This has been a rough year for authors.
We’ve seen multiple publishers closing their doors. Some, like Amber Quill and now Wilde City, have done their best to reduce the impact for the authors they published. Others have dragged it out or acted illegally, owing thousands of dollars of unpaid royalties, refusing to give back book rights, or breaking contracts. And in September to October, Amazon’s Page Flip reading mode messed up Kindle Unlimited payouts to authors.
Then in December many of us took a significant hit, as All Romance Ebooks (ARe) closed on four days notice, with three months of royalties and many readers’ stored books and prepaid ebucks tied up in that closure. Some authors appear to have lost thousands of dollars, some publishers tens of thousands. And although legal action against ARe is potentially pending, the chance of getting much money back is, in my opinion, very small. (BTW, if, as a reader, you lost any of my books in the ARe closure, and have a receipt or a screenshot of the book in your ARe library, contact me for replacement.)
As writers, we have the joy of making money doing the thing we love best – creating and sharing our stories. But, except for a fortunate few, it’s never been an easy way to make a living. The starving artist in a garret is a classic trope, for a reason. And that attic feels awfully close for some writers these days.
I’m not complaining personally. I have a good day job. I have a money-earning spouse. And although my two kids will probably lose our coverage of their health insurance, under the new US administration, I can weather some ups and downs. My losses at ARe are in the hundreds, not thousands. But especially for some full-time writers, this has been a year of going from crisis to catastrophe.
One of the loveliest things I have seen recently, is how many readers have posted, or contacted me, and asked how they can best support the authors they care about. Our readers aren’t wealthy either, but they want to help us keep the stories coming. The goodwill and support in this community has been heartwarming. And I wanted to post a few answers to that question.
How can we help? What can we do, together, to support the stories we love?
* Promote the genre – M/M romance has a tiny fraction of M/F romance sales volume. I believe there’s a lot of room for more romance readers to discover the fun of M/M. And I also get reviews from gay men saying they had no idea there were gay love stories out there with happy endings. I’ve seen a guy in his fifties say my book was the first real gay Happy-Ever-After he’d read, and he wanted more.
So have a few story suggestions at the tip of your tongue to suggest to a friend, to lure them over to us…
Books that I recommend to my straight-romance reading friends include:
~ Hot Target by Suzanne Brockmann – although part of a series this is a fine starting point, and it has a wonderful M/F romance, along with the beginnings of an M/M one. Pull your M/F reading friends in with the beginnings of love between out, gay FBI agent Jules, and closeted, hot-mess actor Robin…
~ Faith and Fidelity by Tere Michaels – an angsty out-for-you romance that has a very slow burn and brings the sex in at lower levels and later.
~ Whistling in the Dark by Tamara Allen – great characters and relationship without explicit sex, in a lovely post WWI historical
Choose your own favorites. Remember other genre stories. Obviously, suggesting something to a mystery lover, or an elderly relative, or a gay friend, or to someone who likes explicit M/F BDSM, will have a different starting point. The hotter stories may be someone’s weakness…
* Review honestly when you can – not everyone is comfortable doing this, and it is never a requirement, but when you can, we appreciate it. A review doesn’t have to be literate, or careful critique. An honest note of how you enjoyed the story and fell for the characters works fine. On Amazon in particular, numbers of reviews affect how a story is listed and promoted. So if you are able to post one, it helps. Even critical or lukewarm reviews help readers find books they will or won’t like, and we want readers to pick books they’re likely to enjoy. So yes, those matter too.
* Denounce piracy – I’ve seen pirate sites that claim to have downloaded more copies of one of my books than I have ever sold. Authors lose thousands of dollars to ebook piracy. I send out 50 take-down messages a month, and barely scratch the surface of the illegal copies of my books online.
If you can’t find a book legitimately, email the author and ask them. If a reader can’t access my books, I’d rather send them a copy myself than have them support a pirate site. Or there may be a new edition on the horizon, or some other reason it’s not available.
Be as scrupulous as you can about music and photos too. Musicians and photographers are in worse positions than authors, as far as piracy goes. For my posts and blog, I bought a stock photo deal of 100 photos at a cost of 60¢ each, and I am slowly using those. There are a lot of royalty-free photo sites, too. It may not be as perfect as that Google search result, but it supports honest artists. And then I don’t feel hypocritical telling someone not to download that free version of a paid book. Pirate sites are also notorious for adding malware to downloads – you’re doing your friends a favor, along with the authors you’re supporting.
* Buy from sites that give better royalties – this can be difficult, but as a rule, direct purchases from publisher sites will give both the author and the pub 30-70% more money than a distributor site. Some publishers will store books on virtual shelves for you (although if ARe taught readers anything, it should be to download and save books as soon as you buy them.) Some publishers, particularly Dreamspinner Press, often have great sales on site.
Smashwords ( https://www.smashwords.com/ ) gives indie authors up to 80% of the total price, keeping just 20% for direct sales there. It’s also a place to find some of the free stories lost from ARe.
Some authors also sell directly on their own websites, and more are planning to (for example via Payhip shopping-cart services.) Do be cautious, when you buy from unfamiliar sites, but these can give the author the whole price paid.
To help connect readers with buy-sites authors prefer, J. Scott Coatsworth is busy creating a new linking site – Queeromance Ink. When completed, it’s envisioned as a place where authors will list their books, and provide links to their preferred sites for buying or downloading, including sites for epub and pdf. Losing ARe was a blow to readers of those formats. The hope is to also make it a good site for readers to find new LGBTQ romance releases, and to search for particular tropes and categories. Some of those functions will come later. (Disclaimer – I’m helping Scott set this up. He will run it paid by fees from authors. I’m not making money there, but he’s also not going to charge me the author fees, in exchange for the help.) More about this when it’s up and launched, hopefully soon.
* If you’re inclined to support authors in other funding endeavors like Patreon, go for it – many authors will be looking for ways to supplement their book-sales income, especially in the wake of the sudden ARe losses. Some may offer to mail premium-priced signed copies, or may set up Patreon accounts where donors get perks and benefits in exchange for support. There will be contests, newsletters… Marketing is always a varied process. There are authors who have stopped writing whom I’d have happily donated money to, in order to get that next book. But don’t ever feel pressured to do anything except buying the books you read.
To me, the key with any support system is that readers are pleased, do not feel coerced, or oversold, and cheerfully engage in it with the author. We are all adults here, and can make our own choices. Any form of marketing will not appeal to someone, and almost any can seem unfair. I’ve seen authors angry with me for writing so many free books, because they undercut the prices of their paid books. Some complain about coupons, or 99¢ pricing, or any other promo. If it’s legal and readers are happy and authors are supported, it’s all good.
Continue to check out the review blogs in our genre. Use their affiliate links, if they have them, to go and buy from retailers like Amazon, so the blogs get a few pennies from your purchase. We’re all in this together.
* Be kind to one another – this may not seem relevant to the question of financial support, but it is. Writers who are working on the edge of financial wreckage are doing so because they believe in the stories and the community we share. When there is infighting, and sniping, and intolerance, the appeal is tarnished. I’m not suggesting that we stop airing grievances, within the community, but that as we do so, we try to keep from hurting each other. When the joy goes out of the reading and the writing, we all lose.
I believe that writing LGBTQ romance matters. I’ve had more than one reader tell me that M/M – sometimes my own books – started them down the road to believing in LGBTQ rights. I’ve seen a love for the stories and characters expanded to material support and activism in the wider world. In the years to come, the LGBTQ community will need all the goodwill it can muster, within and outside its direct membership. So when we keep those stories coming, we’re not only working for our own comfort reads, our own enjoyment, or affirmation. But also for one more piece in the puzzle of how to get to that awaited future – the day when love is just love, a spouse is a spouse, and a family of any kind is just a family.
THANK YOU to all the readers who contacted me after the closing of ARe to ask, “How can we help?” You guys seriously rock.
And if anyone has other suggestions or comments, please add them. My very best wishes to every author and reader out there, for 2017.
Thanks for a great post, Kaje. I’ve shared on facebook.
Thank you for sharing it. <3
Thanks for this concise and thoughtful post Kaje. It’s been a really rough year in so many ways. This too shall pass of course, but I think you make so many good points here. I truly hope 2017 is a much better year for us all and that we do treat each other with kindness as we move forward. The outrage addict has certainly gotten a workout over the last 15 months or so and I for one am suffering heavy outrage fatigue. Now I just mostly feel sad.
As a heavy purchaser at all of the publishers and sites you mentioned, it’s been hard to see them go. Many of my favorite authors have suffered multiple blows. I hope they will be able to weather the storm, but inevitably some may not 🙁 I’ll look forward to Scott’s site and will be looking into other ways to purchase the stories I love.
Definitely hoping for a better 2017. It’s been a rough 2016. But watching publishers and individual authors offering to make things right, for the readers who lost stored books at ARe, has been heartwarming – taking care of each other helps.
Thank you so much for this!
As for reviews, I think there’s a general feeling that, “I really liked the main characters!” or “The sex was seriously hot!” or even, “I really loved this book!” or whatever is needed to meet the minimum character count is useless when it comes to reviews. But a lot of readers don’t understand that it’s PURE NUMBERS for sites like Amazon, B&N, Kobo, etc. (I think B&N and Kobo consider reviews in their rankings/recommendations.) Yes, stars matter, to a point, but just having a review there–positive OR negative–makes a HUGE difference. No one wants to make the readers feel coerced, most definitely. But one of the biggest helps out there, to get our books in front of more people, is a simple review.
I have had people tell me that they’d never tried any kind of LGBTQ romance before my books. These same folks have gone on to buy tons of other gay romance stories and books. It really IS all about the community and fostering togetherness, cooperation, and support does so much more than the infighting we’ve all seen. As emotions run high under the stress of lost royalties and more, it’s easy to let that get to us and let it out at the wrong people. We should be angry at Lori James, not our fellow romance authors. I think readers and authors alike would do well to remember that.
For the readers with that, I would ask that they remember that emotions ARE running high. Many of us are very scared for what’s coming both financially and simply the fears of being “out” as a gay romance author. So if you see someone acting out, posting something that strikes you as off or offensive, I would ask that you remember that they are likely as scared and upset as the rest of us. Immediately writing that author off because of a single post is really hurting all of us because it fosters more of that infighting and anger.
Thanks again, Kaje for such a great post.
Thank you. And yes. Everyone is on edge for a host of reasons. And there are some real dragons that we need to save our swords for, while trying not to sharpen them on each other. I hope we can pull together, as much as any big stressed group is able to. 🙂
Loved this post, every single word of it. I particularly appreciate the low heat recommendations. I read exclusively m/m and have often wondered why the whole world isn’t reading it. Then I think about all those pages I skim because the plot is sacrificed to all the pages and pages of sex. I’ve got nothing against sex, love it, but how many potential readers out there have been scared off, either by the perception or reality of the content. I hope the new site will offer some type of heat level rating. Do we really need 90 pages of sex in a 200 page book? I have my favorite authors (you’re one) and it’s not such an issue for me now but when I started reading m/m if was VERY frustrating. Also, I love, love love the idea of straight writers blending in a few gay characters. That’s a perfect way to open up readership of m/m books. We have some of the best authors and you all need to be recognized and treasured.
We have a great range of books, but yes, some people love the sex and heat off the bat, some prefer less.
Scott’s site is planning to have heat ratings (and maybe romance-level ratings) and page counts and some tropes… but probably not till after February and the next edition of the plug-in he’s using. Eventually you should be able to search with heat level included.
Thank you for this post, Kaje! I’ll be sharing it for sure!
It’s such a great feeling of love and community when readers share books with their reader friends. And, when a reader takes a chance on an unknown author and falls in love with the author and/or genre, it definitely brings a smile.
Great, good, or not my cup of tea reviews are so very important.
You speak my heart when you say “be kind to each other” and “writing LGBTQ romance matters.”
Exactly this. Thank you. (And thanks for sharing.)
This was very well written. You make very solid points.
<3 Thanks for stopping by to read it.
Amazing Post. I agree with what you say. Especally on the Piracy stuff. I learned the hard way to never download a photo off the inernet though I am sure i got scammed in that… There are ways to get free and reduced price books ( at least I hope they are all on the up and Up) through your email from newsletters that are promotions from authors. Insta freebie is a good place now and it helps you connect to the author as well. When I first got back into reading had no income to buy books. I just saw my first MM books ( one by Lee Brazil) I saw interview blogs so I set up a blog where i posted interviews and fun stuff and reviews in exchange for the book. I contacted some of the authors and simply asked for a copy for review and offered them posts too. I met some very cool generous authors ( you were one of them RJ) You guys helped me through recovery and depression. I was happy to give back what I could. Now that I am on my feet some and can buy some books I do try to do that. I have lists and mark off a few each month. The point is there is no reason to pirate or support pirates. its easy to support an autor on Social media!! Tweet retweet blog post on there pages and of course buy and share omments on thier books ! Good luck this year.
Sorry I meant Kaje I was looking at a book by RJ and got my wires crossed. No disrespect intended and still the same words you are awesome ( if you cna correct it by all means please do.
No worries – RJ is great 🙂 And yes, piracy has become almost normalized (and the risks are hidden). But there is a ton of legitimately free reading available, and other ways to get books. Thanks for helping us all out and the great comments – this genre heartens me with the way readers and authors take care of each other.