Quote:
Originally Posted by ficbot
Put a website telling customers who you have been writing to and what steps you are actively taking to get the problems solved so that they really can buy the books they want legitimately. Think outside the box. Do SOMETHING! But suggesting that a customer who has spent the money to legally buy a book second-hand because nobody would offer it to them first-hand should then voluntarily spend more money just to help the author out? That is insulting.
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Oh, my. Sorry I punched your buttons. Seriously. This reaction's not good for your blood pressure. There was a reason I put a smilie behind that particular comment. It was a joke. The point was, simply, a suggestion to help, not insult.
But in case you haven't noticed, I
am doing something and I'm also encouraging other authors caught in the same mess to do the same by sharing freely all I'm learning. Authors
are banding together, as witness Book View Cafe and other similar sites. I simply suggested, in response to a previous post, that rather than chastising an author whose book you bought at a used bookstore, you might invite them to Mobile Read for some ENCOURAGING input on viable options.
I won't address the issue of the differences between corporate jobs and creative jobs or even the differences between types of writing...even short stories vs 200,000 word novels. Or the issue of those people now writing who have been writing full time for decades, who are nearing the age when non-creative people retire, and are seeing what should have been their retirement, i.e. their backlist, caught in the cross-hairs from both sides of this issue and beyond their ability to save it because of decisions made when the only game in town were dead tree books.
Others have done a very nice job of that, and I thank them for it.
Bottom line, you're yelling at the already converted and it seems to me that your attitude will scare off the very people you imply you to would like to convert. But I could be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time.