Write Nonfiction NOW!

Good News for POD World: Amazon Settles Antitrust Lawsuit Filed by BookLocker

If you look back at some of my posts from April 2008, you’ll see that at that time Amazon was threatening to monopolize the print-on-demand (POD) publishing industry.  Amazon wanted all POD publishers to print their books using BookSurge, a POD owned by Amazon. In other words, they wanted all POD publishers to pay Amazon via BookSurge to print their books. If they didn’t agree to do so by signing a contract, Amazon said it would remove the “buy it now” buttons from Amazon.com for all their authors’ books. This sent a lot of authors who were about to or planned to self-publish running to BookSurge, despite the company’s quality issues. It also caused some POD publishers to sign that Amazon contract in an effort to keep those “buy it now” buttons working.

One POD publisher, however, fought back: BookLocker. Despite a run in I had with Angela Hoy, who runs BookLocker and WritersWeekly.com (see this post), I gave her a lot of credit (and still do) for doing what the whole industry should have done–stand up to Amazon. She not only boycotted Amazon.com (which some other POD publishers and many writers did as well) and refused to sign Amazon’s contract (which quite a few POD publishers did not),  but also filed a class-action lawsuit against Amazon, alleging their actions violated federal antitrust laws.

In the latest issue of WritersWeekly.com Hoy provides an update on the Amazon/BookSurge antitrust lawsuit. According to an article Hoy published in WritersWeekly.com, Hoy says Amazon filed a motion to dismiss, in August, 2009, but Chief U.S. District Judge John Woodcock Jr. issued a 26-page order denying Amazon’s motion. Amazon then opted to settle before discovery began.

Two months later, a settlement was reached, with, I believe, money awarded going to charity. (Nice, touch, Angela…) You can read the final settlement HERE.

You might be interested to know that  Amazon recently retired the BookSurge name. It now does POD business under the name CreateSpace.

As for winning the antitrust lawsuit, Hoy reports, “We didn’t do this for the money. We did it to make Amazon understand that covert efforts aimed at forcing POD publishers to pay Amazon / BookSurge (now Createspace) to print their books is not the way responsible corporate citizens should act. By getting Amazon to rescind their pay-us-to-print-your-books-or-else policy, we believe BookLocker’s lawsuit achieved its goal.”

I would like to thank Hoy and BookLocker for taking up the fight for all authors who want to self-publish their books and for all POD publishers. POD publishers should never have felt bullied into printing their books with BookSurge (or any other publishing house) so they would be free to sell their books on line at Amazon.com like other publishing companies.

We can all breath a bit more easily now, and we can self-publish with the POD of our choice without fear that our books won’t be sold on Amazon.com, which–unfortunately–remains the primary online bookseller.

So You Say You Want to Write About Dance…

No matter your interest, you can find a magazine for which to write.

Recently I was asked to write a guest blog post  for 4 Dancers, a blog written by Catherine L. Tully. She is the Outside Europe representative for the National Dance Teachers Association in the UK. She has been involved with dance for over 35 years as an educator, writer, performer, photographer, choreographer and classroom instructor. Her articles appear in magazines such as Dance Teacher, Dance Spirit, youngARTS, Highland Dancer, and many other arts-related publications–some of the same ones in which my articles appear. She is also one of the founders of Freelance-Zone.com, an award-winning blog for freelance writers. She asked me to write about how I got started as a dance writer. If you, too, would like to write about dance, you might want to read mypost. You can do so by clicking here. Enjoy!

Writing with a Purpose vs. Writing with a Passion

Have you ever gotten an idea for a book, essay, article, or blog post, and simply sat down and began writing? When the so-called “light bulb” turned on, and the flow of passion began cursing through your writer’s veins, you knew you simply had to write about whatever subject was on your mind. That’s an amazing feeling.

Sometimes, however, we have an idea for a book, essay, article, or blog post that we know will help us in some way. This piece of writing might help us get where we are going, build our platform, fit into the niche we are creating for ourselves, get us noticed, build readership, etc. So, we get excited, and we pursue the project, because it feels right and we know it fits into the “big picture.” That’s a pretty good feeling, too.

For the last eight or nine years, I’ve spent a lot of my time doing the latter–writing with a purpose in mind. During that time, a lot of projects I started and pursued briefly have been left by the wayside while I created a platform, found a niche, built a readership, and so on.  This past week, however, I began thinking about the difference between these two types of writing–writing with a purpose vs. writing with a passion–and where they fall into a writer’s career.

I did this as I listened to the guest speaker, Gerard Jones, at the California Writer’s Club South Bay January meeting. Jones is the author of books Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book (2004), which won the Eisner Award; Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy,Superheroes and Make-Believe Violence (2002); andHoney, I’m Home! Sitcoms: Selling the American Dream (1993). Jones has written for Marvel Comics and DC Comics, as well as for Wonder Man, The Shadow,Pokémon, and Batman.With Will Jacobs, he co-authored The Beaver Papers: The Story of the Lost Season (1983). As he told his story he mentioned that sometimes, as in the case of a few of his more recent works, you just have to write something because you feel strongly about it, not because it fits into your niche or because someone tells you it’s sure seller.

From what he said, his first book, The Beaver Papers, seems to have just fallen together. It was a work of some passion. Later, he worked tended to work on books that had more of a purpose. Now, he has started working on projects that once again his heart and his passions dictate.

I think that this illustrate how many a writer gets started and progresses, especially in the current publishing world. We begin a book, or some writing project, because our heart, soul or passion leads us in that direction. We believe in it and feel we just must get it written and published. Along the way, we learn the publishing ropes, and we start playing the publishing “game,” doing the things we are “supposed to do.” We write with the purpose of become successful writers and authors. Then somewhere along the line, we decide we must once again write because our hearts, souls and passions drive us to do so. Maybe it at that point we become the best writers we can become, because we can put all the knowledge we have gained to use with our passion. Indeed, then passion and purpose come together.

For myself, I see now that the projects I left by the wayside must be picked up once again. My passion for them is beginning to rise again. My soul and my heart are crying out to write from that place once more.  I see now, in hindsight, how I can improve these projects. (Time and experience make a writer wiser…) I’m ready to move forward with them one way or another–to try again to find a traditional publisher or simply to self-publish because I know the information deserves to be in the world for people to read. My passion tells me so. Even Jones has turned to some non-traditional forms of publishing, despite his traditional publishing track record. The publishing world has opened up to those with both purpose and passion.

So, I conclude that writing with purpose need not be better or worse than writing with passion. They each have a place and time in a writer’s career. Additionally, they can–and should–be employed together to succeed as a writer today.