From Giselle: Today we are fortunate to have a blog
post from a wonderful fellow author, Carl East. Carl is an established,
successful erotica author who was in the business before most of us knew what
ebooks were. He is the author of 100+ erotica ebooks, and a few audio
book editions as well. I and many of my fellow erotica authors have
benefited from Carl's sage advice. Be sure to check out Carl's books at
Smashwords, or your favorite eBook
retailer. And now I'm pleased to let Carl take over....
Why would I buy my books from Smashwords?
Over
the course of the last year things have really picked up where eBooks are
concerned. We've seen partnerships develop, big money changing hands and all
kinds of new gadgets hitting the market. People in general have their favorite
places for buying these books, which is understandable. Some swear by Amazon,
Barnes and Noble or Apple, but you very rarely see anyone mentioning
Smashwords.com This is a shame for many reasons, not least because it gives
the authors the best deal around, but because it's one of the few places that
hasn't banned or deleted
authors work without having a darn good reason.
These
other places don't seem to think they need a reason, they just delete them
without any warning and we're supposed to just sit back and accept it. Until
recently it was just Erotica that got attacked; now it seems that if they
don't like your non-erotic stories then they are fair game as well. I
personally had over 40 stories chopped from Apple, and four of them were
non-erotic, so when do we say enough is enough?
My only
wish is that people will start to see Smashwords as a viable replacement for
all of these sites. I say that because you will find every story that I've
released there, full and intact. And why shouldn't they be, I mean not one
story on Smashwords that was written by me is breaking any law that I know
about. The thing is we have a champion in Mark Coker, because he's someone who
is prepared to go to bat for the writers and someone who actually cares about
the written word in all its forms.
If he
ever bans a story it's because it crossed the line of what is and isn't
acceptable in today’s society. His site also includes every popular download
file there is, so whether you have a Blackberry, Nook, Apple or Kindle they
have a book file for it. You may think that all of this is about the fact that
I've been attacked by Apple and need support in order to fight back, and in
part you'd be correct. However, I really do want to see Smashwords succeeding
beyond what they've achieved so far. People like Mark Coker deserve to get the
credit for revolutionizing the eBook age and helping unknown authors to
achieve their dreams.
If you
admire Smashwords for what they've achieved then shout it out on the networks,
Twitter it, Facebook it or do whatever you can to get the word out. It doesn't
matter whether you like erotica or not, it really isn't about any specific
genre, it's about protecting all fiction from those that believe we the indie
writers have no rights what so ever and can censor us whenever they feel like
it.
Let me
also put it another way. Let's say that you have a favorite indie author, one
that you've been following for over a year now. Suddenly your favorite authors
books are no longer available at Amazon, Apple etc., wouldn't you be annoyed
that some faceless company had removed the stories you love, without so much
as a reason being shared with anyone, not even the author? It has to stop,
otherwise these companies will always be in control of what you can and cannot
read. It's up to you, you have the power to stop all of this, you just need
the will to do so.
So, why
should I buy my books from Smashwords? Simple, they serve the author and
reader and not the almighty dollar. They have quite literally changed the
landscape for the indie author and have made us all see that we are being
ripped off by the big publishers, on a daily basis. Who wouldn't want to
support such a site?
