#Ebook: Pay What You Can

[jovialtorchlight]

a complete collection of my downloadable works

these are all completely free to download. as always, if you can, i SO appreciate any sort of pay what you can support on any level.

my paypal is jabolduc125@gmail.com, or @JonathanBolduc921

my cashapp is $jonnybolduc125

my venmo is @Jonny-Bolduc

[vashti-lives]

I have finally conceded that gremlins have eaten my kindle voyage and I do, in fact, need to replace it. It's been more than year of waiting for it to "turn up" interspersed with frantic episodes of looking. It's not happening! It's in the negaverse now.

WHY IS THE EREADER MARKET SO FUCKING TERRIBLE??? ALL I WANT IS A REASONABLY PRICED SMALL-ISH EREADER WITH DEDICATED PAGE TURN BUTTONS.

That's all! I don't need to be able to write on it! I don't need it to play videos! I don't need a big screen! I don't want to pay $200+ dollars. I just want to be able to read long fanfic on an e-ink screen again.

[scribblingface]

hey so important heads up for users of amazon (especially if you have your ebooks through amazon):

if your account is locked (such as because of repeated failed login attempts from an unrecognized device, as an example), the ONLY way to unlock it is by providing information about your recent amazon purchases that have been made within the past year. if you have made no amazon purchases within the last year, there is no way to unlock your account.

in other words, if you have for example your entire ebook collection associated with your amazon account and that's your only way to access it, and you don't purchase something for a year, and amazon arbitrarily locks you out for some reason, you will permanently lose access to ALL your books with zero recourse.

I spoke to a customer service person at amazon today to try to unlock my account, who explained that in the system on her end there is NO other option to unlock an account except verifying the recent purchases, and if there hasn't been a purchase recently enough that option isn't available to them to access.

so uh. fuck amazon to hell for their ability to steal all your books at random and give you no way to get them back.

[rotisseries]

everything on earth and heaven above and also hell below is conspiring to make sure I don't get to read this one damn book

[faeriekit]

...I had a guy come in today asking about how to get his kids library cards. I told him. He asked me how hard it would be for them to get them, and I said that all it took was their presence and his government ID.

He told me about how nice the system was here, where it was so easy to get a card; he said that there was a beautiful public library in Beijing that was top of the line and everything, but that the only way to access it was if you were a high ranking government official or a top professor or something. Instead, our library "serves the reader." His kids will be able to take chapter books home at no cost. He'll even be able to get books in Chinese here so that his native language skills don't atrophy.

I didn't even really know what to say, so I told him how to ask us to buy books for him that we don't already have so that he can still read them at no extra cost. I don't know how to shore up what it must feel like to know that there are books out there you can't read; I've always grown up with a good library nearby. It reminded me of working in my old library, though, where families who spoke Spanish were startled to find out we took any government ID with a formal address in town— even foreign IDs— so that their kids could get access to all of our titles in all the languages we offered.

Ah. Anyway, I hope you check out a library book with this thought in mind. I checked out the first volume of YJ98 today with that thought in mind. I didn't have to pay anything. I put it on hold, and there it was.

Edit: for those who struggle with reading comprehension; no, this patron interaction is not meant to represent the status of the Chinese public library system at large nor the country of China itself; this was my response to a random Chinese immigrant dad's anecdotal concerns as he expressed them to me, because the whole breadth of concern I'm responsible for while on desk starts and ends at recommending which library services would fulfill his needs. If you think he misunderstood or was lying about the status of public libraries in China, that isn't something I'm charged to verify before writing my thoughts and feelings about the patron interactions I was exposed through throughout my day. Expecting anything else is absurd.

Edit edit: Also, your library may not actually use Libby as the distribution method for their ebook collection. The best way to find out about how to access your library's ebook collection is to call them directly.

[burins]

I know this is the Take Personal Responsibility for Systemic Issues website, but I keep seeing weirdly guilt trippy posts about libraries and ebook licenses, which are a labyrinth from hell and not actually something you personally need to feel guilty about. here are a few facts about ebook licenses you may not know:

in Libby/Overdrive, which currently operates in most US public libraries, ebook licenses vary widely in how much they cost and what their terms are. some ebooks get charged per use, some have a set number of uses before the license runs out, and others have a period of time they're good for (usually 1-2 years) with unlimited checkouts during that period before they expire. these terms are set by the publisher and can also vary from book to book (for instance, a publisher might offer two types of licenses for a book, and we might buy one copy of a book with a set number of uses we want to have but know won't move as much, and another copy with a one year unlimited license for a new bestseller we know will be really moving this year.)

you as a patron have NO way of knowing which is which.

ebook licenses are very expensive compared to physical books! on average they run about 60 bucks a pop, where the same physical book would cost us $10-15 and last us five to ten years (or much longer, if it's a hardcover that doesn't get read a lot.)

if your library uses Hoopla instead, those are all pay per use, which is why many libraries cap checkouts at anywhere between 2-10 per month.

however.

this doesn't mean you shouldn't use ebooks. this doesn't mean you should feel guilty about checking things out! we buy ebook licenses for people to use them, because we know that ebook formats are easier for a lot of people (more accessible, more convenient, easier for people with schedules that don't let them get into the library.) these are resources the library buys for you. this is why we exist. you don't need to feel guilty about using them!

things that are responsible for libraries being underfunded and having to stretch their resources:

government priorities and systemic underfunding of social services that don't turn a profit and aren't easily quantified

our society's failure to value learning and pleasure reading for their own sake

predatory ebook licensing models

things that are not responsible for libraries being underfunded:

individual patron behavior

I promise promise promise that your personal library use is not making or breaking your library's budget. your local politicians are doing that. capitalism is doing that. you are fine.

(if you want to help your local library, the number one thing you can do is to advocate for us! talk to your city or county government about how much you like the library. or call or write emails or letters. advocate for us locally. make sure your state reps know how important the library is to you. there are local advocacy groups in pretty much every state pushing for library priorities. or just ask your local librarian. we like to answer questions!

also, if you're in Massachusetts, bill h3239 would make a huge difference in letting us negotiate ebook prices more fairly. tell your rep to vote for it!)

[thebibliosphere]

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm one of those people who priates books. But only because I've bought so many books that disappointed me! I need to flip through a bit of it before buying.

Sometimes, if the author has kofi or patreon or something, I like to just give them the full price of the book. That way they get it all. But I also know that this isn't the perfect answer because it messes with stats and actual readership and therefore advertising and the platform they are selling on promoting it....

It's complicated. Maybe I should buy the book normally and tip the author what the publishers/printers/distributors take? But that can get really pricey fast. Ugh.

Books are often a luxury when you have no money. I’m very familiar with that. I've saved up for several months sometimes because I wanted a $5.99 ebook and didn't want to steal from the author. That’s just what being poor is. Wanting something doesn't entitle me to it.

That said, most books these days have a reading sample on purchasing sites so you can see if you like the style. Most sites also offer refunds, at least on digital books, before you reach a certain point. (please be sparing with refunds if you can. The refund is taken from the author/publisher, not Amazon. Same with audible. My audible funds are often close to zero or negative because people just return and reuse their monthly credit.)

You can also check and see if the books are available at your library, and if not, request them. Honestly, library sales are so, so, so good for authors. Libraries pay higher lending license rates to authors, and also, depending on the country, every time someone checks out my book via Libby or the local equivalent, I get a little tiny amount of money (we’re talking literal pennies, but it can add up), and it increases the library’s likelihood of re-purchasing the library lending license the following year.

You can alsp sign up to be an ARC (advanced reader copy) reader through places like NetGalley or by checking if the author offers ARCs as well. In a world of algorithms, books live and die by reviews. Some of us are quite happy to give out ARCs for new and upcoming titles.

Failing that and you have absolutely no other option... Yeah. Ko-fi or whatever is an option. Even if I wish they didn't do it because it fucks my sales metrics, I still appreciate when I get a little ding on ko-fi for the exact amount of the book. It's always telling. I even sometimes get little anon messages going “sorry for pirating your book it was really good.”

Like thank you. Please buy the next one properly, lol.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting the audiobook of The Lost Cause, my novel of environmental hope

Tonight (October 2), I'm in Boise to host an event with VE Schwab. On October 7–8, I'm in Milan to keynote Wired Nextfest.

The Lost Cause is my next novel. It's about the climate emergency. It's hopeful. Library Journal called it "a message hope in a near-future that looks increasingly bleak." As with every other one of my books Amazon refuses to sell the audiobook, so I made my own, and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-lost-cause-a-novel-of-climate-and-hope

That's a lot to unpack, I know. So many questions! Including this one: "How is it that I have another book out in 2023?" Because this is my third book this year. Short answer: I write when I'm anxious, so I came out of lockdown with nine books. Nine!

Hope and writing are closely related activities. Hope (the belief that you can make things better) is nothing so cheap and fatalistic as optimism (the belief that things will improve no matter what you do). The Lost Cause is full of people who are full of hope.

The action begins a full generation after the Hail Mary passage of the Green New Deal, and the people who grew up fighting the climate emergency (rather than sitting hopelessly by while the powers that be insisted that nothing could or should be done) have a name for themselves: they call themselves "the first generation in a century that doesn't fear the future."

I fear the future. Unchecked corporate power has us barreling over a cliff's edge and all the one-percent has to say is, "Well, it's too late to swerve now, what if the bus rolls and someone breaks a leg? Don't worry, we'll just keep speeding up and leap the gorge":

https://locusmag.com/2022/07/cory-doctorow-the-swerve/

That unchecked corporate power has no better avatar than Amazon, one of the tech monopolies that has converted the old, good internet into "five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four":

https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040

Amazon maintains a near-total grip over print and ebooks, but when it comes to audiobooks, that control is total. The company's Audible division has captured more than 90% of the market, and it abuses that dominance to cram Digital Rights Management onto every book it sells, even if the author doesn't want it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

I wrote a whole-ass book about this and it came out less than a month ago; it's called The Internet Con and it lays out an audacious plan to halt the internet's enshittification and throw it into reverse:

http://www.seizethemeansofcomputation.org/

The tldr is this: when an audiobook is wrapped in Amazon's DRM, only Amazon can legally remove it. That means that every book I sell you on Audible is a book you have to throw away if you ever break up with Amazon, and Amazon can use the fact that it's hold you hostage to screw me – and every other author – over.

As I said last time this came up:

Fuck that sideways.

With a brick.

My books are sold without DRM, so you can play them in any app and do anything copyright permits, and that means Amazon won't carry them, and that means my publishers don't want to pay to produce them, and that means I produce them myself, and then I make the (significant) costs back by selling them on Kickstarter.

And you know what? It works. Readers don't want DRM. I mean, duh. No one woke up this morning and said, "Dammit, why won't someone sell me a product that lets me do less with my books?" I sell boatloads" of books through these crowdfunding campaigns. I sold so many copies of my last book, *The Internet Con, that they sold out the initial print run in two weeks (don't worry, they held back stock for my upcoming events).

But beyond that, I think there's another reason my readers keep coming back, even though I wrote a genuinely stupid number of books while working through lockdown anxiety while the wildfires raged and ashes sifted down out of the sky and settled on my laptop as I lay in my backyard hammock, pounding my keyboard.

(I went through two keyboards during lockdown. Thankfully, I bought a user-serviceable laptop from Framework and fixed it myself both times, in a matter of minutes. No, no one pays me to mention this, but hot damn is it cool.)

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/13/graceful-failure/#frame

The reason readers come back to my books is that they're full of hope. In the same way that writing lets me feel like I'm not a passenger in life, but rather, someone with a say in my destination, the books that I write are full of practical ways and dramatic scenes in which other people seize the means of computation, the reins of power or their own destinies.

The protagonist of The Lost Cause is Brooks Palazzo, a high-school senior in Burbank whose parents were part of the original cohort of volunteers who kicked off the global transformation, and left him an orphan when they succumbed to one of the zoonotic plagues that arise every time another habitat is destroyed.

Brooks grew up knowing what his life would be: the work of repair and care, which millions of young people are doing. Relocating entire cities off endangered coastlines and floodplains, or out of fire-zones. Fighting floods and fires. Caring for tens of millions of refugees for whom the change came too late.

But with every revolution comes a counter-revolution. The losers of a just war don't dig holes, climb inside and pull the dirt down on top of themselves. Two groups of reactionaries – seagoing anarcho-capitalist billionaire wreckers and seething white nationalist militias – have formed an alliance.

They've already gotten their champion into the White House. Next up: dismantling every cause for hope Brooks and his friends have, and bringing back the fear.

That's the setup for a novel about solidarity, care, library socialism, and snatching victory from defeat's jaws. Writing it help keep me sane during the lockdown, and when it came time to record the audiobook, I spent a lot of time thinking about who could read it. I've had some great narrators: Wil Wheaton, @neil-gaiman, Amber Benson, Bronson Pinchot, and more.

I record my audiobooks with Skyboat Media, a brilliant studio near my place in LA. Back in August, I spent a week in their recording booth – "The Tardis" – doing something I'd never tried before: I recorded a whole audiobook, with directorial supervision: The Internet Con:

https://transactions.sendowl.com/products/78992826/DEA0CE12/purchase

When it was done, the director – audiobook legend Gabrielle de Cuir – sat me down and said, "Look, I've never said this to an author before, but I think you should read The Lost Cause. I don't direct anyone anymore except for Wil Wheaton and LeVar Burton, but I would direct you on this one."

I was immensely flattered – and very nervous. Reading The Internet Con was one thing – the book is built around the speeches I've been giving for 20 years and I knew I could sell those lines – but The Lost Cause is a novel, with a whole cast of characters. Could I do it?

Reader, I did it. I just listened to the proofs last week and:

It.

Came.

Out.

Great.

The Lost Cause goes on sale on November 14th, and I'll be selling this audiobook I made everywhere audiobooks are sold – except for the stores that require DRM, nonconsensually shackling readers and writers to their platforms. So you'll be able to get it on Libro.fm, downpour.com, even Google Play – but not Audible, Apple Books, or Audiobooks.com.

But in addition to those worthy retailers, I will be sending out thousands – and thousands! – of audiobook to my Kickstarter backers on the on-sale date, either as a folder of DRM-free MP3s, or as a download code for Libro.fm, to make things easy for people who don't want to have to figure out how to sideload an audiobook into a standalone app.

And, of course, the mobile duopoly have made this kind of sideloading exponentially harder over the past decade, though far be it from me to connect this with their policy of charging 30% commissions on everything sold through an app, a commission they don't receive if you get your files on the web and load 'em yourself:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell/posts/3788112

As with my previous Kickstarters, I'm also selling ebooks and hardcovers – signed or unsigned, and this time I've found a great partner to fulfill EU orders from within the EU, so backers won't have to pay VAT and customs charges. The wonderful Otherland – who have hosted me on my last two trips to Berlin – are going to manage that shipping for me:

https://www.otherland-berlin.de/en/home.html

Kim Stanley Robinson read the book and said, "Along with the rush of adrenaline I felt a solid surge of hope. May it go like this." That's just about the perfect quote, because the book is a ride. It's not just a kumbaya tale of a better world that is possible: it's a post-cyberpunk novel of high-tech guerrilla and meme warfare, climate tech and bad climate tech, wildcat prefab urban infill, and far-right militamen who adapt to a ban on assault-rifles by switching to super-soakers full of hydrochloric acid.

It's a book about struggle, hope in the darkness, and a way through this rotten moment. It's a book that dares to imagine that things might get worse but also better. This is a curious emotional melange, but it's one that I'm increasingly feeling these days.

Like, Amazon, that giant bully, whose blockade on DRM-free audiobooks cost me enough money to pay off my mortgage and put my kid through university (according to my agent)? The incredible Lina Khan brought a long-overdue antitrust case against Amazon while her rockstar DoJ counterpart, Jonathan Kanter, is dragging Google through the courts.

The EU is taking on Apple, and French cops are kicking down Nvidia's doors and grabbing their files, looking to build another antitrust case for monopolizing GPUs. The writers won their strike and Joe Biden walked the picket-line with the UAW, the first president in history to join striking workers:

https://doctorow.medium.com/joe-biden-is-headed-to-a-uaw-picket-line-in-detroit-f80bd0b372ab?sk=f3abdfd3f26d2f615ad9d2f1839bcc07

Solar is now our cheapest energy source, which is wild, because if we could only capture 0.4% of the solar energy that makes it through the atmosphere, we could give everyone alive the same energy budget as Canadians (who have American lifestyles but higher heating bills). As Deb Chachra writes in her forthcoming How Infrastructure Works (my review pending): we get a fresh supply of energy every time the sun rises and we only get new materials when a comet survives atmospheric entry, but we treat energy as scarce and throw away our materials after a single use:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612711/how-infrastructure-works-by-deb-chachra/

Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. We have shot past many of our planetary boundaries and there are waves of climate crises in our future, but they don't have to be climate disasters. That's up to us – it'll depend on whether we come together to save ourselves and each other, or tear ourselves apart.

The Lost Cause dares to imagine what it might be like if we do the former. We don't live in a post-enshittification world yet, but we could. With these indie audiobooks, I've found a way to treat the terminal enshittification of the Amazon monopoly as damage and route around it. I hope you'll back the Kickstarter, fight enshittification, inject some hope into your reading, and enjoy a kickass adventure novel in the process:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-lost-cause-a-novel-of-climate-and-hope

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/02/the-lost-cause/#the-first-generation-that-doesnt-fear-the-future

[dduane]

The Young Wizards series turns 40!

...And yes, we're having a sale to celebrate. But that can wait. :)

I'm sitting here looking at the date and considering how amazing it is that, despite the changes in the publishing world, anything can stay in print nonstop for forty years.

But this book has. Here's how it started:

...Well, not how it started. It started with three things:

A newbie YA writer being deeply annoyed with a non-newbie one for (as she thought) stripping their teenage characters of their agency without good reason.

A suddenly-appearing joke involving two terms or concepts that wouldn't normally appear together: the 1950s young-readers' series of careers books with titles that always began So You Want To Be A..., and the word "wizard."

And the idea immediately springing from that juxtaposition. What if there was such a book? Not a careers book, but a book that told you how to be a wizard—maybe some kind of manual? One that would tell you the truth about the magic underlying the universe, and how to get your hands on it... assuming you felt you could promise the things that power would demand of you, and survive the Ordeal that would follow?

Six or seven months after that confluence of events, there was a novel with that joke-line as its title. A month or so after that, the novel was bought. So You Want To Be A Wizard came out as a Fall 1983 book, as you can see from the Locus Magazine ad above (from back when Locus was only a paper zine). The first reviews were encouraging.

And by the middle of 1984, the publishers were asking, "So, what's next?" A question I'm still busy answering.

There's been a lot of water under the wizardly bridge since. In SYWTBAW's case, this involved a couple/few publishers, a surprising number of covers, a fair number of awards here and there; and lots more books. (I always knew there'd be more, but how many more continues to surprise me. Which is a bit funny, considering how much stuff that universe has going on in it.)

So here we are at forty, and looking ahead to The Big Five-Oh with some interest. More books? Absolutely. Young Wizards #11 is in progress at the moment, and YW #12 is in the late concept stages. More covers for So You Want To Be A Wizard? Seems inevitable. A TV series, perhaps? (shrug) Stranger things have happened: we'll keep our fingers (or other manipulatory instrumentalities) crossed. The New Millennium Editions in translation? and in international paperback? Working on that right now. The sky's the limit.*

And meanwhile, to celebrate, just for today we'll have a sale. (Except in the UK. To our British friends, the usual sad apology: the expensive bureaucracy of Brexit has made it impossible for us to sell directly to you any more. Details here, with our apologies.)

As has been mentioned before, changes are afoot at Ebooks Direct, so this kind of sale won't be happening again for the foreseeable future. (In fact I thought we were all done with them already. But the number 40 suggested one last opportunity that wouldn't be recurring, so I thought, "Aah, what the heck? Let's.")

New things first! Today, to mark this occasion, we're introducing the "All The Wizardry" Bundle. This is Ebook Direct's entire inventory of Young Wizards works; the contents of the bundle are listed on its product page. The $29.99 price listed there is for today only, to celebrate SYWTBAW's birthday, and will go up as of 23:59 Hawai'ian time tonight. As always, should you ever lose your ebooks or need to change reading platforms, we'll change your formats as necessary, or replace the books, for free.

Just click here, or on the image below, for the "All The Wizardry" Bundle. (Please ignore the category listings under the "Pay Using..." icons on the product page: they plainly think they're in a different universe. Kind of an occupational hazard around here...)

The other, older kind of sale folks will have seen here is on the "I Want Everything You've Got" Bundle, which is the whole Ebooks Direct store—obviously including all the Young Wizards books as well: more than 2.5 million words in 36 DRM-free ebooks. Just for today, in honor of the birthday book, we're dropping the whole-store price to USD $40.00. This, too, will go away just before midnight Hawai'ian time tonight... and it will never be lower. So if you want everything we've got at that price, don't wait around.

Make sure you use this link or the one associated with the image to get the baked-in discount at checkout. (If it fails to display correctly, use the discount code "40FOR40" in the checkout's "discount code or gift code" field.)

Meanwhile? Onward into the next decade. The new A Day at the Crossings novel unfortunately won't make it out before the end of 2023; other work in-house currently has taken priority. But as for early 2024... stay tuned.

And for those of you who're Young Wizards readers, and have kept this book, and its sequels, alive for pushing half a century?

Thank you, again and always!

*Though actually, it's not, is it? As the proverb has it, "Wizardry doesn't stop at atmosphere's edge..."

[bitchesgetriches]

{ MASTERPOST } Everything You Need to Know about Saving Money and Being Frugal

We’re all in this together. Don’t give up.

On food and groceries:

How to Shop for Groceries like a Boss

Why Name Brand Products Are Beneath You: The Honor and Glory of Buying Generic

If You Don’t Eat Leftovers I Don’t Even Want to Know You

You Are above Bottled Water, You Elegant Land Mermaid

You Should Learn To Cook. Here’s Why.

On entertainment and socializing:

The Frugal Introvert’s Guide to the Weekend

7 Totally Reasonable Ways To Save Money on Cheap Entertainment 

Take Pride in Being a Cheap Date

The Library Is a Magical Place and You Should Fucking Go There

Your Library Lets You Stream Audiobooks and eBooks FOR FREEEEEEE!

What’s the Effect of Social Media on Your Finances?

You Won’t Regret Your Frugal 20s

On health:

How to Pay Hospital Bills When You’re Flat Broke

Run With Me if You Want to Save: How Exercising Will Save You Money

Our Master List of 100% Free Mental Health Self-Care Tactics

Why You Probably Don’t Need That Gym Membership

How to Get DIRT CHEAP Pet Medication, Without a Prescription 

On other big expenses:

Businesses Will Happily Give You HUGE Discounts if You Ask This Magic Question

Understand the Hidden Costs of Travel and Avoid Them Like the Plague

Other People’s Weddings Don’t Have to Make You Broke

You Deserve Cheap, Fake Jewelry… Just Like Coco Chanel

3 Times I Was Damn Grateful for My Emergency Fund (and Side Income) 

When (and How) to Try Refinancing or Consolidating Student Loans

The Real Story of How I Paid Off My Mortgage Early in 4 Years 

Season 2, Episode 2: “I’m Not Ready to Buy a House—But How Do I *Get Ready* to Get Ready?”

The Most Impactful Financial Decision I’ve Ever Made… and Why I Don’t Recommend It

On buying secondhand and trading:

Almost Everything Can Be Purchased Secondhand

I Am a Craigslist Samurai and so Can You: How to Sell Used Stuff Online

The Delicate Art of the Friend Trade

On giving gifts and charitable donations:

How Can I Tame My Family’s Crazy Gift-Giving Expectations?

In Defense of Shameless Regifting

Make Sure Your Donations Have the Biggest Impact by Ruthlessly Judging Charities

The Anti-Consumerist Gift Guide: I Have No Gift to Bring, Pa Rum Pa Pum Pum

How to Spot a Charitable Scam

Ask the Bitches: How Do I Say “No” When a Loved One Asks for Money… Again? 

On resisting temptation:

How to Insulate Yourself From Advertisements

Making Decisions Under Stress: The Siren Song of Chocolate Cake

The Magically Frugal Power of Patience

6 Proven Tactics for Avoiding Emotional Impulse Spending

On minimalism and buying less:

Don’t Spend Money on Shit You Don’t Like, Fool

Everything I Know About Minimalism I Learned from the Zombie Apocalypse

Slay Your Financial Vampires

The Subscription Box Craze and the Mindlessness of Wasteful Spending

On saving money:

How To Start Small by Saving Small

Not Every Savings Account Is Created Equal

The Unexpected Benefits (and Downsides) of Money Challenges

Budgets Don’t Work for Everyone—Try the Spending Tracker System Instead

From HYSAs to CDs, Here’s How to Level Up Your Financial Savings

Season 2, Episode 10: “Which Is Smarter: Getting a Loan? or Saving up to Pay Cash?”

The Magic of Unclaimed Property: How I Made $1,900 in 10 Minutes by Being a Disorganized Mess

We will periodically update this list with newer articles. And by “periodically” I mean “when we remember that it’s something we forgot to do for four months.”

Bitches Get Riches: setting realistic expectations since 2017!

Start saving right heckin’ now!

If you want to start small with your savings, consider signing up for an Acorns account! They round up your every purchase to the nearest dollar and save and invest the change for you. We like them so much we’ve generously allowed them to sponsor us with this affiliate link:

Start investing today with Acorns

[renthony]

My doctor ordered tests that I can't afford + I need further appointments

Without plastering my medical info all over tumblr, I need about $600 to cover some bloodwork, a followup appointment, and a separate appointment plus medication for a different issue.

Now is a SUPER great time to buy my book, check out my Etsy shop, or pledge to my Patreon for updates about my art & writing.

Shop my Etsy

Buy my book on Amazon as an eBook or paperback

Pay-what-you-want for my book on Gumroad

Pledge to my Patreon

If you're not interested in any of that and still want to help me out, you can:

Kick me a tip on Ko-Fi

Use the tip feature on this post

PayPal @ renniequeer@gmail.com

Venmo @ renniequeer

CashApp @ $renniequeer

Thank you so much for reading, have a great day, and I hope you enjoy my book if you read it. <3

[booksinmythorax]

So, in the midst of... you know, everything, life at the library goes on and I wanted to talk about the difference between Libby and Hoopla.

For those not in the know, Libby and Hoopla are both apps/software that libraries can use to offer digital items to our patrons. Libby does ebooks (including graphic novels) and audiobooks.

Hoopla does ebooks, audiobooks, digital comics (weekly issues, not just trades or graphic novels), movies, TV shows, and music.

A little while back, my library system had to cut down on the number of Hoopla items patrons can check out per month. This caused a little bit of a stir - people like Hoopla! And they should! It's really cool! But the reason we had to cut back there and not with Libby was because the ways we pay for Libby and Hoopla are different.

Libby uses a pay-per-license model. This means that when we buy an ebook or audiobook on Libby, it's like we're buying one copy of a physical item. Except, because publishers are vultures, it's often much more expensive than buying one copy of the physical book - unless it's an audiobook, in which case buying the CDs might very well be more expensive than buying the digital license on Libby. That's why you might have to wait on a list for a Libby title that's really popular: we only have licenses for so many "copies". These licenses can be in perpetuity (i.e. you pay once and you can use that copy forever) or, more commonly, for a limited length of time like a year. Once that time is up, we decide whether to pay for the license for each copy again.

Hoopla uses a pay-per-circulation model. There's no waiting: once you, the patron, decide you'd like to check something out, you can do so immediately and we pay Hoopla a smaller amount of money to essentially "rent" the license from them. Cool, right?

Except that the pay-per-circ model adds up. If we have access to a brand new or popular title on Libby and Hoopla, and the Libby copy has a long waiting list, patrons might hop over to Hoopla to check it out immediately. If enough people do this, we might end up paying more overall for the Hoopla item on a per-circulation basis than we did for the license on the Libby item. That's why libraries typically limit the number of Hoopla checkouts patrons can use per month: because otherwise, we can't predict the amount we'll be paying Hoopla in the same way we can predict the amount we'll pay Libby.

Let me be clear: If a library offers a digital service and it would be helpful to you, please use it. Don't deny yourself a service you need or would enjoy in some misguided attempt to save your library some cash. We want to offer digital services, not least because ebooks and audiobooks have accessibility features that print books often don't. If your library has Libby and Hoopla and you get utility out of both, use both!

That said, if you're upset with the lower number of checkouts on Hoopla or the limited number of titles or copies available to you on Libby, you know who you should talk to? Your elected officials. Local, state, and federal. Because those folks are the ones who decide how much money we get, and what we can spend it on.

Don't go to them angry, either, because then we'll get scolded for not using the funds they "gave" us appropriately. (If you're a frequent library user, you might be shocked at how anti-library many local government officials already are.) Write your officials an email, call them, or show up at a board meeting and say you like the services the library offers, but you'd love it if we had enough money to buy more books on Libby or offer more checkouts on Hoopla. Tell them directly that this is how you would like your tax dollars to be spent.

If anybody has questions about how Hoopla or Libby work, I'm happy to answer them! Just wanted to make sure we had a baseline understanding.

[copperbadge]

Every time, you guys. Every time I look into alternatives to Lulu.com for self-publishing I come up with “Wow Lulu really is the best of a bad set of options, huh?” 

Recently, Draft2Digital bought Smashwords in order to bring a print book company under their aegis; they’d formerly only done ebooks. I thought I might investigate them as an alternative to Lulu, which I’ve used for about twelve years now. For ebooks I would venture D2D is probably top of the line. For print books they are....not. 

I’m writing this out half so other folks can see it but half so that in the future I can look this up and remind myself of why I’m still with Lulu. 

TLDR: Not only does Draft2Digital want 60% of my print book royalties where Lulu takes 0%, and $30 for a proof that costs me $11 at Lulu, but I also appear to have solved the problem of why Lulu was making me price my books so goddamn artificially high. Which is like. Honestly the best anti-anxiety drug I’ve experienced this week. 

Basically there are a number of elements that go into self-publishing with a print-on-demand service. For some publishers, there’s a “setup fee” which doesn’t really set anything up, it’s just there to be a fee, everything is done by computer on the back end. Traditionally, Lulu has not charged a setup fee. Smashwords used to charge $50, but Draft2Digital currently waives it. I was heartened by that because the setup fee was keeping me from migrating, since I can afford $50 but I balk at knowing I’m paying them $50 for nothing. 

Next is the cost of printing -- what it costs the company in paper, ink, machinery, labor, etc, to just make a book with no profit. Lulu’s price calculus isn’t super clear and I’ve never bothered looking at what the breakdown is, because they’re pretty up-front -- they tell you in the process of setting the book up how much it’ll cost. In this case, a 140-page 6x9 trade paperback, no frills, which is how all my books are printed, is $5. Draft2Digital doesn’t tell you the flat price anywhere but they do offer the breakdown information; it costs $1.22 flat plus $0.0133 per page. So, for a 140 page book, the at-cost is $3.08. So far so good. 

Now, if you’re going to sell through Lulu, the “at cost” is the minimum price. You won’t make any money but you CAN charge just $5 for a $5 book. Any pricing above that is your cut. So -- let’s price this 140 page trade paperback at $13-$15. That’s a bit high to be honest but let’s just see. At Lulu, your take is roughly $6-$8 based on those prices, because you’re just dropping out the cost of printing from the retail price. 

At Draft2Digital, the same 140-page trade paperback, which remember is quoted as costing roughly $1.20 less to print than Lulu charges, gets you $2.75-$3.50 in royalties per book.

....wait, what? 

So now we need to sidetrack a little but I promise it’s for a reason. One of the motivations for looking into a change to Draft2Digital is that I didn’t like that Lulu was setting higher “minimum prices” than I was accustomed to -- they would tell me the book only cost $5 to print but require me to sell it for $12 or similar, and I couldn’t work out why. I’m an idiot but the penny did finally drop: it’s because when you distribute them outside of Lulu (say, on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or similar) your royalties drop like a stone. $7 in royalties purchased through Lulu comes out to like twenty-five cents purchased through Amazon. So Lulu forces you to price the book at a point where you even GET royalties and don’t end up weirdly owing Amazon money. The “global distribution” is what’s driving that minimum up. 

So in price-quoting a competitor I actually solved the problem with Lulu. 

Which is good, because the fun doesn’t stop there. If you want a proof copy of a book from Lulu, it’s the at-cost of the book, plus tax, plus postage. Buying a proof copy of this book from Lulu would cost me $11. Lulu makes you order a new proof copy every time you make a change, which is shady, but usually I only need to make 1-2 changes across the life of a book, so at most the cost will probably be $35 and for that I’ll get three copies of the book. Draft2Digital doesn’t give you an option. If you want a proof pre-publication, it’s $30 flat. If you want to publish and then buy a copy you can, but you can only make one change to the book every 90 days once it’s published. If you want to make more than one change, it’s $25 every time you upload a new version of the manuscript within that 90 day period.

So Draft2Digital’s books cost less to print but they take a massive cut of your royalties out of the retail cost of the book. If the book costs $3 to print, and I price it at $15, that’s $12 in profit on the book. Of that $12, however, I only receive $4. Draft2Digital literally wants 2/3 of my royalties per book. They want $20 more than Lulu to send me a proof copy. If I need to correct the proof, the correction is free, but I’m assuming the second proof will also cost me $30. Any changes after that, within 90 days, will cost $25 plus $30 for a new proof.

Which means my upfront costs at Lulu are about $35 per published book; to do the same thing at Draft2Digital is between $60 and $105 depending on whether I need to make changes after the second proof copy. And even after that, my royalties at Lulu are just about twice what they would be at Draft2Digital per purchase. 

So, well, Lulu it is. And the problem I was having with Lulu is solved if I decide to just retail through Lulu rather than selling globally. Which...selling globally has done two things that I’m aware of:

1. Fucked up my author page so badly on Amazon that one of my books is still attributed to Kathleen Starbuck, and one of her books is for sale on my author page. 

2. Raised the minimum price I’m allowed to set my books at by like, 40%. 

So I think probably what’s going to happen is going forward my books will be for sale only on Lulu. I can still assign them ISBNs and they still will ship worldwide, and the prices will fall significantly. My deepest apologies to those of you who have paid an artificially inflated price for the last few books; I’m going to fix that going forward, I’m going to go in and try to fix it retroactively in the books that are already on Lulu, and if it’s any consolation at least the cash came to me, and TWO THIRDS OF IT didn’t go to Lulu. 

It’s gonna take me a little time, untangling Lulu’s relationship to other retailers is tricky, but eventually the Shivadh Omnibus and Twelve Points should come down significantly in price, and there ought to be a dollar or two drop for the older books as well. 

This is why it always pays to do the math, even if like me you are dreadful at it. 

[rjalker]

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin Abbot Abbot, published in 1884, is public domain. That means it has no copyright, and belongs to everyone.

This post will have links to as many versions and adaptations of it as I can find, and will be updated whenver I find new links to add.

Feel free to copy and paste this whole entire post and make it a new post for your own blog too!

None of these links are piracy, because you literally cannot pirate what has no copyright. Anyone who tells you you must pay to read the original Flatland is scamming you.

The only time you should be spending money on Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, is if you find a cool physical copy that you want specifically.

Check the original post before reblogging to look for updates if you are seeing this post days, weeks, or months after I originally post it.

____

Visual books:

Public domain:

The Original Novel:

Read online or ownload the original book in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg

Read or download from Standard Ebooks

Read and download from the Internet Archive. This also includes a computer-generated audiobook.

_

The 2024 translation:

Read online or download the 2024 translation in multiple formats from the Internet Archive. This also includes a computer-voiced audiobook.

Read the 2024 translation here on tumblr @flatland-a-2024-translation

___

Audiobooks:

The original novel:

Listen to the original book on the Internet Archive, read by Ruth Golding

Listen to the original book on the Internet Archive read by David "Grizzly" Smith

The 2024 translation:

Listen and read-along with the lazy audiobook of the 2024 translation on Youtube

___

Free visual media with full stories:

Here’s an animation from 1965. Contains some flashing lights.

Here’s a stop motion film from 1982 in Italian with English subtitles

Here’s an animation from 2006

The 2007 Flatland film by Ladd Ehlinger is free on youtube. Unfortunately Ladd Ehlinger is a virulently racist and misogynistic conservative who thinks feeding school kids is the same thing as slavery. His film is filled with almost constant flashing lights and spinning cameras that cause headaches, motion sickness, migraines, and seizures.

Here is a link to timestamps for these if you still choose to watch it.

The film ignores all of the politics from the original novel because the creator of the film agrees with the bigotry the novel condemned. You are much better off watching another visual adaption or reading the original or translated book.

Especially if you suffer from photosensitivity or motion-sickness, this film will make you want to throw up.

___

Shorter visual media:

In-universe

Part 4 of a Korean animation. from 2010. Haven't found parts 1-3 yet.

A short animation from 2020 showing an Equilateral being taken away from his Isosceles parents

Flatland Heist from 2013, A short animation from 2013 where the Narrator and Sphere team up to rob a bank :)

Flatland a Romance of Many Dimensions Alternate Timeline (without audio yet) 2024 Here's the version with audio

No Nonbinary Door 2024

A Visit to Lineland 2024

Up, Up, and Away 2024

Meta:

A short TED-Ed summarizing the math parts of Flatland from 2014

Another short animation explaining the math of Flatland from 2012

A long presentation (38 mins) about the math in Flatland. from 2017

Youtube Shorts:

A very short animation about the narrator meeting the Sphere

___

Related books by other authors, in publishing order:

Public domain:

An Episode of Flatland: or How a Plane Folk Discovered the Third Dimension. With Which is Bound Up an Outline of the History of Unæa by Charles Howard Hinton. (1907) Public domain, unlimited reading and downloading. It's terrible. But you can rewrite it to make it not terrible.

Other copyright:

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics by Norton Juster (1963) Can be borrowed by 1 person at a time. A short....poem? Nothing to actually do with Flatland.

The Incredible Umbrella by Marvin Kaye (1980) Can be borrowed by 1 person at a time. I have not read it yet.

Sphereland: A Fantasy About Curved Spaces and an Expanding Universe, by Dionys Burger. (1983) Can be borrowed by 1 person at a time. It's racist. Was intended to be a sequel to Flatland, but the author's racist and failed every lesson Flatland tried to teach.

“Message Found in a Copy of Flatland” by Rudy Rucker (1983) free to read online from the author.

The Fourth Dimension, by Rudy Rucker (1984). Can be read for free online from the author. I have not read it yet.

The Planiverse: Computer Contact With a Two-dimensional World by Alexander Keewatin Dewdney (1984) Can be borrowed by 1 person at a time. Good 2D worldbuilding, nonexistant plot and boring abrupt ending.

Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So by Ian Stewart (2001) Can be borrowed by 1 person at a time. it's useless crap that unironically defends the bigotry against Irregulars from the original novel by pretending it's just natural selection that's totally natural and not at all artificialy and violently upheld to uphold the supremacy of the Circles.

Spaceland by Rudy Rucker (2002) Can be borrowed by 1 person at a time. I have not read it yet.

VAS: An Opera in Flatland (2002) by Steve Tomasula. no copies donated to the internet archive yet. I have not read it yet.

__

Neopronoun short stories:

The Breaking Point, a short story of a Line and Isosceles in another country of Flatland, attempting to deal with an abusive officer of the military who's invited himself into their home. Almost 4k words.

Gaining a New Perspective, a short story of the Sphere contemplating everything that's happened after throwing the narrator of Flatland back down to his plane. Almost exactly 5k words.

Other short fiction:

[link me your stories and a short summary to go here!!]

__

Please feel free to add more links and I'll add them to this original post.

Here's the first masterpost I made which has fewer links.

[b-a-pigeon]

As you might expect from a couple of queer indie authors, Fell & I are going hard on the sales and promotions for Pride Month! I'll try to summarize as succinctly as possible, and remember that you can always click the links for a full synopsis ;)

Are you in the mood for...

✨ An emotional, reflective gay fantasy romance following a werewolf cowboy whose family takes in an amnesiac vampire? Fell's debut novel, Both Sides of the Moon, is on sale! You can buy a paperback for $11.99 & the ebook is on Countdown Sale June 3-7, starting at $0.99!

✨ A short and sweet sapphic contemporary fantasy read? My novella Worm in a Jar is pay what you want on Gumroad all month, so you can download it free if you'd like!

✨ A not-romantic fantasy novel with queer trans protagonists, about a demon and a demon hunter who must team up to prevent an imprending wave of violence? Our upcoming collab, Hierarchy of the Unseen, comes out June 21! It's up for preorder now, and available as an ARC on Netgalley :)

✨ The above, and also deals and/or supporting queer trans authors? This month, we're running a special offer on Patreon: all new & current patrons starting at the $4 tier will receive a free paperback of HotU (in addition to the ebook downloads, early access to our work, behind-the-scenes exclusives, and more already offered to patrons)!

✨ Finding more queer indies to support? Check out Pride SFF Reads & Read LGBTQ Authors on Bookfunnel!

I'll post about these individually in the coming weeks, but just wanted to throw it all out there at once 🖤 Reblogs appreciated! Thank you all for your support!

[thebibliosphere]

Hi Joy!

As a recently published author, can I ask you a question? It’s about people who want to review my book.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to get the word out about my book, so I made a post on one of the social media sites I’m on. And now I have people messaging me saying they’ll review my book and share it with their followers on their blog and Instagram and whatnot, if I pay them for the package they’re offering. Is this advisable?

I’ve heard of sending copies of a book with a request that they take a look at it, but that’s about all I know about getting reviews from people. I am very, very new to this whole being published thing - it’s been less than a week, actually.

Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated!

Some people will give favorable reviews for money, but you should also know there are a bunch of tiktokers in hot water right now for taking as much as $600 from people to promote their book on their platforms and then not following through with it.

You should also know there are so so so many people in the book community who will do free reviews in exchange for an ebook. I mean, shit, the entire premise of Netgalley one of the biggest ARC distributors online is built around that. No one on Netgalley is getting paid. That’s just people who love books.

So please don’t feel like you need to pay anyone, especially if that’s not in your budget.

So that said, what’s your book called? I know my followers love new things to read.