A little note to authors: Don't worry about piracy

Say you're a newbie author. Say you've written a masterpiece. Say you've worked your ass off, you've applied for a copyright, and you've uploaded to Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Smashwords, Apple, etc. You're proud of what you've accomplished, and damn right--you should be so fucking proud of yourself. It's a lot of work, writing and then publishing a book. Believe me, I know what that feels like: 18 novels, a slew of short stories and children's books, a few novellas. Yep, I do.

But after a day or two, someone whispers in your ear, and a level of fear you've never experienced before goes squirreling up your backside: What if someone pirates your book? You know, those torrent sites out there... they have everyone's book. And I mean EVERYONE'S.

Your hand goes to your mouth, and your teeth search out your fingernails. You gnaw them until you're bleeding, and your heart races along, causing your chest to ache. Worry has set in. Worry from six little words that someone has inserted into your mindset, six little words that have festered and boiled until it has you awake deep into the night, your natural, author-ly anxieties taking hold of you, depriving you of sleep, of rest.

I've worked hard on this book, you think to yourself. I want to make sure that I earn the money in my royalties. I don't want to be pirated, because, you know, that's stealing. And stealing is wrong! Wrong I say!

Of course it is, and no one is arguing that point. The point is that as an author, you shouldn't be worried about ebook piracy.

Why? Because if someone is downloading your material from a torrent site, they weren't going to buy your book to begin with. A download from a torrent site is not a lost sale, and neither is it a loss of revenue for you.

If anything, it's more of a headache for the person that did the downloading. That torrent site is more than likely a phishing scam for the downloader's PayPal and credit card information, and the site is full of spyware and malware. That's crap someone doesn't need on their computer. But if they happen to download your book from these sites, read it, and like it, they may tell 10 friends about it--10 friends who are very likely to not make purchases in such a nefarious manner--and they may tell 10 friends. I've always said that word of mouth is your best friend when it comes to growing your readership. If it comes with a deceitful edge... well, no worries! That's an eventual win for you.

Sure, it's illegal to steal. That's not really the argument. Sure, you can get yourself a good attorney and send a cease-and-desist letter with the DCMA legalese scribbled across the top, but why give yourself that headache? Why worry about stuff over which you have absolutely no control? Are you going to sit there and worry about every, single, fucking, piece of shit torrent site out there on the Internet--and let's face it, the Internet is a huge, huge place--when you should be worrying more about perfecting your craft, creating awesome, kick-ass characters, developing intriguing plots with twists that keep readers on the edge of their seat and forcing them to flip pages? There are new torrent sites every day. There will be new torrent sites tomorrow. The day after that. Next week. Next month. Next year. Keeping up with all that shit is a headache, will give you gray hair, and make you lose sleep. Do you really think that's going to stop them? I repeat: You have no control over them. Control what you can control.

Of course, there are some who opt into Kindle Select and may, at some point, receive a nifty little email from Amazon informing you that you've broken the terms of Select because your work appears elsewhere on the 'Net, i.e., a torrent site. That'll be a headache in and of itself, and in my honest opinion, it's one you've brought on yourself for putting all your eggs in one basket; I consider that a slap in the face to your friends who want to buy your book but can't because they simply happen to have a different ereader. Of course, your mileage may vary, and it's your career. You may never get that email, and you can consider yourself lucky.

In closing, Joe Konrath told me a little somethin'-somethin' a few years ago: If you've been pirated, it means that you're worth being pirated.

I'm sure my books are on torrent sites. I'm sure that they'll be on torrent sites for years to come. Am I worried? Hell no! Why?

Because I'm worth it.

So are you.

www.seansweeneyauthor.com

Coming Soon--LITERARY AGENT: A Thriller

Jaclyn Johnson is back in an all-new, pulse-pounding adventure, and this time, the deck is stacked fully against her!

It’s the holidays, ex-FBI agent-turned-author Jack Henshaw has been kidnapped, and the secrets he holds has the government worried. Jaclyn—along with her British boy toy, Tom Messingham—are sent to Detroit, Henshaw’s hometown, on Christmas Eve to begin their investigation.

Things turn out not as they seem, and while an ex-member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police claims responsibility—as well as giving the Americans a list of outlandish demands—Jaclyn’s investigation grinds to a halt until she gets the break she needs.

It’s a break that could unravel national security as Jaclyn knows it.

LITERARY AGENT is the fifth full-length Jaclyn Johnson story.

RIP, Nook Simple Touch

Two weeks ago, I blogged about the death of the Sony Reader and at the end, openly wondered, "Who's next?"

Today, we got our answer.

Nook has phased out its Simple Touch ereader, and it begs the question: How much further will this particular platform fall into the morass?

I've blogged in the past how Barnes & Noble is pretty much in its death throes. Two years ago, I wrote about how B&N potentially exploring the spinning off of the Nook into its own entity (much like it did with GameStop) was the beginning of the end for the company. I've written that B&N would sell off its physical assets by 2015, closing stores as its stock prices continue to dwindle. And I've written that B&N, when it comes to the Nook device in and of itself, cannot match Amazon and the price of the Kindle. Amazon has consistently shown it will beat everyone with fervent price-matching schemes.

(Quick aside: For those of you out there who despise Amazon for what it's doing to B&N and previously Borders... where were you and your soapbox when B&N and Borders did the same thing to the small independent bookstores in the 1980s? Glad we could clear that up. Thanks for playing.)


Did I expect Simple Touch to go? Not at all. The Simple Touch was Nook's only true competition with Kindle, and the fact that its gone means that the folks at B&N are in the process of unfurling that white banner (much like I am with the snow that has pummeled Massachusetts lately, but seriously) and surrender. You all have to see this. It's inevitable. Nook will surrender, and the ereader wars will be down to Amazon and Apple. We all know that Apple will never give up (and seeing my Apple sales being what they are, I don't want them to give up).

Now. Like I said in the Sony Reader blog, I feel bad for the readers who use the Nook. I know plenty of readers who have them, my sister-in-law to be being one. Friends from school have them, and they have my books on them. I'm sure there are plenty of other readers who have the Nook and have my books on them. Tonight, I was asked by one of my readers what Nook's potential demise will mean for her and the vast amount of books she has on her device.

I can only hypothesize. It is my hope that Amazon will come out with a dual mobi-epub Kindle that, when it eventually takes Nook over (much as Kobo is doing with Sony), will allow Nook users the ability to keep the epub books they have on their devices while trading in their Nook for a discount on that new Kindle. Of course, they can use Calibre to convert if they so choose now. This is only a guess on my part. I wouldn't want a reader to have to buy my books digitally twice.

We've bought new televisions when the technology changes (hello, HDTV). We've gone from 8 millimeter film to LaserDisc, to VHS and BetaMax, to DVD, and now to Blu-Ray (which you need an HDTV to use). We've gone from the icebox to the refrigerator/freezer combo. Soon, Nook readers will have to adapt and go Kindle. I don't know when--my crystal ball is in the shop--but it will be soon.

Simple Touch's premature death is only the start of the defections to Kindle.

www.seansweeneyauthor.com

RIP, Sony Reader

Back in the late 1980s and 1990s, Howard Stern held mock funerals in radio markets that he had entered and subsequently dominated after he left WNBC and headed to K-Rock Radio. Stern had absolutely obliterated the competition, and held that fact over the other stations' heads.

While this may not happen with today's revelation that Sony Reader is pulling out (giggity) of the North American ebook scene, it's sad to say that it wasn't hard to see this coming.

Since I've started in the business, Sony have been fourth-best in my sales numbers behind Amazon Kindle, Nook, and iBooks. Most of the books "sold" on Sony for me have been free copies of Model Agent. Occasionally I'll see the other AGENT books get picked up, but other than that... whenever Sony numbers update on Smashwords, I'm disappointed.

Now that's not to say that I don't appreciate my Sony readers. I do. I appreciate every single one of them. I do, however, feel bad that they are being put through the ringer here.

Sony didn't put out a quality product, in my opinion. Not only that, the Sony Reader store was hard to navigate--I think that if people found my books there, they did so on accident. No one I know have a Sony Reader; they are all Kindle and Nook, with the occasional iBooks user. It's almost as if Sony wanted to not sell the product.

Now Sony users will be able to keep their already-downloaded books as they now go to Kobo, a company that was, at one time, a device barely available in the US: it was involved with Borders at the tail end of that brick-and-mortar company's existence. I do get most of my Canadian ebook sales from Kobo, so I wish Kobo nothing but the best.

I do hope the Sony users fare well over the transition. But the question everyone should ask themselves as they dive into purchasing an ereader--who's next?

www.seansweeneyauthor.com

An Author Who Hated Reading--For A Time

This blog has been a long time coming, and I'll tell you why.

Once upon a time, in a small city in north central Massachusetts called Fitchburg, there was a teenager named Sean. Sean was your average, run-of-the-mill teenager. He liked sports and girls, listening to music on the radio, and watching his favorite television shows. One of the things he didn't like, though, was reading.

There was one good reason for that. He had nothing to read that interested him.

Oh, of course there were the books that his teachers at Fitchburg High School force-fed him, books that are so-called classics. Books from a long ago age, with what he considered dull writing that didn't seem to spark any interest in him. Books that his teachers needed to pull his arm off and beat him over the head with it in order to get him to read it. He shrugged, didn't read them, failed his English courses, and somehow still went on to become a fantastic author and sportswriter.

Hmmm, you're saying to yourself. How can that be? How can one be an author if that person doesn't like to read?

The answer is simple.

He found books that he liked to read. He found books that interested him. He found books that fostered a love of reading within him. He found books that reached out and pulled him in with excellent writing, writing that brought him to other places.

Sean was about 15 or 16 when he and his mother walked into his local WaldenBooks store, a store where he would later meet a local author named R.A. Salvatore and put him on a path toward writing his first novel. You've probably heard of him. Anyway, Sean's mother was in the romance section on this fine Saturday. Not wanting to see his mother pour over the bodice rippers, he moseyed over a few feet to the Science Fiction/Fantasy section. Sean had been a fan of the Star Wars movies growing up, and his father had handed him The Hobbit when he was 11. He liked it enough. Lo and behold, as he peered those shelves, he found quite a few Star Wars novels. There weren't many.

If books had voices, they called to him, begging him to ask him mother to buy them.

"Hey ma," he said, turning to her. "Can we get some of these Star Wars books?"

Hand to Cthulhu, Sean's mother walked over and swiped them all into her basket. And suffice it to say, he traveled to that Galaxy Far, Far Away many times, gobbling up those books--and soon waited for more.

But what else could he read, that would hold his attention, while he waited?

Enter John Grisham. Books like The Firm, The Runaway Jury, A Time To Kill, The Pelican Brief. Stories about law with an interesting plot (and a little sex, too). But once the new Star Wars came out, he would get it, bring it home, and devour it. Books--Star Wars books--soon became his drug of choice. He didn't find those books boring. Far from it.

From there, he found other great authors and turned into a rather voracious reader. He finally read Lord of the Rings, reading the three books in less than a month. He's moved on to find great authors like Michael Connelly, and Jim C. Hines, and Mario Acevedo, and David Forbes, and Kevin J. Anderson. He discovered Vince Flynn in the remainders section ten years or so ago: when Flynn died last year, Sean felt as if a member of his own family had died.

Nowadays, he's writing his own stories--he's currently writing his 20th full-sized novel, and he's written a few children's books and short stories, too--but he still has a love of reading that carries him through the days. He rarely watches television. He reads great fiction that entertains him, fiction that doesn't lull him into an absolute stupor with dry writing--much like the books he was supposed to read for school. He has Kindle practically everywhere he goes, and it's not out of character for him to read a bit before a ballgame. And what is he reading now, you ask? Star Wars: Scoundrels by Timothy Zahn.

So you see, teens of today: there's a lot of symmetry between you and your elders. Yes, they were forced to read the same books you're being forced to read today (it's the case for those of you at Fitchburg High School; hello, Wuthering Heights). But when someone says for you to do some independent reading, you shouldn't say that it's "mad boring as shit." You need to find the book that--like it did for me some twenty years ago--grabs you by the throat and pulls you in. There is a book out there that will do it for you.

I guarantee it.

www.seansweeneyauthor.com

A New Year, A New Friend

Please allow me to wax poetic this evening instead of talking about my books.

This past fall was, by far, one of the worst I've experienced in my life.

In the span of 6 1/2 weeks, my fiancee Jen and I had to put down two of our horses. Cheesi, short for Parchessi, was 35 years old: an ancient age for a pony. We put her down on the morning of September 16. Three weeks later, J.R. suffered a horrific hoof injury. And while we thought he was out of danger two weeks later, he developed an infection in the joint and we realized that he would never recover. We put him down on November 1, and the pair are buried practically next to each other in our deep backyard. I've owned several animals in my life, but I never cried more when J.R. went down, coughed several times, and finally went silent. I'm sure that I will feel inconsolable when we have to put Alex, their companion horse, down whenever that happens to be. I hope it's not soon.

Since the middle of October, Alex, a 20-year-old retired thoroughbred in the bloodline of Northern Dancer (1964 winner of the Kentucky Derby), has been alone. He has wandered around our paddock, taken his meals in solitude, and has had his fill of hay.

Earlier today, we changed that.

Meet Jesse.

Jesse is owned by a friend of Jen's, and she has loaned him to us in order to give my fiancee a horse to ride. Jen rode him back in the middle of November, and we finally were able to get him here today.

Jesse, having a nip of hay before he heads into the paddock.

Alex, left, wants a little bit of that hay that Jesse is nibbling. 

Jesse is a 13-year-old Paint. He is a little larger than J.R. was (J.R. was 15.1 hands, Jesse is 15.3), but the first thing I noticed about him was how much he looked like J.R., at least in the face. The eyes are an exact match, at least by my reckoning.

 J.R., getting attention from Jen after his injury. I miss the Bubba.

While I know that Jen is uber-excited to have a new horse to ride--Alex is retired because his right front hoof is flat, shall we say, akin to a human collapsed arch--I think Alex is more excited to have a new companion in the paddock. When Jen brought Jesse into the yard, Alex trotted over to the gate, and the two sniffed each other's muzzles. Once he got into the paddock for the first time, they sniffed each other some more before they trotted and cantered together. And what I find to be a refreshing change, they shared each other's hay without the other getting snippy: J.R. was protective of his hay, let me tell you. 

This is a great day for this family. I want to thank Wendy and Jim for loaning Jesse to us. He will be loved here at the farm!

www.seansweeneyauthor.com

The Changes Of An Author

Saturday marks eleven years since I first began writing my first novel. Back then, and for the next nine years or so, my writing style was rush-rush-rush, get-the-story-out-and-move-on-to-the-next-one. Show vs. Tell was a foreign concept that I didn't understand. At the time, I thought it was the best way for me to write. During a good week, if I wrote 20,000 words, it was a good week. Heck, a poor writing week still gained me 10,000-12,000 words. That's just how I wrote back then. It's how this author rolled.

Over the course of the past year or so, I've changed. But I've seen more changes in me as an author than anything else.

My writing process has changed. I'm no longer writing at the crack of dawn, and I rarely will write in the dead of night. I'm taking a great deal of care in my writing, where I'm making sure I'm awake, fed, and completely coherent before my fingertips touch the keyboard in a productive manner. I'm not writing 2,500 and 3,000 words a day any longer; in fact, if I get to 2,000 words, I've had an unbelievably fantastic writing day. If I've written 1,500, I'm satisfied. Truthfully, anything better than 0 is fine to me now. I'm writing slowly, not getting more than 300-400 words per hour. I'm choosing the proper metaphors. I'm trying to use my characters' senses more, and I'm staying within the proper point of view.

And I'm doing better to make sure that everything makes sense and is correct the first time. It makes the editing process run more smoothly after I'm finished, and it makes for a better read for the reader when they one-click on Amazon, Nook, Kobo, or iBooks.

Who said you can't teach an old author new tricks?

www.seansweeneyauthor.com