In which I hang up my buckaneer boots and tricorn hat...

This is not a blog I want to write today, if ever, but with things going the way they are recently, I feel it is about time I address some things, and before everyone gets all up in arms about what I have to say and explain, let me assure you, this has been thought over long and hard.

E book is great for its innovation and the "I want it now" attitude of the readers that use it, but its also opens us all up to theft. Because of the theft portion of that statement, going forward in our career, all our novels will not be available in normal E book formats. That means LIT, PDF or HTML or any other. We will have our Novels available on kindle, and any other straight to device formats but that is it.

Why? the short answer is that the pirates have made my life hell, and I don't have the time, strength and inclination to fight them anymore. So from now on we wont be giving them any way to get our books to share them.

See, I have the ability to do this with Tease Publishing, and I will be doing it. Please understand that I didn't come to this decision lightly. The truth of the matter is that with the amount of books that we sell in e book, the numbers aren't there. With our print, that is where the majority of our sales come from. We don't make the numbers most do in e book, and therefore, its counterproductive for us to offer E books in those formats when all it really is doing is letting the pirates win.

Now, you will say, Stella, the pirates aren't real readers and buyers, true, but with the low number of e sales we get, taking them away, the formats, will stop them entirely from pirating out work. If they can't get it, they cant pirate it. And you know who you are, pirates.

Now, if your a e reader of ours, I'm sorry about this, and while we are taking the forthcoming options of e books from all future books, if you are a reader, we can make arrangements. Please note however, the files that are done for e book readers of ours, will have several distinguishable things in the file that if they are found on pirate sites, we will know WHO has put it up. Why do that? Because the pirates are people that buy books. This will not stand. All files will be watermarked as well.

I really am sorry about this. But I don't have the stamina to be fighting these assholes 24/7. Its come to a point where its either fighting the pirate sites, or writing. And I have been writing less and less seeing how many copies of our books have been pirated, and seeing when I get one taken down, another gets thrown up. Its relentless, and the only way I can see to protect our intellectual property is to not offer it anymore. I'm of the mind that if you make it harder for them, they will stop their bullshit. I'm a firm believer of being paid for my hard work, and in e publishing and small press, that paycheck is never equating the amount of time and energy you have put into the manuscript. But that's the chance we take when we sign with a publisher.

Here's the truth: our e sales as a whole, and that's 18 books in e book, hit about 50 sales every 6 months. We do that in a month in print with 2 books. Thats hard. We are not with some of the big publishers that get the huge sales numbers from those that love that publisher. If we were this might not have to happen. So we have to take steps to ensure we are getting paid for the hard work we do, and that our copyrights are protected, and most of all, so those asshole fuck pirates don't win.

Again, the books WILL be in kindle, and if and when other readers have straight to device downloads like kindle, then we will do it like that as well. Yes, there are ways around it all, but we believe it is safer for our work, and that's what is important. I'm just happy that we can do this, and feel confident that our work will be protected to the best of our ability.

Now, I'm ready for your ire, your questions, and your snark, I expect it after dropping something like this. Do I think this is the answer to everyones problem? No, but for right now, it is for us, and until better options present themselves then this is how it is meant to be. Again, to our fans that read e book exclusively, I am sorry and we will work to keep you guys in the fold. It is simply easier to work with the scant number of e readers we have on a individual basis (if they want it) then to fight the pirate sites.

Thanks for understanding, and for reading our work.