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David Gaughran has it in for Author Solutions. With good reason – Author Solutions rips people off. They offer marketing packages with huge markups that will likely have very little effect on sales. Recently, I attended the L.A. Times Book Festival and the Author Solutions booth was hocking a book about racial purity. Incredibly disgusting, but all’s well and good for AS because they got their fee.

That said, I think much of the onus with Author Solutions problems is laid at the foot of the writer. Author Solutions may be predatory, but it is not enough to say […]

I recently discovered something that is pretty eye-opening about the state of media today, and into the future. Perhaps I’m late to the game, but I’ve found it pretty amazing. Basically, it’s possible to watch any movie you want for free. I’m not going to link to it because it’s illegal, or at least ethically dubious, but sites like this look like this:

I found it via Twitter. Netflix was trending one day and someone tweeted, “Why is everyone using Netflix when you can just use _____.” The answer is: I don’t know. If you’ve ever dealt with Netflix or […]

A guest post on David Gaughran’s site covers the new world of bundled box sets. A good idea on the surface, and very profitable, but also problematic. She addresses this in the post:

With the attention, of course, also comes the inevitable criticism: that 2012 was the year of the freebie, 2013 the year of the 99¢ book, and now 2014 is the year of the 99¢ box. All cheap marketing ploys that will devalue the written word and destroy an industry.

Pretty much. Next paragraph:

Our business ledger, of course, says otherwise. Despite having built our assisted-self-publishing micropress