If you want books to exist, stop pirating them.

This sounds like drama, but it's not.

Not only is it well documented that pirating contributes to publishers not buying more manuscripts from an author (Maggie Stiefvater's experiment being the most famous), now we have evidence that Amazon's Kindle Unlimited algorithm is registering pirated copies of books online as the book being "offered" somewhere else, and punishing the authors for it.

And I don't know how much you know about Kindle Unlimited, but the thing is, if your book is in KU, you have to check a little box that says you're not offering the book anywhere else for sale. At all. So when the algorithm is finding the pirated copies, it's pinging it as, Oh! The author lied! The author misrepresented their sales strategy! ACCOUNT DELETION FOR AUTHOR. NO ROYALTIES FOR ONE THOUSAND YEARS.

Miette jokes aside, that's actually what's happening to very popular self-pub authors. Ruby Dixon just had her account deleted, her 15+ volume popular KU series taken down, and Amazon fighting her over the KU Pages royalties she'd already earned on those books. Now, Ruby's got her account back because she's popular enough that people shouted at Kindle executives very, very loudly, but what about other authors? This could ruin someone's career.

Well, why not publish wide, I hear you saying. Why stick to Kindle Unlimited? After all, Amazon sucks.

Here's the thing. Whether we like it or not, Amazon has a massive corner market on books, and for authors who are self-publishing, it is by far the most accessible and cost-effective method, PLUS, it's a great way to be discovered by new readers.

Because readers don't have to pay for individual titles under KU (they pay for a subscription, and then Amazon pays out authors based on how many pages of the book someone read), they can give new authors a try. They can take a chance on a book they're not sure they'll like. And Amazon tends to promote KU titles more aggressively because it's good for their business.

My little $0.99 short story, Swelter, is on Kindle Unlimited, and I can tell you that a good 85% of my royalties from it come from KU pages, not from people buying it. And that's for a story that costs less than a dollar and is not a big investment and has pretty good word-of-mouth in the f/f reading community.

Self-publishing is expensive, and time consuming. I'm getting away with it pretty cheaply right now because I am also a professional editor, and I have friends in the business who are willing to trade in kind rather than be paid. I have a really wonderful friend who is doing my ebook formatting for free because I beta read and do proofing for her. But if I were paying for all the services that I'm trading for, as most authors have to do? I'd be well over $1500 sunk into this little ebook coming out in a week that is going to cost $3.99 and be free to read on Kindle Unlimited. And that's not counting marketing. Because yeah, you have to pay for marketing. Hell, I had to pay $35 upfront to a popular site to be considered for their marketing campaign, and would've paid another $65 if they'd accepted me. (They did not, so I'm out that $35 without even a marketing campaign to show for it.)

And the thing is, I'm currently gainfully employed. I'm salaried. My spouse is also salaried, so I have enough disposable income to spend what I've spent on this ebook (which is still about $600, even with all the things I'm trading for). Most authors? Especially most self-publishing authors? Don't have that.

So Kindle Unlimited, for all its flaws, is a way to get more diverse voices in the business because you don't even have to buy an ISBN. Amazon assigns you an Amazon Sales Index Number (ASIN) and you're good to go, as long as you're not listing it on any other sites. Hell, they even have tools for you to make your own cover art if you don't want to pay someone to make it for you. They do a lot of their own internal promotion on Kindle. Readers can try you out for little-to-no personal investment on their part and maybe discover that they love your writing, and you've gained a whole audience. It's a great return-on-investment for self-published authors.

So that's why a lot of self-pub authors choose Kindle Unlimited. And a lot of authors will do a limited run on KU in order to get some early word-of-mouth and discovery readers, and then publish wide later. (That's my current strategy with Welcome to the Show, if it does well. If it's not doing well, I probably won't sink the money and time into expanding its availability.) But if this happens, if Amazon shuts down their account over "KU membership misrepresentation," then even if the book has been published wide and is available on other platforms by then, Amazon is going to dispute their KU Pages royalties and try to take them back.

So by pirating books, not only are authors losing "potential" sales (I know, there's a whole argument there), they could be losing real, actual sales that they've already sold.

In conclusion:

1. Don't pirate books.

2. If you see someone requesting where they can read a book "for free", speak up.

3. If you see someone providing links where people can read a book "for free" (if it is not provided by the author for free), speak up.

Thanks, and have a good day.

4. If you want to read free books, go to the library.

If the massive corporation took the hit, that would be one thing. But unfortunately the massive corporation has ways of making sure that the only hit is taken by small businesses and individuals.

they need to invent a food that i do not have to do any work to prepare and also is cheap and also is nutritious and also tastes good and also that doesn’t hurt my tummy

what they dont tell you about growing up in the early 2010s is that fun.’s  “we are young” will make your heart ache a frankly embarrassing amount

humanity can be so beautiful actually

I hope people reblog to give us a wide sample size, also I hope people put in the tags explaining in greater detail, or mention any category I might not have thought of

The phenomenon of tumblr re-imagining Judaism as this ultra radical leftist religion and not what it is, which is a complex religious community with conservative, reactionary, liberal, and leftist subcommunities, is that we've ended up with this sort of social media understanding of Judaism among young leftish types which gets really awkward when its pasted over the ambient Christian antisemitism of mainstream American culture. Like the idea that the "Old Testament God" is uniquely angry and mean and hurtful is something people absorb in this country through the popular culture, and then they grow up and become like a lefty social media tran and hear about this sick religion called Judaism where you yell at God and are an anarchist (bc that's the only idea of Judaism anybody ever told them about), but they still think the Bible is this book about a really mean guy called God and his chill son Jesus.

what’s in a name 

We’re almost done, my lawyer says during our final conference call. If he’s happy to be done with me, his pro bono, abused wife divorce case gone to hell, he does a remarkable job of keeping it from showing. Just finishing up the paperwork.

He pauses, then, with the pause that always precedes a delicate question. 

Do you want to change your name?

The line goes dull and heavy with my silence.

When it’s clear I’m not going to answer, he prompts: You know, back. To your name before you got married.

(Before? I would love, Mr. Lawyer, nothing more than to go back to before. Barring that, yes, I want to change my name. I hate these four letters with every fiber of my being. I want to scrub them, expel them from my life. I never, ever want to sign that awful name again.)

The prospect is thrilling, dangerous. Forbidden. I can’t force my mouth to voice what my heart truly wants. Because:

(Think of the children. How will they feel if you’ve a different last name? You felt so alien when your mother changed hers, like your name wasn’t good enough for her anymore. Do you want to continue that cycle? They’re hurt enough over all of this. They need you to be a stabilizing force for them right now. Don’t be selfish.)

And:

(Think of him. Supervised visits have ended. He has guns. He’ll be irate, more than irate. You’re going to provoke him like this, then send them to him? Do you want to be another headline? Do you want him to kill them for spite, over a name? Don’t be stupid.)

No, I say, long after I should have answered. I don’t think I will.

My lawyer is used to my long silences, but I’m not used to his. It’s what he gives me, though. Endless silence; a chance to change my mind. 

When I don’t, he asks: Are you sure?

(No, I’m not, and we both know it.) 

Yes. I’m sure.

Okay, then. He can’t keep the disappointment, or disapproval, or whatever it is, from his voice. Or maybe that’s me projecting. I’ll send you final drafted agreement.

We end the call.

I sign the papers two weeks later, with the name that I hate, to keep the name that I hate.

Years pass.

My wings, once clipped, grow new feathers. Stop apologizing for everything? New feather. Start writing again? Another. Stop listening to his voice in my head, until it finally (finally) goes away. A giant feather. Get out of debt. Another. Go hiking on my own for the first time? Take another feather. First promotion. First apartment. Going camping again. First college degree. 

A long line of happy agains, and tentative firsts, and I’ve got more feathers than I know what to do with.

I could fly. Almost, but there’s this thing.

A cage. 

That name.

Where I expect the hatred for it to lessen with time, it festers: That name, on my college degree. That name, on my plane ticket to my first real vacation. That name, on my email signature at work.

(You still belong to me, if only in name.)

Except I don’t. I don’t belong to him, anymore, in any respect but this.

Those four letters don’t match who I am now: strong enough to recognize that wanting a name that doesn’t traumatize me is not selfishness; smart enough to recognize that my actions do not hold me responsible for the overreactions of others. 

The bigger I grow, the more constricting this particular cage feels, and I don’t particularly feel like living in it anymore.

I’m ready to change back, I text my sister. 

No awkward pauses, no clarifying questions. Her response is swift and sure:

Fist bump emoji. Balloons. And, because she works at the courthouse: Do you want me to get you the paperwork? 

(The paperwork means this is an actionable item, not an intangible wish. You’d be holding yourself accountable to following through. There might be consequences. You might be judged at work. It will be time consuming. Are you sure you want to do this?)

But:

(Your own name could be on your next college degree.)

(Yes, I do.) 

That’d be great, babe. Thx.

Linds, you haven’t had name dysphoria in three years. The judge understood your fear, he’d seen it before.

You haven’t regretted it once.

You love your name every day but have hyphenated the cat’s last name out of respect for your kids.

Your name was on two degrees.

Thanks for being brave.

oh good, we’re just wasting the hides now, that’s so much better than making things out of them

From a crafting perspective, leather is so very expensive to buy as well. it’s extremely frustrating, because this beautiful material can be used to generate useful goods that people actually want - which is pretty bloody rare in crafting, much as I love crafting - but cost of materials is such a barrier. If more people really got into it as a crafting material, it would be really pleasing.

Here’s the opposite story, though. With apologies because I don’t have the book in front of me, so I may get some details wrong, but I read this “Irena’s Children“ by Tilar J. Mazzeo.

Irena lived in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation, and dedicated her life to rescuing Jewish children from the Ghetto, and her story is complicated in a lot of ways but - well, this story isn’t actually about Irena, per se.

It’s about a bus driver.

It’s about a day when she’s traveling across town by bus with a very young Jewish child, and partway to their destination the child looks up and asks a question - in Yiddish. and the whole bus goes quiet, because everyone knows what that means. And Irena thinks, okay, we’re going to die here today.

And she’s running through her options - all of them bad - and suddenly the bus stops, and the bus driver announces that there’s been a mechanical failure and the bus needs to return to the depot immediately. Everyone off, please.

And she stands and goes to get off the bus and the driver says - not you two. Sit down. So she sits down as everyone else leaves, because, well, what else is she going to do? the options are all still bad, at this point.

and when the bus is empty the bus driver says,

“Where do you need to go?”

And then he drives them as close to their destination as he can, and lets them off, and drives away. And Irena lives, and the kid lives, and they never cross paths again.

So a janitor got three people killed, and a bus driver saved two lives - not to mention all the other lives indirectly saved because Irena was able to continue her work.

I think about that almost every day now, to be honest.

We can’t all be Irena. I couldn’t be Irena. She was in a unique place with very specific skills and connections that let her do what she did. I am just one mentally ill librarian. I can’t be her. But - I can be the bus driver. Or I could be the janitor. Because it doesn’t matter what your job is. It doesn’t matter who you are. In a world like this, every single one of us has the opportunity to do massive harm or massive good. We can save lives or end them.

And that’s scary. but it’s also very comforting? at least for me. Because at the end of the day it means this: no matter of how small and helpless and unimportant you feel, you’re never powerless in the face of great evil.

You can choose to be the bus driver.

$8 to get a scarlet “A” next to your username

fun fact if your breasts are somewhere between a 36C-36D then they weight about the same as your brain

if you're above a D-cup you've probably got more boob than brain

I have to hand it to Musk, nobody else could have fucked up quite on this scale, Twitter is a disaster right now

there will be lawsuits over this stuff

I'm too slow - Eli Lilly is apparently thinking about suing over this one:

long hair on a man is the worlds most powerful aphrodisiac

glad to know people will still be experiencing this video for the first time this daylight savings

sit in front of ultra-violent light