L. S. Baird

So while I'm disappointed, I'm not surprised.

There's been a reason Erotica has thrived as a genre primarily on Amazon for a while now — but even there, we've seen increasing censorship, and authors struggling to get eyes on their work because the algorithm is hiding their work. (We call it the 'erotica dungeon,' and it's not as fun as it sounds. It's basically algorithmic death.)

And to any of my fellow Romance authors who think this doesn't affect us: it already does.

Amazon and other publishers already discriminate and classify LGBTQ+ content as inherently more erotic than het-romance. You could write the sweetest, cutest, most tooth-rotting LGBT fluff on the planet with zero hardcore erotica in it, but because you've tagged it as LGBT, you're inherently pushed toward the Erotica genre.

And really, it's all just goal posts built on a foundation of shifting sands. Just because they're letting your work slide today doesn't mean they'll do it forever.

And if that makes you mad because you don't want to be lumped in with the icky, gross sex writers, well, I'd hold your hand when I say this, but I don't want to: you're part of the problem.

That is a Majestical Beast 

From your Amazon homepage, click "Account & Lists" then click "Content Library"

Click "Books"

Find the book you want to download and click "More actions"

Click "Download & transfer via USB"

Click the button next to your device, then click "Download"

That's it! Your book file is now downloaded to your device. To my knowledge there isn't a way to bulk download everything, which means that your have to download books individually. (If anyone knows how to download multiple books at a time, please let me know!)

I use the free software Calibre to organize my ebook files. This video gives a good basic overview of how to download your ebooks from Amazon to Calibre, and also goes over how to use Calibre to transfer your ebooks to Kobo. I recently got a Kobo and have slowly been transferring my ebooks to it, and it is actually pretty easy!

If you're looking for ways to get ebooks without supporting Amazon, check out Smashwords, Bookshop.org, or see if your favorite author/publisher sells ebooks directly from their website.

The best help I can offer is to point you to Amy Cuddy’s book, Presence. She talks about Imposter Syndrome (and interviews me in it) and offers helpful insight.

The second best help might be in the form of an anecdote. Some years ago, I was lucky enough invited to a gathering of great and good people: artists and scientists, writers and discoverers of things. And I felt that at any moment they would realise that I didn’t qualify to be there, among these people who had really done things.

On my second or third night there, I was standing at the back of the hall, while a musical entertainment happened, and I started talking to a very nice, polite, elderly gentleman about several things, including our shared first name. And then he pointed to the hall of people, and said words to the effect of, “I just look at all these people, and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They’ve made amazing things. I just went where I was sent.”

And I said, “Yes. But you were the first man on the moon. I think that counts for something.”

And I felt a bit better. Because if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did. Maybe there weren’t any grown-ups, only people who had worked hard and also got lucky and were slightly out of their depth, all of us doing the best job we could, which is all we can really hope for.

And then I remember how Stephen King said (I’m paraphrasing) in his book On Writing that if you do your work, and someone pays you for that work, and then you take that money–however much or little–and pay your electric bill with it, then you’re a professional writer. Maybe I can’t full-time this gig but I’ve been lucky enough to pay some electric bills, literally and metaphorically. Not all of them! But not none, either.

These two things usually do the trick. And if I ever have any further questions I go back to the Instructions, and the phrase I heard Neil say at that same reading years ago and which I have never forgotten.

The artists' works provoke tremendous internal reassessment of surfaces, textures, and one's own sense of memory. I am still mulling the show over. I wrote some notes about how Orudjev and Frankenfield's works, deeply in conversation with one another, made me feel:

Time and distance alter recollection, morphing perspective, altering thought. A woman's body melts into the impression of armor and then furniture. A dusty lace veil gently drops down over the terrain between experiencing and remembering, a waxen plastic veneer over time. Things that one longs to access hide. Some details are so sharp you wish you’d forget them, dizzying in their relentless confrontation, an ignored series of signs that now swim large before the mind’s eye. Things weather and rust, and the rust turns to powder, and the powder clings to the back of one’s hands. Studs of nostalgia stand out, little jewels committed more sharply as special pleasures, a flash of gold leaf in your mind. Old pins stick through starker, harder thoughts. Scraps of what is said blend into glossolalia. A particular color, or texture, or single vivid thought has the power to match the substance of the whole over time. Jutting edges of memory catch your chin, turn your head. Even the clouds are something we can’t agree on.

I loved how the works were displayed. The gallery space gave me the impression of a treasure map that has fallen to pieces and then lovingly and carefully been preserved. The precision and deliberateness of the use of an eclectic array of materials are communicated extremely effectively to the viewer.

weisheng paris

To celebrate #aromanticawarenessweek, we asked our contributors (some of whom chose to remain anonymous) to recommend their favorite books with aromantic characters (some explicit, some implied).

Here are our 8 favorites!

Loveless by Alice Oseman This is the funny, honest, messy, completely relatable story of Georgia, who doesn’t understand why she can’t crush and kiss and make out like her friends do. She’s surrounded by the narrative that dating + sex = love. It’s not until she gets to college that she discovers the A range of the LGBTQIA+ spectrum — coming to understand herself as asexual/aromantic. Disrupting the narrative that she’s been told since birth isn’t easy — there are many mistakes along the way to inviting people into a newly found articulation of an always-known part of your identity. But Georgia’s determined to get her life right, with the help of (and despite the major drama of) her friends.

Commit to the Kick by Tris Lawrence For eighteen years, Alaric has lived under the cloying politics of family and his Clan community. His freshman year is supposed to be a chance to explore a world where Clan and his shapeshifting Talent isn’t central to his life. But when his inner bear bursts forth during his first football game, endangering those around him, Alaric realizes that it’s not so easy to ignore his past, or his own internalized anger. In his quest for anger management, Alaric begins to train in taekwondo, and makes new friends in both sports. He finds that he is creating his own small community, where Clan, Mages, other Talents, and even humans come together and build their own found family. When Alaric receives news that something has happened to his brother Orson, he must return and deal with his Clan and his place in their world. He discovers that old prejudices are still strong between Clan and Mage communities, but that both may be in danger from a creature long thought to be only a legend. Alaric must figure out how to move forward and prevent a war and protect both his home and newly built communities, his found family with him every step of the way.

The Graverobbers’ Chronicles by Xu Lei Uncle Three loves good food, good booze, good card games, and bad women–and he’s never found a grave he wouldn’t rob. He can’t help it – it’s in his blood – grave robbing has been the family business for centuries. So when his bookseller nephew comes to him with a map to an ancient tomb, Uncle Three sets off to find it, in the company of some grave-robbing colleagues, his nerdy nephew, and a strange poker-faced guy that nobody can quite figure out. Uncle Three knows that the grave he seeks will lead him and his companions to “another kind of world,” but not even he could ever imagine what they are about to find. Lost in a labyrinthine cavern that is full of dead bodies, Uncle Three and his comrades fight for their lives as they come up against vampires, corpse-eating bugs, and blood zombies.

The Devil’s Luck by L. S. Baird Years ago, a foolish wastrel once played a hand of cards with the devil… and lost. Now Frey has inherited his uncle’s double curse: the Devil’s claim written on his body in crimson letters, and the impossibly good luck that comes with it. Death is Frey’s only escape from his destiny, but not even Etienne, an expert assassin from the Order of the Crimson Seal, can defeat Frey’s luck alone. And when Etienne finds himself growing too fond of his victim, he doesn’t know if Frey’s good nature or the luck is to blame. However, Etienne will give his all to preventing the Archdemon’s return, even if his all includes wearing a corset, and killing a friend.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern. On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid – a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is. But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it’s up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.

In Good Company by Nicola Kapron Haruki no longer remembered what had been going through his head the first time he’d killed. All he recalled was the sight of those he’d once loved with all the helpless force of a scared, scarred child covered in red and utterly still. He hadn’t felt grief or triumph when he realized they weren’t struggling anymore. He’d just felt— Empty. Better to be hollow than to despair.

Kaikeyi by Vaisnavi Patel I was born on the full moon under an auspicious constellation, the holiest of positions–much good it did me. So begins Kaikeyi’s story. The only daughter of the kingdom of Kekaya, she is raised on legends of the gods: how they churned the vast ocean to obtain the nectar of immortality, how they vanquish evil and ensure the land of Bharat prospers, and how they offer powerful boons to the devout and the wise. Yet she watches as her father unceremoniously banishes her mother, listens as her own worth is reduced to how great a marriage alliance she can secure. And when she calls upon the gods for help, they never seem to hear. Desperate for some measure of independence, she turns to the texts she once read with her mother and discovers a magic that is hers alone. With this power, Kaikeyi transforms herself from an overlooked princess into a warrior, diplomat, and most favored queen, determined to carve a better world for herself and the women around her. But as the evil from her childhood tales threatens the cosmic order, the path she has forged clashes with the destiny the gods have chosen for her family. Kaikeyi must decide if resistance is worth the destruction it will wreak–and what legacy she intends to leave behind.

Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace New Liberty City, 2134. Two corporations have replaced the US, splitting the country’s remaining forty-five states (five have been submerged under the ocean) between them: Stellaxis Innovations and Greenleaf. There are nine supercities within the continental US, and New Liberty City is the only amalgamated city split between the two megacorps, and thus at a perpetual state of civil war as the feeds broadcast the atrocities committed by each side. Here, Mallory streams Stellaxis’s wargame, SecOps on BestLife, spending more time jacked in than in the world just to eke out a hardscrabble living from tips. When a chance encounter with one of the game’s rare super-soldiers leads to a side job for Mal–looking to link an actual missing girl to one of the SecOps characters. Mal’s sudden burst in online fame rivals her deepening fear of what she is uncovering about BestLife’s developer, and puts her in the kind of danger she’s only experienced through her avatar.

Recommendations contributed by Nina Waters, softestpunk, Adrian Harley, and others.

Also: did you know? Duck Prints Press’s owner, Nina Waters, is aro! We’re an aro-owned company!

I'm replying publicly so other folks can see my answer, but doing it this way to keep your name out of it. You asked, "Hey, is it true you write incest and child rape and fucked up sex? Why, my dude? You're a good writer, you don't have to do that immoral stuff!"

Yep, it's true, I do write about lots of uncomfy-making stuff in my fiction! I tend to write about topics like systemic oppression, identity, sexuality, generational trauma, abuse, power dynamics, and more, just because those are the directions my writer-brain takes me. Exploring those topics in a way that does them justice sometimes requires that I actually depict the "immoral"* things happening, explicitly or implicitly, and sometimes in harrowing ways. If I do my job right, then readers will empathize with the character(s) experiencing this bad thing, and maybe think more about the topic. If I screw it up, and I do sometimes, then people who've actually been through this in real life will feel like I've trivialized something important and intrinsic to their lived experience. So when it becomes necessary for me to write about these topics, I try to do them justice and not tapdance around the gory details, because I'm a good writer and that's what being a good writer means, to me.

That said, you're asking about morality**, which has nothing to do with being a good writer. There are lots of excellent writers in the world who aren't good people, as you've probably noticed. Maybe you've decided that I'm not a good person either; okay, if so. But writer or not, you cannot become a good person by pretending evil doesn't exist. Evil looooves silence. If you want to fix that evil, you have to talk about it, honestly and uncomfortably, and you have to make sure that everyone gets to participate in that conversation -- especially the people who are most harmed by that evil. Even bad fiction about these topics creates more space for those people to participate in the conversation. Without that space, the people controlling the conversation will inevitably be those with the most social power. That's going to be the rapists, the racists, the rich people who hate poor people, and so on, because the most immoral acts in our society pretty much boil down to abuse of power.

For me, it's simple: I think it's far more immoral to avoid Topic X and thus allow it to flourish, than it is to address the topic in a way that hopefully facilitates justice. So the latter is what I do.

*Scare quotes here because I don't know what "fucked up sex" is supposed to mean. If it's between consenting adults, it's not fucked up. If there's no consent or adults involved, it's rape.

This sounds like drama, but it's not.

Not only is it well documented that pirating contributes to publishers not buying more manuscripts from an author (Maggie Stiefvater's experiment being the most famous), now we have evidence that Amazon's Kindle Unlimited algorithm is registering pirated copies of books online as the book being "offered" somewhere else, and punishing the authors for it.

And I don't know how much you know about Kindle Unlimited, but the thing is, if your book is in KU, you have to check a little box that says you're not offering the book anywhere else for sale. At all. So when the algorithm is finding the pirated copies, it's pinging it as, Oh! The author lied! The author misrepresented their sales strategy! ACCOUNT DELETION FOR AUTHOR. NO ROYALTIES FOR ONE THOUSAND YEARS.

Miette jokes aside, that's actually what's happening to very popular self-pub authors. Ruby Dixon just had her account deleted, her 15+ volume popular KU series taken down, and Amazon fighting her over the KU Pages royalties she'd already earned on those books. Now, Ruby's got her account back because she's popular enough that people shouted at Kindle executives very, very loudly, but what about other authors? This could ruin someone's career.

Well, why not publish wide, I hear you saying. Why stick to Kindle Unlimited? After all, Amazon sucks.

Here's the thing. Whether we like it or not, Amazon has a massive corner market on books, and for authors who are self-publishing, it is by far the most accessible and cost-effective method, PLUS, it's a great way to be discovered by new readers.

Because readers don't have to pay for individual titles under KU (they pay for a subscription, and then Amazon pays out authors based on how many pages of the book someone read), they can give new authors a try. They can take a chance on a book they're not sure they'll like. And Amazon tends to promote KU titles more aggressively because it's good for their business.

My little $0.99 short story, Swelter, is on Kindle Unlimited, and I can tell you that a good 85% of my royalties from it come from KU pages, not from people buying it. And that's for a story that costs less than a dollar and is not a big investment and has pretty good word-of-mouth in the f/f reading community.

Self-publishing is expensive, and time consuming. I'm getting away with it pretty cheaply right now because I am also a professional editor, and I have friends in the business who are willing to trade in kind rather than be paid. I have a really wonderful friend who is doing my ebook formatting for free because I beta read and do proofing for her. But if I were paying for all the services that I'm trading for, as most authors have to do? I'd be well over $1500 sunk into this little ebook coming out in a week that is going to cost $3.99 and be free to read on Kindle Unlimited. And that's not counting marketing. Because yeah, you have to pay for marketing. Hell, I had to pay $35 upfront to a popular site to be considered for their marketing campaign, and would've paid another $65 if they'd accepted me. (They did not, so I'm out that $35 without even a marketing campaign to show for it.)

And the thing is, I'm currently gainfully employed. I'm salaried. My spouse is also salaried, so I have enough disposable income to spend what I've spent on this ebook (which is still about $600, even with all the things I'm trading for). Most authors? Especially most self-publishing authors? Don't have that.

So Kindle Unlimited, for all its flaws, is a way to get more diverse voices in the business because you don't even have to buy an ISBN. Amazon assigns you an Amazon Sales Index Number (ASIN) and you're good to go, as long as you're not listing it on any other sites. Hell, they even have tools for you to make your own cover art if you don't want to pay someone to make it for you. They do a lot of their own internal promotion on Kindle. Readers can try you out for little-to-no personal investment on their part and maybe discover that they love your writing, and you've gained a whole audience. It's a great return-on-investment for self-published authors.

So that's why a lot of self-pub authors choose Kindle Unlimited. And a lot of authors will do a limited run on KU in order to get some early word-of-mouth and discovery readers, and then publish wide later. (That's my current strategy with Welcome to the Show, if it does well. If it's not doing well, I probably won't sink the money and time into expanding its availability.) But if this happens, if Amazon shuts down their account over "KU membership misrepresentation," then even if the book has been published wide and is available on other platforms by then, Amazon is going to dispute their KU Pages royalties and try to take them back.

So by pirating books, not only are authors losing "potential" sales (I know, there's a whole argument there), they could be losing real, actual sales that they've already sold.

In conclusion:

1. Don't pirate books.

2. If you see someone requesting where they can read a book "for free", speak up.

3. If you see someone providing links where people can read a book "for free" (if it is not provided by the author for free), speak up.

(I mean, ok, it may help you because you get something without having to pay for it, but I'm assuming we're not just out for ourselves here. We're interested in supporting a healthy, sustainable author-to-reader pipeline, right? Right.)

Authors need to make money or they stop authoring, and as the OP says, not everyone can afford to/has the tech chops to go wide. It's not always a choice of "KU or this Better More Pure Option". It's sometimes a choice of "KU or nothing". The "nothing" option doesn't help diversify authors or get new stories out there or pay authors' rent or break monopolies. The "nothing" option does nothing.

If you hate Amazon and don't want to support it, that's fine, but don't argue that you're doing it "for authors". I haven't done a poll, but I'm pretty sure that most authors will tell you that if you want to support them, you should buy their book wherever and however they sell it. You don't get to decide where that is. Sorry. That's the way it works.

If you really want to do something for authors: don't pay for Kindle Unlimited. Why is the KU exclusivity such an issue? Because people BUY the damn thing. Rail against KU, instead of railing against authors. Promote alternative ways to get and discover books. Signal boost authors' own homegrown marketing. Be familiar with other ebook outlets, and use them, even if it's a little more, or a little inconvenient. JOIN AUTHORS' MAILING LISTS, or follow them, or whatever, so that you know when they put out something new and aren't relying on Amazon's algorithm or emails to tell you what to read next. If you're business minded or software minded, support (or start) projects to help authors easily and cheaply sell their books in places other than Amazon and get the word out where it will drive sales to better avenues.

Needless to say, my frankness about how royalties work and just how little many of us are earning from our labor has drawn the ire of a few people, even here on Tumblr.hell.

I'm not particularly bothered by this. In my view, they're the same people who won't discuss wages in the workplace because they don't want anyone else to earn what they do. They know the system is unfairly rigged, but they like it that way because they're scared if more people are educated about how things work, they'll lose whatever competitive edge they think they have, thus enforcing the status quo.

Needless to say, I don't care for this view.

I'm very much a "holy shit, two cakes" kind of creator. I also very firmly believe in pulling people up behind me and spreading the wealth of information that was shared freely with me by other like-minded individuals who also believe that the mysteries around publishing are gatekeeping bullshit and everyone deserves the chance to earn money from their creative endeavors, not just the people who can afford to.

Anyway, David Gaughran's 'Let's Get Digital: How To Self-Publish And Why You Should' is an invaluable resource for indie authors and provides great insight into how publishing and distribution work. It is available for free through the retailers listed on his website.

If you don't want to publish exclusively through Amazon, draft2digital.com does global ebook and also paperback distribution. (I've only used it for ebooks, but I'll be trying out their paperback options for my next book.) You can pair it up with a books2read account to create easy-to-post buy links. Draft2Digital also allows for distribution through library lending services like Overdrive. So that's neat. (NB: if you use d2d, you can't use Kindle Unlimited, so be aware of what links you have active and where if you decide to enroll in KU. You can always opt for wide distribution again once your KU time expires.)

D2D also recently partnered with FindawayVoices.com for audiobook distribution. You can find voice actors there, or you can upload your own files if you already have them. You can submit to Audible through them, too, but you'll earn a pittance more if you upload directly through Audible. Findaway also allows for library lending distribution through Libby and several other global equivalents.

If you need ISBNs, you can buy them cheaper in bulk from Bowker at myidentifiers.com

Individual storefront options like Payhip.com and Gumroad.com are also great ways to allow people to buy directly from you, though I soured on Gumroad after the whole NFT thing and their CEO harassing people on Twitter over it. Payhip is now my preferred storefront, and as an added bonus, they calculate VAT in European countries as well, so that's one less thing for me as an indie author to work out. As an added bonus, Payhip can be directly integrated into your author website if you have one. It's a feature I'll be implementing soon.

itch.io also allows for the sale and distribution of ebook files, though I haven't used it yet.

If you don't have the means to hire a cover designer or the means to do it yourself in photoshop, Canva.com has some decent-ish ebook templates. Just make sure the images and fonts you're using have the right licenses for commercial use.

Editing and formatting are also extremely important, though I know not everyone can afford them. If you can, I highly suggest doing so and shelling out extra to have them format your work across mediums. Ebook formatting is different from paperback formatting, and it can look very strange if you just try to format an ebook into a pdf. It is a skill you can teach yourself (plenty of youtube videos) if you really want to, but I prefer to throw money at my editors, who provide formatting as an additional service. Whatever you can afford to do to streamline the process is money well spent.

Also, do not be shy about using affiliate links to sell your work. Authors lose a solid chunk of money to places like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, etc., in distribution fees. Whatever pennies you can scrape back through affiliate links for directing traffic to those sites is hard-earned--and it is literal pennies sometimes. You can also integrate any affiliate links you do have into draft2digital, so they auto-generate, which is handy.

When it comes to paperbacks, BookShop.org offers the best affiliate earnings, and a percentage of the sale goes toward supporting indie bookstores. They do not take that percentage from your earnings, they pay it themselves. Libro.FM is the audiobook equivalent of BookShop.org, and they also give a percentage of sales to supporting indie book stores.

Anyway, I hope that helps someone. Good luck out there.