PayPal Revises Policies to Allow Legal Fiction_Posted by Mark Coker (by erotica writers and such, curtailing their mercantile censorship)

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

In a victory for free speech, PayPal today announced plans to revise their content policies to allow Smashwords writers full freedom to publish and sell legal ebooks.

I met with PayPal at their offices yesterday in San Jose. They outlined their proposed policy changes for me. I was impressed.

This is a victory for all writers and readers. It removes credit card companies, banks and payment processors from the business of censoring legal fiction. It creates a new precedent that should allow other payment processors who have previously discriminated against legal fiction to relax their policies.

It will make more fiction more available to more readers. It gives writers greater freedom to express themselves. It gives readers more freedom to decide what they want to experience in the privacy of their own imagination.

If you haven't followed the Paypal censorship saga, you can see how the campaign developed by reading my email dispatches to Smashwords authors, publishers and customers. They're archived in the Smashwords Press Room (see PayPal #1, #2, #3, #4, #5).

When I received the first email from PayPal February 18 with the ultimatum to remove certain erotica content or face loss of PayPal services at Smashwords, my first inclination was to try to limit the damage so we could protect mainstream erotica from further censorship incursion. Thanks to the outpouring of opposition to these policies, I saw an opportunity to make PayPal our partner in a greater campaign to protect all legal fiction from censorship.

Credit for this breakthrough goes to the indie author community who made phone calls, wrote letters and emails, blogged and tweeted; bloggers who raised visibility of the issue; advocacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) and the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) who were the first to stand up for our authors; mainstream media who raised visibility of the story to greater levels; and last but not least, PayPal. PayPal worked with us in the spirit of partnership to understand the issues, understand Smashwords and how we represent a new model for publishing outside the traditional gatekeeping system, and to understand that fiction is fiction and literary merit should be determined by readers.

I'm sending out an email today to all Smashwords authors and publishers with more details and thanks. An archived version is in the Smashwords press room here._Posted by Mark Coker

An Answer to the Frustration of REAL Publishing at LinkedIn.com

Perhaps the real questions are do you want to wait a year or two to find an agent, and another yr or 2 to get an editor, and then a publisher?

Oh. Your editor just quit and you're agent's a dink. And you have to start over. How many years of your life will that take?

Or.

You get all your ducks in order and get that brass ring REAL publisher, that drops your book off market and makes it nearly impossible for anyone to buy--the very same year it's published!

These things are what I saw in my research before publishing, and also that many of the "self-publishing houses" had/have atrociously bad contracts. They are my books not theirs, if they wish to lease fine, if not, then a quick release of a few weeks should be doable.

You will be doing a lot of your marketing no matter who publishes it, but if you want to be certain it's out there long enough [takes about 5 yrs? for a Christmas Box or Joy of Sex] to become the next author-published goody that hits HUGE,.

So, you may consider joining we the author-published [also known as self-published and POD]. But, author publisher is cleaner, truer, and hasn't the baggage.

Check out the great contract at www.InfinityPublishing.com and call [I think it's still 877-BUY BOOK] and ask for their SAMPLE BOOK which is a perfect bound sample of the actual POD/print as they're purchased that they'll print for you with all the info to your questions. Their contract--if a huge house pick you up--can be released without any fuss, and within a few weeks. Not years.

And/Or invest in your own isbn's [www.isbn.org / www.bowkerlink.com] and upload to Ingram's www.LightningSource.com which prints and/or distributes pretty much all the big REAL publisher books and ebooks, as well as mine, to most booksellers online and brick and mortar.

And they don't stiff you with a ton of books to get waterdamaged in the garage or basement. You can order at cost and they'll ship for you to whoever needs to see your book, when you're marketing.

But they fulfill all bookseller [Amazon, BN, etc] orders without you, if you like. I like. I love.

All this requires learning more entrepreneurship skills and coordinating or doing your own editing, layout, and packaging.

All of my releases are still growing, and I'm set up now that if I want to write story or text, do layout, cover, and upload to them and have it go on sale within the same week. No. No bull....

Do look check them out, because putting your energy into--as the man said above--a dying system may not make you any happier.

Do you want to publish? Believe me the validation is there when you see your properties on sale across the net worldwide, and when you get your royalties, monthly, if you make sales.

Instead of 2-4 times a year from the majors, I believe it is.

This way is much work but there is much satisfaction and peace of mind, as well. And the years you spent chasing NYers or whomever, who by the way have been putting out badly edited and researched books, too, for a decade or more, have NOTHING to say about author publishing. Highly frustrating.

They are the big marketers nothing more.

So, you could use those years to learn epublishing and get your publishing company or a consortium group together and work on your books as a group.

Neale Sourna

www.PIE-Percept.com [publishing]
www.Neale-Sourna.com [author site]
www.Writing-Naked.com

www.LightningSource.com [national and worldwide print and distribution--ebooks (Adobe PDF/EPUB, MS, Palm), print books of all binding, interior color, and distributes to the new airport POD book kiosks]

Legal Battles Over E-Book Rights to Older Books

By MOTOKO RICH

Published: December 12, 2009

William Styron may have been one of the leading literary lions of recent decades, but his books are not selling much these days. Now his family has a plan to lure digital-age readers with e-book versions of titles like “Sophie’s Choice,” “The Confessions of Nat Turner” and Mr. Styron’s memoir of depression, “Darkness Visible.”

Skip to next paragraph

William Styron in 1983.

Related

The Letter From Mr. Dohle (pdf)

But the question of exactly who owns the electronic rights to such older titles is in dispute, making it a rising source of conflict in one of the publishing industry’s last remaining areas of growth.

Mr. Styron’s family believes it retains the rights, since the books were first published before e-books existed. Random House, Mr. Styron’s longtime publisher, says it owns those rights, and it is determined to secure its place — and continuing profits — in the Kindle era.

The discussions about the digital fate of Mr. Styron’s work are similar to the negotiations playing out across the book industry as publishers hustle to capture the rights to release e-book versions of so-called backlist books. Indeed, the same new e-book venture Mr. Styron’s family hopes to use has run into similar resistance from the print publisher of “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller.

On Friday, Markus Dohle, chief executive of Random House, sent a letter to dozens of literary agents, writing that the company’s older agreements gave it “the exclusive right to publish in electronic book publishing formats.”

Backlist titles, which continue to be reprinted long after their initial release, are crucial to publishing houses because of their promise of lucrative revenue year after year. But authors and agents are particularly concerned that traditional publishers are not offering sufficient royalties on e-book editions, which they point out are cheaper for publishers to produce. Some are considering taking their digital rights elsewhere, which could deal a financial blow to the hobbled publishing industry.

The tussle over who owns the electronic rights — and how much the authors should earn in digital royalties — potentially puts into play works by authors like Ralph Ellison and John Updike.

Some publishers have already made agreements with authors or their estates to release digital editions. All of Ernest Hemingway’s books, for example, are available in electronic versions from his print publisher, Scribner, a unit of Simon & Schuster.

But with only a small fraction of the thousands of books in print available in e-book form, there are many titles to be fought over.

“This is a wide open frontier.....[more at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/business/media/13ebooks.html#]

A version of this article appeared in print on December 13, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.
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And people ask why I publish my own works. Yes, it's work and like a voice crying in the wilderness all alone; but, it's my voice. And autonomy and independence and knowing my titles aren't ignored or pulled out of rotation for no apparent reason except boredom in waiting for the BIG NUMBERS by "my publisher" for a huge, star customer other than myself--I'm my own star!--is worth the sleep at night.--Neale Sourna

Publishing an ebook which is better Lulu or Amazon?

Question:

Publishing an ebook which is better Lulu or Amazon?

Answer:

Look at Ingram's www.LightningSource.com for both ebook [adobe, ms, palm] and print books [most bindings and interior color now, colour in UK :)] and they can link you into national and international distribution online and brick/mortars, and airport book kiosks; bring your own ISBNs [www.Bowkerlink.com].

Amazon, I believe, only takes MobiPocket [for Kindle] ebooks, which you can download, set up and upload yourself from MS Word or Adobe Acrobat file.

Your $% cut can be large or small at Ingram's--you control it. Amazon Mobi is 50/50, It think.

It is feasible, once you're in Lightning Source , that you can write, edit, and publish and have on sale within a couple of weeks--all uploaded from your own computer.

You can do all this yourself, I do--with some hysterical hair-pulling, every now and then; but, I can, publish weekly or whatever and it'll be available nationally and internationally.

Or, you can have a layout editor at Elance.com or Guru.com help you (at a price), then upload the files yourself. Price your books above the print rate for print [it's pretty much ALL yours in ebooks] with a % for all the bookstores to share, and the payments (minus the printing rate) come in monthly straight to you--if you have sales.

All this costs a lot less than having a rather printer print and stack books to get damaged in your basement.

Also, Infinity Publishing / BuyBooksOnTheWeb has good low rates to typeset your files, design a cover, and distribute for you. Call [1-877-BUY-BOOK] them for a sample book, which will have all their info for setting up with them, and latest prices.

Neale Sourna

Links:

* http://www.LightningSource.com
* http://www.InfinityPublishing.com
* http://www.Bowkerlink.com