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Posts tagged ‘Amazon’

Oct 1

21 Comments

New Developments at Amazon

Let’s get a couple of things out of the way first. Every indie author out there owes Amazon a thank you. The company took a risk on us when no other major platform would. It wasn’t altruism that motivated them. It was profit. The corporate gurus knew there were readers out there who would pay good money to read books that did not fit in with what the traditional gatekeepers were letting out into the wild. Those same gurus knew there were any number of writers who wanted an option to traditional publishing and who would pay a very small percentage of their earnings (much smaller than the take trad publishers demanded) to have a sales platform available to them. For all that, Amazon hasn’t always made the right move. Because of that, I’m interested in hearing your thoughts–as readers and as writers–to two of the latest announcements to come from the KDP side of the company. Read more

Aug 13

16 Comments

Know your enemy

This isn’t the post I set out to write this morning. For a bit, I considered putting up a blast from the past. I’m operating on very little sleep and getting used to a new laptop with a keyboard that feels very, very different from my previous one.. Then I realized there’s something I want to discuss, something that came up in the comments from my post last week–Amazon and what we really feel about it here at MGC. Read more

Jul 6

50 Comments

Constant Scrutiny

As I was chatting with a fellow author last night, the topic came up of Amazon and their predilection for pulling reviews they find suspicious, or suspending the accounts of authors they think may be gaming the system. It was something John van Stry had talked about on the trends in Indie Publishing panel he and I were on, along with Jim Curtis and Lawdog. (Great panel, I was listening more than talking, and we had almost two hours so we got into the meat of the matter).

The upshot of that conversation, and the more private one later, is that as authors we must avoid all appearance of evil. Read more

Apr 23

21 Comments

Adventures in Publishing

The last six weeks or so, I’ve been butt in chair and fingers on keyboard. Lots of words have been written. More important in some ways, new print versions of all my books are in the pipeline. It’s amazing how much work that entails. It is the sort of busy work I hate doing even though I know how important it is.

When I first started this indie gig, we didn’t have all the easy to use programs we do today. You whippersnappers don’t know what it’s like to have to hand code a 100k word manuscript with html tags to make sure the book looks the way you want it to on that e-ink reader without lights. And it snowed every day and no matter which way we walked, it was always uphill.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t that bad but the first few books were coded by hand. Read more

Mar 26

6 Comments

On Reviews (Redux)

Last week, I wrote about the need to read, write and review and not  necessarily in that order.  I promised to be back with more on the topic. I’ll be honest, that’s not going to happen today. I’m up to my eyes finishing several projects and deadlines are looming. That means my mind is busy running around screaming in panic. That’s not the mindset I need to tackle the promised topic. So I’m reposting a piece I wrote last year about reviews. It is as pertinent now as it was then.

On reviews

Once again, there are rumblings among indie authors about how big, bad Amazon is being mean. I’m the first to admit Amazon isn’t without fault. It takes actions, mainly due to automation, without warning. Innocents can and sometimes do get caught in the massive bans wrought by Amazon bots. For those wrongly caught up in the bans, the process of getting their accounts reinstated can be long and frustrating. They are why Amazon needs to look at their process and change it.
Read more

Mar 5

32 Comments

Choppy waters ahead

I’m going to start out by saying I’m sleep-deprived and cranky (well, crankier than usual) as I sit dow to write this. I’m in the final push to finish everything necessary to get Nocturnal Revelations ready for publication. I’m in the middle of preparing a new entry in the Honor & Duty series. I have a stack of files that is literally a foot tall sitting on my desk for other projects in the pipeline. So I have little patience for some of the crap I’ve been seeing lately on blogs I follow, in social media and in the media in general. Consider this your fair warning. I’m swinging for the fences and getting some stuff off my chest. Read more

Jan 29

18 Comments

Common Sense Needed

(I am in the final throes of getting Nocturnal Revelations prepped to go on sale Feb. 19th. Add to that I am re-releasing the other titles in the series with new covers and new print editions before then and that I am doing the conversion on a really great book by a friend–waves at J–and blogging is taking the backseat right now. Today’s post comes from Sept. 2014 and has additional comments included.–ASG)

Over the last few days, several things have come up that have left me scratching my head and wondering why. Why do I write? Why do other people write? Why is common sense so lacking in our industry and in people in general? Read more

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