Updates and More!

Lana Rae and the Magic Wand is now available for any format you like on Smashwords.  There won’t be another Smashwords update this week, but I hope you’ll enjoy that story as Amazon looses its grip on that title.

On another note, and please forgive me for sounding petty, but I have noted a rash of returns from the UK.  Not just returns, but a pattern of purchasing and returning within the normal two- to three-day window.  I am no stranger to a few returns here and there.  It happens.  The nature of the stories I write means that someone may be getting more than they bargained for with some of these titles.  To the offended, I apologize, but the behavior I’ve seen with the sales and near-immediate returns is more in line with someone who reads the story (or stories) and just doesn’t want to pay for them.

If you’ve read the intermittent blog posts at all, you know that I aim to be able to write full time, which means writing more, of course, but with the freedom to do so in my own fashion.  You, my wonderful readers, are the people that make that possible.  Most of you, especially those who have written, have been kind and wonderful to interact with.  Someone who “games” the system to read material for free is essentially saying, “Yes, I value your work and the time it takes to produce it, but I don’t feel like I should have to pay for it.  I’m just trying to read a little naughty fiction after all.”

That makes you, the person who holds that attitude, a very bad person.  I suppose there are always those bad apples, but I wanted to take a moment to say that exploiting Amazon’s return policy is essentially pirating, just like a movie or video game.  You have consumed the material, but have given nothing in return.  Most self-published authors make around $1.50 – $2.00 for every digital copy they sell.  Granted, that’s not much, but you write and write, and, eventually, you start doing alright as more titles are bought or reviewed or recommended.  I have been very fortunate to receive largely positive reviews, and that helps in a big way.   But these serial returners who pay one day and refund the next…  Well, they are simply freeloading.  I imagine a sociopath, someone who doesn’t understand that an author actually works hard to bring the stories to life.  This sociopath buys the book in question, reads and enjoys it, but then returns the digital copy.  This no person has no regard for the work, really, certainly no regard for the author of the work, and cannot pause to think that, just maybe, the author who wrote the work is deserving of the rather small sum of money for the experience of reading the purchased material.  Some returns are bound to occur, but I have seen too many patterns of chronic returns from the same location, where multiple books are purchased at once only to be returned the following day.  This sort of person takes from my pocket and insults the work I do.  They are terrible, awful people.  I hope you, dear reader, are not one of them.

Thank you to all of you who read and leave feedback or email me or leave a comment, or even find me on Facebook.  You are all wonderful!  For those who believe the world exists for their own enjoyment, to dismiss the work of others, I feel sorry that you don’t understand such a basic concept as paying for goods and services.  You make everyone else look bad for your behavior.  I hope you consider your actions in the future.

Enough grousing, on to the smut!

-L

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