Some of you may know that my publishing company, Hachette, is feuding with Amazon. Others of you may be sweetly oblivious, because I’m not sure how much it affects individual readers. For consumers, it probably isn’t yet a big deal.

But this feud is a big deal for authors. I’m not going to go into the nuts and bolts, mostly because it’s super complicated, I don’t fully understand everything, and if you Google “Amazon Hachette feud” you’ll probably get 1,000 sources and opinions far more informed than me. I am pretty sure about one thing, however, and that’s the fact that this fight is one of Goliath versus Goliath, which makes picking a horse to bet on pretty difficult (even if one of those horses is, technically, your own).

That said, there’s one thing I’m absolutely sure about, and that’s who is really getting screwed in this pootch-house: the authors. Now, technically I’m one of Hachette’s authors, so I’m really bemoaning my own sad fate, here. But my next book isn’t due out until November, by which time Amazon could very well have bought Hachette and I’ll have been handed my red pill and complimentary sippie cup of water. But right now there are a lot of authors getting hit really hard by this feud. After all, no one wins when mommy and daddy fight.

This feud really sucks for those authors, not least because they didn’t have pre-order buttons for months and pre-orders are what publishing companies use to decide whether to make new deals, and how much to pay out in those deals. And I don’t just mean Hachette is looking at those numbers, cuz they should be giving a brother a break, right? Unfortunately, book sellers look at these numbers to determine what they want to order to put in their stores. And other publishing companies have the same numbers, and all they see is that Debut Author Sacrificia Lambe had like no sales, and because she’s a debut, they don’t know if it’s because of the feud or if it’s because her book was simply destined to tank. And they don’t know if a new series didn’t take off because of the feud, or because it didn’t have a freaking buy button for ninety years.

Such authors are kinda screwed, and it really sucks. Especially because one of these authors is my friend.

She’s being a total trooper and she’s not complaining and she gets that this is a business and blah blah blah but I’m her friend and I’m kind of a Tiger Friend and I’m all RAWR RAGE.

So here’s my proposition: BUY HER BOOK.

I don’t care where you buy it from. I’m not going to tell you where to shop. I’m just asking you to buy it. Because she’s a great writer and, as a reader, I kinda want to show The Powers That Be that I’ll get the damned book the day it comes out, whatever they do with buttons or orders or shipments or whatever.

Whose book is it? It’s my buddy’s book: Cursed Moon by Jaye Wells. It is the second book in the series, so you might have to just go ahead and buy the first book if you haven’t read it already. Really stick it to the man.

Because Jaye is an amazing writer and writing is her job. She takes it so seriously and she loves it so much and she wants to do what all writers do: to tell stories and get them into the hands of readers so y’all will love us and send us chocolate.

What we don’t really want to do is  have to scramble around the feet of Goliath and Goliath, trying not to get stepped on while they grapple. Writers aren’t known for their athleticism, quite frankly, and that’s some dangerous shit.

So go buy Jaye’s book. You’ll love it and you’ll have shown TPTB that no matter how much they squall, we have ways of reaching our readers. (I would like you to say that last sentence in a German and/or Russian accent. I know, I’m demanding as hell.) And I’m giving you a picture of us bar crawling, dressed as nuns, in NOLA, as payment.

Now send me some chocolate. xoxoxoxo