Talion: Revenant now on the Kindle.

Talion: Revenant is finally available for the Kindle!

The delay came from Amazon’s rather curious legal department’s requirement for double and triple verification that an author has the rights to any work he puts up. First, in the terms of service, if you put anything up that you don’t own, your service is terminated and you’re liable for penalties. Second, when you offer something for sale, you have to attest to the fact that you, indeed, own the rights to that work.

The third step is where it gets dysfunctionally odd. The publisher gets an automated note from Amazon asking for “proof” that he owns the rights to publish the material in electronic form. In the case of previously published material, Amazon asks for copies of contracts or reversion letters to prove that he has the right to publish the material.

This is a problem for three reasons.

1) I have plenty of work that has been previously published where contracts don’t even mention electronic rights. It’s impossible to provide proof, via contract, that I own the rights. In the case of the Dark Conspiracy novels, for example, all rights to the books were returned to me when the publisher went out of business. They did that to pay off the royalties they owed me. It was a game industry deal done with a handshake and smile, so documentation doesn’t exist, and since the company no longer exists, getting it from them is impossible.

2) That sort of contract information is, in fact, proprietary to the book business. If anyone thinks Amazon is not in competition with or won’t be in competition with traditional publishers, said individual is dreaming. Moreover, details of my deals with publishers are between them, my agent, my lawyer and me. If Amazon wants proof, a letter from my lawyer stating that I have such rights should suffice.

3) Anyone who is inclined to lie about owning the rights to a work could also, very easily, produce scans of faked documents to prove they have such rights. (And if you don’t think Photoshopping forgeries is possible, I refer you back to the faked Obama Kenya Birth Certificate.) Requesting such documentation is, de facto, futile. Amazon is already indemnified by the declarations we have to make in posting the material, and in their terms of service, so demanding such documents makes little sense.

All of this results in a bottleneck. Amazon promises a ruling/response in 2-3 days, which stretches out to a week or more, and then sometimes is not resolved even beyond that. I know of another author who wrote a trilogy under one contract. Amazon has allowed the posting of the first book in the set on the basis of the author’s declaration that he owns the rights, but is blocking book two—even though it is covered by the declaration they have previously accepted.

In my case I told them very simply that the previous publisher had made me an unacceptably low-ball offer on the electronic rights to Talion: Revenant, and that I had refused the offer. Had I gone with the traditional publishing deal I would have gotten half of what Amazon offers right now, which is a quarter of what it will offer in July. The book wouldn’t be out right now and, realistically, there would be no publication date on the horizon. By refusing the traditional offer, I was able to get the book out faster, and we’re that much closer to having a sequel.

Just to recap on the sequel Talion: Nemesis—once I sell 10,000 units of Talion: Revenant in electronic form, I’ll write the sequel. I’ll bank the money I’m getting through these sales, and that’s what I’ll live off to write the book.

In the eight days since I first released the book, you’ve bought 27 copies, or just over three a day. At this rate it will be 2021 when the sequel will be out. But this is why I’m offering this as a challenge: if you help me by letting folks know about the book and the sequel, if you blog about it and tweet about it and mention it on Facebook and in discussion forums, you can help make this go viral. There are currently over sixty million mobile devices that are capable of reading this book. Every smart phone that has a Kindle app can buy and read it. And every computer can pull down the free Adobe Digital Editions software so users can read the epub version of Talion: Revenant.

In short, getting 10,000 people to buy copies isn’t the problem. Letting folks know Talion: Revenant and this challenge exists is.

This is the chance for any reader to help decide what I’m doing next. This is the opportunity to completely overturn the old publishing paradigm where a select few in New York determine what you get to read, simply based on their gut feelings—and absent most demographic or sales data. You actually have the power to do that, to tell a whole industry that their antiquated methods and arrogant attitudes no longer function in this day and age. Chances like that are rare, so don’t miss it.

Again, thanks for your help with this. Together we’ll shape a future that guarantees we’ll get the entertainment we want, when we want it, and at a price that is reasonable—all without having to murder a single tree.