How to Destroy a 15-year Customer Relationship

I have used Verizon Wireless since before it had that name — signing on back when it was called Air Touch. But, over the last several months, Verizon’s poor customer service and fraudulent billing practices have sent me looking for another wireless provider.

I gave up my land line in 2003. Because my only telephone is a cell phone, I need a reliable provider. But I also expect decent customer service and I will not tolerate blatant corporate rip offs.

The problems began a year ago when I realized a few days before it ended, that I would go over my plan minutes for the month of January. I contacted Verizon and was told if I signed on for another year, I could get 100 additional bonus minutes. Sounded reasonable. After almost fifteen years, I had no expectation of going anywhere else. Unfortunately, when I got my bill, I was charged for 35 minutes with no credit given for the bonus minutes. I called, got an adjustment, and thought that was the end of it.

In May, when my submissive, Patrick, joined my household, I added another phone and upgraded my plan, increasing it by an additional 300 minutes. Since then, every attempt to utilize my 100 “bonus” minutes has resulted in overcharges. Even worse, I repeatedly have had customer service and supervisory personnel promise that they will take care of problems and that they will call me back, only to never hear from them again.

The scam Verizon runs works like this: the company claims that because I acquired the bonus minutes before I increased the amount of money I give them every month, the minutes are not shared between the two phones. They contend this, despite the fact that every month my online account “overview” shows those extra minutes in the total available for both phones to use. Verizon refuses to credit any of the 100 minutes to calls made by my phone. Instead, they put all the overage minutes on the second line so they can charge 45 cents a minute for them.

Under this fraudulent bookkeeping scheme, in order to use my “bonus” minutes, I would have to not use the second line for an entire month and put 800 minutes on one phone. Essentially, when I added a second line and additional minutes, Verizon stole the 100 minutes from me.

Unlike many consumers, however, I will not accept fraudulent practices on the part of a mega corporation without a fight. I have already filed complaints against Verizon with the Oregon Attorney General’s office of Consumer Fraud and the Federal Communications Commission. As soon as I can escape their contractual clutches without incurring outrageous “termination” fees, I intend to find another provider. And, of course, I will berate them online for abusing their customers as a warning to others who might consider using their services.

As I search for an alternative to Verizon, I am interested in learning more about others’ experiences with their cell phone providers. Feel free to comment here or contact me via e-mail to share your experience.

Personal Art Work Perceptions

Recently, a woman in her seventh decade, watching physical therapy patients exercising in a swimming pool, commented on how so many folks of every age seem to wear tattoos these days. We spoke a bit of how much the acceptability of the practice had changed in recent decades. Not so very long ago, mostly sailors, prisoners, and bikers sported them.

I remember the first article I ever sold–for a pittance to a small, community newspaper–featured a tattoo artist who had covered his own body in ink. I shot the photo that appeared with my words using a mirror so the reader could see both his back and his chest. The newspaper purchased the article and photo because at the time, the man had an unusual amount of ink and his shop was unique. Today, he would get lost in the crowd.

I found myself intrigued at the time (decades ago), but I had no interest in a needle touching my own skin. That changed over time although I’m not sure when I decided I might want art on my own body. I do recall desiring a tattoo for several years, but hesitating for a number of reasons. As a diabetic, I worried about medical consequences. I learned that the stringent regulation of tattoo artists in Oregon make the possibility of infection or contracting HIV or hepatitis remote. I also had to balance perceived stereotypes about people with tattoos against my own self image.

When I divorced, that self image went through some drastic realignment and I selected three roses on a thorny stem to celebrate a new life that included reclaiming my health, returning to my first love of writing fiction, and a better understanding of who I am as a woman. Although I had spent some time talking to the artist and scrutinizing photographs of her work, I arrived for my appointment with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.

When the needle first attacked the skin on my hip, I thought the discomfort minuscule. As the hour and a half dragged on, keeping still became more onerous than the increasingly painful application of bright red and green ink. But I loved the results and everyone who saw it raved about the detail, the color, the beauty of my roses.

I started to notice ink on others more. I would see the edge of a tattoo peeking out from someone’s shirt and look for an opportunity to get them to show me the rest. I became aware of how common and pervasive wearing ink had become among people of all ages.

I decided I wanted another tattoo and knew I wanted it on my breast. I had no idea what should go there, so I found excuses to frequent tattoo parlors and look at the flash art. On one of those excursions, I saw a stylized hummingbird. However, I knew no one at this tattoo parlor and did not feel comfortable putting my skin under just anyone’s needle. With a picture from the Internet of a hummingbird in the position I wanted and a tattoo in the style I had seen, an artist delivered the perfect sketch. By the time I was ready for ink, however, the woman who had done my first tattoo had decided to stay home with her baby.

I sought a new woman because I did not feel comfortable having a man putting a needle on my breast. That narrowed my choices of artist significantly. Although body mod studios had become almost as ubiquitous as coffee shops, finding women in the tattoo business then was still difficult. Finding a woman with experience who someone else would recommend presented quite a challenge. Again, that has changed. More and more women have worked as tattoo artists long enough to develop portfolios and earn recommendations.

Although I had spent years reaching a point where I had ink applied to my skin the first time and nine months to decide I needed a second tattoo, I knew where and what I wanted for my third piece of art on the drive home from my second. Not only did this third tattoo take longer and cost more my other two combined, but I learned too late that the place I had chosen–above my shoulder blade–apparently is more sensitive to pain than my hip or my breast. I captured my experienced in a poem I call “Art Work.”

Still, pain, cost, and the need to sit still aside, I do not think that the one tattoo I suffered for will be my last. And, I now understand people who mourn when they run out of skin to ink.

A few weeks ago, I hosted the weekly Circlet Press Author Chat on LiveJournal. I shared some thoughts about changes in the publishing industry, rights issues, platform, author compensation, etc.

Below is an updated copy of my final (of three) posts. You can read comments on it there.

The bane of many authors has become even more ubiquitous in the Internet age. Now, the horror that requires us to drag ourselves away from writing stories to promote our work has been awarded a new, dreaded title: Platform.

At writers’ conferences and workshops, authors are lectured endlessly about the necessity of having a platform and how to build one. Allegedly authors are asked about their platforms by editors before they will read their work. Some authors have leveraged platforms into lucrative publishing contracts.

Unfortunately, while publishers expect authors to invest time and money in the marketing of their books, as M.J. Rose states: “We now have a situation where publishers are financially benefitting from the author’s efforts but the author is still getting paid the old way, without regard to how much we personally invest.” She covered that concern quite well in her editorial, “Publishers Must Change the Way Authors Get Paid,”on PublishingPerspectives.com so I won’t belabor that point here.

Personally, I’ve had a presence on the web for several years, but as one correspondent wrote a few months ago, my website is “utterly pants” (British slang for total crap). I coded it myself and couldn’t disagree with him. I’m a writer and although I have a basic understanding of HTML, I’m not a graphic designer.

Meanwhile, I’ve increased my presence on the web over the past year to help promote my novels. I tweet regularly. I’ve put up profiles on FaceBook, Goodreads, GLBT Bookshelf project, MySpace, and LinkedIn. I post to blogs here, on LiveJournal, and Fanny Press.

But anyone could have said my website is pants and I couldn’t have argued.

One reason, with which I’m sure many authors could agree, is because I already spend so much time promoting my work, I didn’t want to take another minute away from my writing. While promoting the novels that came out last year, Broken and Shattered, and the one that released last month, Dommemoir, I also still need to finish the one I drafted during National Write a Novel Month 2008. And, I am blocking out the novel I will draft next month during NaNoWriMo 2009.

Redesigning a website just wasn’t on my priority list. But even updating what’s there, adding all the information about and reviews of Dommemoir, for example, takes work. My submissive, Patrick, suggested he could learn HTML and take over that responsibility. However, working on the website drove home, for him, that it is pants.

Looking, as always, for additional ways to serve me, he requested permission to work on the design. On a Monday he showed me his idea and I loved it. Unfortunately, the beautiful site he envisioned made what I had up look even more pitiful. The more he worked on it, the more I wanted it up NOW. I had planned to (and did) appear on the Speakeasy Café that Thursday, and I had signed up to host the Circlet Press chat. Both will, I hope, drive traffic to my website. I didn’t want to drive traffic to a pants website when I could drive traffic to a gorgeous one.

My sweet boy put in ridiculous hours over the following three days. On Tuesday, I left him working on the website while I drove from Bellevue to Lynwood (Seattle area where I am staying for a few weeks) to meet with a friend/colleague to catch up and discuss an upcoming project. When I returned, five hours later, he had not eaten, drunk, or gone to the bathroom. He kept up a ridiculous pace through Thursday afternoon when the pages were uploaded to the Internet just before my appearance on the Speakeasy Café.

He still has some refinements to make. The shopping page requires a more work and he wants to learn how to add some cool features like RSS feed, music, and SEO tags. But the beauty that he created is visible on every page. And the website reflects my work as a writer: dark, erotic, and seductive.

I know I’m very fortunate to have someone so devoted and talented in service, a luxury most authors do not have. (Although, I’m aware of more than one well-known author who has had a website developed and maintained by a zealous fan.)

However it’s developed, building and maintaining any kind of web presence consumes vast resources. And time devoted to blogging, tweeting, etc. is time not spent writing stories.  In the long run, if I don’t sell books, I won’t be able to get any future ones published. But, it’s easy to get bogged down with promotions and have difficulty finding time to write.

Which is why I’m taking from now through the end of November off from promotional activities to participate in National Write a Novel Month. I’ll post more details on my website in the next week or two

Whose story is it anyway?

Last weekend, I hosted the weekly Circlet Press Author Chat on LiveJournal (and sponsored a poetry contest). I shared some thoughts about changes in the publishing industry, rights issues, platform, author compensation, etc.

Below is a copy of my second (of three) posts. You can read comments on it there.

In the past three years, I’ve turned down several opportunities to sell short stories for rates ranging from acceptable to best ever. In all cases, I rejected the acceptance because the contracts required that I give up all future rights to my own work.

I’ve sold stories before to publishers who sent out such contracts. But they were willing to negotiate for more reasonable terms. Two of the contracts I sent back took possession of all rights in perpetuity including any and all derivative works published or distributed throughout the world in any and all languages, formats and media, available now and in the future. They could have made a blockbuster movie out of my story and I would have been stuck with my $400 payment.

Now, I’m not so egotistical as to think that I’ve written an erotic short story that’s destined to fill movie theaters. But the way the contracts were worded, they even would have prohibited me, for example, from including my own short story in a collection of my own work. The publisher could have sold e-book rights, audio rights, YouTube rights, and rights I haven’t heard of yet without giving me any additional compensation.

It’s discouraging enough that well-known, respected authors accept as little as $25 for a 3,000- to 5,000-word story (less than one cent a word). In some genres, three cents a word is considered professional rates. But SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America) raised that bar to five cents in 2004. Still compared to rates paid for non-fiction or business writing, even professional rates for fiction are embarrassing.

By accepting less than a third of that, authors do all writers a disservice — devaluing their work. To give away all the rights to your work for a few hundred dollars is, in my opinion, a travesty. Unfortunately, these types of contracts seem to have become more prevalent. And authors, desperate for the prestige that allegedly accompanies placement in certain periodicals and anthologies, sign them.

I recognize that some people just write for the pleasure of telling stories and seek publication to share those stories with the world. They have day jobs.

One of the consequences of the quantity of material available for free on the Internet is that readers have become less willing to pay for content. But free doesn’t always represent the best deal. I’ve read many erotic stories, available free on the Web, that are pure dreck. They are case studies in poor grammar, misspelled words, and lack of character development, conflict, story architecture etc. Many are just badly written sex scenes, nothing more.

I have traded words for cash for more years than I care to admit, first as a newspaper reporter, then as a marketing communication professional. Perhaps my many years in the business world color my refusal to give away rights to my work. But, every time authors sign away rights to their work for little or no compensation, or allow publishers to walk away with ownership of what they’ve written, they devalue the work of every other professional writer struggling to make ends meet.

I recognize it’s sometimes hard to turn down $50 or $500 even for a bad contract. And ultimately, we each work for ourselves, so we have to evaluate every offer on its individual merits relative to our individual needs. But if fewer authors signed away all rights in contracts, publishers might stop insisting on stealing our work.

What are your thoughts? Have you sold a story for less than you thought it was worth? Have you turned down a contract that required you to give up too many rights? Have you signed such a contract and later regretted it?

A Novel’s Journey

This weekend (today through Sunday), I’m hosting the weekly Circlet Press Author Chat on LiveJournal (and sponsoring a poetry contest). I’ll share some thoughts about changes in the publishing industry, rights issues, platform, author compensation, etc.

Below is a copy of my first (of three) posts. If you’d like to comment, please join the conversation there.

The business of delivering words and ideas to readers is in upheaval. Newspapers are dying. Book sales are down. Right now I can probably find a few dozen news articles and blogs lamenting all the things bad/wrong/problematic about this.

But, change doesn’t always equal bad, wrong, or problematic. Thousands of small presses publish the work of authors who could never get into print with a New York house. Buying a book no longer requires acquiring an ink on paper volume — you can download an e-book into your PDA to read on the subway, acquire an audio book to play on your iPod, etc.

The journey of Dommemoir , my third published novel, into the readers’ hands stands out as unique in the current traditional publishing world. But it’s a story that probably will become more common as that world adjusts to new paradigms.

First, Dommemoir was written before my novels Broken and Shattered which were released last year by a small press. They did not exactly get into print via traditional channels, either. A conversation that started with greetings from a friend to a new acquaintance ended with “my publisher is looking for exactly the type of books you’re writing.”

Networking has always influenced which books get into print. Numerous authors have signed publishing contracts because they had some connection to an agent, editor, publisher via friends, relatives, or acquaintances.

Dommemoir’s story has a few more degrees of separation. It started a few years ago when Cecilia Tan of Circlet Press invited me to join her professional network on LinkedIn. We’ve all gotten invitations from various folks we know to join numerous social networking sites. But, Cecilia is an editor who has purchased my work in the past. I joined. I put up a profile. I spent almost no time on the site.

A few months ago I received an e-mail from Paul Beidler. He had seen my profile on LinkedIn and followed the link to my website. He liked my work, was starting a new imprint (Fanny Press), and was actively seeking to publish the type of fiction I write.

He asked me if I had any projects for which I was seeking a publisher. I mentioned a novel I had written several years ago which I found hard to market because of its unique structure. He asked to see it, loved it, and decided to launch his new venture as a publisher of cutting-edge erotic fiction and nonfiction with it.

Yes, that’s correct. I did not submit the book to dozens of agents and publishers. (Okay, I did send it to one or two publishers when I finished it several years ago, but it sat in the virtual drawer since while I wrote and promoted other novels).

I’m excited about being part of a new venture and thrilled to have a publisher who loves my book, wants to help make it successful, and will offer it both in paper and electronically. Since the books I write are, for the most part, outside what mainstream publishers and readers will accept, I’m also delighted to participate in a less-than-traditional method to deliver my novels to those who will appreciate them.

At the end of the day, it won’t matter who the players are in the publishing industry. No matter what format they’re ultimately delivered in, good stories will always find a home with those who want to enjoy them.

What do you think? Do you prefer reading books on paper or electronically? Do you prefer to listen to your stories?

If you’d like to comment, please join the conversation at Circlet Press.

Feminist Pornography

When I started this blog, my intention was to post regularly, but not frequently. Since I tweet daily, I decided to use this forum to occasionally explore interesting and controversial topics in depth. Then, my personal life exploded and prevented me from even contemplating a subject never mind doing the research required to write intelligently about one.

Recently, when a friend and fan of my writing offered to feature my books on her blog, she asked me if I considered myself a “feminist pornographer.” Talk about a loaded question — certainly not one I can answer casually. My second blog topic emerged with a deadline (which as a former newspaper reporter still motivates me).

The two terms — feminist and pornographer — are themselves volatile. For many, “feminist” is a fighting word, equated with man-hating and confused with female supremacy. Fundamentalists take this vitriol to the extreme. For example, Mike Adams, a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina, insists “Feminism is a minority social movement, whose members murder innocent children in order to obtain sexual gratification.” He rationalizes this outrageous statement with: “feminists today are voluntarily involved in a movement whose principal issue/goal is abortion on demand.” As a result of comments such as these, the word has attained negative connotations resulting in denial of the label even by those who, when questioned, agree with every tenet of feminism.

Then you have the major schism within feminism between the anti-pornographers and the sex-positive movement. The former argues that pornography degrades women. However, many women don’t consider the money they can earn as sex workers at all degrading, especially when compared to the minimum wage/no benefit job alternatives available (or not) to them.

No one has offered scientifically documented evidence of the specious argument that pornography contributes to violence against women, misogyny, or even the perpetuation of the patriarchal attitudes it reflects. Some have attempted to prove statistically that access to porn reduces rape. Tim Worst’s claims, in an article on examiner.com, that “since the mainstreaming of porn into American lives in the early 70s … the incidence of rape per capita has declined by an astonishing 85 percent … It isn’t exactly news that the rise of the internet and the web has made pornography vastly more available. … If exposure to porn did indeed cause rape, if on balance they were complements not substitutes, we would have expected an explosion in the incidence of rapes.”

Steven E. Landsburg writes in How the Web Prevents Rape on Slate.com: “More Net access, less rape.” He quotes Clemson professor Todd Kendall, who claims that “a 10 percent increase in Net access yields about a 7.3 percent decrease in reported rapes.”

While these conclusions are questionable, one valid point made in this article is that: “psychologists have found that male subjects, immediately after watching pornography, are more likely to express misogynistic attitudes. But as professor Kendall points out, we need to be clear on what those experiments are testing … the effects of watching pornography in a controlled laboratory setting under the eyes of a researcher,” Landsburg writes.

“The experience of viewing porn on the Internet, in the privacy of one’s own room, typically culminates in a slightly messier but far more satisfying experience — an experience that could plausibly tamp down some of the same aggressions that the pornus interruptus of the laboratory tends to stir up.”

Sexually repressed fundamentalists would like to eliminate pornography along with every other form of sexual pleasure that doesn’t result in conception. “Don’t women, and all people, have the right to control their bodies, access their sexual desires, and to enjoy safe and consensual sexual pleasure?” asks KaeLyn in Feminist Porn: Sex, Consent, and Getting Off “And while the porn and sex/adult industry is currently geared towards men and definitely objectifies women, forgets women’s pleasure, and supports an oppressive rape culture, I see a bigger solution than attempting to censor or criminalize sex.”

KaeLyn believes that “like abortion, homosexuality, and other social issues that have been labeled ‘deviant’ and make people uncomfortable, sex work and the sex trade will always go on, even if pushed underground. And legalization and support of sex work can open the door to helping the sex/adult industry become safer and healthier for sex workers and a more welcoming and affirming place for feminists and all people.” She also believes “in a society that truly values gender justice, where women can make free and safe choices about sex and sexuality, be free from abuse and assault, and have available to them the same frank and authentic access to their sexual selves that Western culture affords men from the day they pop out of the womb.”

Personally, I’ve always considered and proclaimed myself a feminist. I advocate equal rights for women including equal pay for equal work, protection from domestic abuse and rape, access to contraception, legal benefits equal to men’s, etc. But I’m also a FemDom (although not a female supremacist) who owns a collared submissive — not what many would consider “equal.” In addition I have many female friends and acquaintances who submit to their male masters, some who chose to live as slaves.

As for pornography, I myself have gotten caught up in the porn versus erotica debate with other authors on numerous occasions. I’ve quoted an author from whom I once took a class on the subject, Eric M. Witchey, who defines erotica as a story in which a character experiences a life-changing event as a result of a sexual encounter. I myself have differentiated the two by explaining erotica as fiction in which the sex scenes move the story forward or reveal/develop character compared to porn in which the story line is just used to tie the sex scenes together.

However,J.T. Benjamin says it best in All Worked Up About Porn for Erotica Readers Association, Inc.: “pornography is erotica that you don’t like, or that you don’t want to admit you do like.”

I believe my friend the feminist pornographer has the best approach. Rather than accept the mainstream feminist attitude that pornography degrades women or that women need to adjust their attitudes about their own bodies, she promotes “tackling the sticky issue of how men’s porn and male sexuality interact with gender dynamics and body image issues.”

She admits “I want to be objectified—thoroughly, explicitly, perversely — by men –because it turns me on. I enjoy using sex as power. I adore being the center of men’s sexual attention. I identify as sexually submissive.”

What makes her, in my opinion, a feminist, is that she has made these choices for herself rather than allowing society to choose her role because of her gender — just as I have chosen the dominant role in my relationship, just as my boy has chosen to submit to me, just as my friends have chosen to proudly wear their masters’ collars.

Which all brings me back to the original question: do I consider myself a “feminist pornographer”? The fiction I write could be described as erotica by the definitions above: the sex scenes move the story forward, reveal/develop character, and result in life changing experiences for the characters. Readers like it and admit they like it.

In reality, though, my novels don’t exactly meet the dictionary definition of erotica — they’re not intended to sexually arouse. Broken and Shattered are cautionary tales about the fine line between abuse and BDSM. One of the highest compliments I’ve received was from a woman I respect greatly who told me that they made her think.

Many would call the novels, and my published short stories, “smut” and “porn.” While I have always proclaimed my feminism with pride, in the past I have shied away from association with pornography. I’ve only admitted to writing erotica because I believe my work does have literary/artistic value beyond stimulating sexual desire.

But I think we need to take back that word, as others have taken back derogatory terms and embraced them. So yes, my friend, I consider myself a feminist pornographer. Thanks for helping me take pride in that.

Additional Reasons To Not Forget #amazonfail

Click on logo for Part 1

Yet more evidence has emerged that #amazonfail was not a glitch, nor was it an incident that began or ended on the weekend of April 12. Rather it apparently is part of an ongoing attempt by Amazon to exploit authors, discriminate against LGBTQ and erotic material, and control the book selling business.

Francine Saint Marie, author of the LAMBDA Notable Book, The Secret Keeping, as well as The Secret Trilogy and Girl Trouble, among others, has battled Amazon to get her rankings restored and Kindle royalty payments made by Amazon since January of 2008 (yes, 2008, that is NOT a typo).

She and her team started documenting Amazon’s anti-LGBTQ bias in the last quarter of 2008. At least some of the discussions about this subject on Amazon forums were deleted by Amazon.

“Censorship was clearly built into Amazon-Kindle’s digital-text-platform years ago when it was programmed to constantly crawl itself for new content and trip the automatic censors whenever it found certain keywords that Amazon’s leadership had designated as forbidden. Publishers and customers need to be aware that those dirty words (like “gay” and “lesbian” as well as “erotic” or “sexuality” or “adult”) will still cast you into the great Kindle abyss for all eternity and that missing sales rankings are really only the tip of the censor’s iceberg.”

On April 5, John Kremer, author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books reported in his Free Book Marketing Tip of the Week post that Amazon has deleted any reviews by authors who had the impudence to mention their own titles in posting their reviews.

I can’t speak for all authors, but I believe a review posted by another published author carries more weight. I’m proud to count some well known authors among those willing to praise my novels. As Kremer stated: “legitimate reviews that reveal that the reviewer is an expert (a book author) should be allowed, indeed should be highlighted.”

Amazon deleted reviews with no notice and only after much difficulty could anyone even obtain a reason why. As is typical with Amazon (along with the lack of communications) no change to this policy seems to be forthcoming.

Recently, Amazon instituted a policy of only allowing anyone “who has purchased items from Amazon and is in good standing in the Amazon community” to write reviews. As far as I know, Amazon is the only bookseller restricting online reviews to those who have given it money. This policy prevents anyone who has read and enjoyed my books, but chosen to purchase them from another vendor, from posting their opinions on Amazon. It has prevented me from posting a review of a book I enjoyed that was given to me by that book’s author.

I am not the only one (although we apparently are in the minority) still outraged by what has happened and what it means. A small sampling:

Dear Author: “Amazon offers up some plausible excuse – oh my it was an overzealous cataloguing error – and everyone assumes that this issue is over. But it’s not over, or at least it shouldn’t be, because the #AmazonFail episode is an example of how easily one company can make content essentially disappear from consumers.”

Richard Eoin Nash: “in a world where whiteness and straightness are “norms” and males benefit from our patriarchal history, it is always the GLBTQ books, the queer books, the non-normative books that get caught in the glitches, the ham-fisted errors.”

Patrick of Vroman’s Bookstore: “now is the perfect time to think about whether you want to trust one company to dominate the book market, or any market, for that matter. … It’s actually your freedom that’s at stake here, and putting things back the way they were, fixing the notorious “glitch,” won’t change that. Because your freedom was at stake long before this recent de-listing experiment.”

Lilith Saintcrow: “Talking points in place for a specific complaint is not a glitch. It is a marker of a policy. Just look at the initial responses Seymour got when he complained of deranking in February. ”

Nadia Cooke “The indies are failing because we, the consumers, turned to Amazon and the chains. No-one thought that their own actions carried any weight, forgetting that the power of capitalism comes from the aggregated effects of thousands—millions—of individuals.”

You can use this link to find the closest independent bookstores. The staff there should be able to order any book for you as long as it has an ISBN number.

If you don’t have access to a local independent or it censors what is available, two online independent options are Relatively Wilde and Powell’s of Portland, Oregon.

And, just for fun: #amazonfail The Music Video

Digg this post

Why We Should Not Forget #amazonfail

Click on logo for Part 2

Now, that Amazon has reinstated most of the 57,000 plus books that lost their rankings, their visibility, and their sales over the weekend, many people are letting #amazonfail die down. The twitter- verse has a very short attention span.

The backlash against the LGBTQ community and the “angry left” for making an “issue” out of a “technical glitch” has already begun.

However, this is not exclusively an LGBTQ issue. Many of the books that lost their ranking were heterosexual romances and non-fiction books on important issues such as surviving rape and preventing teen suicide. It’s not even an issue of what is and is not “adult” material. And, it doesn’t really matter if it was a “glitch” or a deliberate attempt by anyone inside or outside of Amazon to censor LGBTQ and adult material.

I have always maintained, while often taken to task for it by other authors, that Amazon is inherently evil for many reasons. Sunday, many of those authors and I joined forces to rally against a corporate behemoth that has, in my opinion, entirely too much power to decide what we can and cannot read and who profits from an author’s work.

But despite the fact that Amazon has not offered a consistent explanation or apologized for the negative impact this event had on many authors’ sales, most today return to business as usual, accepting the Amazon paradigm and its impact on what is available to read.

Other authors will argue that Amazon offers opportunities to small press and self-published authors that they wouldn’t otherwise have to reach readers. But those “opportunities” come at a very high price when you look at:

1. the discounts Amazon demands (some of Amazon’s ability to offer reduced prices on books comes out of the pockets of authors and publishers);
2. Amazon’s recent attempt to restrict access to its website by any POD publishers other than its own (See “Amazon Throws its Weight Around, Book Publishers Push Back” and BookLocker.com, class action antitrust lawsuit agasint Amazon) ;
3. and the number of small independent bookstores for whom Amazon was the tipping stone that pushed them over the edge and out of business.

Like everyone else, I was angry Sunday. It was a righteous anger, one that for me doesn’t dissipate with Amazon’s lame and inconsistent excuses about glitches and a French employee not knowing the difference between “adult,”"erotic,” and “sexuality.”

These arguments are particularly specious in light of Amazon reps telling Brooke Warner, Jessica Valenti’s editor at Seal Press, that Amazon “has been experimenting with the way they dole out content” and Mark R. Probst “In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude ‘adult’ material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists.”

In addition, Associate Professor of Journalism at Northern Illinois University Craig Seymour had his memoir removed from Amazon’s search results as early as February 2. (It was “mysteriously” restored after numerous complaints and endless correspondence on his part 25 days later.)

Personally, I was not adversely affected by the fiasco (well, except for the two days of productivity I lost to the battle). Rain and wind offered absolutely no temptation to venture outside my door. With one cat or the other curled up on my lap (and for a couple of hours both) I spent a good chunk of Sunday helping get the word out.

Although my books were also de-listed, they’re so far down in the Amazon stratosphere that I doubt if the few days of not being searchable noticeably impacted my sales. I encourage my readers to buy the books from other sources anyway and have removed links to Amazon from my website.

But, as stated in UK’s The Guardian: The move “highlights the extent to which Amazon has become one of the most powerful forces in the publishing industry – with the power to make or break a book.”

Buying books from Amazon gives the company that power. Saving a couple of dollars here and there has a VERY high long-term cost. Yes, the Twitter-verse, bloggers, and other authors united and perhaps forced Amazon to back pedal and/or fix the glitch — depending on who you believe — this time.

Keep in mind that Jeff Bezos is a large investor in Twitter. If you don’t want to see a repeat of this week’s ham-fisted (to use Amazon’s own word) attempt to control your world DO NOT BUY BOOKS from its websites.

Shop at your local independent bookstores (assuming they are not censoring erotic and LGBTQ material). If you are lucky enough to still have an independently owned brick & mortar bookstore in your town/city go spend your book money there. The staff should be able to order any book for you as long as it has an ISBN number.

If you don’t have access to a local independent or it censors what is available, I recommend Relatively Wilde and Powell’s of Portland, Oregon as online alternatives to shopping at Amazon.

I have no affiliation with either except as a book lover who appreciates a bookseller who truly cares about books and doesn’t view them as commodities. (Disclosure: I do know the owner of Relatively Wilde and he has been very supportive of my books.)

Some additional coverage if you’re interested:

Blogs and Twitter Coin “AmazonFail” (Wall Street Journal)

“Amazon Says Error Removed Listings” (New York Times)

“#Amazonfail and the politics of anti-corporate cyberactivism” (net.effect)

Amazon’s Conflicting Censorship Stories Show Problems

Lilith Saintcrow: “The biggest online retailer has been caught trying to tweak algorithms to place content it desires at the top of the lists. Not content the customers have desired, content Amazon desired.”

“Dear Jeff Bezos: Let’s be Adults, Shall We?” (Susie Bright)

Open Letter to Amazon Regarding Recent Policy Changes (Kassia Crosser)

“Amazonfail: A Call to Boycott Amazon” (Edward Champion).

Digg this post