The People who Ensure We Can't have Nice things.

Amazon's KU program is doing very nicely. While it's not exceeded my sales numbers, it's certainly been a pleasant addition to them.  Unfortunately, as usual, we have people, a lot of them, coming out of the woodwork to try and "game the system."

In this case, it's short, very short "erotica" pieces that look like they were written by someone who has English as a fourth language.  They're usually sold for 2.99 and are short enough that anyone looking at them in KU likely contributes to the author even if he or she just read a single page.

Now, we ALL try to "game the system" to some degree.  If you've ever tried to predict what is going to be the hot thing, or written a story with the hope of appealing to KU borrowers, well you've done a bit of that.

But there's a difference, to put it in a vulgar way, between trying to improve your numbers and shitting in the well everyone else uses.

Amazon isn't stupid.  In fact, they're very, very smart which is part of the reason they are as big as they are.  The lending program isn't something they've done out of the goodness of their heart, it's something that they expect to pay money-- lots of money.

But if someone notices that whenever they search for an erotic title, they get 10,000 nearly unreadable results clogging up the page, they're likely to not be a subscriber for much longer.  Amazon knows this, and that means added scrutiny on the source of the problem: In this case, erotica.

Now, some may wonder: what's the big deal?  The problem is that the erotica writer already suffers from a situation in which editorial standards can vary widely from editor to editor-- what is good for one may result in a swift rejection by another.  Because of that, anything that leads to more editorial scrutiny is bad, to say nothing of the possibility that it could lead to changes in the lending program that are unfavorable to writers.

Just remember:  The people putting out the barely readable crap aren't writers-- they're people gaming the system. Last year they were putting out PLR labels, and God knows that they're going to be doing next year.  But we who are writers will be dealing with the consequences of their crap long after they've left Amazon for greener pastures.