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I bought both of his books and hope that he succeeds in his endeavor, if for no other reason than to help liberate authors from publishers, if they so wish.
Just out of curiosity, for those of you who are upset with something or way he does something, what do you think he should do?
I am not trying to be rude, but honestly would like to know.
According to wikipedia (not the best source but good enough for this) there are 26 different eBook formats. Arguably, many of these are old and outdated, but still. A quick search of wikipedia again shows that of all listed eBook readers only the Kindle cannot read ePub formatted books. To address that he has offered the book in the mobibook format through Amazon. So, he has made his work available in two formats which are readable on virtually every, if not every, eBook reader out there. At what point does demanding different formats be made available become a bit ridiculous, and at what point is the ROI for the author not worth it? While it isn't anywhere near what the publishers want you to believe, it does take time and effort to create an ebook format. As an author, and a reader, I am hard pressed to see why he should make his books available in a format other than ePub and Mobi. I just don't see a reasonable ROI on that work.
As for payment methods. The last time I purchased from Mr. Stackpole's store, about a year ago, he took CC sales directly, and I don't remember him taking Paypal. Therefore, it is obvious that he is still trying to feel out the best way to do business with his customers. Personally, I think that Paypal is a reasonable alternative to taking CC sales directly. Also, he has made his books available in the Amazon store and in the iBookstore. However, a quick browsing of Google Checkout doesn't show anything significantly different from Paypal as to preclude his offering through them, but I don't know all of the specifics.
Regarding the personal information that many of you state he wants to collect. I see this as either a remnant of the time when he was using CC for payment and such information is necessary to combat CC number theft (ergo, the supplied address doesn't match the billing address). However, you also need to keep in mind that we live in a very litigious society. While I enjoy Mr. Stackpole's work, and it isn't explicit, many of his works deal with adult themes. In his Trip Malloy short stories the protagonist works at a strip club as a bouncer and is often dealing with crimes. Honestly, with how some parents would be more than happy to sue someone for "allowing" their children to read such stories I think asking for an age is a minimum of what he might need to do to cover himself if it should come to that. You see it as an invasion of privacy. He and his attorney may see it as a means of avoiding a multi-million dollar lawsuit by someone looking to collect because he didn't take prudent measures to keep children from reading age inappropriate stories.
As for why he isn't offering the eBook through B&N or Borders, can an independent author even post eBooks for sale on these two stores? I have no idea why he isn't offering it on smashwords. Other than I don't know all of the ins and outs of the service. I know that they take a cut of your sales, and that they offer it through several different store fronts. However, can an author pick and choose which store fronts he wishes to distribute to? For instance, can he state that he wants to offer his book for sale through Smashwords to B&N and Borders and Kobo, but not the iBookstore or Amazon? If not, then the percentage in sales that they take from the iBookstore and Amazon might not make up for the extra he would make from the added storefronts.
Michael Stackpole is pretty vocal about the fact that in the world of eBooks a person needs to be both an author and a business person. Perhaps some of what upsets people here are simply mistakes made by an author learning about the best way to do business, or perhaps they are simply unfortunate realities of the way business needs to be done in the US to keep the author safe and solvent. Honestly, I don't know the answer to that, but he seems very responsive to feedback, so I would let him know about your concerns.
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