Publishing

As you may have read here earlier, I’ve run into some roadblocks with the launch of Gray War. The middle managers at Amazon Marketing Solutions won’t let me advertise it, citing “violent content” on the cover. That gave me the idea for tonight’s Stand Your Ground Stream. Larry Correia and Nick Cole have both experienced direct attacks on their careers and character, and Jason Anspach has experienced it slightly more indirectly, as Galaxy’s Edge Press’s account was deleted from Kindle Direct publishing last year, citing a clearly false accusation. Whether it’s bureaucratic incompetence, a decaying algorithm increasingly swamped by the signal to noise ratio, or actual malice, there are plenty of roadblocks to the author out there. Tonight, we’re going to talk about standing your ground and making it work despite those obstacles. Come join us.

Amazon, Galaxy’s Edge, and Single Points of Failure

So, over the weekend, someone or somebot at Amazon apparently decided that Galaxy’s Edge Press was in violation of their terms of service, and deleted and banned their KDP account. Dozens of books disappeared from Amazon in a heartbeat. An entire weekend’s cash flow was disrupted. It did get resolved, and all the books are back up this morning, though a lot of the details of just what happened are still hazy. There are some ideologues at Amazon who like to pull these little fast ones from time to time. Entire authors have been deleted. There’s no evidence that this is what happened this time, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. As Nick Cole has said, it still makes one wonder about being Amazon exclusive. Now, this is concerning to me for a couple of reasons. One, my upcoming releases through GE Press’s Wargate imprint were also affected. But that’s almost a secondary concern. Amazon has been a hell of a tool for the independent author. Kindle Direct Publishing has enabled thousands who might not otherwise have gotten published–not necessarily due to the quality of their work, either–to get their stuff out there. That’s one of the