Amazon.com -- that great and glorious albeit cravenly cowardly American corporation -- decided for some amazingly stupid reason to have some poor guy from India or Pakistan call me in response to my letters about my books. In very broken English, he said they would be happy to relist How To Rape A Straight Guy and Rape In Holding Cell 6 if I would just make a couple changes. New titles. New covers. New descriptions.
I said, "No." Then I told him I'm having both of those books as well as Porno Manifesto and the 3 volumes of Bobby Carapisi pulled from Amazon's listing. That's a total of 7 books. I'm also going to look into what other options I have in publishing David Martin. There may be none and I'll have to go with them or just not put it out, because I can't afford the self-publishing route offered by vanity publishers.
This is going to be interesting. I now get to decide if my moral indignation and sense of injustice are greater than my obligation to my characters. I hate the fact that Amazon has become so large and so destructive to bookstores that it can do anything it wants with impunity. But my stories want to be told...need to be told...and that's getting me tied up in knots.
Of course, part of this is me wanting to make some money off the books' sales. But it's been such a piddly amount, that really shouldn't enter into the equation. So reality is, I could just post them on a website with a nanny blocker of some kind and ask for donations through Paypal. I'd probably make more than I have from Nazca Plains. And they'd be available to read.
Make a living as writer...is that possible, anymore, unless you're Steven King?
I said, "No." Then I told him I'm having both of those books as well as Porno Manifesto and the 3 volumes of Bobby Carapisi pulled from Amazon's listing. That's a total of 7 books. I'm also going to look into what other options I have in publishing David Martin. There may be none and I'll have to go with them or just not put it out, because I can't afford the self-publishing route offered by vanity publishers.
This is going to be interesting. I now get to decide if my moral indignation and sense of injustice are greater than my obligation to my characters. I hate the fact that Amazon has become so large and so destructive to bookstores that it can do anything it wants with impunity. But my stories want to be told...need to be told...and that's getting me tied up in knots.
Of course, part of this is me wanting to make some money off the books' sales. But it's been such a piddly amount, that really shouldn't enter into the equation. So reality is, I could just post them on a website with a nanny blocker of some kind and ask for donations through Paypal. I'd probably make more than I have from Nazca Plains. And they'd be available to read.
Make a living as writer...is that possible, anymore, unless you're Steven King?
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