Yeah I got called the ‘c’ word a lot of times over this post…’caring’ not being that word. Pfffth. They can get over it.

Preach it. I wrote blog after blog after blog on this. Even coined the term “Fair Trade Fiction.” I’ve been researching my own way of outmaneuvering the system because it preys on creatives. We are shamed for creating. If you even read the comments in this blog (though many of the really nasty ones I deleted because there is disagreement and outright disrespect), you will see there was more compassion for the struggling resale bookshop than for the authors creating the books.

I had BIG blogs post about this post here ranting that I needed to get another job if people didn’t want to pay for my work…while SIMULTANEOUSLY hugging the used bookstore crying about Walmart. HUH? Why was no one telling them to get another business? It stunned me. Not that I don’t love used bookstores. I shop at them all the time. But I am also aware that there are creatives who are being used up and exploited until they give out.

Sure, I buy that used book…THEN I get another title or the same title in audio or in digital or whatever. If money is tight, I blog about the book, I leave a review because I know it will help sales. Whatever. I go out of my way to support in meaningful ways. BUT, it has to be more than a handful of people.

Because Amazon, Google, Apple, Spotify, and on and on do not care. They will make billions and trillions and we are just batteries powering the Matrix…unless we speak out and DO SOMETHING. What that something is? I’m working on it.

I actually write because others love it, just like the makers of the house you live in, the car you drive and the food you eat make it because you love it…enough to pay them money for it.

I do not stand and complain because it makes the pain less, nor does it make me feel justified, nor do I seek the pity of the readers, or the commiseration of fellow authors.

I am not famous, nor am I popular, but I am known as a dissenter, a trouble maker and a rabble rouser, not content to be trampled upon by the giant corporations of the system.

I have been struggling to connect to people who are willing to do even so little as turn their complaints over to another, and it seems that its fine to complain so long as nobody asks them to DO anything, except continue to slave along churning out content for the masters whom they slave for, for little, or no pay, as if that is just their lot in life.

Why even write if all you are doing is making some complete stranger rich while you have to continue to work at some other corporation supplied job to actually keep food on the table?

I stopped writing over a year ago, with titles lined up, some even technically completed, which I refuse to release into the piracy bin because I’m BETTER than that.

I DESERVE payment for the work I do, and I’ll be DAMNED if I am going to let it out the door ANY MORE for free.

While I can not shame, cajole, or strong arm anybody to come forward with their stories to anybody, it is only in their own wisest and best interests, as well as that of authors to com whom we are letting down with our collective refusal to stand and act, to take that stand, and just like so many other successes of modern human civilization which came by mass movements [and you can surely think of at least a dozen in the past decade alone, not bothering to go all the way back to women’s suffrage] to make what needs to be, come about.

YouTube channels, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and a host of other outlets wherewith to rally the troops, just keep spreading the word, keep pushing the agenda, keep making ourselves heard, and keep the issue before the public eye so that it gets heard and gets done.

I personally am working to build my own print and publishing company with guaranteed transparency, a strong legal counsel built in and an aggressive stance toward locating, prosecuting and punishing piracy on all levels, and in the mean time, RECOVERING lost royalties to the authors they have so gleefully and shamelessly robbed.

This is not an easy project because it requires I obtain investors who are willing to get paid LESS over a LONGER period of time and that makes the investment less attractive than does investing in piracy, with its fast, high payout on a low initial investment.

Yes, I literally am competing with the pirates for OUR OWN books!

That is just how corrupt the print and publishing industry is.

I have no idea when it got this way, but I would speculate it was some point in time right after the invention of the publishing agent, or perhaps the mass printing era of the Gutenberg press.

As soon as the word ‘royalties’ was attached to printing, it is sure that this kind of skulduggery began, but it is high time it ended.

But it will ONLY end, if we the people with [pick your own style of media recording] in hand, take action to DO something about it, and in a REALLY BIG WAY.

People today are too jaded to bother with little tempests in teakettles, they need something BIG to get their interest.

That means THOUSANDS of people acting on the same cause at the same time.

This has to be active, aggressive and coordinated, with leadership and direction, but it HAS TO BE DONE!!!

I wrote this blog so long ago and so many things I saw coming ahead I just wished would not be. You have to write because you love it. Everything else is fodder for a dystopian. Remember there are good reasons writers are the ones dictators shoot first 😉 .

But how does one take a ‘small general consensus’ and convert it into something that puts money in our pockets?

I can get hold of at least one IP attorney who might can be called upon to take up a class action suit if enough people express real interest and produce real evidence.

I really seriously screwed up to be calling people about my own royalty ripoffs without a recording program operating, so I totally missed out on something each and every one of you should hear.

The simple truth is [and I tested and proved it not long after a lady told a writer’s forum about it so I know its real and not just paranoia] Amazon knowingly defrauds authors by intentionally damaging your books hot off the press before shipping them out to ‘used book resellers’ so that they can circumvent paying you.

All they have to do is get the book order already marked as ‘used’ and bada-bing-bada-boom there ya go, book goes out of Amazon’s shipping door already ‘used’ without ever a single person even so much as fanning the pages.

I would have believed it even if I had NOT experienced it [call me paranoid, or call me experienced in reality, call m a pessimist, a cynic, doomsayer, whatever, doesn’t matter] but after learning just exactly how they do it AND THEN hearing a middle-man at a book store actually openly BRAG about it… Well, let us just say, some days luck is on your side, but it needs to be on BOTH sides… No recording, no super damning evidence to show you the people, let alone an attorney, let ALONE a judge…

Okay so here is all it is…literally…brace your self…they fold the back cover down and crease it, then fold it back and iron it flat.

That’s it.

I have a copy of my own book, not a single fingerprint inside it, not a single dog eared page, the spine is as flat and perfect as a perfect bond spine can possibly be off the printer, the book does not wing out, nothing.

I could post a photo, but that would require image sharing be part of this forum, so if you would like a photo of the back of the book to see what to look for, e-mail me at yuri_futanar@futayuriverse.com, OR spend the money and purchase a ‘used’ copy of YOUR OWN book off of any Amazon reseller and see it and hold it in your own hands and inspect every minute detail of it right up close and personal.

This scam, this fraud, this PIRACY is FAR DEEPER than people know or believe.

Its genuine organized crime.

I could go on for hours on this, but I think I should save a little floor space for others to comment.

And Kristen, no, I really DON’T want people hacking into my books, even if they mean well. I’m happy with the remarks I get from readers, that does me well enough.

I think I did offer a bunch of other solutions in the follow up posts that went on for like a MONTH. Amazon being a monopoly certainly doesn’t help anyone but Amazon (which I have written about plenty of times as well). Google my post on “Fair Trade Fiction.” I would love for bookstores to have labels of Fair Trade Fiction. The marketplace already does this for coffee, chocolate, textiles, etc. so why not for artists? I would pay more to buy from a store who made sure the artists were paid. All this FREE is just making us all ill. Thanks for commenting even though this post is so old…and my wounds have scarred over, LOL. Who knew asking for writers to be paid would be such a horrible thing?