Finally. As promised my #readerhack post.
So I guess there's this "reader hack" circulating TikTok. It is less a reader hack and more theft. From what I can gather, Amazon has a shitty-ass return policy when it concerns kindle books. People purchase the kindle book, read it and return it within the time limit. This is literally taking money out of author's pockets.
Most of this is based on my own experience, so an opinion piece. I know I'm usually a cheerful and happy person but this gets dark. I don't believe in this false-positivity shit that does the rounds (seriously, positive thought can only be complete once you take the actions to ensure a positive outcome, as someone who meditates a lot, and has been meditating since my late teens/early 20s, there's no magical manifestation meditation that will magically fix things, you need to take physical action and a lot of times, the first actual step in positive thought is acknowledging something negative, positive thought and manifestation could form another post when I get a chance). Life is not all sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes life is hard and no one is immune to it. The positive thought people are outright delusional in their denial of reality (I've had to deal with more than a few of these types and well, maybe positive thought will tell them they can fly and they'll jump off a fucking bridge).
The average author is not rich. The average author works another job, either full time or part time. Sometimes these day jobs are rather shitty (I have experience there and love my new job so much more because of it, and that would have happened before the ten pointless years because I had a very shitty job in college and my first year of university). Over the pandemic, some people decided to take their mental health issues out on me as if that is acceptable (it isn't). As a result I lost a lot of freelance clients with the stress and public telling off from someone incapable of reading and thinking and then processing what is being said. Royalties were why we and my son ate. I'm going to be paying off the debt that situation put me in all through the rest of this year and into next. Nor was it the first time something like that has happened (up until early 2018, it was such a common occurrence throughout my entire life, including childhood, that not a week went by with at least two incidents of this sort of drama, I guess after early 2018 I started to grow complacent as these incidents don't occur all that often anymore, but now, they're more devastating when they do).
My situation was extreme (and I'll post about that around the anniversary of handing in my final degree assignment, so grateful for the legal changes over here that freed me so four years later I landed my dream job). But speak to authors, artists, musicians, film makers, dancers, etc. Most of us aren't doing this full time. And we have families to feed. Even if we didn't, taking our hard-earned money is costing us. After loosing my clients, I was on the verge of eviction (no, the government does not pay for housing over here). So even if someone is single, no pets, no house plants and entirely alone, they still have living expenses. And if they're homeless, they have even more expenses with a lack of cooking and washing facilities, maybe paying for a night in a hostel, etc (I'm sure there's more). A homeless person would at the very least need to somehow hold onto a laptop and then find an internet connection to publish a book.
At the very least, authors are investing their time into creating your entertainment (as is everyone else working in the arts and entertainment). Self-published authors have further expenses - there's editing, cover art, layouts (I know I do my own art and layouts, but most don't). Then there's marketing, which can be rather expensive. A lot goes into creating a book and there's people beyond the author that need to be paid.
When I first moved to Liverpool a creep tried to convince me that it was okay to pirate whatever he wanted because no one makes money off it so no one looses. And he wonders why I avoid him. I literally get paid from my art. Sometimes it was the only way I was getting paid. If I'm not getting paid, I'm not paying the rent or the council tax or any of the other bills, I can't afford food or clothing. But he had a penis so therefore he was right (thank the gods again for the legal changes which mean I can now phone the police on these creep losers and thank god for my new job so I can start looking presentable again and not attract them in the first place, which may not necessarily be expensive but is when you have nothing). He was the type of person that thought authors puked out novels in a day or so. Even when a book is a quick write, there's still more going into it.
I'm going to use Name Dropping With Hayden as my example because I self-published this one. 56 Seconds remains my quickest write, but that might be more to do with the fact that when I sent it to the publisher on 01 April 2018, my next step was to tell them I have no idea about the cover art so they designed a few covers without my input. I couldn't decide between two so the ever-lovely Crabes picked the final one. NR even did the back of book blurb. Name Dropping with Hayden took about as long to write as 56 Seconds.
Once Name Dropping with Hayden was done, I had to go through it myself, slowly and carefully because I couldn't afford an editor. I think I left it to rest while I finished off Stef and Tucker 4: Secret. That took a few days and I've just mentioned that I could not afford an editor. I was so poor in late December/early January that not only could I not afford an editor, but I was struggling to afford even basic food (again, for the people at the back, the government does not fucking pay my goddamn way, I have a few ideas where that misconception comes from and let me just say that anyone that actually believes the government is paying someone's way is so far beyond stupid that it would be unbelievable if I didn't have to deal with these idiots, my remaining parent is one of these people before someone says "Bank of Mom and Dad").
Name Dropping with Hayden was my light during this dark and hungry time (although I wasn't as hungry as when I was in college and university and not allowed to eat). It made me happy to write it. If you see my blog post from last night, you can view my promo video for it. This past Christmas was absolutely horrible. Due to when it was released, I haven't received a royalty payment for it yet, but I can promise you that the money will probably go on my son's birthday to help make up for a shitty Christmas (I had lots of these and was hoping my son would never experience one, but people and their drama and incessant need for attention and need to blow up at you if they misinterpreted something). If I didn't find a new job, that upcoming royalty payment would have gone entirely on the rent.
After me editing my own book (this is really bad practice to any new authors or anyone thinking of writing and self publishing a book, if you are going through a publisher, a good publisher will either in-house edit or hire someone or in the case of Death's Head Press who published Becoming, hire your favourite editor, although I don't think they did that on purpose). I had to do the layout. While I wasn't getting much work in over the later lockdown I learned how to self publish (I am not the sort of person who likes to waste time, however, if you needed downtime during the pandemic for your mental health, especially to ensure you don't project what you feel onto others, I totally respect that, it takes a lot of different people with different personalities to make the world go around). By this point, I'm pretty confident with basic layouts (once I sort out The Daisies That Open at Midnight, We Gave the World Synthpop Dreams and That's Where All The Magic Is, I'll be learning why Becoming was such a nightmare for Death's Head Press). So that took a few hours.
Once the layout was done, I needed to make a cover. Now, I've been to art school. However, that was a long time ago and digital drawing tablets weren't a thing back then. Over the first lockdown, before work arrived for the day or before I started working I would practice on my drawing tablet. This time though I was having difficulties with the tablet so the cover didn't turn out how I wanted it. It is nowhere near as bad as the cover for Ghetto Super Skank but it didn't look how I wanted and that's important to me. It took time for me to learn how to draw and then how to draw digital and I'm still not very confident with it. The cover design took me about one week.
Once the cover was done, I had to convert the files. I'm lucky I had the internet to send them in (my internet bill was always late during this time) to godless and upload to amazon (if you want the paperback, get the ebook from godless, theres instructions on how to upload it to your kindle). So the only expense here was my time, my electricity and my internet bill. But you know, no paying the internet could have meant I wouldn't have been able to send it and upload it, which could have meant homelessness further down the line. I was on that much of a knife-edge while writing Name Dropping With Hayden that it could have happened (thankfully I have some great friends, including one who helped pay the rent during this time).
Back to the creep, is he paying for anyone's living expenses that he's stealing from? I doubt it. He's probably still out there preaching how stealing art and entertainment isn't hurting anyone. But it is hurting people. I mentioned the positive thought people at the top of this post, people like these #readerhack thieves are another form of this delusional behaviour. They are out there denying reality.
It isn't like you can't get free or cheap books. Amazon do kindle unlimited subscriptions and a lot of stuff is on there and the authors are still getting paid (pennies from what I hear, but I only have one book enrolled in it that I have self published and can't say it has benefited me, when I get the chance to give that one a new cover it is going on godless). On this website I have two free Era Two stories and two free Chester and Lester stories, plus two (or is it three?) of my university assignments. I'm always looking for reviews and will send out advance ebook copies for a review. Fuck, a few months ago, I would have sent you Name Dropping With Hayden and Stef and Tucker 4: Secret to beta because I couldn't afford an editor. I'm not the only author that has free titles available. And where I don't have stuff for free, each book in the Stef and Tucker series and Tainted 07/The Human Connection are 50 cents each on godless.
If you want people to keep making art, you need to actually pay us. Stop stealing from us. Authors have to give money back to amazon with each return. Most of us can't afford that.
As an author, if you're sick of amazon ripping you off, get on godless. I can sell my books for cheaper on there than on amazon and still make more money, which a few months ago was the difference between going hungry or not. It isn't just extreme horror. My bizarro and experimental stuff does a Hell of a lot better on there than my extreme stuff. It isn't just self-published authors on there. Talk to your publisher about godless if they haven't already signed up.
As a reader, you should be on godless. Look at some of these books:
This is just me picking books from the best seller's list. But as you can see, they're hardly bank breaking. Download the app and switch on the notifications and you won't miss anything on it.
This post is much longer than I intended. I have to cook dinner, then I have an art commission and a book to finish writing so I guess my Censorship Guide is going to have to wait. Seriously stop stealing books or music or films. Do you steal shoes or cars?
So I guess there's this "reader hack" circulating TikTok. It is less a reader hack and more theft. From what I can gather, Amazon has a shitty-ass return policy when it concerns kindle books. People purchase the kindle book, read it and return it within the time limit. This is literally taking money out of author's pockets.
Most of this is based on my own experience, so an opinion piece. I know I'm usually a cheerful and happy person but this gets dark. I don't believe in this false-positivity shit that does the rounds (seriously, positive thought can only be complete once you take the actions to ensure a positive outcome, as someone who meditates a lot, and has been meditating since my late teens/early 20s, there's no magical manifestation meditation that will magically fix things, you need to take physical action and a lot of times, the first actual step in positive thought is acknowledging something negative, positive thought and manifestation could form another post when I get a chance). Life is not all sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes life is hard and no one is immune to it. The positive thought people are outright delusional in their denial of reality (I've had to deal with more than a few of these types and well, maybe positive thought will tell them they can fly and they'll jump off a fucking bridge).
The average author is not rich. The average author works another job, either full time or part time. Sometimes these day jobs are rather shitty (I have experience there and love my new job so much more because of it, and that would have happened before the ten pointless years because I had a very shitty job in college and my first year of university). Over the pandemic, some people decided to take their mental health issues out on me as if that is acceptable (it isn't). As a result I lost a lot of freelance clients with the stress and public telling off from someone incapable of reading and thinking and then processing what is being said. Royalties were why we and my son ate. I'm going to be paying off the debt that situation put me in all through the rest of this year and into next. Nor was it the first time something like that has happened (up until early 2018, it was such a common occurrence throughout my entire life, including childhood, that not a week went by with at least two incidents of this sort of drama, I guess after early 2018 I started to grow complacent as these incidents don't occur all that often anymore, but now, they're more devastating when they do).
My situation was extreme (and I'll post about that around the anniversary of handing in my final degree assignment, so grateful for the legal changes over here that freed me so four years later I landed my dream job). But speak to authors, artists, musicians, film makers, dancers, etc. Most of us aren't doing this full time. And we have families to feed. Even if we didn't, taking our hard-earned money is costing us. After loosing my clients, I was on the verge of eviction (no, the government does not pay for housing over here). So even if someone is single, no pets, no house plants and entirely alone, they still have living expenses. And if they're homeless, they have even more expenses with a lack of cooking and washing facilities, maybe paying for a night in a hostel, etc (I'm sure there's more). A homeless person would at the very least need to somehow hold onto a laptop and then find an internet connection to publish a book.
At the very least, authors are investing their time into creating your entertainment (as is everyone else working in the arts and entertainment). Self-published authors have further expenses - there's editing, cover art, layouts (I know I do my own art and layouts, but most don't). Then there's marketing, which can be rather expensive. A lot goes into creating a book and there's people beyond the author that need to be paid.
When I first moved to Liverpool a creep tried to convince me that it was okay to pirate whatever he wanted because no one makes money off it so no one looses. And he wonders why I avoid him. I literally get paid from my art. Sometimes it was the only way I was getting paid. If I'm not getting paid, I'm not paying the rent or the council tax or any of the other bills, I can't afford food or clothing. But he had a penis so therefore he was right (thank the gods again for the legal changes which mean I can now phone the police on these creep losers and thank god for my new job so I can start looking presentable again and not attract them in the first place, which may not necessarily be expensive but is when you have nothing). He was the type of person that thought authors puked out novels in a day or so. Even when a book is a quick write, there's still more going into it.
I'm going to use Name Dropping With Hayden as my example because I self-published this one. 56 Seconds remains my quickest write, but that might be more to do with the fact that when I sent it to the publisher on 01 April 2018, my next step was to tell them I have no idea about the cover art so they designed a few covers without my input. I couldn't decide between two so the ever-lovely Crabes picked the final one. NR even did the back of book blurb. Name Dropping with Hayden took about as long to write as 56 Seconds.
Once Name Dropping with Hayden was done, I had to go through it myself, slowly and carefully because I couldn't afford an editor. I think I left it to rest while I finished off Stef and Tucker 4: Secret. That took a few days and I've just mentioned that I could not afford an editor. I was so poor in late December/early January that not only could I not afford an editor, but I was struggling to afford even basic food (again, for the people at the back, the government does not fucking pay my goddamn way, I have a few ideas where that misconception comes from and let me just say that anyone that actually believes the government is paying someone's way is so far beyond stupid that it would be unbelievable if I didn't have to deal with these idiots, my remaining parent is one of these people before someone says "Bank of Mom and Dad").
Name Dropping with Hayden was my light during this dark and hungry time (although I wasn't as hungry as when I was in college and university and not allowed to eat). It made me happy to write it. If you see my blog post from last night, you can view my promo video for it. This past Christmas was absolutely horrible. Due to when it was released, I haven't received a royalty payment for it yet, but I can promise you that the money will probably go on my son's birthday to help make up for a shitty Christmas (I had lots of these and was hoping my son would never experience one, but people and their drama and incessant need for attention and need to blow up at you if they misinterpreted something). If I didn't find a new job, that upcoming royalty payment would have gone entirely on the rent.
After me editing my own book (this is really bad practice to any new authors or anyone thinking of writing and self publishing a book, if you are going through a publisher, a good publisher will either in-house edit or hire someone or in the case of Death's Head Press who published Becoming, hire your favourite editor, although I don't think they did that on purpose). I had to do the layout. While I wasn't getting much work in over the later lockdown I learned how to self publish (I am not the sort of person who likes to waste time, however, if you needed downtime during the pandemic for your mental health, especially to ensure you don't project what you feel onto others, I totally respect that, it takes a lot of different people with different personalities to make the world go around). By this point, I'm pretty confident with basic layouts (once I sort out The Daisies That Open at Midnight, We Gave the World Synthpop Dreams and That's Where All The Magic Is, I'll be learning why Becoming was such a nightmare for Death's Head Press). So that took a few hours.
Once the layout was done, I needed to make a cover. Now, I've been to art school. However, that was a long time ago and digital drawing tablets weren't a thing back then. Over the first lockdown, before work arrived for the day or before I started working I would practice on my drawing tablet. This time though I was having difficulties with the tablet so the cover didn't turn out how I wanted it. It is nowhere near as bad as the cover for Ghetto Super Skank but it didn't look how I wanted and that's important to me. It took time for me to learn how to draw and then how to draw digital and I'm still not very confident with it. The cover design took me about one week.
Once the cover was done, I had to convert the files. I'm lucky I had the internet to send them in (my internet bill was always late during this time) to godless and upload to amazon (if you want the paperback, get the ebook from godless, theres instructions on how to upload it to your kindle). So the only expense here was my time, my electricity and my internet bill. But you know, no paying the internet could have meant I wouldn't have been able to send it and upload it, which could have meant homelessness further down the line. I was on that much of a knife-edge while writing Name Dropping With Hayden that it could have happened (thankfully I have some great friends, including one who helped pay the rent during this time).
Back to the creep, is he paying for anyone's living expenses that he's stealing from? I doubt it. He's probably still out there preaching how stealing art and entertainment isn't hurting anyone. But it is hurting people. I mentioned the positive thought people at the top of this post, people like these #readerhack thieves are another form of this delusional behaviour. They are out there denying reality.
It isn't like you can't get free or cheap books. Amazon do kindle unlimited subscriptions and a lot of stuff is on there and the authors are still getting paid (pennies from what I hear, but I only have one book enrolled in it that I have self published and can't say it has benefited me, when I get the chance to give that one a new cover it is going on godless). On this website I have two free Era Two stories and two free Chester and Lester stories, plus two (or is it three?) of my university assignments. I'm always looking for reviews and will send out advance ebook copies for a review. Fuck, a few months ago, I would have sent you Name Dropping With Hayden and Stef and Tucker 4: Secret to beta because I couldn't afford an editor. I'm not the only author that has free titles available. And where I don't have stuff for free, each book in the Stef and Tucker series and Tainted 07/The Human Connection are 50 cents each on godless.
If you want people to keep making art, you need to actually pay us. Stop stealing from us. Authors have to give money back to amazon with each return. Most of us can't afford that.
As an author, if you're sick of amazon ripping you off, get on godless. I can sell my books for cheaper on there than on amazon and still make more money, which a few months ago was the difference between going hungry or not. It isn't just extreme horror. My bizarro and experimental stuff does a Hell of a lot better on there than my extreme stuff. It isn't just self-published authors on there. Talk to your publisher about godless if they haven't already signed up.
As a reader, you should be on godless. Look at some of these books:
- Puritea by Lucy Leitner 50 cents (I haven't started this one yet)
- Spunk of the Sasquatch also 50 cents (with a title like that you know it is going to be good)
- Laser Slut, 99 cents instead of $1.99
- The Sexual Avenger 50 fucking cents
This is just me picking books from the best seller's list. But as you can see, they're hardly bank breaking. Download the app and switch on the notifications and you won't miss anything on it.
This post is much longer than I intended. I have to cook dinner, then I have an art commission and a book to finish writing so I guess my Censorship Guide is going to have to wait. Seriously stop stealing books or music or films. Do you steal shoes or cars?