It's Gonna Cost You

LibraryThing is instituting some changes to its giveaway program. I'm in favor of most of them, but my one sticking point is that an author needs to host her books on an ARC site. When I ran my one and only giveaway I produced my own ARC's using (free) calibre software, and I sent the winners their desired format.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, seems to assume that anyone who writes is flush with cash. How could that even be true? It costs me nothing to write a manuscript in Word, since it's already built into my computer. KindleCreate is also free, and that's what I use to format my book for publication. I create my own book covers. I do all that because, well, I like doing it, but primarily because I can't afford to do it any other way. Apparently if one is poor, they have no business writing, because poor = bad.

I've wasted a bit of money on promo sites ~ not a lot of money by most people's measure ~ but as much as was reasonable based on my bank balance. Over the course of my writing career, I might have spent about $200.00 total (and I've been writing a long time). 

I like LibraryThing's giveaways precisely because they're free. I've been all on board with any free promotion, because I can afford free.

Elitism exists everywhere, even in self-publishing. Maybe I'm just one of those awful "white rurals" they write books about (books the authors can afford to heavily promote). There was a ton of books offered in the LibraryThing giveaway I participated in, and I scrolled that page almost daily to find out how many entries I had. I saw all the professionally-designed book covers, and the blurbs that someone was paid to write. Meanwhile, here was I with my homemade cover and a blurb that didn't cost me a penny. Guess which books garnered the most entries. 

I understand why LibraryThing is making these changes, and more power to them. I don't know that I'd ever do a giveaway again anyway, unless I wrote something that totally blew me away. My beef is with the overall industry ~ and yes, self-publishing is an industry. Writing something good is in itself an uphill battle without having to deal with a stacked deck. 

I really don't like this game.