Worked a bit on the newest story for Fenrir’s Tales today, but my heart just wasn’t in it. I stopped and had lunch, then I went to read and take a nap.

The book I was reading is one that if I said the title, you’d know it. It’s non-fiction and highly overrated. It’s a good think I didn’t have the physical book because it would have gotten thrown against the wall. I may have even burned it. I had stumbled across the author’s blog earlier in the day and thought, “Okay, I’ll give his book a try.” I’ve avoided it until now because I didn’t like how he phrased his title. Yeah, probably a dumb reason, but after reading that first chapter and being unable to stomach the thought of paying him any more royalties, I knew my internal gut reaction hadn’t been wrong. There are sentences in his book that don’t even make sense. His premise is all disjointed, as if the LSD trip that he talks about in that first chapter never stopped. Yeah, I’m pretty sure he’d fail a drug test today.

So, I had to take the book off my device and give my poor phone a cleansing prayer along with offering it my deepest, most sincere apologies. If only I could take back the few cents I paid to him for reading that short section of his book. That’s the bad thing about reading on a subscription service, I suppose.

If you’re curious, I use Scribd. No, I’m not into Kindle Unlimited. I don’t believe that authors should have to be exclusive to one platform. It’s really not good for authors. Being wide (which means not participating in Kindle Unlimited) is a way to get into libraries as well as other subscription services just like KU without an author having all their eggs in one basket (Amazon). Amazon certainly doesn’t expect musicians to be exclusive to them for their Prime Music. Why is it only authors that they want to segregate like a poorly run harem? Yeah, go on… ask me how I feel about that?

Amazon isn’t even looking out for readers’ best interests. They have separate programs for books and audiobooks — two services to subscribe to if you want books. Scribd is one service and has books, audiobooks, and magazines. I stay away from the other stuff on Scribd because I suspect there are some unscrupulous people uploading documents that they have no right to upload. I certainly hope they are not making money from it. Someday, I will have to check into that side of Scribd and find out.

Aside from Scribd, there is Kobo Plus. I don’t know much about this service, but I do know my books are available through it. Again, some day I need to look into that.

And, contrary to one person’s false comment that I saw today, indie authors can get into library systems. I know I have books in an L.A. library, as well as Wisconsin and Oklahoma. Strange combination, I know. Yes, sometimes you have to ask your library to get a book into their system. An author can’t do this if they are in KU. The author must be wide so they have the rights to lease to libraries.

Yeah, if I’d gotten the book from Amazon, I could have returned it and the author would have gotten no royalties. Instead, he makes a few cents from me. Well, I guess he was just giving me his two cents on life and I threw it back at him. That makes me much happier to think about it that way. (grin!)

Cheers.