Censorship: Paypal goes after Smashwords and look who is behind it...

What is going on in America? 
If you write books this will upset you. 
If you read books this will upset you.
Censorship by finacial institutes...what? 


That's right, the banks are attempting to censor what we can write or read. I woke up this morning, Saturday March 3, to find this email. It's from Mark Coker at Smashwords.  


The rhetoric in this country over the last few years reminds me of the same dialog we hear from fundamentalist Muslim countries in the middle east. I feel like we've gone insane. This has to be stopped; read on... 


____________________________________________________
Saturday March 3, 2012:
In case you haven't heard, about two weeks ago, PayPal contacted Smashwords and gave us a surprise ultimatum:  Remove all titles containing bestiality, rape
or incest, otherwise they threatened to deactivate our PayPal account.  We engaged them in discussions and on Monday they gave us a temporary reprieve as we continue to work in good faith to find a suitable solution.

PayPal tells us that their crackdown is necessary so that they can remain in
compliance with the requirements of the banks and credit card associations (likely
Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, though they didn't mention them
by name).

Last Friday, I sent the following email to our erotica authors and publishers:
https://www.smashwords.com/press/release/27   Then on Monday, I issued an update, and announced we would delay enforcement of PayPal's guidelines so we and PayPal could continue our discussions:  https://www.smashwords.com/press/release/28

THE PROBLEM:

PayPal is asking us to censor legal fiction.  Regardless of how one views topics
of rape, bestiality and incest, these topics are pervasive in mainstream fiction.
We believe this crackdown is really targeting erotica writers.  This is unfair,
and it marks a slippery slope.  We don't want credit card companies or financial
institutions telling our authors what they can write and what readers can read.
Fiction is fantasy.  It's not real.  It's legal.


THE SOLUTION:

There's no easy solution.  Legally, PayPal and the credit card companies probably
have the right to decide how their services are used. Unfortunately, since they're
the moneyrunners, they control the oxygen that feeds digital commerce.

Many Smashwords authors have suggested we find a different payment processor.
That's not a good long term solution, because if credit card companies are behind
this, they'll eventually force crackdowns elsewhere.  PayPal works well for us.
In addition to running all credit card processing at the Smashwords.com store,
PayPal is how we pay all our authors outside the U.S.  My conversations with
PayPal are ongoing and have been productive, yet I have no illusion that the
road ahead will be simple, or that the outcome will be favorable.


BUILDING A COALITION OF SUPPORT:

Independent advocacy groups are considering taking on the PayPal censorship case.
I'm supporting the development of this loose-knit coalition of like-minded groups
who believe that censorship of legal fiction should not be allowed. We will grow
the coalition. Each group will have its own voice and tactics  I'm working with
them because we share a common cause to protect books from censorship.  Earlier
today I had conversations with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), The
American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) and the National
Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC).  I briefed them on the Smashwords/PayPal
situation, explained the adverse affect this crackdown will have on some of our
authors and customers, and shared my intention to continue working with PayPal
in a positive manner to move the discussion forward.

The EFF blogged about the issue a few days ago:  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/legal-censorship-paypal-makes-habit-deciding-what-users-can-read
Today, ABFFE and NCAC issued a press release:  http://www.scribd.com/doc/83549049/NCAC-ABFFE-Letter-To-PayPal-eBay-re-Ebook-Refusal-2012

I will not be on the streets with torch in hand calling for PayPal's head, but
I will encourage interested parties to get involved and speak their piece.  This
is where you come in...


HOW YOU CAN HELP:

Although erotica authors are being targeted, this is an issue that should concern
all indie authors. It affects indies disproportionately because indies are the
ones pushing the boundaries of fiction. Indies are the ones out there publishing
without the (fading) protective patina of a "traditional publisher" to lend them
legitimacy. We indies only have each other.

Several Smashwords authors have contacted me to stress that this censorship affects women disproportionately.  Women write a lot of the erotica, and they're also the primary consumers of erotica.  They're also the primary consumers of mainstream romance, which could also come under threat if PayPal and the credit card companies were to overly enforce their too-broad and too-nebulous obsenity clauses (I think this is unlikely, but at the same time, why would dubious consent be okay in mainstream romance but not okay in erotica? If your write paranormal, can your were-creatures not get it on with one another, or is that bestiality?  The insanity
needs to stop here. These are not questions an author, publisher or distributor
of legal fiction should have to answer.).

All writers and their readers should stand up and voice their opposition to financial
services companies censoring books.  Authors should have the freedom to publish
legal fiction, and readers should have the freedom to read what they want.

These corporations need to hear from you.  Pick up the phone and call them.
Email them.  Start petitions.  Sign petitions.  Blog your opposition to censorship.
Encourage your readers to do the same.  Pass the word among your social networks.
Contact your favorite bloggers and encourage them to follow this story.  Contact
your local newspaper and offer to let them interview you so they can hear a local
author's perspective on this story of international significance. If you have
connections to mainstream media, encourage them to pick up on the story.  Encourage them to call the credit card companies and pose this simple question, "PayPal says they're trying to enforce the policies of credit card companies.  Why are you censoring legal fiction?"

Below are links to the companies waiting to hear from you. Click the link and
you'll find their phone numbers, executive names and postal mailing addresses.
Be polite, respectful and professional, and encourage your friends and followers
to do the same.  Let them know you want them out of the business of censoring
legal fiction.

Tell the credit card companies you want them to give PayPal permission to sell
your ebooks without censorship or discrimination.  Let them know that PayPal's
policies are out of step with the major online ebook retailers who already accept
your books as they are.  Address your calls, emails (if you can find the email)
and paper letters (yes paper!) to the executives.  Post open letters to them
on your blog, then tweet and Facebook hyperlinks to your letters.  Force the
credit card companies to join the discussion about censorship.  And yes, express
your feelings and opinions to PayPal as well.  Don't scream at them.  Ask them
to work on your behalf to protect you and your readers from censorship.  Tell
them how their proposed censorship will harm you and your fellow writers.

Visa:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=V+Profile

American Express:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=AXP+Profile

MasterCard:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=MA+Profile

Discover:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=DFS+Profile

Ebay (owns PayPal):  
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=ebay+Profile

Mark Coker
Founder
Smashwords
http://smashwords.com
blog:  http://blog.smashwords.com
twitter:  http://twitter.com/markcoker
_________________________________________________


Norm Applegate author of:


Into the Basement


Shockwave

Another tip for writers: A simple reminder about conjunctions.

Another writing tip, this one uses the phrase A WHITE BUS as a reminder about conjunctions with which you can begin dependent clauses. This helps to make our writing more interesting.


A dependent clause is a phrase that must be attached to an independent clause — a series of words that can stand on its own as a sentence — to make grammatical sense.


Below, you’ll find the words or phrases that the letters in A WHITE BUS represent, and sample sentences in which they’re employed.

A

1. “After dinner, we’ll go see a movie.”
2. “Although I’d rather not, I’ll make an exception.”
3. “As you know, she’s rather eccentric.”

W

4. “When we’re done, let’s get some ice cream.”
5. “Whenever I go, I try to see something I’ve never seen before.”
6. “Whether or not you agree, I think it looks fine.”
7. “Where I go, they always have sales.”
8. “Wherever I go, I try to enjoy myself.”
9. “While I’m there, I play music on a jukebox.”

H

10. “How is it that even though you go there all the time, you’ve never noticed that before?”

I

11. “If you find out, please let me know.”
12. “In case you hadn’t heard, I couldn’t care less.”
13. “In order to enjoy your trip, take your time and enjoy the sights.”

T

14. “That I like wearing red — that has never been in dispute.”
15. “Though I’m flexible, I draw the line about that.”

E

16. “Even if it is true, I’ll forgive him.”
17. “Even though I’d heard the song before, I hadn’t known who sang it.”
18. “Ever since I met her, I haven’t been able to think about anything else.”

B

19. “Because I’ve been there before, I’d rather go somewhere else.”
20. “Before I saw the house, I was ready to just rent an apartment.”

U

21. “Unless you’re willing to wait, you’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
22. “Until we find it, we can’t leave.”

S

23. “Since then, I’ve had a different opinion of him.”
24. “So sure were you of your theory about them, you ignored evidence that you were wrong.”
25. “So that I’m sure I understand you, please repeat what you said.”

Author Norm Applegate: Into the Basement Shockwave

Source: Daily Writing Tips

Attention writers: 100 Words for Facial Expressions

Here's an excellent list of names to explain to your readers what you are saying about someone's facial expression. How many times to you use the same words? Well, spice it up, keep it interesting:

1. Absent: preoccupied 2. Agonized: as if in pain or tormented 3. Alluring: attractive, in the sense of arousing desire 4. Appealing: attractive, in the sense of encouraging goodwill and/or interest 5. Beatific: see blissful 6. Bilious: ill-natured 7. Black: angry or sad, or see hostile 8. Bleak: see grim and hopeless 9. Blinking: surprise, or lack of concern 10. Blissful: showing a state of happiness or divine contentment 11. Blithe: carefree, lighthearted, or heedlessly indifferent 12. Brooding: see anxious and gloomy 13. Bug eyed: frightened or surprised 14. Chagrined: humiliated or disappointed 15. Cheeky: cocky, insolent 16. Cheerless: sad 17. Choleric: hot-tempered, irate 18. Coy: flirtily playful, or evasive 19. Crestfallen: see despondent 20. Darkly: with depressed or malevolent feelings 21. Deadpan: expressionless, to conceal emotion or heighten humor 22. Dejected: see despondent 23. Derisive: see sardonic 24. Despondent: depressed or discouraged 25. Doleful: sad or afflicted 26. Dour: stern or obstinate; see also despondent 27. Downcast: see despondent 28. Dreamy: distracted by daydreaming or fantasizing 29. Ecstatic: delighted or entranced 30. Etched: see fixed 31. Faint: cowardly, weak, or barely perceptible 32. Fixed: concentrated or immobile 33. Furtive: stealthy 34. Gazing: staring intently 35. Glancing: staring briefly as if curious but evasive 36. Glaring: see hostile 37. Glazed: expressionless due to fatigue or confusion 38. Gloomy: see despondent and sullen 39. Glowering: annoyed or angry 40. Glowing: see radiant 41. Grim: see despondent; also, fatalistic or pessimistic 42. Grave: serious, expressing emotion due to loss or sadness 43. Haunted: frightened, worried, or guilty 44. Hopeless: depressed by a lack of encouragement or optimism 45. Hostile: aggressively angry, intimidating, or resistant 46. Hunted: tense as if worried about pursuit 47. Impassive: see deadpan 48. Inscrutable: mysterious, unreadable 49. Jeering: insulting or mocking 50. Languid: lazy or weak 51. Leering: see meaningful; also, sexually suggestive 52. Meaningful: to convey an implicit connotation or shared secret 53. Mild: easygoing 54. Mischievous: annoyingly or maliciously playful 55. Moody: see sullen 56. Pained: affected with discomfort or pain 57. Pallid: see wan 58. Peering: with curiosity or suspicion 59. Peeved: annoyed 60. Petulant: see cheeky and peeved 61. Pitying: sympathetic 62. Pleading: seeking apology or assistance 63. Pouting: see sullen 64. Quizzical: questioning or confused 65. Radiant: bright, happy 66. Roguish: see mischievous 67. Sanguine: bloodthirsty, confident 68. Sardonic: mocking 69. Scornful: contemptuous or mocking 70. Scowling: displeased or threatening 71. Searching: curious or suspicious 72. Set: see fixed 73. Shamefaced: ashamed or bashful 74. Slack-jawed: dumbfounded or surprised 75. Sly: cunning; see also furtive and mischievous 76. Snarling: surly 77. Sneering: see scornful 78. Somber: see grave 79. Sour: unpleasant 80. Stolid: inexpressive 81. Straight-faced: see deadpan 82. Sulky: see sullen 83. Sullen: resentful 84. Taunting: see jeering 85. Taut: high-strung 86. Tense: see taut 87. Tight: see pained and taut 88. Unblinking: see fixed 89. Vacant: blank or stupid looking 90. Veiled: see inscrutable 91. Wan: pale, sickly; see also faint 92. Wary: cautious or cunning 93. Wide eyed: frightened or surprised 94. Wild eyed: excited, frightened, or stressful 95. Wistful: yearning or sadly thoughtful 96. Withering: devastating; see also wrathful 97. Woeful: full of grief or lamentation 98. Wolfish: see leering and mischievous 99. Wrathful: indignant or vengeful 100. Wry: twisted or crooked to express cleverness or a dark or ironic feeling Author Norm Applegate: Into the Basement Shockwave

Improve Your Writing Right Now: 5 Steps

Lately I've been posting some tips to improve your writing, these five are excellent.


1. Avoid cliches like the plague: You can’t omit them altogether — and you shouldn’t try — but take care when recasting a tired word or phrase into something fresh and new. When calling attention to hypocrisy, instead of reciting the cliche “This is a case of the pot calling the kettle black,” you could write, “Keywords: pot, kettle, black.” You can also play with words, referring to an especially distraught drama queen as a trauma queen.


2. Avoid filler phrases: Delete content-free wording like “be that as it may,” “to all intents and purposes,” and “in the final analysis.” These prolix protrusions pop up naturally in speech to bridge a gap between one thought and the next, but although you’re forgiven for including them in a first draft, there’s no excuse for letting them pass inspection when you review your writing or edit someone else’s.


3. Avoid verbosity: Watch for wordy phrases like “in order to,” unnecessary words and phraseslike currently and “that is,” and smothered verbs (constructions in which a noun can be transformed into a verb, such as “offered an indication” when indicate will do.)


4. Avoid redundancies and repetition and saying the same thing twice: Take care to avoid doppleganger words in stock phrases — common, like filler phrases, to spoken language but inimical to good writing — like “actual fact” and “completely finished.”


5. Avoid repetitive sentence structure: Craft your prose in such a way that phrases, clauses, sentences, and paragraphs flow smoothly (avoid a Dick-and-Jane style of writing reminiscent of text in primary-grade reading books) — and consider the visual impact of your writing.

Norm Applegate author of:

SHOCKWAVE

Into the Basement

Source: Dailywritingtips

5 Tips for Cleaning Up Your Writing

Here are five quantitative quick tips about improving your writing functionally, before you even get into improving the quality of your prose:

1. Always Use Serial Commas

The policy of preceding every item in a list but the last one with a comma is commonsensical (read a previous article about the serial comma). Confusion is possible when you don’t and highly unlikely when you do. What if, using a non-serial-comma style, you write about more than two things when one of the things consists of more than one part or ingredient? (“The choices are roast beef, turkey, and ham and cheese.”) Do you insert a serial comma for clarity (and introduce an inconsistency) or leave the sentence as is for readers to stumble on? Adherence to serial-comma style eliminates the dilemma.

2. Minimize Capitalization

Job titles are capitalized only before names. Names of academic majors aren’t capitalized unless they are already proper nouns, like names of languages (“English”) or references to regions (“Asian studies”). Generic names of entities (“the hospital,” “the organization,” and so on) are lowercased. Yes, capitalization is a minefield; when in doubt, look it up, and search on this site for “capitalization” for many articles on the topic (including this one).

3. Repair Comma Splices

A comma alone cannot separate two independent clauses in a sentence. Break the clauses into distinct sentences, or separate them with a semicolon or an em dash — or a comma and a conjunction (and, or, and so on) — but not with a comma alone. For more information on this topic read 5 Ways to Fix the Comma Splice.

4. Omit Extraneous Hyphens, and Insert Necessary Ones

“Decision making,” “problem solving,” and similar compound nouns require no hyphen, unless they precede a noun as a compound modifier (“decision-making procedure,” “problem-solving aptitude”). “Near collision” and other similar constructions don’t, either, with the same exception (“near-collision statistics”). Established compound modifiers usually don’t require a hyphen even before a noun (“high school student”). Confused? Here’s a simple rule: Look it up. (And check out this DailyWritingTips article and find others on the topic by searching on the site for “hyphens.”)

5. Limit Displays of Emphasis

Words can be italicized to indicate that they are being used to refer to themselves, not the things they stand for (“Note the word emphasis”), or to signal a foreign term (“Wunderbar” means “wonderful”), or to make sure the reader understands that something is really important. Words can be initial-capped to indicate irony or other humorous intent. (“The rent-a-cop exuded the air of an Authority Figure.”) Boldface is appropriate for introducing new vocabulary or otherwise calling attention to an unfamiliar term but is best limited to textbooks and guidebooks. But all-caps are invariably excessive, “scare quotes” are seldom necessary, and be judicious about otherwise calling attention to words and phrases.


Norm Applegate author of:


Shockwave


Into the Basement

Source: Dailywritingtips

Do you go with a small publisher or self-publish?

An author friend of mine asked for some help. Her question was: do I go with a small publisher or self-publish? For me it’s self-pub but read my thoughts…

Don't pay a publisher any money! Everything they can do; you can do.

1). Editing! Pay an editor! Quality is important. Here's the name of the person I used on my last book, SHOCKWAVE. She's not free...For me she was worth it. I'm going to work with her again on my next book.

Deborah Levinson, she a friend of mine on my Facebook site. She is good.

Norm's Facebook 

2). Cover work! check out the cover for Shockwave, my thriller and short story Jumpers. Nice work...

Contact James Rone at jameron713@gmail.com tell him I sent you. He's an art student in Phoenix.

3). Use Amazon...they are the largest book distributor in the world.

Amazon Kindle for ebook. Look up Kindle Direct Publishing.

Amazon's Createspace for paperbacks. Here's the facts...1% of my sales are from paperback. Yes, it true...it all about ebooks now. I self publish on Createspace so I have paperbacks to give away.

4). Product Description: I looked at a pile of book descriptions on Amazon. I believe what I’ve done works. I combined what I liked from a number of successful authors. Look up my books on Amazon and you'll see the description I use. Lots of stuff for people to read...

5). Price…the ebook price for a new book is $2.99 your older stuff $0.99. However you might consider starting at the $0.99 price point. I know it's cheap but that seems to be the market, check out authors on Amazon not the big names, the indie authors. HEADS-UP - This may be shifting. Some authors are raising their ebook price to find the sweet spot, the right number of sales at the maximum price to generate the most profit. Remember, at $2.99 on Amazon you get 70%. At $0.99 it’s only 35%.

6). Go to Smashwords and format your ebook yourself from their guidelines. They have the best outline for formatting an ebook and publish on Smashwords. That gets your book into Apple's iPad, B&N. Sony. Diesel and Kobo...

7). Start a blog, use Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads and any other sites you have time to post stuff on.

...that was a lot of stuff...hope it helps.

all the best

Norm

Shockwave

Into the Basement

Indie Author Editing

I've just finished reading John Locke's, "How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months." Excellent marketing ideas. I'd like to see authors like John Locke talk more about their writing and editing process. Is there a systematic approach or do they feel their way through it? I'd like to think there is a repeatable systematic methodology that all of us can model. 

Below are some components that could be part of an editing model. After you've written your first draft, you know you're going to go over it again. I go through my material at least two more times. One, looking for plot and character gaps and the second review is to tighten up the work. But what do you look for? It seems like there are so many checklists and guidelines it's easy to be overwhelmed. I found these to be great suggestions. 

I've finished a draft of my new thriller novel. I'm calling it, "Shockwave," just as a working title. Of the items listed below, #4 grabbed my attention. I'm going to do a "find," for the phrases; “there are” or “there is.” If they come up, I'll read the sentence and edit it, make it tighter, more concise. Seems like a quick way to improve my writing.

Check them out see if they help.

1. Remove Redundancy

Avoid double-teaming terms like “a period of one week,” “end result,” “free gift,” and “personal opinion.” Watch for phrases that echo the quality in question: “oval in shape,” “larger in size,” “shorter in duration,” and the like. Omit redundant words that are already implied as part of an abbreviated term, such as machine in “ATM machine.”

2. Reduce Phrases to Words

Replace a descriptive phrase following a noun with a one-word adjective that precedes the noun: “People who experienced at traveling know better than to label their luggage,” for example, can be revised to “Experienced travelers know better than to label their luggage.
A modifying phrase, similarly, can be reduced to a simple adverb: “Sympathizing with her concerns, he nodded in response to her complaint,” for instance, is more concisely expressed as “He nodded sympathetically in response to her complaint.”
Delete extraneous phrases such as “which is” and “who were,” as shown here: “We drove down Lombard Street, which is considered the crookedest street in the world” is easily simplified to “We drove down Lombard Street, considered the crookedest street in the world.”

3. Omit Gratuitous Intensifiers and Qualifiers

Use adverbs that intensify or qualify in moderation: “They had an extremely unpleasant experience” isn’t accurate unless a subsequent explanation justifies the intensifier extremely, and “I was somewhat taken aback” isn’t necessarily an improvement on “I was taken aback.”

4. Expunge Expletives

“There are” or “there is” is a weak way to start a sentence. “There is a telling passage toward the end of the story” lacks the focus of (and the more vivid verb in) the sentence “A telling passage occurs near the end of the essay.”

5. Negate Nominalizations

“The report gave an analysis of the accident” uses a phrase where a single word suffices. (This is known as a nominalization, or smothering a verb.) When you see a “(verb) a/an (noun)” construction, convert the noun into a verb and replace the phrase with it. In this case, “The report analyzed the accident” is the more concise result. As with deletion of expletives, a stronger verb is an additional benefit.

6. Delete Superfluous Phrases

“At the present time,” “for all intents and purposes,” and “in the event that” are just a few of many meaningless phrases that clutter sentences. Trim them to tighten your writing.

7. Avoid Cliches

Likewise, “face the music,” “litmus test,” “tried and true” and other timeworn phrases add nothing to your writing but words; they’re useful only for padding a word count, but instructors and editors (and readers) will notice.

8. Eschew Euphemisms

Generally, words that disguise concepts degrade language, which is all about expressing, not repressing, meaning. For example, “collateral damage,” in reference to warfare (and, by extension, to all interpersonal relationships), invites derision. However, use of some euphemisms, such as those for human disabilities, is a well-meaning effort to preserve the dignity of the disabled, though some people argue that such cosmetic wording actually harms people by diminishing the seriousness of their condition, or that it is for the benefit not of the disabled but of people who would rather not be reminded of the disabled.

Latest novel: First To Die

Source: Dailywritingtips