A friend recently notified me that there was a site offering eBooks for free download, and several of my books were among those offered. The site is called graycity.net, and it’s got quite an extensive library of “free” books— extensive enough to have ten of mine and several of many other indie authors I know.
This, however, is not a new occurrence. Unfortunately, I get notices of this sort of piracy fairly often. The thing is, there are actually two diverse scenarios here. The first is that, yes, a site may have pirated books available for free download. Yes, it’s illegal, but yes, it goes on. What can you do about it? I’ll get to that in a minute. Continue reading “The Business of Pirating Books: Graycity.net”
Many of us, in our writing odysseys, have had intervals working with traditional publishers, some more reputable than others, and many of us have seen those arrangements come to an end for one reason or another. Our IU mailbag often includes letters from writers who have been taken in by predatory publishers and who want to cut their ties, but also from writers published by small presses that have come on hard times and shuttered their doors. While the larger issue of what to do to get out of a bad contract or when your publisher goes belly-up would take more time to detail, let’s concentrate on one part of that equation: the book cover design.
In general, we often hear there are two types of writers: 
It’s tough enough to write an eye-catching blurb for your book on Amazon, especially so when you consider how many millions of books are there to compete with. It’s something we all struggle with, believe me. So how do we make our blurb pop? How do we draw eyes to it on our sales page?