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By Joanna

call to arms.jpgI am blown away by the responses to the articles Chris Meadows and I posted over the past week. I am dismayed that in some reader’s minds, I came off as anti-author—if that were so, I would be downloading off the darknet right now instead of blogging to you—but I am delighted that the issues which have left me, and many other loyal e-book buyers, so frustrated are finally getting notice.

Readers like me want to buy books and support authors. But we want to be treated like more than a nuisance or afterthought too.

We deserve books which look nice and are free from errors. We deserve to pay a fair price—not overly high, but not overly low either (most of the objection to the Macmillan price raise was a distrust that they would actually lower it later, when the book aged—they have not done this in the past and mass-market $6 paperbacks still are retailing in e-book for $10 and up!)

We deserve books which are not so crippled by DRM that we can’t read them on the device of our choosing (and yes, we deserve to be trusted that we won’t abuse this freedom—treat us like book-buying fans and not potential criminals who must be thwarted at every turn!) We deserve to simply have the chance to BUY the books and not have them made unavailable due to the vendor we shop at or the country in which we reside.

Here is my call to arms, for readers and authors alike—let’s move into action now. We all know that the issues are, and they are just as bad for authors, who let’s face it could use the extra business, as they are for the customers, who are walking away with fewer purchases and bad experiences.

We need to move beyond ‘the author camp’ and the ‘reader camp’ and into a ‘mutual problem solving camp’ where we can begin to resolve these issues. No more explaining or justifying or defending of why things are the way they are, or how you are I or this person or that person is powerless to change them. No more defensive authors and aggressive readers. Let’s work together.

LET’S STOP TALKING ABOUT WHAT THE PROBLEMS ARE AND START TALKING ABOUT HOW WE CAN FIX THEM!

I put this out there to readers and authors alike: what can we do? What reader initiatives actually have a chance of success? Who can write to or phone or email, and how can we phrase our issue to give it the best chance of being heard?

Would a petition help and to whom can we address it? Can any author organizations band together and help us advocate? Who are some people in the industry who are known to be sympathetic and how can we reach them to make our voices heard?

I want a better e-book environment for everyone. I want readers who can buy and read, and authors to enjoy the fruits of the profits these readers will send their way. But readers like me need the authors to help us. We’ve tried advocating on our own, it hasn’t gotten us anywhere, and we simply don’t know what else to do. And we’re tired of feeling like we have to work so hard just to get someone else to take our money.

Let’s work together. Let’s help each other. Authors, readers, bloggers, commentators I throw down the gauntlet to you. What can we DO?

 
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