You may have heard of a little scandal last week involving LendInk, where a group of authors — mainly indie, although some were traditionally published — misunderstood the purpose of borrowing site LendInk, mistakenly believing the site had pirated their books. In reality, the site was matching borrowers and lenders for authors whose titles had borrowing enabled under their Amazon and Barnes & Noble contracts.
Using the power of social media — despite the fact LendInk wasn’t actually pirating any material — authors were able to get LendInk shut down, igniting a flurry of support for LendInk and a backlash against authors who did not understand the terms and conditions of their own contracts, and the fact that they had indeed enable lending themsleves. In short, the event did nothing to enhance the reputation of indie authors, who (as we all know!) already battle accusations of lack of professionalism.
When you don’t have a team behind you as in traditional publishing, it’s all too easy to hit the panic button. I know, because I’ve done the same in many situations when I’ve experienced Amazon glitches, inexplicable drops in sales, or other phenomena out of my control. It’s easy to feel the sky is falling when you spot your title on unauthorized websites; to jump to conclusions that your hard work is being taken advantage of. However, there is one thing we can do to regain some control: educate ourselves.
Okay, so we may not be able to explain away every technical glitch that occurs. But we can take the time to make sure we read and understand the fine print in our contracts. Sounds like common sense, doesn’t it? Sure, it’s boring. Yes, it’s tedious. But if we want to be treated as a professional, we need to act like one. Understanding the ins and outs of our business is critical.
In the comments section of this post on The Digital Reader, Smashwords founder Mark Corker says:
Over the last four years, here at Smashwords we’ve faced probably hundreds if not thousands of mini-panics, many of which might have developed into raving angry mobs as developed around this one had we not taken steps to diffuse them. For example, dozens of times we’ve had authors claim illegal copies of their books were being distributed by our retail partners, simply because the author didn’t realize we were a distributor (!!). Dozens of times authors have accused of us withholding their payments, only to discover their mailing address changed, or the gave us the wrong PayPal address.
We’re living in a time when authors have never had more power. It’s exciting, it’s inspiring, and it’s scary to be in charge of our own destiny. But we still need to keep a firm grip on the reality that what we’re doing is also a business. And that includes reading the fine print.
Being the least detail-oriented person on the Planet, I know it’s no easy task! So I’m curious: how do you deal with understanding all the ins and outs of contracts with Amazon, B&N, etc?
As usual your words of wisdom will resonate with many, Talli. Thanks for a very interesting post, yet again!
Thanks for dropping by, Giselle!
Well written (as usual) Talli. I haven’t self published (yet) but will keep in mind this and all your other useful advice though I too hate reading the small print.
Thank you, DJ. Reading the small print is so tedious, but it has to be done.
Nothing cures insomnia for me like reading a legal contract! The only thing I’ve found that works is to read it aloud. Tedious, but it does keep me awake. Either that give it to my DH to read–he actually likes reading “legalize.”
That’s a great idea, Sara. Thank you! I try to get my husband to read over my contracts, too, if I’m uncertain. He has a great eye for that kind of stuff.
Legalese, not legalize–fingers got away from me!
Yes, small print is no fun when you’re used to reading fast-paced thillers or novels with a plot! I print out the contracts so I can read them while I’m exercising. If I try to read stuff online, I’m tempted to skim! Thanks for the great pot, Talli!
Great tip, Tamara! Reading online is really hard. Printing out and having the text right in front of you makes it that much easier.
You are so right. Ignorance is no excuse. I got ripped off by a well known publisher because 1. I had no agent. 2. I didn’t read the small print on my contract. When I acquired 1. she pointed out the merit of doing 2.!
Oh, Carol, that just plain sucks. I’m sorry to hear it! Hopefully you got things sorted out.
I admit, I seen the start of the LendInk march on a Facebook group, and I was ready to jump on the bandwagon. I visited LendInk, got a user account and checked it out. I read a little (not all) of the rules and decided it wasn’t the horrible site it had been made out to be. Links were provided to Amazon to buy my book.
I decided to get off the bandwagon before I sent that threatening letter. Shortly afterwards, I noticed a borrow of my book on Amazon. Did it bother me? Nope. Someone I may not have reached through other means was reading my book. This fall, I hope they go looking for book two in the series.
Although I don’t read an entire contract, if I have questions, I refer back to it, scanning through it to find the information related to my question. I should read it all, but…I should.
Diane, like you, I was ready to work myself into a lather of righteous indignation!
I did the same – I checked out LendInk, and it was the same as many other sites that connect lenders and borrowers that I’d run across in the past, so I wasn’t concerned. I look at borrows the same way as you do – as a way to reach new readers.
Hee hee, I just relayed what others had posted re lendlink!
I think many people did that, Francine. I saw it all over the place!
Thanks Talli, I’ve been watching developments from the sidelines (and on ROMNA) and trying to make sense of it all. I’m not published, but hope to epublish this autumn so all information is very welcome. Thanks for making it all make sense for me. I think the monks with their illuminated manuscripts had the right idea – much harder to copy and pass around. LOL.
The monks may have had the right idea, ha! I was tempted to stick my oar in on ROMNA but decided not to, given the vehemence of some of the responses. I do think there’s a real lack of understanding about what these services are actually doing, and LendInk is only one of MANY I’ve run across. It’s a shame what happened.
The truly sad thing was there were a small minority of us (authors) trying to educate others and frankly once the lather started it was hopeless. The fact is that Lendlink was absolutely legal and aboveboard in the US, there is still some controversy as to how it should have worked in the UK, but I felt sites like that actually helped discourage piracy. It is going to take a very long time to overcome that backlash for authors.
LC, that is sad. I did see some authors trying to explain, but sadly it seems to have gone off into the ether.
Great point on the UK. Hmm, I’d assume that a US-Amazon-user wouldn’t be able to lend to someone registered on .co.uk? Not sure…
I think that everyone isn’t ready to be the boss and figure out the in and outs of all that publishing a book entails. You should teach set up webinars!
I feel bad for LendInk. I didn’t know about the whole falling out.
Yes, good point, Theresa! There is a lot of work involved in being your own boss – and lots of tedious details to attend to.
I saw this on FB with the indie authors. I was told that it was legal in the US but not here, so we couldn’t do anything, and I didn’t. I know there was a rumble about this on romna. I just stayed in the backgroud about it all. I did read Bob Mayer’s blog about it, which said that it can help authors not hinder them.
I’m with Bob – I really think sites like this can help authors. It’s a shame what happened.
Yes, I’ve been watching the scandal around LendInk, and it makes me want to shout a big old Homer Simpson “D’oh!”. I typically make a few hundred dollars a month off my “borrowed” books on KDP. I thinks sites like LendInk would help us all increase those numbers.
Anyway, in answer to your question, I’m lucky enough to have a lawyer in the family, so he gets to read the fine print, lol!
p.s.–I realize we don’t make money on peer-to-peer lending, but I think it makes people aware of the lending process, leading some to the Prime membership that allows authors to make money off the KDP Select program.
Totally agree, Claire. I also think it introduces books to readers who might otherwise not have heard of you.
You’re so lucky to have a lawyer in the family! I’m jealous!
Like others, I read a post by someone saying “My book has been pirated!!!” I went to LendInk, found my books (nice, large thumbnails, too!), read the ‘about’ page, read whatever the administrator had to say, thought it over, remembered that I had enabled lending (at 70% I think it’s mandatory), double-checked to see that it was so, concluded that LendInk was a good thing, and posted that. Then I watched the freewheeling and groaned.
I did the same thing, Diana. And then groaned, too.
Great advice Talli -knowing the fine print is important – even when it’s incredibly dull and convoluted.
Thanks, Jemi! I long for the day when fine print is exciting. Market gap?
A great post and a wonderful reminder! With small print or anything legal – I usually have to read it out loud in order for it to keep my attention – but now I think I’ll read out loud AND read it again.
Sharon, I like the idea of reading it aloud! My mind usually wanders when I’m trying to read tedious text, so it’s a great tip!
I just ask them any question I have and they send me an answer. Amazon has been wonderful both with KDP and Createspace.
I’ve found the same thing, Nancy. They’re very responsive and open to questions.
There is a difference in reading and understanding. Sometimes words are skimmed over or misunderstood, like Mark Coker’s quote about Smashwords being a distributor. The authors complaining obviously didn’t know what that meant until it was pointed out.
I hate what happened with Lendlink. There was an anti-piracy workshop a few weeks ago on a yahoo loop I’m on, and now almost daily someone is yelling about a possible pirate site. They see it, go to Facebook, Twitter, yahoo loops, message boards, yelling about pirates when all the site may be is an affiliate site or a lending site like Lendlink. Despite numerous messages on the yahoo loop stating Lendlink was okay, it seemed no one listened.
Read the fine print, understand the fine print, and before yelling and screaming, take a deep breath and check things out.
This is one reason I don’t use DRM and send out letters to everyone and their grandmother. I don’t want to use my energy to something like this. What you resist persists. I’d rather use my energy creatively and get more writing done.
“There is a difference in reading and understanding.”
Yes, great point! I should have titled this post “understanding the fine print”.
And I’m with you – I’d rather spend my energy on creativity than pursuing pirates, especially when one gets taken down and another pops up!
I read all the contracts before I ever uploaded to Amazon, BN, and Smashwords. It was long, tedious, and dull but I did it. I was sad to see LendInk become such a mess.
Long, tedious and dull about describes it! I was sad to see what happened to LendInk, too.
Particularly doable in this digital age, where you can download the contract as a pdf file, while you’re reading the contract, mark it up with your pdf reader’s mark up tools. For instance, I use the yellow highlight tool to highlight portions that I don’t understand, so that I can find them easily — those are the passages I know that I need to research before I agree to them. I use the orange to highlight portions that I don’t initially like. It’s easy to remove or change the color of that highlighted text if later portions of the contract clarify that passage so that I no longer think they are onerous.
I also underline portions of the contract that I might want to compare with the same passages in other distributors’ contracts, to see how the various distributors stack up against each other. Where I have 3 or more similar contracts (we’re just getting into publishing ebooks so only have two so far — Apple and B&N, so I haven’t done this for this particular activity — yet
, I create a spreadsheet and breakout the contract across the top and down the right-hand side based on company and their payments / royalties, distribution requirements, whatever seems pertinent to me, then compare them. This helps me understand what the contract covers and over time I can build a sort of cross reference, so that I know what to expect, what to look for, and what’s not typical in other contracts of the same type when I do encounter an anomaly.
Where the contracts specify that any markup will negate the contract, you have to be more careful, but in cases where I send back the paper contract, I will mark out passages (some obviously can’t be eliminated because there’s no contract without them) that I don’t want to agree to. About 10 years ago, I self-published a soft cover book after an extensive search for a publisher who did not demand any rights for printing and distributing the book. When the company later sold and the buyer put my book up on Amazon, I didn’t protest, but when the new management released a digital copy of the book on Amazon, I did. When I called and told them to take it down, the editor told me that I had agreed to permit them to digitally distribute the book however they saw fit. Only, I hadn’t, because I had crossed out the assignment to them for digital rights and as was proper when changing a contract, initialed and dated the change. I told her to check the contract. She did and sent a letter of apology. Because I had other plans for the book — in this age of Indie publishing I had other paths I wanted to follow — I also had them take the book of their list, remove it from distribution and destroy the digital files that they had. It did take a while for Amazon to remove the page (shadows of it are still there and as far as I know they still have the 2 physical copies of the book they keep on hand for sale), but within 24 hours the publisher had removed the pages that Amazon links to in order to order additional books.
It’s onerous initially, but if you put in the front in work to read the contract, each subsequent contract gets easier to read and easier to understand. Note, that I’m not suggesting that you don’t get an agent if you feel overwhelmed managing the business side of your writing yourself. But being able to also read the contract yourself gives you more power when negotiating with outside entities, be they agent, publisher, printer, or distributor and even when you sometimes have to agree to terms you don’t like to move forwards, you at least know you don’t like them and aren’t surprised later and left wondering how / when / why you agreed to that.
Thank you so much for a wonderfully thorough answer, and for taking the time to explain your process when it comes to contracts. I love the tip on marking up contracts using PDF tools. And obviously your knowledge empowered you to take action when you wanted to claim to digital rights. You’re a great example to follow!
I read every damn one of ‘em, Talli! In short, that’s the total scoop! I literally read every contract with each and every vendor I use to distribute my work.
For example, that’s how I knew I had to send-in a W-9 to Audible ACX for my Audio Book royalties. Yep, that was in the fine print. That’s also how I knew to contact them because their contract says I’m to receive payment each month following the month of any given sale. They haven’t been timely on payments so I’ve been working with them on getting that resolved.
That’s also why I didn’t sign up for KDP Select…when I read all the fine print in that deal, I ran as fast as I could the opposite direction. LOL!
Reading them is half the battle, DD! I’m stunned how many authors don’t seem to have taken that initial step. And, as pointed out above, taking the time to ensure you understand them is critical.
Like DD, I read all the fine print and try to understand it as much as I can. I also don’t hit the panic button until I’m sure that something is wrong. It’s important to know what you’ve agreed to (re: Smashwords and Kindle book lending). I see authors all the time acting surprised when Amazon won’t lower the price of their book because it’s sold cheaper on Kobo – but I only published it on Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords, they say. O..o Know what you’re doing. It is a business and you’re in charge, no one else.
I’d missed all this, Talli. Thanks for the info! Actually, I have a question for you – how do indie authors manage to keep track of all the different publishing sites/distributors/lending sites/review sites and blogs/etc ? It seems like a marketing job in itself!