AJ Adams - Dark, Messed-Up Romance and Crime

When I wrote about #cockygate making some new authors nervous about titling their books yesterday, I mentioned that the barriers put up by Amazon and other big book companies have led to widespread piracy. This led to some questions - and accusations. Answering the latter first, I'm not anti-Amazon, anti-American etc etc. I was describing the situation as I see it. I forgot that many people don't travel and have little idea of life outside the US/UK/EU.  So here goes... We don't have a national library system; we're a developing nation. We do have bookshops. Best Sellers from MPH, one of Malaysia's biggest bookshops An average paperback price is RM45-RM70, which is US$12-US$18. Note: a latte in Starbucks/CoffeeBean costs RM12 or US$3 so for us, books are a luxury. Not everyone can afford them. We see Amazon Kindle offers 1,400,000 books for RM40 or $10. They advertise everywhere: Facebook, Twitter, blogs are constantly harping o...

This post is written for young authors, or new authors living in non-kindle countries, who are worried about #cockygate leaving them open to lawsuits and being blocked by American sales platforms like Amazon.  Also, there are tips on creating a unique title. What is #CockyGate? Faleena Hopkins who sells novels on Amazon is making lots of claims, including that she alone has the right to use the word 'cocky' in a book title. She's been bullying authors, threatening to sue them, and telling Amazon that her rights have been infringed. For a short time, authors who had books with the word COCKY in the title on Amazon had their books taken down. Also, because Amazon uses a lot of automated tools, readers who'd used the word in totally unrelated book reviews also found their opinions censored. Although Faleena is sticking to her guns and making more and more wild claims, Amazon has put the banned books back up, and is restoring the reviews. She's also being challe...