Steal My Book

Really, I don't mind. In fact, I encourage you to steal my book. The way I figure it--and I'm stealing the idea from Cory Doctorow, proving piracy of ideas is pretty common--anyone who steals my book wasn't going to pay for it in the first place.

What am I talking about? Well, I discovered (through the magic of Google Alerts...if you are an author and don't have one set to your name do it now) The Bottom Feeders is available through a file sharing site. Another site has it available for $1.99. Ha! Good luck selling it, folks. I'm not doing so hot at $.99. (5 sold in January so far...)

But I digress. Please, feel free to trade my book "illegally". Any of my books, actually. If it means more people read the books--awesome. The problem, see, is that most book pirates probably don't read all those files. Pirates pirate because they can--I'd say some are addicted to file downloading. I want to meet readers who are addicted to reading. So steal my book. Steal it all over the place. Just leave my name on it, okay, because not to do so would be the real theft.

Speaking of free things and reading, you can sign up for a free preview of The House Eaters. Just fill in the appropriate info off to the left. The book is coming. Soon.

In fact, it goes to print tonight...barring any major problems.

Excited?

Yes.

What is a Writer's Worst Enemy?

It's not a bad review. It's not writer's block, either. (I don't believe in "writer's block", anyway. It's called "time to take a nap".)

How about obscurity?

Cory Doctorow might agree, and he's a helluva lot more well-known than me (and more talented, too). Yeah, Doctorow is speaking of making money, but we are talking about writers here, and I'd argue obscurity is any writer's worst enemy. (At least tied for first with hubris, but that's another blog entry.) Writers want their work to be read; even if you "give" someone a story for free, they are paying you with their time, so yeah. Every read is a "sale" in my book. And if you're too damn obscure, who can find your stuff, anyway?

How to fight obscurity? God, I wish I knew. I've been publishing stories for a few years now and a few folks (love ya) read my stuff regularly. Thanks. Building a reader base takes time...it's not like you can throw a free novel up on the web and land a six figure deal. (If you do, please tell me how, okay?)

I've mentioned my "biggest day" (in terms of page loads) here at the blog occurred when I got caught in a brouhaha regarding a little bit of snark (from yours-truly) and a lot of fallout. I'm not going to take that path to, er, "stardom". I'll keep the snark in my back pocket from now on. I'd rather be a nobody than infamous, any day.

But...does an author need a big ticket book advance to "spend" his/her way out of obscurity? Could you if you tried? How about stupid pet tricks on Youtube? Posting reviews under false names at Amazon? Doing a cross-over rap album with a zombified Tupac?

How did you hear about your favorite author(s) (who may not be well known to the public at large)?

Well, in the name of keeping it positive, I thought I could do a few interviews and pimp some authors here at my bit o' the web. Cate Gardner had something going for a while called "Somebody Else Saturday". I liked it enough to almost steal it...

If you're an author interested in answering five relatively benign questions, drop me a line at aaron_polson(at)hotmail(dot)com. The questions will be randomly drawn from a collection of interview questions my students wrote for various class projects. How's that for inspired? Or crazy?

Maybe I'll call it "Five Question Friday with ______".