Republishing Madness: Two steps forward, one step back, but still moving

For the last three years of my author life I’ve felt like Sisyphus pushing a stone up a hill, only to have it roll back down, thus negating any progress. It has been very frustrating, to say the least. Instead of writing, I’ve spent time and energy (and money) republishing novels and stories. Too often, I think I have given a story a good home, only to find it orphaned.

Republishing involves: re-editing (sometimes editing out a publisher’s style and reasserting my own); new covers; possibly new blurbs; ebook formatting; paperback formatting; new ISBNs (stupidly expensive in the US); uploading to retailer sites; plus promotion, promotion, promotion.

Basically everything an author has to do when self-publishing, except all of that stuff had already been done and now you have to do it all over again. Sigh. Continue reading

Ex-EC Titles Re-Released: Part Three #notchilled

For an explanation of what I’m doing here, please see Part One and Part Two of this blog series. More authors and their reverted titles are listed below (with another “thank you” shout out to reader Cayenne!). Let’s do something positive to support your favorite author and their ex-EC titles! Buy their books! Review their books! Spread the word about their books on social media! Continue reading

Ex-EC Titles Re-Released: Part Two #notchilled

For an explanation of what I’m doing here, please see Part One of this blog series. More authors and their reverted titles are listed below. This time around I received help from a reader who had an extensive library of books purchased from the Ellora’s Cave website — a library that vanished during EC’s website “upgrade” (many readers had this happen). This reader, Cayenne, started keeping track of reversions and re-releases for herself, and shared the list with me. Readers are awesome. Authors would be nothing without them, and publishers should do more to recognize readers’ importance.

Now for the list. Let’s do something positive to support your favorite author and their ex-EC titles! Buy their books! Review their books! Spread the word about their books on social media! Continue reading

Ex-EC Titles Re-Released: Part One #notchilled

The publisher Ellora’s Cave has been having problems for the last couple of years. They’ve had massive layoffs, late and missed payments to authors and contractors, then, when they sued a blogger for defamation, all hell broke loose. There was mudslinging and accusations and a boycott of Ellora’s Cave books led by some pretty powerful people in the field of romance. EC authors themselves begged their fans not to buy their EC books so they could request reversion of rights based on low sales.

I want to go beyond the negativity, the “don’t”-ness of a boycott, and instead explore positive actions to support authors still trapped in the EC quagmire. Let’s get some love for your favorite EC author!
— Buy non-EC books by your favorite EC author!
— Write a review for a non-EC book by your favorite EC author!
— Blog or post on social media about non-EC books by your favorite EC author!
— Recommend non-EC books by your favorite EC author to all your reader friends! Continue reading

Amazon’s Adult Filter Buries Your Naked Bodies

Recent news about my publisher Ellora’s Cave is not good. Freelance editors and cover artists have been laid off – including both my editors. I’m worried about my cover artist since she is a freelancer, although she is still listed on the company website. [UPDATE: Alas, she is no longer.]

There was a lot of hullabaloo in the blogosphere and on Twitter about this news, which was originally a private communique to EC authors. Some people complained that Ellora’s Cave charges too much for ebooks especially since so much self-published material is so cheap, some people ruminated about financial concerns at EC, some people wondered about poor business practices at EC (this one about Farrah Abraham’s advance is interesting), and some people thought it was disingenuous of EC to blame Amazon although perhaps Amazon’s launch of Kindle Unlimited had something to do with it.

But what no one seems to be gossiping about is Amazon’s adult filter and how that is quite possibly the reason for EC experiencing a “sharp decline of ebook sales via Amazon.”

And as an indie erotica author, I have some personal experience with precisely that. Continue reading
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