you really expect us to believe that? Oh the irony.

I finally had a non-conversation with an Amazon Executive Customer Service representative in regards to the removal of my three books – Back to the Garden, Under Mr. Nolan’s Bed and Naughty Bits. I call it a non-conversation because we had to talk around their definition of what would or wouldn’t violate their “content guidelines” – she told me that Amazon refused tell me why my books were removed, now or ever.

Okay then. At least I was on the phone with a person, right? I decided to get as much information as I could, hence the talking in circles.

What I did gather is that Amazon has no intention now or in the future of making those horrible vague “content guidelines” any clearer. They will also continue removing material as they see fit, notifying authors and publishers after the fact, and not telling them how or why they violated the aforementioned guidelines. While the Amazon CS rep wouldn’t confirm or deny 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.

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 the two m/m “rape” titles were removed.

Oh the irony.

I did also point out that in their letter to authors and publishers, they state:

“Please note that if you continue to submit content that violates our content guidelines, we may conduct a general review of your account. Actions resulting from such a review could result in a termination of your account.”

Um, really? How can an author or publisher know if they are submitting content that violates any guidelines if Amazon refuses to specifically state what those guidelines are? Thankfully, the CS rep saw reason when it came to that and she agreed that she would be looking into getting that statement removed from the letters.

Small consolation. It doesn’t really solve the problem.

I have said before and I’ll say it again – I have no problem with a company deciding what they will and will not sell, but I do have a problem with the way Amazon has handled this.

They could have come to the publishers and told them about their new guidelines, given 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 in ranking.

Instead, they’ve clandestinely removed titles, informed authors and publishers days or weeks later, and most importantly, refused to tell anyone what they’re doing or why.

They should, in my opinion, be clear about what is and isn’t acceptable. This “ban as we go” way of doing things is just going to move from one hot button topic to the next. If you’re a business, and you’re going to make a policy, then make one.

Readers and authors have a right to know where Amazon stands. That’s just good business.

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 about what we do and don’t accept:

No sexual situations featuring characters under the age of eighteen

No bestiality (fantastic creatures exempt)

No necrophilia (fantastic 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.

Oh the irony.

So now we’re in the business of censoring ourselves. Big Brother has won. But at least we are clear about what we do accept and what we don’t!

See, Amazon, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

There is another ironic twist in this story. Since Amazon banned my books, my sales of one of my banned titles (Under Mr. Nolan’s Bed) is now in Barnes & Noble’s Top 10 Pubit Titles. Should I say, “Thank you, Amazon? May I have another?”

Or perhaps the next twist will be that B&N and other vendors will start banning books from their sites, too. I’m afraid we’ll have to wait and see what the next ironic twist in this censorship story will be.

On Sunday, December 12, the print title that had been removed had now disappeared from the Kindle store, as well as two of my other titles, Naughty Bits and Under Mr. Nolan’s Bed. I have over fifty titles selling on Amazon, all of them in erotic fiction categories. The only thing these three singled-out titles had in common, besides being written by me—they were all erotic incest fantasy fiction.

About this time, I heard that two other authors, Jess C. Scott and Esmerelda Green, both had erotic incest-related titles removed from Amazon’s site. After some research, I discovered one of Frances Gaines Bennett’s incest-related books had also been removed. As the night wore on, and public outcry about censorship and banned books began on Twitter at #amazonfail and #amazoncensors and on their own Kindle Boards, more and more incest-related erotica titles began to disappear from the Amazon site, so that the “Kindle Incest” search page began to look like swiss cheese. Teleread covered the story soon after.

When some of my readers began checking their Kindle archives for books of mine they’d purchased on Amazon, they found them missing from their archives. When one reader called to get a refund for the book she no longer had access to, she was chastised by the Amazon customer service representative about the “severity” of the book she’d chosen to purchase.

As of this writing, Amazon has refused to respond to my emails or phone calls in regards to this matter and has refused to further clarify what, if any, content guidelines the books in question violate. If Amazon had clear guidelines that were applied to all publishers across every platform and enforced them consistently, this would be a moot issue. By not clearly stating their position and choosing books either arbitrarily or based on searches of top-rated titles which are the most visible titles in the genre, they seem to be deliberately hiding a clear case of discrimination and what amounts to censorship (albeit ipso facto) because of their lack of transparency.

I want to be clear that while the subject of incest may not appeal to some, there is no underage contact in any of my work, and I make that either explicitly clear in all my stories or I state it up front in the book’s disclaimer. I don’t condone or support actual incest, just as someone who writes mysteries about serial killers wouldn’t condone killing. What I write is fiction. It’s fantasy, not reality. And I’m not saying what I write isn’t controversial, but it’s not illegal (at least in some states) or a threat to national security, and seems as undeserving of censorship as… well…

As fellow author, Will Belegon, noted, if Amazon is going to start pulling books with incest in them: “I just re-read Genesis 19: 30-38 and realized that Lot’s daughters got him drunk, had sex with him and bore sons. I demand you follow your clear precedent and remove The Bible from Kindle.”

Or perhaps Amazon should create a new television ad after they follow their clear precedent and ban the book the woman is reading in the advertisement on her Kindle (“Sleepwalking” by Amy Bloom) which tells the story of a 19-year-old boy who has a sexual encounter with his stepmother, which, in some states, is legally incest.

While it can be said that, for an author or celebrity, any press (including bad press) is good press, for a bookseller and publisher, that does not necessarily hold true. Can Amazon afford the bad press about book removal which may spark outcries from many corners, including self-publishing authors, the fastest-growing segment of their Kindle ebook distribution?

In speculating on the motivations of Amazon’s actions, as they have not been forthcoming with any statement or explanation, I am concerned that they may be acting out of reactionary fear. This may be based on pressure from a small number of vocal and complaining conservative and/or religious right extremists who object to and are afraid of sexual fantasies and erotic printed material (including incest fantasies). It may also be based on threatening governmental pressure related to the recently removed WikiLeaks. More speculation may point to overzealous lawyering as Amazon moves from just-distributor and bookseller to publisher.

While I am not a lawyer, constitutional scholar or legal expert on free speech and intellectual freedom, I am an author and publisher and know that, regardless of the technical legalities of Amazon’s actions, buckling to this pressure and the removal of books will hurt their bottom line. It will damage relationships with readers, authors, publishers and organizations such as the American Library Association and the ACLU, among others, who are interested in supporting free speech. I should also note that I am a professional psychologist and, while no longer licensed or working in the field, it’s clear that when individuals and organizations fail to recognize the difference between fantasy and reality, problems such as this result.

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Personally, I think there are far more people willing to ADMIT they read mysteries, crime novels and sci-fi than there are people willing to ADMIT they read romance and erotica.

In that sense, the study is probably accurate!

I think we can all agree that they have done a lot right, in terms of selling ebooks – as their 70-80% of the market share proves. The Kindle is a fantastic e-reader, and as a dedicated device, I wouldn’t recommend anything else. They make buying books ridiculously easy with 1-click (i.e. 1-crack). They make publishing books easy, too, for the big six, indie publishers, and self-pubbed authors alike.

Aside from eliminating the agency pricing model, which is a given – for me, there are two things that come to mind that would make the experience at Amazon a better one for readers and authors alike.

First would be allowing self-published authors to offer books for free. I understand that there’s bandwidth and delivery issues involved as a cost, but they offer it to the Big Six publishers (and others as well – you’ll notice Samhain Publishing offers free titles, and they’re an indie) why not to self-pubbed authors? Even if we had to pay a fee for doing so, I think we’d all agree the boost in exposure would be worth it.

The second thing would be to give away a free ebook to everyone who buys a print version. As a reader, I know there are certain books I will always buy in print, as long as print exists, because I’m a fan and collect them. Stephen King books, for example, in my case. But I also want to read that book when I’m sitting at my son’s wrestling practice or waiting at my daughter’s orthodontist appointment, and I don’t want to have to carry a huge hardcover with me. (Have you ever lifted one of the tomes SK has written? They’re like doorstops!) I want it in ebook form, too. But if I want it…I have to pay for it. Again. And of course, because of the agency model, I may have to pay just as much (or more!) for the ebook version as I do for the hardcover! That just makes me mad.

I think Amazon Kindle is in a unique position to offer this option. Excessica publishes all our print books through Amazon’s CreateSpace, and it would be easy, I would think, to link the systems together and give the reader an ebook version when they buy a print version. And it would also marry the idea of print-and-e together. It would send the message that they’re not mutually exclusive, and Amazon isn’t trying to “kill print books” with ebooks. (Even if they are… shhh!)

I also think they’re setting the bar too low setting the price point at $2.99 for a full-length book, but that’s something I’ve talked about before – and I’m gathering data together to see if my theory that pricing full-length books at $3.99 and $4.99 and even $5.99 doesn’t hurt (and may even help) sales. That’s something that Amazon doesn’t really control, aside from the royalty option they’ve set up. It’s the thrifty Kindle readers who seem to think that, after paying $200 for an e-reading device, content should be “nearly free.”

I think Amazon Kindle has done a lot for ebooks – but I also think they need to pay attention to the trends and possibilities. The good news is, I think they are, and they will. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw them offering the “free” option to self-pubbed authors and a complimentary copy of ebooks with a print sale as well. After all, they’re now offering their popular 70% royalty rate on books sold in the UK.

The good thing about Amazon is they pay attention and listen to authors. Which is more than can be said, it seems, for big publishing.

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In spite of low author royalties in the UK, Amazon is scrambling to deep-discount books before agency pricing starts to take effect in the UK, as it did in the US (much to most consumers’ chagrin!) It seems that Amazon wants to brand the consumer’s brain with the idea that books should be priced on average at $2.99 – and certainly no higher than $9.99. And while I certainly agree with the latter, I’m not so sure about the former $2.99 price point.

Besides, it looks like Amazon wasn’t quite fast enough. Hachette, the UK’s largest publisher, is taking the same route the Big Six publishers in the U.S. have taken – they are demanding agency pricing from Amazon on Kindle books sold in the UK.

And the price-wars continue…

Will the investigation into price-fixing by the Texas Attorney General come to anything? Who will win in the end? Who knows?

But we all know consumers and authors both lose if books continue to be over-priced the agency way. Some of the forums on Amazon are eye-opening, with consumers threatening boycotts of overpriced books (and their authors). Granted, I happen to think some Kindle folks are a little extreme about ebook pricing, thinking full-length books should be priced at $2.99.

Because ebooks are such an ethereal sort of thing, people are loathe to pay much for them. I get that. After all, you can’t share them with a friend, and there’s always the fear your hard drive may crash (or your ebook vendor will go out of business) and your e-library might disappear. Ebooks don’t seem quite “real” – even if you’re actually getting the same amount/time of entertainment with them that you would with a hardcover.

It’s hard to wrap our heads around paying $9.99 for something that doesn’t quite seem “real.” But think about it – we do that now when we go to the theater to see a movie. (In fact, if you’re into buying popcorn, you pay quite a bit more). And you don’t get to take that movie home with you, or get to watch it again, the way you get to read an ebook.

Now, granted, if you’re a bargain-hunter like me, you can go see a matinee show for $3.75, or the twilight show for $4.75 (your mileage may vary depending on your state – or country – of origin). Or you can wait to buy the DVD and have it to watch over and over (at least until it gets all scratched – am I the only one who misses VHS for that reason?)

So why should a bargain ebook be $0.99 and a full-length novel ebook be priced at $2.99? Could we be down-valuing the medium?

Personally, I think ebooks should be priced based on length. This model has been used by indie ebook publishers for over ten years. (Yes, it’s true, there were thriving ebook publishers and distributors before Kindle!)

Our own eXcessica pricing is based on length:

$0.99 Short Shorts: Under 3K
$1.99 Shorts: 3-7K
$2.99 Stories: 7-15K
$3.99 Novelettes: 15-35K
$4.99 Novellas: 35-50K
$5.99 Novels 50-70K
$6.99 Super Novels: 70-140K
$7.99 Super XL Novels: 140-250K
$8.99 Super XXL Novels: 250K +

It’s a good, and I think fair system for both authors and consumers. I mean, come on – the average candy bar costs $0.99 – and I think a short little story is probably more nourishing than a Snickers.

Remember what you’re paying for – the amount of time you get to be entertained by a book.

In a world where everything has gone Supersize for so little investment – where you can get a Gazillion Ounce Big Gulp Slurpee for $0.99, but “real” food (i.e. an organic apple, for example) costs so much more – we have developed a Wal-Mart mentality where we want everything for nothing.

But the reality is you still get what you pay for – a $0.99 Slurpee is something that took very little energy to produce. The apple, on the other hand, took a long time to grow, and under the loving, watchful eye of an organic farmer.

So with ebooks. A $0.99 book should be a short-short – something it took an author perhaps an afternoon or two to write and polish. A 100,000 word tome that took a writer half of his life to complete, might, perhaps, deserve a little more investment.

There has to be a middle ground between the price-gouging of agency model and the deep discounts of Amazon and Wal-Mart. I think basing ebook price on length might just be the place we’re looking for.

-Selena Kitt
www.selenakitt.com

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About a year ago, Fictionwise was acquired by bookseller Barnes and Noble. This is old news. The reaction was mixed, positive and negative. Some thought, well it had to happen some time, as ebooks became a bigger part of the market share, and if Fictionwise was going to be acquired by anyone, at least it was by someone who actually cared about books. Some, though, hated to see the biggest independent ebook retailer sell out to one of the big boys. Up until the surge of Amazon’s Kindle (followed by Barnes and Noble’s Nook and Apple’s iPad) they were the considered THE place to buy ebooks.

But in a free market system, competition is good, right? The consumer never benefits from a monopoly, and in some ways, before the acquisition, Fictionwise was monopolizing the ebook market. Sure, some other distributors (most notably All Romance Ebooks and Omnilit) had come out to challenge them, and were even making some headway, but Fictionwise still had a lion’s share of the market.

Then the acquisition happened, Kindle exploded for Amazon, and the world turned upside down.

Fictionwise had already begun to have some major customer service issues. They were getting pretty big for their britches before the acquisition, ignoring customer and publisher complaints, all the hallmarks of a company who thinks it’s the biggest bully on the block who can get away with it. (Anyone hear Lily Tomlin’s cackle, followed by, “Because we’re the PHONE COMPANY!” in their head, or is it just me?) But even big ol’ Fictionwise saw the writing on the wall about the future of ebooks and sold out to the highest bidder.

They said selling out wouldn’t change anything – Scott Pendergrast, head of Fictionwise, was quoted as saying, “Barnes & Noble (is) fully behind Fictionwise’s philosophy of ‘platform neutrality and eReader everywhere.’”

Hm. Really? A big corporation holding the same philosophy as an independent retailer? Who was he trying to convince exactly?

Then came the extinction of Fictionwise’s Buywise program, due to agency model pricing. It was a great program for consumers, offering 15% off books for members, along with special “micropay rebate” offers. Of course, it wasn’t always so good for the publisher. Fictionwise standard contracts said that royalties to the publisher would be 50% of the sale price, or 25% of the list price, whichever was greater. And the “sale price” was defined as “the price paid by the customer.” Of course, Fictionwise stipulated that the price “may be less than the List Price because of coupons, promotions, or other discounts.”

Promotions like the Buywise program.

The small independent publishers had always complained about Fictionwise’s deep discounts of their books and the smaller percentage of royalties that they received based on those discounts. Unlike Amazon, who only gave a 35% royalty rate to publishers, but always based that rate on the publisher’s set list price even when they discounted a book, Fictionwise passed that consumer savings on to the publisher, much to the publisher’s chagrin. But at the time, Fictionwise was the biggest dog on the e-book block, and volume of sales helped alleviate some of those consumer incentives. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you, and small independent ebook publishers were loathe to complain.

The Big Six, though, weren’t having any of it. With the typical arrogance of the “too big to fail” philosophy of most big corporations, they complained. They wanted to sell their books and receive royalties based on the price they listed. And now that Fictionwise had been acquired by Barnes and Noble, they didn’t have much say in the matter. And the Buywise program bit the proverbial dust.

But that was just the first indication that the biggest independent online retailer’s selling out to one of the big boys might have been a mistake – at least, if they wanted their philosophy about ebooks to continue into the near future, let alone a long-term one.

Then, Fictionwise closed applications to any new publishers wanting to publish directly with them – I was told they were “indefinitely on hold.” I was also told to inquire with Barnes and Noble instead. I know of several publishers who applied and had been waiting six months or more without any response from Fictionwise about their applications, in spite of numerous attempts to elicit one.

And now, Fictionwise is closing all of its branded stores. According to Publisher’s Weekly, Fictionwise boasted about 500 of these store-fronts that were hosted by Fictionwise and enabled customers to view only a publisher’s own titles rather than the entire list of all ebooks sold by Fictionwise. EPIC’s (Electronically Published Internet Connection) own bookstore was powered by Fictionwise – but has since been redirected to www.fictionwise.com. All of the branded stores will reportedly be closed by the end of September.

I can say now that I’m glad I followed my instincts in dealing with Fictionwise from the beginning and didn’t invest the $1000 (that’s right, it cost those who wanted a branded store $1000 for the privilege) to power Excessica‘s storefront. Although I feel sorry for those who did make that investment.

I’m also a little sad, in spite of my difficulty in dealing with Fictionwise over the past few years, to see the end of an era. This, to me, more than the explosion of Kindle, the Coming of the iPad, the scrambling of Borders and Barnes and Noble to keep up, marks the true beginning of the end. Fictionwise, once the largest and most profitable ebook retailer, isn’t going to survive the ebook boom we’re facing, and certainly not in the way they claimed to have hoped.

Perhaps Fictionwise saw the future of ebooks and sold out at just the right time. It was inevitable, wasn’t it, that once ebooks reached a certain share of the market, that the “little guys” just wouldn’t be able to hold their own anymore? Even the biggest “little guys” were going to take a hit or disappear altogether.

But why all the smoke and mirrors? Why not just admit that you sold out, that the impending change in the market necessitated the sale? Instead, we heard platitudes about things staying the same.

I don’t know, but it seems to me the winds of change have taken on the distinct odor of manure.

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At this moment I have the #1, #6 and #9 bestsellers in erotica on Amazon. That may change in the next moment. They move up and down. But I’ve been in the top ten for six months and I am making $10,000 a month on Amazon Kindle.

How did that happen?

When I started Excessica in March of 2008, the biggest ebook distributor on the block was a company called “Fictionwise.” In order to get into their storefront, you had to be a publisher with 10 or more authors and 25 available (not public domain) titles. I wasn’t a publisher, and I didn’t have 25 titles, but I did have a lot of online friends who were authors.

So I had an idea…

What if we all got together to form a sort of “co-op” of writers to publish our work on the big ebook distributors? At the time, that was Fictionwise, Mobi, and a newcomer, All Romance Ebooks. That was how Excessica was born, and basically how my career as a real paid writer began.

Granted, at that time, I’d already been “epublished” by a start-up ebook publisher, Stardust Press, who had gone out of business almost as soon as my book hit the virtual shelves. And I’d sort of fallen into that, having entered a contest they sponsored, hoping for the money prize. I didn’t win – but they offered me an epublishing contract.

I hesitated. I didn’t know anything about epublishing at the time (it’s amazing what you can learn in two years) and kind of turned my nose up at it. I didn’t want to be “epublished.” If I was going to be published at all, I wanted to be published “for real” – to feel the weight of my book in my hands, to see it on shelves in a brick and mortar store.

But as my husband pointed out – why not? A bird in the hand, as they say…

It was that brief foray into epublishing that whet my appetite for more, watching Stardust Press get our books to distributors like Fictionwise. I thought, if they can do it… why can’t I?

Nevermind that Stardust had just winked out into nothing in the vast constellation that was epublishing at the time. I wasn’t taking on any big time investment – just the cost of creating a domain name and putting in the work of setting up a site for our books. I’d already purchased a hosting package for my own author domain, so that wasn’t an issue.

It didn’t take long for the authors I knew to climb on board, and we were off and running, applying to Fictionwise, being accepted, and seeing our books find wide distribution. That was exciting, and proved to be lucrative for me personally. I started making enough money per quarter on my books to make it equal to a part time job, which was really my goal when I started: a supplemental income.

The ball rolled along nicely for about a year – and then one day in March 2009, all our titles (about a hundred and fifty of them by then) disappeared from Fictionwise. This was just after Barnes and Noble had acquired Fictionwise. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

As I look back on it now, in light of what’s happened since with self-publishing, it’s almost amusing, but at the time it was devastating. I panicked, emailing the site. I received the response that Fictionwise did not support “author co-ops” and that they were terminating our contract and pulling our books.

Come to find out, after a little digging and back and forth with Fictionwise president, Scott Pendergrast, that a few “support tickets” had been submitted about our “extreme content.” Excessica has always been about freedom of speech. We have some boundaries, but I try to let our authors push them as much as possible. We publish things like nonconsent and adult consensual incest – something other erotica publishers wouldn’t touch.

Of course, when I inquired about those support tickets, I was told we couldn’t get any details about them, even if stripped of identifying information. They wouldn’t even tell us the number of support tickets submitted! Finally, we had to give them a list of “possibly offensive titles” after which they would restore our books to the site, minus “the list” – and would only restore those upon review.

Basically, they used our self-publishing status to try to censor our books. Mr. Pendergrast scoffed at the idea of an author having total creative control over their work, creating their own covers, arranging for their own editing, and decided we weren’t “a publisher” because of our business model. So what if I was offering 100% payout to my authors? What business of it was his?

Luckily, the first amendment won out. After two months of lost sales, they finally restored the titles on “the list”, adding a new “taboo” category to their site.

Then another revolutionary thing happened. Smashwords opened their doors. They looked like another distributor, on the surface of things. The difference was they offered a huge cut to authors (something I was all for – because I didn’t take any percentage from Excessica authors’ works and only profited from my own). We got to keep 85% of our profits with Smashwords (All Romance Ebooks gave us 60%, Fictionwise gave us 50%, and Mobi gave us a piddly 35%) so I signed up with them immediately. Who knew that they would change the face of self-publishing inside of a year?

Of course, they couldn’t have done it without Amazon Kindle’s success.

It was like the perfect storm. Smashwords started reaching out and becoming a true distributor, offering individual authors the opportunity to get into places like Fictionwise (and hence Barnes and Noble) where they couldn’t tread before. More and more authors jumped on the bandwagon. Kindle themselves opened their own self-publishing platform (although we could, as a publisher, access them through Mobi before that). In places like Sony, and then much later, Apple, the doors were opened wide for individual authors.

Our little co-op had become unnecessary within six months. We didn’t need each other to publish books anymore – any single author could go onto Smashwords and reach the same distribution level we had. And they did. Joe Konrath blogged extensively about his success. I watched it all unfold, seeing my own numbers on Amazon start to match his. I was making $10,000 a month on Amazon alone.

Our little venture had, for me, gone far beyond a “supplemental income.”

Of course, I was still running Excessica. From the beginning, I’d done the lion’s share of the work, formatting everyone’s books, putting titles up at distributor sites, sending out royalties. It added a great deal of time to my schedule, but I figured, I was also receiving the lion’s share of the profits (even if it was just for my own work) so it seemed, somehow, fair. And I did have some amazing volunteers (the woman who offered to take over the accounting aspect for me saved my life!) But as our roster of authors reached 100+ and our distribution schedule hit four books a week, even I got overwhelmed. And the business model I’d created wasn’t quite as self-sustaining as I’d hoped.

I had come up with the idea of releasing quarterly anthologies with donated stories from Excessica authors to pay the basic costs of doing business (web site, postage, etc). But the anthologies weren’t coming out fast enough to keep up with costs. Finally, I decided to take 10% of Excessica’s proceeds – leaving Excessica authors with 90% profit. And I started “hiring” people to do the work I’d done previously, paying them, as a co-op might, with keeping their 10%, or with free advertising on our site.

So far, this system has worked quite well, and Excessica has kept on rolling. The only other thing I’ve done is close our doors to submissions from outside authors, except by referral or invitation. We will keep publishing our own authors’ work, of course, if they want to stay with us. (Our contracts allow them to leave at any time.)

I knew this was the right decision when My Bookstore and More (Samhain’s distribution site) stopped taking outside authors’ works. For a while there, ebook publisher storefronts like Ellora’s Cave, Samhain, and Bookstrand, opened their doors to not just their own published work, but to outside publishers as well. But as the success of Amazon/Kindle, Apple, Barnes and Noble and Kobo started to appear, they realized where the real money could be found and saw the futility in selling other publisher’s books from their own storefronts.

So that’s it. That’s how I started my journey toward making $10,000 a month on Amazon writing erotic fiction. I don’t know how long it will last, of course. This business has proven it can turn on a dime. It’s a whole new world in e-publishing. In just a few years, a total shift has taken place. My revolutionary idea has become obsolete. Authors like Joe Konrath can publish their work on their own. He never had to jump through the hoops I did back in 2008.

Makes you wonder what 2012 is going to look like, doesn’t it?

****

(Please post comments here!)

It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it!

I spend a few hours Googling my name, checking out links to free file-sharing sites, and sending out cease and desist notices.

Usually, the links are removed within 24 hours. Yay me!

Yeah, right.

The truth is, I probably only catch about 1/4 to 1/3 of the links that are actually out there available to download in the first place. (Probably less!)

And of course, they’re back up 48-72 hours after that. The pirates all say ARGH! (I mean, they say: “Would you please re-up?”) and the link goes back on RapidShare or MegaUpload or Plunder…

And the whole thing starts all over.

It’s like putting a band-aid on an artery.

Granted, I’ll admit, piracy kind of pisses me off. I have taken it pretty personally. I mean, WTH? You’re taking my book and you didn’t even ask me? Dude! Hence all the Googling and letter writing and craziness I obsessively undertake every week.

But frankly, I’m exhausted.

And J.A Konrath gave me a good reason recently to give myself a much-needed break.

Konrath decided to give a book away for free, as a piracy experiment, to see if it would impact his book sales. He’s not the first to think of this. Lots of people have done it before him. Baen did it ten years ago. It’s basically a marketing gimmick. A good one, but still, a gimmick. It’s the classic “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!” philosophy.

Me, I don’t have to give books away free. I’m one of the most-pirated (living) erotic authors on the Internet. My books are being pirated all over the place. Go ahead, Google “Selena Kitt” and “Torrent”. I’ll wait. See?

I stem the tide a few times a week, but it doesn’t stop the deluge for long. It’s like trying to kill cockroaches with a Barbie shoe.

So while everyone is giving books away free to “prove” or “disprove” that piracy is “good” or “bad” – and trying to up their sales by doing so (come on, guys, I’m pretty generous in that department – I already give away a bunch of good free reads)…

Me, I’m just giving up.

That’s right – the pirates “win.” I’m putting away my sword. No more pirate hunts for me!

So that’s MY piracy experiment. Let’s see if doing NOTHING AT ALL will impact my sales numbers.

Babysitting the Baumgartners is the #2 bestseller in Amazon Erotica this week. All you’ll need to do is watch the ranking. Up or down? Hm, I wonder…

I heard Jason Mraz encourages his audience to bootleg his live performances. I love him. Especially his live performances. And I own several of them. Bootlegged. It’s true, I’m a pirate.

Maybe this video’s got it right after all?