Category: business

People can support my work by buying my books, through whatever channels they prefer. I also have my Patronizer program, offer sponsorships of individual titles, and take early orders via Kickstarter. Folks ask me what the differences are between these three things.

Patronizers send me money every month, either through Patreon or my store. They get everything that sponsors and Kickstarter backers get. If you receive my books in print, and I send sponsors a physical gift, you get that gift. Patronizers who receive digital rewards get any digital rewards that sponsors and Kickstarter backers get. Patronizers are thanked by name in the Acknowledgements in the front of everything. Any print books are signed with a personal thank-you note.

Sponsors back a particular book. I offer sponsorships only for tech books. If you don’t want to back every daft thing I do, or fear I will soil your name by thanking you for atrocities, or you have enough fiscal responsibility to not send me money monthly for no good reason, sponsorships are for you. When the book comes out, sponsors receive a gift. The gift might or might not be the book. It might be related to the book. It might amuse only me. Sponsors are thanked in the back of the book. Any print books are signed with a personal thank-you note.

Kickstarter is basically pre-orders. Backers get a chance to purchase any limited editions I create. Their name doesn’t go in the books. I sign print books but don’t personalize.

Practically, how does this work? Now that everyone’s had a chance to get their gifts, here’s what I did for Run Your Own Mail Server.

Print sponsors received a special edition of the book, (Ruin Your Mail By Running It Yourself). It will never be in stores, although I have a few extras that will wind up in charity auctions.

They also got a metal challenge coin. I’m quite pleased with how these came out. This coin will never be re-issued. I have a few extras that will, again, go to charity.

Why these? Because they amused me. Seriously. That’s it.

Print-level Patronizers got both. They also didn’t know what was coming.

Kickstarter backers could get the RYOMS Special Edition. They didn’t know what it was either. They did not get the challenge coin, however.

Why do it this way? My second business goal is to lure people into buying direct from me, eliminating middlemen like Amazon. (My first business goal is to pay the mortgage.) The more direct our relationship, the more crap I give you. Or, if you prefer: the further you descend down the Reader Acquisition Funnel, the more I try to weigh you down so that you can never climb out.

Or:

If you buy my books, I appreciate you.

If you preorder my books at release time, I appreciate you more.

If you back a book before I’ve finished writing the silly thing, I gotta make it worth your while.

If you send me money every month, I must show my sincere gratitude.

A few years ago I switched from delivering books via WordPress downloads to Bookfunnel. Now and then, folks ask why. “Because it reduces my pain without escalating yours” is trite, but true. Here’s the full explanation.

When I first opened tiltedwindmillpress.com, I provided files at obfuscated filenames. By the third direct sale, someone had shared the link to eleven thousand of their closest friends. Pirating my books is a jerk move, but pirating them off my own server is downright insulting.

Woocommerce provides access controls for downloads, letting me limit the number of downloads. I set it to ten and moved on.

That eventually caused problems, though. Now and then someone would need to redownload their books more than ten times. People want help loading their files onto devices. Woocommerce’s download management is clunky, probably because they didn’t anticipate my use case. Bundles like The Full Michael took hours of painstaking labor to update. (I don’t remember if I actually launched TFM before Bookfunnel, but the thought of doing it the old way causes keyboard-trashing shudders, so my body certainly remembers.)

Bookfunnel lets me provide epub, mobi, and PDF, all easily labeled. If you create an account at https://my.bookfunnel.com, they’ll let you redownload your books as many times as you like. When I update a book, updates actually propagate across the accounts. They can help you load your ebooks onto whatever weird ereader you own. I pay them for this service specifically so they leave my customers the heck alone.

I’ve written before how the Internet’s business model is betrayal. What will I do if Bookfunnel gets bought and decides to exploit everything and everyone?

I’ll stop using them.

Yes, having my readers’ email addresses in the hands of an exploitative firm would suck. I am highly confident that exploitative firms already have that information, however. Many of you use disposable or filterable addresses for exactly that reason. I would take the money I spend on Bookfunnel and give it to a WordPress contractor to have them manage the files, or to even write a Woo-compatible WordPress plugin for ebook management.

So: ease of management, ease of re-downloads, and help loading books on your devices. That’s why.

(This post went to Patronizers at the beginning of June, and the public at the beginning of July.)

“The deck is clear, projects are ready to go, I’m ready to WRITE!”

One lovely Friday night in May, She Who Must Be Obeyed finished teaching for the summer. The following Sunday, at five AM, she broke her leg.

You look alarmed, so I’ll say now: she will fully recover.

The next couple weeks were a blur. The third week, where she could take care of herself enough that I could do some work, are also a blur–but mostly because I was doing tech edits on Run Your Own Mail Server. The Kickstarter was scheduled to start on 20 May, and I had invested a bunch of energy in shilling it, so I didn’t want to push it back, but my stupid conscience demanded I have the book in copyedit before launching the Kickstarter. Why would I launch a Kickstarter on a book I’m not ready to deliver? I also had to finish writing two four-hour courses, one on email and one on TLS, for BSDCan. So, I launched the Kickstarter and got ready for BSDCan.

You remember my last Sausage post? Where I said I thought that the direct market for RYOMS was exhausted? I hoped I might gross seven, maybe ten thousand?

I was wrong.

So very wrong.

And the dang thing isn’t over! I’m going to be shipping over 500 books. I might need to buy help doing that, particularly for the drop-shipped copies. Despite that complaint, you’d be helping me out if you’d share the campaign.

Part of the reason I set the Kickstarter to run over BSDCan was that I was teaching about email, and wanted to mention that the Kickstarter existed. I thought it might sell a couple more books. Also, I thought that if I was busy being the BSDCan con chair, I couldn’t spend my days obsessively reloading the Kickstarter page to see if anyone bid. The con chair role mainly consisted of pointing at volunteers and saying “You. You are empowered to make this Thing happen. Go. Do.” Plus, I’d deal with any last-minute disasters.

You ever start a week-long con exhausted? Because I sure did. It was a loooong week. Fortunately, SWMBO was more able to care for herself, so I was able to go at all. (If I hadn’t been chair, I would have canceled.)

So, yeah. Very few new words this month, and those all on polishing RYOMS. I hope to change that this month.

The eight hour drive home from BSDCan gave me time to ponder the world and my place in it. One thing I’ve been contemplating is my Patronizer rewards. The video hangout tier was popular during the covid lockdown. We still have covid, but we’re not in lockdown. I often start the video hangout and nobody shows up.

I’m contemplating dropping the monthly video hangout, replacing it with a quarterly all-Patronizer hangout: two in my morning, and two in my evening. That would give everyone a chance to show up.

I would replace the Monthly Video Hangout tier with a private chat. I would check the chat at least 2-3 times a week. The question is, what platform? Signal would be preferable, but its anonymity means it doesn’t integrate well with Patreon or Woocommerce. I’m familiar with Slack. Matrix and Discord annoy me. The catch would be, I’d demand that such a chat be family-friendly. Perhaps Addams Family friendly, but family friendly. That means moderation. I don’t know if I want to do that labor.

So, pondering. Video hangout subscribers, I’m open to your thoughts.

Meanwhile, I’m waiting for RYOMS to return from copyedit. While books like SNMP Mastery covered complex material, that material could easily be chunked. It’s the most complex and interrelated book I’ve ever written. It does not break into chunks. Everything depends on everything. That meant painstaking interleaving of information, in a weird order that looks clunky but is the only way to approach the material. There’s reasons nobody else wrote this book. I have several outstanding anthology invitations, so I’m gonna break up my mental logjam and write some short fiction for a little bit. My brain is tired after the last few months.

I’m looking at the RYOMS Kickstarter and thinking I should do that revision of Networking for System Administrators I’ve been pondering. The cover art will need mushrooms, however.

Before then, though, I’ll launch Dear Abyss. Which might make two grand, if I’m very lucky. A collection of previously published honest advice columns is of much less interest than running a mail server. Even if “honest” means “bitter and cynical.” We’re talking sysadmin stuff, after all.

Sorry for the dearth of news, but it’s been a crap month. Do let me know what you think about the chat thing, however.

(This post went to Patronizers at the beginning of May, and to the world at the beginning of June. Not a Patronizer? Sign up at https://patronizemwl.com.)

This month was better than last month. If you look at April’s Sausage post, you’ll see that is a terribly low bar to clear, but I’ll take it.

The “exciting” news on this is that I’ve set a up the Run Your Own Mail Server Kickstarter. I’m not excited for the Kickstarter itself, but I’m curious how well it will work out and that curiosity carries its own excitement. RYOMS is the most heavily-sponsored book I’ve written. I suspect this is less about the topic, and more because the sponsorships were open longer than any other book. (You can thank me catching covid for that.) In theory, the groups of “people willing to advance me money to write this book” is not the same as “people willing to preorder directly from the author.” Perhaps I already pillaged my public support and this Kickstarter will fail. Well, no, it’s not going to fail. I’ve set a goal of $500. I had many sponsors for OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems, and got a few dozen pre-orders even though that book had sponsors.

Wait–I keep ranting about the importance of disintermediation, and I’m switching from direct pre-orders to Kickstarter? What gives?

Processing fees on Paypal and Stripe are about 3%. (Yes, it’s more complex than that, but it’s close enough for this discussion, so hush.) Kickstarter fees are 5% plus processing fees, or basically 8%. The question is: will the social aspect of Kickstarter make up for that 5% fee? There’s only one way to know, and that’s to try it. I love experimenting. I love trying new things in my art, my craft, and my trade. So that’s exciting.

The curious among you are welcome to look at the campaign preview.

One thing about this campaign pleases me. I started the 60 Seconds of WIP podcast to better learn to speak on microphone. Recording this Kickstarter video took only eight takes where it would have previously required fifteen or more.

RYOMS is the longest Mastery title, twice as long as Networking for Systems Administrators and 125% the length of SNMP Mastery. I think I’m going to price the ebook at $14.99. This means the Kindle version won’t be available on Amazon, just like OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems. The OpenBSD people have no problem with avoiding Amazon, but this book is for a wider audience. I’m curious to see how that works out as well. I can imagine someone uploading pirated versions to Amazon, but I’m ready with my complaint letters and DMCA takedown notices, as always. Yes, my publishing checklist includes “prepare a template DMCA takedown” for the book. Always preload your pain.

RYOMS is also back from tech edits. If you haven’t sent me your comments, it’s too late. I’m churning through the manuscript to get everything updated, so I can get it to copyedit before the Kickstarter opens on 20 May. I’m also preparing a four-hour course based on RYOMS for BSDCan. Four hours is not enough to go deep into the entire book, but nobody wants to sit through eight hours of config files, so I’m focusing on knowledge integration. That, plus setting up the new BSDCan mail server, is forcing me to go through the manuscript one last time.

I’m also converting TLS Mastery into a four hour course, but I can finish that after RYOMS goes to copyedit.

All of this is taking longer than I expected, forcing me to face something rather unpleasant. Covid dented me. I’m not one of those poor bastards with crippling long covid, but my energy is certainly not what it once was. I’m clearly functioning at about eighty percent, though, and that seems fairly constant. I clearly can’t afford to catch covid again, and am no longer waffling about my conference mask policy. Masks do not protect you, but they protect the people around you. The people most likely to spread covid are the least likely to wear a mask. EuroBSDCan in freaking Dublin seriously tempted me, but I have too many books left to write to catch this crap again.

That’s the thought dragging me through these tech edits: when I finish, I get to write again!

But writing the tutorial is making me double-check everything. The book will be better for it, but I still hate it.

Whenever I release a tech book, I create a file for keeping notes about stuff I missed. This helps me decide if a book needs a second edition. I’m at the point where Networking for Systems Administrators has accumulated a few critical gaps. The appearance of Let’s Encrypt means the book needs TLS coverage. I should discuss special address ranges like 100.64.0.0/10. It talks network sockets, but I should add some comments about local sockets and their evil twin, Windows pipes. Speaking of Windows, I need to confirm all of the PowerShell commands are actually PowerShell. A faint breath of nmap. Other detritus. And the cover needs updating.

Some of this I’ll need for my next big Unix book as well.

I’m contemplating a crash revision. These are all simple topics. I could kick off a two-week sponsorship window after BSDCan, while RYOMS is still in copyedit. Disconnect the Internet and spend eight hours a day revising the book. Another round of tech reviews would be the longest part. Once I get the book to copyedit, I’d do either a ten-day Kickstarter or a preorder on my web site. I haven’t done a crash book like that since you maniacs sponsored Ed Mastery. It would be fun.

But then there’s that “I’m running at 80%” factor.

We’ll see.

(Quick note, because very busy day.)

Vultr had a rights grab in their ToS. They just took it out, after community outrage.

So, is everything fine?

Nope.

This is exactly what Findaway tried. I’ve read the whole ToS. There is no misunderstanding.

The CEO has said that users are not lawyers. I am not a lawyer, true. But I deal with a lot of intellectual property contracts. My books are intellectual property, and I have to read ToS and contracts for every one of them. When reading a contract, you have to assume that the other party will be sold to a complete bastard who will exploit the contract as far as possible.

It’s highly unlikely that Constant Contact (Vultr’s parent firm) would use a book stored on my site to make a film. But suppose their parent company did so. A film I didn’t want made would come out, destroying the value of any film I might have made. I could sue, spending my money to fight a much larger firm. This is a losing proposition.

Perhaps Vultr’s lawyers are merely incompetent.

But their parent firm is a content company. And many content companies are doing rights grabs.

Rights grabs are becoming more common, though. I believe that the only way to stop them is to stop doing business with any company that attempts one. Backing down from a rights grab is too late.

The hot new idea in writer circles is the author-owned bookstore. According to the Wayback Machine I’ve had my author-owned bookstore since 17 May 2013, so you can imagine I’m fully on board with this. This store now accounts for 35% of my income, more than Amazon, so it’s a critical part of my business.

When folks look at building a store, though, they’re immediately confronted with choosing a platform. There’s two major platforms: Shopify and Woocommerce. Which should you pick? The costs are comparable. The skill level to use either is about the same. They then commit a grievous error and ask me for my opinion.

I will always advise Woocommerce. Always.

When I say this, many authors immediately jump up and say “I tried Woo and it sucked, Shopify works better!” I would reframe that. “The first store I built sucked, the second store I built is much better!” The first book you wrote probably sucked, too. The first iteration of my Woo store also sucked. I look at a lot of author bookstores and immediately say, “Oh sweetie, no, this is not how you do it.” Some of them hired ‘technical’ people to build the store. Technical people are like literary agents: there is no qualifying exam, they act in their own interests according to their own biases, and you can’t afford a good one. Even a disaster is educational, though. Your failed first store taught you how to build a second store containing less suck. (It’s amazing how many writers are willing to spend years noodling over a manuscript, but expect their first store to work perfectly on their first try.)

My motivation for standing up my own bookstore is to declare independence from any outside channel. A decade ago, Amazon was the majority of my income. Making my books available in all channels increased the number of readers I drew while reducing my dependence on Amazon. Adding my own bookstore reduced my dependence on anyone. Yes, I use outside components and services, but every one of those parts can be replaced. Why would I replace a dependency on Amazon with a dependence on Shopify?

Cory Doctorow recently made a big splash with the word enshittifcation. He describes it as the process where an Internet company starts off being useful, becomes powerful, then starts squeezing values out of suppliers and then customers. It’s standard business practice at Internet scale. Ford and General Electric would totally do the same, if federal regulation didn’t prevent it. Amazon exists with very little federal regulation.

I prefer a simpler word: betrayal. It’s harsh, yes, but it fits.

Internet companies betray their user every day. Glassdoor sold itself as a place to anonymously rat out employers. Now the company wants to monetize its users, and is attaching real names to user profiles. While I could laugh and say You idiots trusted an Internet company, what did you expect? this will literally destroy lives and careers. Findaway Voices sold itself as one service, got bought by Spotify, changed its ToS to become an IP-pillaging company, and appeared to back down under protest. People thought it was a victory. It was not. We lost. We lost huge. It was an absolute rout. Compare their current terms of service to the pre-Spotify terms of service. Now consider what a minor update like “we added three carefully-chosen words to the ToS, they’re harmless legal boilerplate, we promise” could do. I guarantee that Findaway’s lawyers knew what words they would add and where they would put them before releasing these “friendly” Terms of Service. In Reddit’s quest to raise money, it trashed the people who create its value. All that’s only in the last year.

Betrayal is the Internet’s business model.

Businesses look out for their own interests. If a business believes it exists solely to maximize shareholder value, and has no legal, regulatory, or competitive barriers, it will become invaluable and then betray you.

What happens if either Shopify or Woo betrays me?

The Shopify software and all hosting thereof is fully controlled by the Shopify company. When folks tell me that they’re lovely people, what I hear is “the company’s current management is lovely, but the owners have decided to not betray their users. Yet.” A third of my income is at risk. If they become a problem I must hurry up and find a new store system, without advance warning, right freaking now.

The Woo software is freely available under a permissive license, and is hosted on a WordPress site I pay for. There is a Woocommerce company, yes, but they make money by selling support and add-ons. The actual software cannot be taken away. Yes, I buy some Woo plugins. There’s a super healthy plugin marketplace. If Woo Inc betrayed me, I’d have time to switch. After all, I have all the code. It’s running on my server. Betrayal would vex me, and I’d feel obliged to rant and rave. Also, Woo is a fork of Jigoshop. If Woo betrays its users, any number of those outside firms would leap up and happily take their place. And Woo knows it. That’s how they replaced Jigoshop. One day they’ll get bought and the new owners will go for a betrayal anyway, though.

When Shopify inevitably betrays me, over a third of my income is at risk.

When Woocommerce inevitably betrays me, I am not at risk. I’m merely pissed off.

Either way, you need to experiment with your store. Polish it. Experiment. Some of those experiments will be complete failures. Some will succeed worrying well. It’s all about what your readers want. Give readers a seamless buying experience, and expect that it’s gonna take a while.

See part 1 and part 2 for context.

Last night Findaway changed their terms of service last night to something mundane, but it doesn’t matter.

I’ve worked with developers for decades. Developers do extra work, but only certain kinds of extra work. They will rearchitect your entire front end in Rust and Pascal for the sheer joy of it. What they won’t do is change the terms of service for the fun of it. That’s boring.

I know several lawyers who have fun drafting proposed contracts. This isn’t that.

Someone came to the Findaway web site developers and said “Add a popup with these new terms of service.”

Were those ToS an error? If they were identical to the Spotify ToS, then I’d accept a copy-and-paste goof. They were not. Someone wrote them.

Additionally, it was pointed out that opting out had a 30 day lag, and the announcement was made 30 days before it would take effect. If you didn’t catch it immediately, Spotify would assimilate your work.

Lawyers are accustomed to negotiating with other lawyers. Everybody starts by asking for everything, they bat it back and forth, either meet in the middle or amicably end negotiations. The initial ask includes things that they know they won’t get, and things that they can discard so they can show they’re being reasonable. It’s a dance.

These online terms of service from tech companies? They start the same way, but they’re negotiating with the public. They wait to see what gets pushback.

They’ve shown us what they want to achieve, and it’s antithetical to our art and our craft.

Spotify has no pointy-clicky way to delete books from their inventory or your account. You can go in and delete the individual MP3s, however. You can change the cover art and description to Removed Because Spotify’s Business Practices are Unacceptable. You can then email support@findawayvoices.com and ask them to delete your account.

Hopefully, I am now done blogging about this.

I hear that Author’s Republic, which imperfect, has viable options. I haven’t read their ToS, though. You should read them for yourself, and ask how they’ll be used against you.