Alas, now I’m in my tiny backwoods house in the middle of nowhere and exactly one spot in my living room that gets a strong enough 3G signal for me to be able to tether my phone and get a leeeetle bit of internet on my laptop.

Of course, that spot is about one foot above the table, so it looks like this:

(Hey, balancing the phone on a roll of paper towels is absolutely boosting the signal as well as making a stylish fashion statement. Or something.)

Yeah, twitter told me I was like MacGyver. Which is totally true, if MacGyver ever had a mission that depended on getting his laptop hooked up to the internet so he could bitch about his lack of internet on twitter.

…let’s just pretend he did, okay?

Please tell me I’m not the only one who gets the cold sweats without the interwebz.

However, it’s a new age of ebooks. One request we get again and again is to make these stories available on Nook and Kindle. For the longest time we didn’t think it was necessary–after all, we were willing to offer them as free prc/epub downloads here on our website. But then we noticed a change in our own buying habits. Sometimes, we repurchase on kindle books we already own in other formats, just because the wireless download and latest-page-read sync is so very convenient. And sometimes I buy books I already have at ARe  because I like the convenience of a bookshelf with all of my titles easily accessible, especially when traveling.

Okay, so that’s a good reason to cave in and offer the books for sale. But the books we had, while formatted with love, weren’t quite professional enough to risk strangers stumbling across them on Amazon. I couldn’t be sure that the only people who would find them would be the ones who understood that they were only uploaded to give existing fans access to books via wireless, and my earliest experiments with uploading freebie reads that didn’t stand well on their own had been a bit of a flop, even with BIG OBVIOUS DISCLAIMERS.

Donna & I struggled with the dilemma of what to do for a good long time.  We didn’t want to give up our freebies, because we get hundreds of downloads a month, and plenty of people tell us that they discovered us by reading one of our free reads.  But we also didn’t want to deny readers the most convenient way to get them, because gosh knows we love convenience.

So we decided to compromise. I learned how to format ebooks. Not the easy-going good-enough-for-free formating that has gotten us this far, but a product we’d be okay with someone paying for. The freebie files on our website have been updated with our new spiffy formating. (They’re far prettier than they were before.) Some books (Under the Magnolia) have new covers. One story (Zola’s Pride) is new to the site altogether.

This is, to the extent of our ability, the best of both worlds.  If you don’t want to spend the money, you can head over to our site and get a free book.  If you don’t want to bother with downloading & transferring, you can head over to Barnes & Noble or Amazon and pay a little extra for the convenience.  (After some dithering, we priced our books by length, which is what we will do if we ever decide to self-publish any original work. The price breaks are on the page.) The books are also on All Romance Ebooks, for those of you who prefer to shop there.

Like so many things in the great land of ebooks, this is an experiment and a work in progress.  If you have requests or questions, let us know!  We’re always willing to adapt and roll with new developments. Until then… books!  They’re already up on our website, All Romance Ebooks and Barnes & Noble. They’ve been uploaded to Amazon, as well, and buy links should appear once they’ve made their way through the system.

The biggest news, though, is Zola’s Pride.  It’s our short story that appeared in the Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance 2, the story set between Crossroads and Deadlock that features New Orleans’ badass lioness doing her thing.  It’s now available to purchase or read for free on our website, so you can pick whichever works best for you. 

All of the reissued books:

http://moirarogers.com/reissued

From their Terms of Service (emphasis mine):

Your Stuff & Your Privacy

 

By using our Services you may give us access to your information, files, and folders (together, “your stuff”). You retain ownership to your stuff. You are also solely responsible for your conduct, the content of your files and folders, and your communications with others while using the Services.

 

We sometimes need your permission to do what you ask us to do with your stuff (for example, hosting, making public, or sharing your files). By submitting your stuff to the Services, you grant us (and those we work with to provide the Services) worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to the extent reasonably necessary for the Service. This license is solely to enable us to technically administer, display, and operate the Services. You must ensure you have the rights you need to grant us that permission.

How we use your stuff is also governed by the Dropbox Privacy Policy, which you acknowledge. You acknowledge that Dropbox has no obligation to monitor any information on the Services, even though we may do so. We are not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, appropriateness, or legality of files, user posts, or any other information you may be able to access using the Services. We may disclose information about your account or your stuff to law enforcement officials as outlined in our Privacy Policy.

Uh, holy shit. What?  Honestly, the way this is worded (especially the part in italics), it could be nothing but their attempt to make sure that you know they’re watching you, making sure you don’t do anything that threatens their service.  BUT.  But nothing about the language specifically limits them to that, even though they say that’s all it’s for–technical administration of the service.  And you know what they say about giving someone an inch.

I’m not comfortable with giving someone these rights with my professional work, both published and in-progress.  So long, Dropbox.  Looks like it’s time for us to research other options.

That’s right. Someone named Angela Priest has been posting “The Supernatural Bar of Last Calls Series” and other books on various sites like Smashwords, Scribd and Bookrix, (edit: Wattpad as well, who took down our books but left her account) places meant for people to share their own work with others.

Let’s observe some similarities between the title Hurricane that she’s posted and our book that was released from Changeling Press in 2008.

The blurb she posted:

Artist and witch Flora Logger hasn’t had an orgasm since a bitter ex cursed her five years ago. Whenever she gets aroused, bad things happen. Now, she’s come to Last Call in hopes of gaining an audience with — and help from — its owner, a powerful wizard named Bernard Delacruz. If anyone can break the curse, it’s him. And if he won’t come downstairs to meet with her, she’ll bump and grind until his bar caves in from the backlash. Hurricane: Contents under magical pressure. Experience required. Bernard doesn’t get involved with patrons… not even the hot, sexually frustrated ones. But when a lush-looking reddish-blonde threatens to wreck his bar with her curse and her need, he decides it’s time to take matters — and her — into his own hands. After all, even if he can’t break the curse, he can certainly ease her frustration. And what powerful wizard doesn’t love a challenge?

The blurb from Hurricane:

Artist and witch Fiona Logan hasn’t had an orgasm since a bitter ex cursed her five years ago. Whenever she gets aroused, bad things happen. Now, she’s come to Last Call in hopes of gaining an audience with — and help from — its owner, a powerful wizard named Benito D’Cruze. If anyone can break the curse, it’s him. And if he won’t come downstairs to meet with her, she’ll bump and grind until his bar caves in from the backlash.

 

Hurricane: Contents under magical pressure. Experience required.

 

Ben doesn’t get involved with patrons… not even the hot, sexually frustrated ones. But when a lush looking blonde threatens to wreck his bar with her curse and her need, he decides it’s time to take matters — and her — into his own hands. After all, even if he can’t break the curse, he can certainly ease her frustration. And what powerful wizard doesn’t love a challenge?

Hmm. Like…really? Changing Fiona Logan to Flora Logger?! Not only is it lazy and wrong, it’s terrible theft. What a horrible name. It sounds like a medical condition.

This woman isn’t selling our work as her own for money, but she’s certainly doing it for feedback. On several sites, as people told her they loved the books and encouraged her to write more, she beamed and gushed and told them she would, as time permitted. I guess Search/Replace takes a while.

A screenshot paragraph from her literary offering:

(It’s a screenshot because I couldn’t copy/paste the text she’d posted. Ironic, yes?)

The corresponding opener of Hurricane:

Fiona took one last look at the printed menu in her hand and grimaced at her friend. “I don’t need a drink. I need help.”

 

“Honey, this place is chock full of hot wizards.” Jenn snatched the menu out of Fiona’s hands and studied the back of it. “And this menu’s the key. We just have to decode it. Maybe they have a drink for ‘My castrated jackass of an ex cursed me to a life free of orgasms, contents under pressure.’ Like… oh shit, you can get in on a vampire/werewolf threesome? Hot.”

Wow, literal Search/Replace. What won’t people do?

Anyway, we emailed all the sites. Mark from Smashwords was particularly awesome, investigating immediately and removing the offender’s profile, citing their zero-tolerance policy for such things. Kudos to them.

But y’all should check this woman out. Late-night Twitter peeps have indicated that some of her other offerings look like they’ve been ripped off from Shiloh Walker and even Nora Roberts. (Let’s take a moment at that. La Nora? LA NORA? Is there a sane person on this planet who thinks cribbing her work is a good idea? WTF.)

So put out the word. Take a good look at this lady. This is the face of someone who thinks it’s okay to steal what others have written, put her own name on it, and take the credit.

This is a plagiarist.

UPDATE, 6/29 @ 6:21 pm

It seems that someone doesn’t like the takedown notices. In case anyone was wondering if this slimeball was suffering from a terminal case of stupid, the answer is yes and no.  Observe her comment to another user today on Booksie:

UPDATE, 6/30 @ 11 am (by Bree this time!)

Angela Priest has issued two apologies on our livejournal (where this was mirrored last night due to server issues).  In response, we’ve asked her to take down the rest of her copied work, including the massive amounts of artwork copied from deviantART that she doesn’t seem to realize is also stealing.  At this point we’re hoping that she’ll agree to take down everything on her own without the hassle of every single copyright holder reporting her individually.  I suppose we’ll see.

Also, thanks to hard work behind the scenes, artists at deviantART are working on getting the artwork removed.

UPDATE, 7/4 @ Noon:

All of the offending works seem to have been removed, with the exception of those on her Scribd account. The only work missing from there is the one where the artist from whom the cover art was stolen was able to report the book. Through this whole sordid adventure, books and art have come down pretty much as they’re reported by a copyright holder and not before, casting some doubts on her apology and promise of future good intentions.  The most generous interpretation is that she uploaded plagiarized and stolen content to so many sites that she can’t remember where to go to remove it all.

Thanks to everyone who helped out during this mess, and who tracked down artists and copyright holders.  And especially thanks to Lindsay, who e-mailed us after she realized that the books she’d gotten for free weren’t above board.  She helped a lot of people find out that their work had been stolen, so she’s our hero. 

2010 was a crossroads sort of year for me’n Donna,  and not just because Crossroads came out in digital in February and print in November.  Honestly, it is weirdly symbolic, though, since we spent most of the time in between in a weird flux where we couldn’t decide who we were and where we were going.

If you’re a writer, and hang out with other writers, it’s hard to not get caught up in the excitement of community milestones and the commonly accepted markers of accomplishment.  When many of the people around you have similar goals and similar dreams, those dreams can seem even more important.  If they weren’t the pinnacle of success, everyone wouldn’t want them, right?

So much of 2010 was marked by bitter arguments and dire predictions. Print is dying! Self-publishing is the only smart way to go! For someone who was new enough to publishing to have somewhat nebulous goals, 2010 was dizzying to me.  I started off the year having been published for just 18 months, still feeling like I couldn’t possibly know enough about the industry and the business to have dreams that were legitimate.  Hell, I didn’t even know what my dreams were, except that I wanted to keep writing.

I struggled, in 2010.  Publishing in New York is supposed to be the holy grail, and I wanted it because everyone else wanted it, because it was what you were supposed to want, and because I hadn’t seen the jump in kindle sales from January 2010 because those wouldn’t show up in my inbox until April. People told me there wasn’t a market for more non-erotic romance in epublishing, and I believed them.  People told me I’d never make a living in epublishing unless I published in New York to get my name out there, and I believed them.

The thing is–they weren’t necessarily wrong. In 2009, in 2008, maybe in all the years before, making a living on non-erotic romance in epublishing might have been a pipe dream. Ebooks were not convenient, not widespread.  Many people bought ebooks for genres and niches you couldn’t get at the bookstore.  Not non-erotic, relatively tame paranormal romance.

2010 changed that.  Not that I’m saying it’s easy to make a living in epublishing. It’s not easy to make a living in writing, and I doubt anyone will tell you otherwise unless they have an agenda.  There are disadvantages and advantages to both, and it all depends on where your strengths and desires lie.  I have very good friends making a very good living in New York.  I have friends who make a killing balancing New York and epublishing.

For me?  I’m happy where I am.  That was the hardest thing for me to admit, and to be honest, I have questions about the wisdom of saying it like this.  Authors don’t get to have opinions in a vacuum, especially about things like this.  I guarantee that someone reading this post will think, “Wow, protesting too much, or what?”  Someone will think I’m writing this because I have to convince myself I’m happy where I am, because I secretly spent all of 2010 being rejected by 100 agents and now I’m bitter and broken-down because I couldn’t hack it.

And that is how codified the proper goals in publishing are.  They are so established, so immutable, that I’m almost afraid to admit that I don’t share them, because people won’t believe me.

That’s the craziest thing of all. I live in a dream world. I get to write whatever subgenres I want in whatever length I want.  I don’t worry about my publisher dropping a series if the first or second books don’t perform right out the gate. I don’t worry about returns.  And I made more in 2010 than my husband and I lived on in 2005.  Is it so impossible to believe that I’m really freaking satisfied?

And that is what made 2010 such a weird, emotionally exhausting ride for me.  I’m human, and susceptible to subliminal peer pressure.  It was easy for me to believe my goals weren’t worthy, or valid, or smart. It took me time, and a lot of venting to a few sympathetic friends, to get to a place where I was okay saying, “I’m happy where I am.”  I don’t even feel defensive about it anymore. Or like I need to apologize.

On the flip side, it is easy for my rejection of those goals to come across as a judgment.  Which it isn’t, and shouldn’t be.  I have never understood the driving need to be right about anyone’s publishing journey but my own.  Donna and I have such incredibly unique circumstances, with two people spending 80 hours a week on one career.  We can be prolific in a way many can’t.  We can multi-task in a way that would be impossible for most. That stacks the deck in our favor in epublishing, and I’m not going to pretend someone who writes one book a year is going to make us much as we do. To each their own. Seriously.

That is how I found my inner peace for 2011.  I don’t have to care about how other people are managing their careers, because I’m busy with mine.  And I don’t have to care about what other people think about my career, because I’m happy with mine.  Maybe I’m protesting too much, or not enough.  (Not enough, according to the people who proclaim there are no successful epublished authors because we don’t photocopy our 1099s and post them online–which would probably be protesting too much.)

Mostly?  I’m hoping to just spend a lot of time writing this year.  That is, after all, what I get paid for, and if that isn’t the definition of magical, I don’t know what is.

Rock on in 2011, y’all!

Here’s how it goes. You buy an ebook.  You lend it to a friend.  You don’t have access to it for 14 days, but they can read it.  Then it comes back to you! Voila! They no longer have access to it, but you do. Forever, since this is a one time deal, from what I can tell.

Why is this not file sharing?

Because the lender loses access to the file for the lending duration.  This has always been the crux of why downloading ebooks is not like borrowing a book from a friend.  If Donna buys a copy of Great New Book and decides that I simply must read it, she can hand her physical print copy of Great New Book to me.  Legal, simple borrowing.  Only for the duration of time that I have the book, she can’t read Great New Book unless she’s hanging over my shoulder. (And, contrary to rumor, we’re not that close.)

There’s also the secondary point that if she lends Great New Book to me, my cats will sit on it.  I’ll bend the spine a little.  I’ll probably spill Pepsi Max on my desk and narrowly rescue Great New Book from swimming in it.  Print books suffer gradual but noticeable degradation, even if they’re not sent to a mass market death trap house like mine.

Ebook files suffer no such restrictions or decrease in quality.  Donna can e-mail me Great New Book as a PDF, and keep her copy.  And I could e-mail it to my mom, and to my aunt, and to everyone I went to college with, and we’d all be reading Great New Book but we wouldn’t all be crushed into one room in a scary tangle of limbs trying to see the same page.  And no one will spill pepsi on the ebook. No cats will chew on it, no children will draw on it.  It might get deleted, but another pristine copy can appear.

Now, you either think this is okay or you don’t.  But the truth is that it’s different, and you have to acknowledge that sending 5,000 copies of an ebook to 5,000 friends is not the same as 5,000 people sitting on a waiting list at a library to check out the same copy of a book.  It’s just not.

But File Lending Promotes a Culture of Piracy!

Anyone who is sitting around waiting for someone to legitimately lend them a book?  Treasure that reader, folks, because they could have had their instant gratification one google search ago.  You’re not teaching the people who lend and borrow that file sharing is okay. You’re rewarding them for not participating in it. Because if they were prone to? They wouldn’t need to borrow a book. They’d have their free copy already.

Besides, illegal downloading is really not the same thing as piracy.  And fighting it does nothing to stop the real pirates.

Wait, the real pirates?

Yeah. The ones who resell ebooks on sites like iOffer for a profit.  The ones who are engaging in the true, unwatered-down piracy, the kind where you make illegal reproductions of a product and sell it. To make money. The kind who are absolutely, 100% costing me sales, because you can’t really make a, “they weren’t going to buy it anyway” argument about someone who just bought your ebook from a pirate.

The worst part is that many innocent purchasers don’t realize they’re buying an illegal copy.  Perhaps they imagine it’s no different than buying a used book, or a collection of used books.  But used book sellers need to replenish their stock.  They can’t sell a copy of Great Used Book and have a new copy magically appear.  If someone else wants to order a copy of Great Used Book from them, they’ll have to find a physical copy–one for which the author has at least been paid once.

A pirate selling illegal ebooks is under no such restriction.  They don’t need to acquire stock, like a used bookseller would.  They get one copy (which they could illegally download to begin with) and sell it. Over. And over. And over.  It’s a morally bankrupt sort of way to profit on everyone–readers who were trying to support an author by paying and authors who may never see a cent but have to know that other people are getting paid.

It’s hard to know which ebook retailers are legitimate.  The only advice I have to offer–if the deal looks too good to be true, and you’re not at a major retailer known for offering deals…it’s probably not legit.

Lending, Downloading, Pirating

Lending can build word-of-mouth.  It gives ebook readers back one of the advantages that they gave up with print books–the chance to share a book they loved with a friend, who might well go out and buy more of the authors’ titles.  The restrictions (14 days, lend once) are a compromise, but they’re a step forward.

Downloading can build word-of-mouth too.  Unfortunately, it mostly builds word-of-mouth to people who aren’t currently looking to buy your book.  However, things change.  I feel a lot differently about file-sharing at 30 than I did at 20, but I can tell you one thing…I’ll never forget finding Metallica to be the jerkiest jerks that ever jerked.  I don’t want someone looking back in ten years and remembering the time Moira Rogers called them a scum-sucking lowlife and deciding that the money they now have to spend should go anywhere but to me. Ever.

Piracy sucks.  Just say no.

HOWEVER, a lot of these exciting things feel extra special to me because they’re pretty much readers supporting us with words and pre-orders, and if there’s one thing I’m perfectly okay sitting around and talking about, it’s how much I appreciate everything our readers do for us.

(And it’s a lot. We have AWESOME amazing OMG fabulous readers. <3!!!)

So let’s round it up.  First, thanks to all of you who pre-ordered Deadlock, I got directed to the Kindle homepage where apparently Deadlock is the top romance pre-order at the moment.  OMG guys. Thank you.  Seriously.  As a small press author who pretty much grows 100% on word-of-mouth and fans shoving us up with pure enthusiasm…thank you.

And the Southern Arcana series doing well is, in my oh-so-humble-opinion, in large part thanks to the amazing support we’ve had from readers and bloggers.  I was so sniffly to find that both FictionVixen and SmexyBooks included Crossroads in their top reads of 2010.  So sniffly! (Thank you!)

And we got a nod from The Romance Studio today with a nomination for favorite erotic romance author, and just hanging out on a list with all of those other people is pretty cool, since those are a lot of fabulous authors.

Really, there’s nothing I can do to thank you guys enough.  We made the choice to stay with small presses because we love the freedom and the innovation, but we knew that we would be working at a huge disadvantage when it came to exposure and distribution. It’s hard for a small press author to get noticed.

Except you guys make it feel easy, with your tweeting and your recs and your blogging and how you tell friends and buy books and help us live the dream so few authors get to live, the one where we’re not rich, but we’re making enough money that the only job we have every day is to tell stories.  And that?  That is awesome.

So thanks, guys.  And have an awesome holiday (whichever one you do or do not celebrate) and let’s all agree to party hard in 2011.  It’s going to be a blast!

A few weeks ago, Bree and I were talking on the phone about things we really wish someone had told us back when we undertook this venture, this writing for publication thing.  And I joked and said, “The kinds of things your mentor would have told you, if only you’d had one?”

Well, you know what?  That’s not a joke, really.  There are some new authors who do have someone like that, a friendly face delivering helpful, vital knowledge necessary to navigate this tricky business.  We ourselves have had pros like Ann Aguirre and Lauren Dane helping us out all the time.

But in the beginning…

We didn’t know anyone.  We didn’t know what we were doing.  We made mistakes–everything from tiny little ones good for a laugh to big ones that could have easily derailed a fledgling career.  All for want of something that is notoriously hard to come by in this business: a little dose of hard truth.

Because no one wants to be That Guy, man.  The one people whisper about, the one who spreads rumors and tells tales and guess what?  That’s why people who aren’t your friends aren’t going to give you the real, brutal skinny on the inner workings of different epublishers.  No one wants that to get around.  Every author who’s been doing this for a while could tell you some horror stories but, chances are, she won’t.

I’m not going to be That Guy, either.  If you have questions, I’ll be more than happy to answer them.  I’m just going to go ahead and let you know up front our first lesson here, the biggest thing I wish I’d had a mentor to tell me way back in the day.

YMMV:  Your mileage may vary.

There are so many things to which this statement applies.  It’s unreal, honestly.  One writer may love a particular epub’s production process; another hates it.  I have friends who adore their editors, while I already know I’d never be able to work like that.  This writer sells like crazy at X epub, that one tops the charts by signing with Y, a competitor.  So, far from being a standard disclaimer, this is the closest thing to a universal truth you’re going to find here.

Your mileage may vary.

I’m working on getting together some basic ideas for future posts in this column, but I also want those questions.  And while I’m not going to tell you who I caught picking her nose in a hotel bathroom that one time, I will go ahead and answer just about anything else.  And if I won’t, I’ll tell you why.

You can leave questions in comments here, or email them to donna@moirarogers.com if you prefer.  I’ll use initials instead of names, and we can all learn a few things.  I’ll even take etiquette questions. Knock yourself out.

Of course, now that we’re at the point where we write almost everything on proposal, we have reached a point where we need to make sure we’re not committing to things we’re not going to be able to pull off.  Not just writing-wise, but writing when we’ll have new releases, galleys or edits to worry about.  That’s why we have… the spreadsheet.

Not always as updated as it should be.

The spreadsheet has upcoming projects, tentative release dates, word counts, due dates, sale dates, galleys, edits and more.  We can also estimate how much we’d have to write on X project every month to have it done by Y date, and in general we try not to estimate more than 15k per project and no more than 30k per month across all projects, to give us wiggle room.

As months go by and projects are finalized, I hide rows to keep it current.  It took me a while to come up with a format I really like, but this is my secret weapon in keeping stuff organized.

Since someone asked, I uploaded a template here: Deadline Spreadsheet Template. I doubt it will work for everyone, but I loooove the thing.  <3  And hey, if my deadlines are organized, I don’t have to explain why my desk is a mess, right?

Right?

Ahem.

Most of the time I see it being used by someone who feels like the gatekeeper is preventing them from doing something they clearly should be doing.  (And let’s face it, it’s almost always in regards to NY agents & editors, even though epublishing has gatekeepers too.) Either way, whenever I see it, I get this mental image:

Reaper-Gatekeeper Mocks Our Pain

The so-called gatekeepers are there because our world is made of gates. Some gates are automated, some are manned, but pretty much you never go through a day without dealing with someone whose job it is to make their chosen field run more smoothly.  (Am I saying they’re always accomplishing this?  Hell no.  The world is also full of people, and people are notoriously capable of not being perfect.  I know, I was shocked too.)

Some gates are bad.  Really, really bad.  They’re built on ignorance and bigotry and they’re there to exclude people based on arbitrary and meaningless criteria instead of ability. Those gates need to be burned down and smashed through.  And sometimes it’s hard to tell where those gates end and others begin.

Some gates are important.  The med student who doesn’t want to study any existing medical texts because he is so ahead of his time that the establishment just can’t recognize his brilliance is probably not the one I’d like giving me medical advice.

Some gates are just preferable.  If you can’t boil water without burning it, I’m sure a lot of us are grateful to the gatekeeper who kept you out of the kitchen where we just paid $25 for a meal.

I think everyone should be able to write.  I think everyone should be able to share their writing through any avenue that their skills and talents open for them.  If you don’t have the skills needed to self-publish, learn them.  If you don’t want to deal with the traditional publishing industry, do your research.  Learn about business. Covers. Editing. Distribution. It’s easier than ever before to get your words out there, if you’re willing to work for it.

If you’re not willing to do the work–what in hell do you think you’re doing, anyway?  The gatekeepers aren’t holding a bunch of free passes that they’re dangling out of reach because it’s so fun to watch you dance.  Do you know what’s on the other side of the gate? More work. Hard, endless work, and higher stakes because a gatekeeper just took a chance on you, and do you really want to make them regret it?

In our current world of entitlement, maybe it’s easy to think we all deserve the right to be published.  I don’t think that’s true.  I think we have to earn it, whether it’s by fitting in to the system or striking out on our own path.  Just like everything else in life, you make your own opportunities.

More than anything else, I think I hate the word gatekeepers because it sounds so very, very bitter. In the last few years, I’ve encountered three basic types of people publishing outside of traditional avenues:

1. Those who are doing it because they want to.
2. Those who are doing it because they have to.
3. Those who won’t stop telling you that they’re doing it because they want to, so loudly and so often that you start to feel like maybe they have to.

It’s the third group that pretty much makes all of the rest of us look kind of stupid. They are the definition of protesting too much and I wince whenever I stumble across a ranting, profanity-laced screed trying to convince the world that they don’t care, OMG they don’t care, see how much they don’t care WHY IS NO ONE ACKNOWLEDGING THEIR AWESOMENESS FOR NOT CARING?

Maybe I don’t get any of this because I’ve never been the sort of person who feels the need to “show them all” (whoever them all is.)  I believe that the best way to prove you’re happy and content is to be happy and content.  Maybe that means I don’t have the chops to be a true revolutionary, because I’m not interested in fighting the other methods of publishing.  I just want to get out my virtual guitar and sing kumbaya.

If we’re all really lucky, my virtual voice will be a whole lot better than my real one.  No really, guys. Dying cats might sound harmonious in comparison.  You should thank whatever gatekeeper refused to make me a rock star.