"Free" on Kindle Unlimited Isn't Fucking Free

I try not to go off (too much) on here. This is a positive place filled with smutty books and updates and some weird musings from me now and again! However, I keep seeing this all over the place... and it bugs the shit out of me.

I'm a voracious reader. I devoured Game of Thrones in five hours, just to give you an idea of the speed at which I read. Not a speed reader, but pretty fast. Because I read a lot, and also to do research for writing, I decided to enroll in Kindle Unlimited. Now, a lot of authors bitch about the low payout (and it is), and they feel like Amazon is strong-arming them. If you don't put your book into Kindle Unlimited, then it won't get the visibility other books IN KU will. However, you have to be exclusive to Amazon for the term of being in KU. Kind of sucks for an author.

However, it's fantastic for a reader. You can borrow up to ten books at a time, and I've found some fantastic books this way. Some not so good ones too. Some downright awful ones as well. But I would NEVER have tried those authors had they not been in Kindle Unlimited. In one case, reading an author's book made me a fan of hers. You basically get as many books as you can read for ten bucks a month. That's a great deal!

I pay for that service.

Let me repeat that: I PAY FOR THAT SERVICE.

Yeah, it's only ten bucks a month, and some months Amazon gets my ten bucks for free without me reading shit. Other months, I read the hell out of everything I can get my hands on. It comes and goes. The point here is that money goes out of MY pocket to Amazon's for the right to read the KU books as many times as I want. It's not free.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen authors advertise, "FREE ON KINDLE UNLIMITED!" and it annoys the fucking hell out of me every time. I advertised like that once, then took it down because I felt dirty and weird. Afterwards... never. I'll mention my books are mostly on KU, because they are (mostly), but I never put the word "free" in there. It's not free. I FUCKING PAY FOR THE SERVICE.

Sure, I get it. Authors want to get their books attention. I totally get it. I do! I would love my books to pick up in popularity! And while it's a small thing, saying it's free on KU, it still annoys me. It's false advertising. You heard me: false advertising. Some people might say, "But it IS free on KU! The reader doesn't pay for it." But they do. Hence, it is a lie, a falsehood. Perhaps it's a well-intentioned falsehood. Perhaps the author simply didn't think about it. And I know I'm definitely in the minority here. Heck, I might be the only one in the world that annoys. (But it's my blog, so I write about what I want. :P )Doesn't matter. It is still a false statement.

And I don't borrow those books.

I don't buy them either.

I skip the authors who advertise that way. It annoys me that much it drives me away. If they want to advertise it's on KU, that's great! Do it! We people who are KU subscribers know that hey, we can borrow it at NO FURTHER COST to ourselves, great! To those people who aren't KU subscribers, the word "free" has a very different connotation, and that's where I feel it's really disingenuous. They go in expecting the book to be a freebie if they don't read carefully enough, and lo and behold, it's not.

I can't make anyone stop doing that, but I wish they would. Ah well, le sigh.

Never THE End

For those of you who don't follow me on Facebook, I just got over the flu. I was sick for a whole week and needless to say, I didn't do anything at all in that week except lay on the couch or the bed and cough a lot while I tried to puzzle out what show I was watching. Even now, after I've "recovered", I'm tired and it's really hard to get back to my day time job.

I look at my writing and I just wince. I haven't done anything for over a week. I feel bad about that, but at the same time, I'm so tired it's hard to get motivated to write. I want to. I like writing. I like telling stories. At the same time, there's so much yet to do, so much yet to write, and I'm so tired that it's daunting... and because it's daunting, it's depressing.

I try to keep these posts pretty upbeat, though IRL I am a depressive. It's sometimes a hard fought victory to even get out of bed when I'm depressed. I know, logically, that I'm just tired and overworked from rushing my recovery and being sick, but emotionally it's just as draining. I'm only half done with the first draft of The Princess of Wands, and I look and see how much more I have to write... depressing. Yet I won't give up. I think that hits all writers from time to time... that they see how much more they have to do to get to the end of a particular book and they just throw up their hands and go, "IT'S IMPOSSIBLE!"

Obviously, it's not impossible, but it can feel that way. So, instead of dwelling on "OMG I HAVE ALL THIS TO DO", I'm going to choose to look at what I've done so far. I've written about 150K words in JUST this world alone! That's a lot! And it's a lot more than would-be writers have done who think about writing but have never started. I've not only started, but finished and published novels! And tons of short stories and novellas! If I can do all that, then I can certainly finish one more book! And when I finish that one, then I can do the next one... so on and so forth. The point is that even if we fall or falter, we can always pick ourselves back up. There is no such thing as THE end, only AN end. I'll have an end to this book, but it's not the end of my writing. It'll be the start of my next book. And the next, and the next, and so on.

I wish I wasn't so tired, but I will keep my goals small for right now and build back up. The Princess of Wands is delayed, but it is coming. And after that, Reamin' Demons. And after THAT, The Brujah and the Beast. And after THAT....

Writers, We Be a Fickle Bunch

We writers are a fickle bunch. It doesn't matter if it's text books, porn, sci-fi, literary classics... doesn't matter. Writers, in general, tend to be... dramatic. And a bit over the top. Often alcoholics! (Hello, Hemingway!) This author I know had a bit of a meltdown, and it wasn't their first. That's fine. It happens. Shit happens. It had just never occurred to me in this day of being constantly connected to the internet that a lot of people's meltdowns are public. I mean, we can look at Anne Rice or Laurel K. Hamilton for famous author meltdowns, but how often do we all point and laugh at the kid having a tantrum over not being able to play his xbox? Or someone going batshit crazy in a drive-up window?

It really struck home that nothing's private anymore. I keep this face and my "real" face separate (WHY CAN'T I EVER SPELL THAT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME?!) for a reason. I'm also not political or religious on this face for a reason. I sell erotica. That's it. If things make things more sexy, then I promote it (like gay rights, come on now... having buttsex is a perfectly natural and ok thing to do, people!). If it doesn't, I don't. In my REAL life, I'm very opinionated on things but... I can be there. Here, I want a sexy environment which sometimes discusses the technical aspects of writing. I don't want to do anything to kill a buzz. Not only that, I really do want to help new writers find their way a little bit if they can. There's this other author who started just after I did, and we talk a lot. They're pretty supportive, and I'm supportive of them even though their kinks aren't mine and vice versa. They've given me ideas, and I don't know if I've done the same for them, I've read some of their work and offered feedback. I'm happy to do so! (at least if I can fit it into my busy schedule of working and looking at a blank page!) And yeah, some details I do post from my RL like the basement saga, but it's pretty generic RL details.

Authors should help each other, which includes emotional support. Because you know what? It's fucking hard. Yeah, I know I say I vomit things up on page sometimes, but it's still hard. I'm putting parts of myself out there. So is every other writer. Then we all wait for approval, and by approval I mean reviews and sales. But specifically sales. It's a self-done business, and it's fucking hard. Not only do you have to create when you oftentimes don't want to, but for independent authors, you have to figure out how to get a cover, market it, sell it, keep promoting, and so on. Not only that, but authors (artists in general but we're talking specifically authors here) open themselves up to criticism which they need to smile and take. In the more traditional publishing world? More stress, believe it or not. Maybe not when you make it big, but most authors aren't "big". They have deadlines. They have editors to appease. They have to cut books down or stretch them out to fill quotas or book layouts. They often don't have control over their own work.

It's no wonder why authors tend to be a crazy bunch. In this day and age, it's all going to be public. There's nothing private anymore. Everything is out there for anyone to view, day or night. I had been thinking about letting people I know IRL know about my pen name and vice versa, but I think this has quite convinced me to keep it separate.