Weekly Newsletter
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My wife and I were eating at a Mexican restaurant the other day. Her order looked really good, so I asked her if I could try a bite. She said, “No, you can’t have any of my food because it’s nachos!” So I said, “Why not? Enchilada food on your plate. You’ve got plenty.”
In publishing news, DRM is rearing its ugly head. (I’ve never really understood that term. Just where are you putting your noggin if you’re “rearing” it? Sounds both sketchy and stinky. If I hadn’t heard about horses rearing back when they’re spooked, I would have always had a different visual associated with it.) What is DRM? It stands for Digital Rights Management. Basically it’s an option that authors sometimes choose to protect their work from piracy. Most do not go that route, myself included, because it doesn’t make good faith, paying customers happy when they can’t transfer their content from one device to another. In fact, every so often I try to go back and see if I’ve accidentally (it happens) chosen DRM in the past so I can switch it off.
So what’s changing? Well, Amazon just sent a notice to authors about a new DRM protocol. Basically, starting on January 20th, DRM is going to change policy wise. Not going to get into the weeds here because I do not yet fully understand the implications, but this news very well may affect you as a reader. Many authors may be incentivized to switch their DRM options on with the new policy. Therefore readers, in all likelihood, will have the experience of not being able to transfer their content from one device to another a lot more often. One step forward and two steps back.
To be clear, Amazon is arguably the most customer friendly company in the publishing market. In fact, they are way friendlier to customers than to authors. This leads me to believe that the change in policy is completely necessary when it comes to the old cost versus benefit analysis. All this is still in the early development stages, but it’s out there, and now you know.
Okay, switching gears now. Talking about the big sale again. Smashwords End of Year sale is in full swing. Thousands of great authors are participating. All my ebook titles are half off and three of them are completely free. To find my work, just type my name in the search bar and click on the pic when it pops up. Here comes the link and graphic. 👇👇👇
On the writing front, my latest jokes for kids book is close to the bottom of 22 full pages. Things will slow down for the next few weeks due to the holidays, but are still on track. I have given MoonDom Five’s introduction and chapters 1-3 their first edits. This may be the best turd I’ve ever polished. It’s one of those stories that you just can’t wait to put out into the world. Oh, if only that really were how it works. I’m considering breaking the narrative into three parts. It’s not that long of a read, but there are three distinct sections, so it would be a brain friendly move. I may ask some beta readers about it if there’s enough time. I’m currently looking at the first week in March.
Until Next Time, Merry Christmas and God Bless!
