Item. Taxes.  First the EU with its VAT, now Japan with an 8% Consumption Tax.  It’s becoming more and more difficult to market ebooks in other countries (all bad-news bulletins from Amazon affecting KDP Select authors).  I can’t say I make many sales there (dribs and drabs, but that can describe all my sales), but here’s the thing: many of my stories are international in scope and I think overseas readers would enjoy them as much or more than U.S. readers.  I have an international outlook, not a provincial one.  My blog posts show that and more—I’m often critical about decisions taken by our government and often look outside the U.S. for sanity checks.  My points of view were formed by many years living and traveling abroad.

That said, I’d like to have a chance to reach non-U.S. markets, even to have my novels translated.  These taxes are barriers to realize that, just like sales taxes are barriers in this country.  But the main problem with sales tax, VAT, and Japan’s consumption tax is that they’re regressive—they hurt the poor more than the rich and incrementally add to the growing gap between the haves and have-nots.  To put it into a reading context, shouldn’t everyone have a chance to read a good book?  These regressive taxes, like property taxes, are ways for incompetent and wasteful governments to steer their budgets to the black from the red on the backs of the poor.  Both readers and writers should speak out against this.

Item. Ebook piracy.  David Segal, in his The Haggler column in last Sunday’s NY Times Business section, wrote an interesting article about ebook piracy titled “Rousting the Book Pirates from Google.”  His claim is that Google’s Play Store, a self-publishing channel, has become a way to upload fake ebooks pirated from legitimate sources.  These days I question anything in the Times about indie publishing, but I haven’t heard about a Google response beyond the flimsy one reported on in the article.  It does bring up the issue of book piracy again.

Paulo Coelho, the Brazilian writer, says ebook piracy doesn’t matter.  Yes and no.  Ebooks are just computer files, so they can be copied and resold with a few keystrokes.  If I get more readers that way, what’s the problem? he says.  It’s still name recognition for me, isn’t it?  It’s just like giving away my ebooks in an Amazon promo, right?

Paying nothing for an ebook is one thing, but taking an ebook file, changing the author’s name, and selling it as his or her own (or as a fake person) is sleazy and a criminal act.  This is reportedly happening in Google Play, and the Google gurus are doing nothing much about it.

I don’t have to worry about piracy much.  A book pirate is like a carjacker.  I can park my old car amongst the Audis, Infinitys, and Acuras, and the carjacker will steal one of those instead.  Same for my ebooks: The book pirate is looking for “popular titles”—to paraphrase my Detective Castilblanco, my ebooks are about as popular as farts in an elevator (the quip can be found in The Midas Bomb where Mr. C is talking to the National Intelligence Director).

But someday I might be really pissed about piracy when it ceases to become an abstraction and more of a reality for me.  And I find it morally reprehensible right now.  Google better clean up its act if Segal’s report is true (always questionable with the Times because of its vendetta against self-publishing and Amazon).  Google’s inaction is unconscionable.  A pirate who steals an ebook and changes the author’s name has stolen that author’s identity for fraudulent purposes.  And it can potentially represent a lot of money and a damaged career.

Item. You blew it.  I’ve run Kindle Countdown Deals for #2 through #5 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series.”  All those ebooks, which already had their prices reduced to $2.99, were further reduced to $0.99 during the sale.  To think that people won’t spend a buck for a full novel that can bring many hours of entertainment is amazing to me.  It’s also depressing.  I won’t be running any more deals until 2016, if ever.  And, if you’re waiting for me to go all the way to $0, don’t hold your breath.

Of course, most of my ebooks, at $2.99 and $3.99, are still bargains.  Heinlein championed TANSTAAFL in his The Moon is a Harsh Mistress—a bit of hidden Libertarian philosophy, I suppose—but the acronym certainly applies here.  Instead of the price of a dollar meal at McDonald’s, my ebooks will instead just be less than the regular McDonald’s junk food fare.  But McDonald’s doesn’t offer free lunches; I won’t offer free ebooks.

Item. Support indie authors.  The irony is that many readers expect indies to sell their ebooks at unheard of low prices and gobble them up (some indie ebooks—obviously not mine), but then they’ll turn around and be masochists and pay $12.99 for a Big Five ebook from a well-known author.  If that Big Five author is well-known, chances are s/he’s become formulaic and downright boring (Baldacci, Child, Deaver, Grafton, Higgins-Clark, King, Koontz, Patterson, and Preston immediately come to mind).  Indie authors are coming up with the fresh and original story ideas, adding to the irony.  Yeah, I’m biased, but that doesn’t matter—I’m also careful with my money.  If I can buy four indie ebooks for the price of one Big Five ebook, guess what I’ll do.  All the hype in the world won’t get me to pay good money to be bored.

Item. Advertising.  Your only excuse for passing up the bargains mentioned above is that you didn’t know about them.  That’s a legitimate excuse but not one I can attend to easily.  I funnel proceeds from one ebook into the next one, but that’s always been a loss, even without considering advertising costs.  Paying for advertising just adds to the loss column, at least so far.  Facebook and Goodreads campaigns for the Countdown Deals produced no results.  Their only plus is that they cost less than BookBub, say, which requires me to sell body parts to finance a campaign (mine are more akin to those “used cars” being sold from Hurricane Sandy).  I’m not certain any internet advertising does any good.  If you’re an avid reader and pay attention to internet advertising of ebooks, let me know.  If you’re a writer and think otherwise, let me know.

I’m convinced that the only sure way to advertise an ebook is the old-fashioned word-of-mouth, whether via face-to-face conversation or via social media and the internet.  Lucy reads one of my ebooks, likes it, and recommends it to several friends, who in turn do the same.  That can be a slow process.  But ten years?  I don’t think so.  Of course, every day there are more authors and ebooks competing for a dwindling pool of avid readers.  In economic terms, that’s simple supply and demand—it’s great for the reading public but hellish for writers.  I know no easy solutions.  But I won’t stop writing.  From posts like this to short stories and novels, it’s far too much fun.

In elibris libertas….

 

This entry was posted on Friday, September 4th, 2015 at 4:00 am and is filed under News and Notices from the Writing Trenches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.