Trend-chasing has a lower likelyhood of driving you to insanity than gambling on horse races, but just as likely to finacianlly deplete you. Consider all the fantasy authors who debut books like that but end up never getting noticed, much less read.
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If Amazon’s policies are that awful, then yes, I wouldn’t want people to pirate my books, either.
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I, too, am saddened when people collect books because they think it’s “cool” but don’t actually read them. Yes, they’re two separate hobbies, but there’s no point to collecting them when you’re not actually going to use them. They’re not action figures. 
I’ve actually never read a book by her. 
I’ve been meaning to just to see what the hype is all about, specifically It Ends With Us because of the movie coming out, but yeah… don’t see why there’s lots of hype.
To be fair, a lot of books within the same genre tend to have similar covers as publishers believe it’s a marketing tool when really, it just causes confusion. 
Cassandra Clare and Sarah Maas, however, do have similar covers, but not Leigh Bardugo… unless you might’ve been looking at one with the TV show cover lol.
'Cause like… these are all very different from each other.
But I get what you mean. A lot of YA fantasy has shifted into only female protagonist category and how they’re all about fighting evil forces or corrupted governments, etc. Part of it comes from the feminist thing where it usually was all about guys until women writers showed off that girls can do the same things too. Then it seemed like publishers thought these books were so good that they wanted more of it. And so, now, we just have an abundance of fantasy novels all talking about the same things because the idea was overly asked for and overly saturated. Of course, there are books that dive into a whole other realm of ideas like Natalie C. Parker’s Seafire series which is just a bunch of female pirates trying to stay alive, etc. but they’re not the popular stories that take over reading blogs and videos.
I feel like we’d have no actual wars if governments responded like this more. Heck, we’d definitely have no wars if women ruled the world because we wouldn’t be fighting each other—we’d just not talk to each other and then gossip to other countries about how bad the other country is.
But back on topic, I definitely agree. Especially when it comes from authors because honestly, if you post anything anywhere on social media or for profit, you have to be aware that people are not going to like it, and therefore, accept the criticism. If you’re not ready for it, you are not ready to have your stories displayed on public domains.
Unfortunately true. I feel like so many people are hypocrites these days…
Can’t be done. Originality doesn’t exist anymore because of this. Sure, you can make a story sound original through adding different genres as subplots, but in the grand scheme of things… it’s not original still because that subplot was used before somewhere else, whether as a subplot itself or as a plot to another story. Like, how versions of a fantastical school has there been? Vampire Academy, Harry Potter, Monster’s University, Monster High, Halloweentown High and the Return to Halloweentown (where they go to college), and then there’s an episode of Billy and Mandy where there’s a school for Underworld students. And that’s just off the top of my head.
What makes a story original isn’t always about the plot, though, or the tropes that go along with it. It’s usually how the story is put together—the characters, the way it’s written, how things progress.
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This is manga related but still.
I hate when manga goes these route…sometimes.
- Go on a sudden hiatus for a very long time with no intention or mention of coming back…ever.
- Have an ending that is rushed and lack all sorts of sense.
- Go on for a very long time that there is no ending or a terrible ending.
- Or the mangaka dies (tragic, but life happens) and the manga stays in a stand still never to be finished…ever.
I never realized that when it comes to manga, the endings are a hit or miss.
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I wish that historically held up.
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Some of it has to be because of titles and the fact that they are often discussed alongside each other so one’s brain just sort of sees them as being one big blob called Six of Throne of Glass and Ruin Extra Spicy Edition Now with more Shirtless Fairy Dudes.
I was talking to some…I would say that they are the opposite of normies because they are wiser but not very broadly knowledgeable. I was talking about how much contreversy Overlord light novels would storm up on booktok, someone asked if there were any hot fairies in it, and I told them that the closest you’ll get, at least in the main cast, is two young crossdressing dark elves.
Yeah, this isn’t going to get the Cassandra Clare stamp of approval anytime soon, not helped by most Americans taking gender identity super seriously.
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The clear solution is to declare Fuzz 99 the God King of Planet Earth, then, because there is no statistics about enbies waging wars!
Not yet, at least.
I think that Scooby Doo: Ghoul School might be the oldest example I can name.
Originality isn’t exactly what you should be aiming for, though. What you should do is leave your mark on a certain concept in a way that only you could do. Compare Harald Foss’ Sigmund to Enslaved’s Sigmund.
If you look up the lyrics, it’s pretty bloody. Harald makes it sound like a twisted medieval version of Pumped Up Kicks.
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I know. I’ve been waiting for The Remarried Empress to resume and it doesn’t look like it’s ever going to, and the mangaka stopped before the empress ever remarried! (-᷅_-᷄๑)
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Isn’t that a webtoon though?
Don’t mean to be that person and I am sorry.
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Yup, it’s a webtoon, but I don’t really see the difference between webtoons and manga. Webtoons are just a digital version of the same thing, eh? ¯\_(ﭢ)_/¯
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Damn…I read that for a bit only stopped at some point.
I was reading Empyrea which is suppose to have a third season coming soon. Don’t know when that is happening.
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Oh absolutely. Theres a whole petition going around to get Amazon to change their policies because it is unfair.
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I reaaaaally hope they can sort it all out… it’s crazy it’s been allowed all this time :x
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I’m not sure which KDP issue you’re referring to… I heard of the whole problem they’ve caused with their return policy and due to how their royalties work, authors end up having to pay Amazon out of pocket when/if a customer returns their e-book. But if there’s something else that’s happened with KDP, I haven’t heard of it.
As for my reasoning in regards to e-book piracy, I agree with what some published authors like Brandon Sanderson have said on the topic. They’ve put it more succinctly than I ever can, so I won’t repeat what they have already said, but I’ll only add my perspective to it:
- There are, broadly speaking, three different types of people who download books for free: Those who can’t afford books, those who can but don’t want to “risk” buying books unless they know for sure they will enjoy it, and those who can but choose not to spend money on books.
The third category of people are irrelevant, because whether or not they pirate ebooks, the authors aren’t going to receive a single penny from them anyway.
But I see the first two categories as potential future sales. People who can’t afford books might someday actually have that buying power and purchase books from authors who they’ve previously read (for free!) and enjoyed. People who are risk-averse might read a few books for free, discover that they like the author, and then won’t be so risk-averse next time they see that author’s books in the stores.
- For indie or growing authors, I believe it will benefit them greatly if they have one or two books available for free, because people are even less likely to risk spending money on an author whose work they are entirely unfamiliar with. So having a free book or two will introduce people to your work, and if they like your style, they’d be more likely to buy more of your stuff.
- My third reasoning is probably the most important reason for me personally, and that is because I’m looking at it from a non-Western/“first-world” perspective. Books are (pardon my language) f***cking expensive. Public libraries are basically non-existent. School libraries are small and stock only educational material (hardly any fiction).
To put it into perspective, the average minimum wage per province is roughly US$200 per month. A HUGE percentage of the people barely make minimum wage. An e-book is still US$10-20 (for well-known authors). You could get KDP e-books for $3-5, but when you’ve got bills, housing, food, etc. to pay for … who is gonna risk even $1 on a random author who they’ve never heard of or read before?
Of course people can read “local” books (which are cheaper), but that’s incredibly limiting, and it shuts people off from the rest of the world. That’s how people are still stuck in the misogynistic, homophobic, racist mindsets of the 60s when the rest of the world are progressing.
I spent many, many years pirating e-books … and I would never have found my favourite authors if I hadn’t done so. But I graduated high school, university, I got a high-paying job from very early on because of my excellent English and work and personal ethics–all of which I’d never have developed had I not been exposed to them through (pirated!) international books. Basically, I got myself into a position where I actually have expendable income, and now my bookshelves are stocked with their books (even the ones I already read for free decades ago). And the authors who I never pirated? Well, I’m not buying their books today, either. And I know I’m far from the only one with this experience.
Of course there are people who are just entitled and will never contribute a dime to authors, but shutting off the whole topic of “ebook piracy” and making blanket moral statements regarding the issue at the expense of the rest of the world is like burning an entire city down just because thieves exist.
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My hot take is that book piracy never helps self-published authors. Pirates have never helped a stolen book go viral ever. Not once. They don’t advertise books they’ve stolen, they’ve never generated word of mouth, they’ve never done anything measurable to help self-published authors at all, ever. Maybe wealthy, successful famous writers like Brandon Sanderson and Neil Gaiman benefit from pirates, but I sure as fuck haven’t and I don’t know anyone who has, although quite a few of the self-published writers I know write professional grade novels, like Raymond St. Elmo and Rob Gregson. I have very little money, but I never steal books. I buy them for $2.99 or less as Kindle Daily deals, Bookbub deals, BookRiot deals, or Early Bird deals. Where I come from, if you can’t afford something you simply do without it. Only an asshole steals other people’s hard work, and only the supreme being of assholes would try to justify robbing people. (ง︡’-'︠)ง
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Depends on how you define stealing and ownership in the digital age.
Trust me, it’s a lot easier to pirate than deal with Amazon’s Kindle. And nobody cares about self-published authors, why do you think that @RowanCarver was complaing about in a thread earlier about how writing is useless and everyone should stop writing?
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You can’t do it for others alone. I don’t care if you have other motivations. You’ve got to have an element that owns that this is for me, I am owning me.
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I think that there is a pervasive movement of seeing self-published authors as less than tradiotnally published in bookweb. Especially in ficiton it seems.
Readers might see self-published and think automatically that it’s going to be a steaming pile of crap and not bother.
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