I just received my semiannual royalty check from Paladin Press, an outfit I really like, who is being strangled by Amazon.com. Over this past six months I have sold 8 copies of The Fighting Edge [1999], 30 copies of The Logic of Steel [2001], and 29 copies of The Logic of Force [2011]. The royalties for each item, per sale, are lower the more recently they have been published. Money is simply going out of traditional print publishing.

My roommate, wondering if I had hit the Stephan King lottery yet, commented on these figures, “So, the check was probably less than a hundred bucks. But think of it this way. You have managed to corrupt the thinking of another human being about every other day this year!”

Oh joy, I’m literary brain cancer!

Big outfits that outsource the composition and printing overseas are doing fine and some of the bigger authors are too. But smaller houses—just like in everything else—are getting squeezed out by the big houses.

We are the host of a global economy, a giant parasitic organism that eats our ass, our brains, our genitalia, and what used to be our savings. In such a situation, being the local guy is tough, even when you’ve been shipped to the ass end of the world. For instance, Gill, who just came back from Afghanistan where he drove cargo trucks for the U. S. Army, got paid a monthly rate that amounted to $267 per a two-day roundtrip. The Taliban is gunning for him and he is not making as much as a Baltimore area refrigeration mechanic. You know what the guy working for the global military contractor gets paid per load? That dude gets paid $12,000, and if military contracting is anything like subcontracting refrigeration work, the U.S. tax payer is getting billed between $15,000and $25,000 for that guy that gassed up right next to Gill.

After getting ripped off by a subsidiary of Penguin Books I was told to try Amazon’s Create-a-space Print on Demand platform. I was reluctant, not wanting to be part of the Big House, the global problem. Then I reviewed a couple Create-a-space books and found that they were printed in the U.S.

So, after consulting with my agent and promoter, Erique Watson, we decided, that rather than wait to be the next proxy writer for a popular crime author, that we should just publish PODs through Amazon. It has always frustrated for me to write a book in months or weeks and then have it take years to make it to print.

Erique will be running two imprints through Amazon: Nerd Church Fiction, and Harm City Nonfiction. Our first title will be out this month, Astride the Chariot of Night. I just saw the cover galley and loved it.

The e-books here on the site will still be available for a better value, particularly with the larger novels. The following titles will remain exclusively e-books:

1. Winter of A Fighting Life

2. When You’re Food

3. The Broken Dance

4. Triumph

Yes I’m selling out to The Man, but at least the work will stay in country. It makes sense to have it printed regionally, and, each book has its own print date, and is therefore possibly one of a kind. Also, there is no editorial interference, and when you are a writer, and a defiant jerk, that means something.