Still I Write ...

In 2011, while contracted to a couple of small publishers, I decided to try indie publishing some of my work. As my contracts ended, I've self-published those books along with others I've written. It's been a challenging and interesting journey to date. As if taking on the job of being a sole proprietor isn't enough to wear anybody down, I'm now subjected to an aspect of this business that I don't like one bit.

The promotion I do for each book is never enough and inevitably, after blasting a new novel everywhere for a couple of weeks, I slack off because there's writing to be done and life to be lived.

Other writers in the same boat become discouraged by low sales and some give up, feeling demoralized by the slim returns on the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years of writing, editing, and everything that goes in between telling a story and publishing a book.

A disturbing trend I've noticed in the last few months is that I've been discovered by readers that no writer wants to encounter. My romantic suspense stories are slow sellers, so it is easy to track a certain pattern. When someone picks up the first book in the series, reads it and then moves on to read the next one and return it, buy the one after that, return it after a few days and so on, until they've read the entire series, my mind takes funny turns.

I know each of my stories is the best one, based on the time and energy I put into taking them from an embryonic stage and on to birth.  Apart from reviews that rip writers new body parts, I cannot think of anything more demoralizing than people who 'buy' books and then return them after they've read them in totality.

At the price tag of $2.99—which this writer believes does not begin to cover what goes into each book, but cannot buck the system because that's the going rate, so to speak—I begin to ask myself some questions about the people who practice this sort of thievery, but then I remind myself that the world is interesting because it is made up by different people.

I would like to see writers protected in the same way that readers are by the Zon. I was a reader long before I started writing and I'm still buying more books than I'll ever read, but I do wonder if that company puts any level of energy into tracking reader activity in the same stringent way writers are policed.

Knowing how this business works, as well as reader expectations, I have two books perma free, which I think should be enough for a reader to be able to judge what they're getting when they buy one of my books.

If I were a writer with less blood, sweat and tears to my name, I would imagine that my stories make terrible reading material, but since I know my skill level, plus recognize the fact that not every book is for every reader, I'm coming back to the same place where I started this blog post. People puzzle me no end.

I doubt this post is likely to reach the eyes of readers who make it a practice to rob writers in this way, but I wish they would remember the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And there is what they say about Karma.

Writers are expected to suffer in silence when things like these happen, but I wish people would think about how they feel when they are cheated and their work denigrated in this fashion.

Still I write, because what's a writer to do but write?