Authors and illustrators don't make any money when you buy our books from these massive warehouses that offer you a 70% discount.

So please, if you truly enjoy our work and want us to continue making books, try and shop ethically whenever possible.

– Annoyed author on Twitter

Thus wrote a book author, and thus retweeted an award-winning poet whose work I enjoy. The tweet made me a little bit angry. Sort of like the kitty meme up there. That isn't a 'stolen meme' from the internet, people. That's a Hoggett kitten. Before somebody claims I owe them money. Mrs Hoggett gave me that kitten video. We've been giving each other things for, oh, going on seven decades now, so the copyright police can go peddle their wares.

I wasn't angry about an anxious author wanting to point out to their friends and readers that they got no money from those discount warehouses. I'll explain why not, and then I'll tell you what made me angry and very sad at the same time.

Just so you know: if you buy any of the books under our h2g2 imprint through Lulu, h2g2 gets $8 a book.

None of the authors gets a dime. Sasha and I, who do most of the editing, don't get anything, either. Just so you know: it's all for h2g2.

If you buy the books through Amazon, however, we only get $1. The price to you is usually the same. Occasionally, there's a sale, and the swoosh company is still giving Superfrenchie fits about Izzy Himmelfarb, which may arrive sometime this century. If only he had a time machine. . . So that's why we ask that, to help the site, you spend your money with Lulu if you can.

I wrote a few of these books, and did some of the editing on a lot of the others, and it makes no difference to me how or why anyone acquired them. If you read and appreciated the ideas in the books, I am thrilled beyond measure. I got to participate in the world of ideas. Me. That's a satisfying thought. Oh, and if you wrote a review somewhere? I'm over the moon.

Of course I want h2g2 to get more money. But it would never have occurred to me in a sidereal year to suggest that buying from Lulu was the only way to 'shop ethically'.

Phrases like 'shop ethically' are, in my humble opinion, the reason the world won't get fixed. What do I mean by that? Have you ever been with a group of educated friends, and about to embark on a discussion of the latest issues in climate science, only to have the whole conversation derailed by some holier-than-thou type ranting on about plastic straws? That's why. The same thing happens with AI. Or electric cars. Or whatever issue you care to name. Once the 'I'm on the bandwagon' busybodies have grabbed the limelight, you might as well go home.

The problem with these big issues is in systems. Systems that need to be rethought and changed. The problem is not in individual customers, clients, or users – most of whom are being force-choiced into going along with the system. So instead of acting like the end-user is responsible for the mess, and has unlimited resources to do something about it, it would be nice if we acknowledged the facts on the ground and then discussed the changes we'd like to see together.

That's why I'm 'angy'.

Why I'm sad: I know the indie-published writers face a daunting task when it comes to getting their work out there. I'm an indie-published writer, after all. I know that most of them hover anxiously over their Kindle statistics and royalty reports, torn between their dreams of fame and fortune ('Oh, please! No more interviews today!') and the reality of the 27 cents they've earned from page reads on Amazon this month. I know how hard it is to separate the desire to give up the day job from that other desire which was the initial impetus for writing in the first place: the urge to communicate.

The reason I have absolutely no idea how many of my books have been sold is that I'm not the Core Team member who keeps track of our publishing account. And we don't do Kindle. Every once in a blue moon, I find out, more or less by accident, that somebody, somewhere, has read something I wrote – either in hardcopy or online. I've even been quoted on Wikipedia in three different languages. These things make me happy, see above. But I'm not expecting to make money from it. It's not that kind of world these days.

Yes, I know the book publishing industry is messed up. Everything is messed up. And that's why, if you are a writer, you shouldn't try to blame your readers for buying their books at a discount warehouse.

You should be glad they read your book.

Many of us can't afford to pay publisher's list prices for books these days. And we may not have access to these works in a library. The poet I mentioned before pointed out that UK libraries have an arrangement that allows writers to get paid a sort of royalty when their books are checked out and read. I'm assuming you have to be a living writer to benefit – I don't imagine anybody's paying Tolstoy these days.

The comment implied that even getting the book out of the library was better than the noxious practice of buying books from a discount warehouse. As if the fact that something you wrote was deemed worthy of inclusion in a library, that most sacred of institutions, was nothing. And that the act of borrowing that book and reading it was less than sacred because it did not involve the exchange of money.

Thomas Hardy commented on this a long time ago. I read this more than fifty years ago, and it has stuck with me.

'I have been singing in the choir of a little church near Melchester,' he said. 'And we have this week practised 'The Foot of the Cross,' which I understand, sir, that you composed?'


'I did – a year or so ago.'


'I – like it. I think it supremely beautiful!'


'Ah well – other people have said so too. Yes, there's money in it, if I could only see about getting it published. I have other compositions to go with it, too; I wish I could bring them out; for I haven't made a five-pound note out of any of them yet. These publishing people – they want the copyright of an obscure composer's work, such as mine is, for almost less than I should have to pay a person for making a fair manuscript copy of the score. The one you speak of I have lent to various friends about here and Melchester, and so it has got to be sung a little. But music is a poor staff to lean on – I am giving it up entirely. You must go into trade if you want to make money nowadays.'

– Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

As I said: if you want to do us a good turn, and can afford it, we'd appreciate it if you bought our books from Lulu. They make nice gifts if you have reading friends and relatives, I swear the covers are as attractive as we could make them, and they won't cost you an arm and a leg. But if you can't, we understand. The same stories – a little less polished, perhaps, and with different illustrations – are available in our archives for the price of your internet connection.

And we won't call you 'unethical' for reading us there.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

28.10.24 Front Page

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