I believe it's being called "enshitification." When a company begins watering down their products & services.

This is something video games have been fighting for years. Adam Koralik dived into this recently that digital goods aren't property and the EULA's you agree to are terms that change when they feel like it. Have to check out the calribre tool

Yo ho, yo ho, I'm pirating your book but not reading it

11:00 It is okay to steal books, fight me

you actually do not own the device since they can deny you software updates or logins :)

Writing 1st book. Good to see I am doing something right! Writing scenes, naming that section, and not putting in order. 😊

Thank you. I have just been writing and decided to try scrivener and found your video when asking google what's the difference between scenes and chapters. Not only did your video clarify the difference but I see where breaking things down into scenes will be helpful to me as I review my book decide which "scenes" to keep or move within chapters. As I move my chapters from Word into scrivener I am going to further break them down into scenes. Thanks

What you did is illegal. It is 100% illegal. Removing a DRM is NOT legal in the United States. And Kobo books have DRMs too. Lol she's still so ignorant.

Well I hope people intend to release these exclusively physical books also in braille, large print, or audio formats, otherwise they’re excluding visually impaired and other disabled people from reading them. I’m all for saying ‘F you’ to pirates, but by cutting off a section of your audience (literally anyone who has a reason to buy mainly ebooks) you’re lowering potential sales anyway.

spread that message! you go girl

The conversations here have just reminded me of exactly Why I bought a Kindle. For a few years there, I thought I could be a sailor. So, I downsized everything, and packed away my library. Kindle was good for on the sailboat. Now that I'm back on land, it's become more trouble than it's worth. I'm going to have to start buying actual books again, I guess.

All of your problems are very nice (not!) but the one that really winds me up is when they start removing (Yet Again) books I've read from my Kindle. That might sound good to you, it clears up space, right? Except, I've got a 64GB Sandisk. I mean, even with all the books I have, that Sandisk isn't even close to being used. But, Amazon's computer thinks I'd like to have as little as possible on the precious space on that Sandisk. No, it makes NO Effing Sense to me, either!

I love your videos ❤

Bit Torrent never stopped being awesome.

that's why i am slowly moving back to buying proper books and library reading

My libraries wait list for Libby books is often over 6 months, and I can only put 10 on hold at a time. Not practical for me.

Fantastic video Kristin!!!

when ownership is impossible, piracy is justified.

I got heaps of ppl whining that I will only sell physical copies of my novels, because not everyone can afford a book. Well too bad because the writer community always make excuses for piracy. Books won't eliminate piracy completely but you can make it harder for them.

Doesn’t Amazon make the most money with paperbacks? Authors make little with paperbacks. So basically you don’t want poor people to have the book for free. You give most of the money to a rich corporation instead.

After going to a few of editors, THIS is the one you want to use!

HA I contacted this editor...CONTACT THEM!!

Eh for me I would welcome piracy if it means my works can be read by more people, yes less money for me but cant argue with free publicity. DCMA'ing people left and right is a waste of time and isolating my works to physical books will only limit my reader base so I think the whole thing is counter intuitive IMHO as there is this magical machine called a scanner that you can buy around $40 not to mention that other magical invention called the copy machine. Besides the more you restrict your works the more pirates will come after you and I think your DCMA will backfire TBH as DCMA rarely stops piracy. Honestly want to stop piracy? dont write.

Marxism 101; Demand you are entitled to other people's labor. If need be, take it by force. No one is entitled to the benefits of the labor of anyone else!

Your books have to be worth stealing.

You are correct about raccoons liking shiny shit. More and more, I'm thinking about marketing and cover designs and where to sell physical copies. (Your convention experiences are inspiring) I'm so burned out on anything online that the idea of making a "book run" and pounding the pavement sounds exciting.

Information should be free, but not my labor. I believe in the public domain because I won't need the fruits of my labor when I'm dead. But I ain't dead yet.

Art is a business and why do people think it should be free? Why the hell is there such a ridiculously high value on say, The Mona Lisa? Or Andy Warhol's paintings? How does the world work? Freebies? How are you supposed to make a living? Through freebies? Ughhh!?!?? Very well stated vid.

Great video, us guys really like leather covers.

I meet so many people who only read on paper, and many more who read both, but I only know one person who reads only on their phone...but they never put their phone down, ever. I know several people who have e-readers but they also read on their phones, and have large collections of physical books, but some people only buy specific books, has to be hardcover and a specific edition (they have a beautiful library at home, and they've read all of the books in it). Everything old is new again, lol. Actually, I keep hearing about people reading physical books as an exercise to work on their concentration, I find that interesting.

Good video, thanks. I'm on your TwiX which is where I saw this. But, you don't address the ROI of conventions. If you have to fly, get a hotel, and pay for your table, that's a lot of cost. How many books do you actually sell at these things? Enough to make all those expenses worth it?

Great vid! Very informative.

I like the idea.

You do not own the device, if you did then you could install whatever OS you wanted, apps, programs, etc. You lease the device, the manufacturer retains intellectual property rights over the firmware and software. You will own nothing and be happy. Remember how clear the elites were about this? They were not kidding.

enjoyng this . thank you . i use kindle app (iPhone) on the subways. and yeah, should we not get used to the subscription universe? i see it like this: we humans are not the dominant life form on Earth any more. No, not AI's (yet.) . . well, kinda AI's. . . but Corporations are germinating AI's - think about it - and they ARE the dominant species on Earth. And they will make us subscribers whether we like it or not: like the intestinal bacteria (metaphorically) that we are in their digestive systems. Anyway YGG!

i like your personality! thanks for the tips!

Kobo is just so user friendly- it can handle so many different formats and then you can always copy all the files over to the computer

To be fair, you can pay Amazon another £10/$10(?) to remove ads. With regards to e-books, the first thing I do is download the book to my PC. This then goes into my Calibre e-book manager. I NEVER download the book to my Kindle - it is always in aeroplane mode. I am not rich, I am not American. I DO pay for my books.

Licensed

When I read one of today's most prolific fantasy writer's books, Brandon Sanderson, I don't read his material for the cover. The Stormlight Archive, (Sorry, Brandon and Dragonsteel) I don't exactly adhere to the covers he places on those novels. It's the prose within those pages that drives me to read all 380,000 pages in one month. It's the beautiful story!!! This vid is such a great smackdown!!! I definitely subbed to your channel!!!

As a Python programmer and a writer who refused to embrace the use of AI at first, (AI largely uses Python as a language in its development, among other forms of languages), I saw how they learned, and was sucked into the hype of 'it's cheating'. Until I tried it and found its capabilities very versatile, I was so close-minded. It's amazing the tool it is and not the fact that AI does everything for us.

The Big-5 are now piling up with blue-hairs, looking for 'material' that checks the boxes of a literal echo-chamber right now. I would rather pave my own way independently. If AI helps me break out with some cover art, then I will use it. There is very good software out there to manipulate those images to your liking. It's called art and subjective for a reason. These bullies need to get a grip. Great video!!!

I've been thinking about subtext in the form of sarcasm. I think my work is riddled with it

Im on my 4th Kindle - they've not been very reliable or durable. The battery has just died in my Paperwhite and Amazon can't repair it 😢. They have offered me a discount of 20% off a new device but I've hesitated. The threat to me losing access to books I've bought was a step too far and I think it might be time to switch to Kobo. George Orwell's 1984 was removed from the Kindle store and disappeared from my Kindle too. Apparently, it was a copyright or licencing issue 🤔. But, I'm starting to wonder if it's actually something far more sinister.

You don't even own the Device .

Awesome!!

Language evolves and now buy and own seem to mean something different than it used to be.

The problem is of course that you don't buy the books you buy the lease with amazon under your user agreement with amazon. I don’t think that DRM to protect books from being copied and the author from being ripped off is a problem per se. The problem is Amazon's monopoloy on the market which they abuse. To me it's a good idea to spread one's purchases amongst as many companies as possibles to reduce dangers of monopolies and if possible, support ethical sellers. If sellers simply sold epub files combined with drms that you could download on your computer and on all your devices also from smaller companies.

Thank you for this incredibly informative training video! So, do you think it's a good idea that you ask the ARC readers to post all their reviews on your online book launch day such as in Amazon?

You may want to consider just cutting off Wi-Fi to your ereader and transferring your epub via USB. I think for many this isn't hard to do, it's just not what we're accustomed to when you can connect via WiFi. It seems you pay a steep price for connecting these sorts of devices, and definitely lean away from Kindle.