When the horrendous terms of Amazon’s Audible platform were revealed, many indie authors turned to Findaway Voices to distribute their audiobooks instead. But the industry is now scrambling in alarm following the 2022 acquisition of Findaway Voices by Spotify, who, within two years, have managed to make Amazon look like a perfect saint in comparison. (Okay, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch.) Although Spotify backed down (slightly) thanks to the overwhelming backlash following their initial announcement, which included the line about waiving the right to object to derogatory use of one’s work, their previous history of issues in the music industry along with their apparent lack of understanding of the independent book publishing industry is deeply concerning. The original paragraph in the new Spotify terms that sparked outrage. This clause has since been redrafted.   As part of their backpedaling, Spotify published a list of FAQ in direct response to concerns voiced over so...

  Episode 02 - Scorpion-Readers and the Writers Being Stung Transcript and links: A scorpion asked a busy beaver for a ride across the river. The beaver complied, and that time it was fine. Other scorpions heard about the deal and arrived for a lift across the river. The beaver began spending more time giving lifts to scorpions than he did building his dam… so he asked the scorpions to each carry a small twig to help with the dam building. And for a while that was fine. One day one scorpion took offense at the request and halfway across the river he dropped his twig and stung the beaver. “Why did you do that?” cried the beaver with his last few breaths. “You’ve killed me for no reason. The other scorpions now have no one to help them across the river. And what about you? You’re going to drown.” “Don’t care,” said the scorpion. “I’ll just float here until another beaver comes along.” [Music] Author, how shall I harm thee? Let me count the ways. Piracy, copyright theft, and p...

Promoting books is all about exposure. No, I don't mean running around the neighborhood nekkid, although that might get a lot of attention. What I mean is that people have to know about your book in order to be interested in reading it, and that entails spreading the word far and wide on the Internet and in the real world. In my earlier post here at The Blood-Red Pencil this month, BSP - It's All About Buzz, I mentioned how much I dislike this promotional part of the writing biz, and most of the comments on that post shared the same sentiment. So it was kind of ironic that in my research for this article I came across this bit of advice from Tony Levelle in a blog post on the Writers Store Ezine.    He suggests that we change that negative to a positive.  Think of book promotion as storytelling. The story you are telling is why you wrote your book, how it can help others, and how the world will benefit from your book. If you can develop a positive attitude ab...