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#payment processing in amazon
mousedetective · 1 month
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Help A Mostly Queer Disabled Family Get Out of Homelessness?
PAYPAL | AMAZON WISHLIST | KOFI | GOFUNDME
VENMO: @penaltywaltz | CASHAPP: $afteriwake23 | ZELLE: DM me for email address
02/18/24 - New Post
So we were recently blessed with $2,000 to pay bills, get hotel stays covered for the rest of this month/part of March and get food while I wait until the local county office opens to find out why I never got my food stamps. I almost started crying, for real.
I paid off the money my mother owed to PayPal so we can send each other money again (it will take two to three business days for the payment to process, then another day or two for her to regain access to her PayPal account), I paid off/paid down some of the PayPal 4 In 4 payments I needed to make (I've been ignoring them in favor of paying off other things), I got us a room every day from February 28th to March 13th except the 2nd, when we have to go to another hotel (we do that one via the hotel website, and I make sure we pay that one on-site because they charge a $50 fee for anything that might happen to the room that gets refunded after we leave) and I paid off one of my mom's loans down to $21
If we get really lucky, I can take the loan payments we have coming out on the 1st and 3rd and get them paid and not take out any more loans except for my and my mom's MoneyLion ones (I can take those out in increments as needed) and we can get closer to saving up for a down payment on an apartment. But I still have bills to pay. I owe about $500 to PayPal for the 4 in 4 plans still, my mother needs to pay $610 for a credit card bill we thought was under her debt consolidation payment (I'm going to try and add it later, and if they'll take it, then we only need $200 to get it up to date) and we still need to get Lena her glasses (around $150 there, since I pulled out the money for her exam in cash). Plus I will need to get us accommodations on the 13th for the rest of our 28-day stay.
I'm tentatively setting the goal at $2000, which should cover paying off all the bills we need to pay, the glasses, and the later hotel stay. Any help sharing or donating is much appreciated. If we don't have to take out the loans to cover stuff in March we can get the money together in April for a deposit. We're almost there! Thank you!
$135/$2000
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deanthe · 6 months
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[open] nintendo eshop code commissions!
looking for quality, stylized commissions at a relatively cheap price? well, uh... here ya are!! (more info under the cut)
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for an nintendo eshop code ranging from 5-20 dollars (usd only), you can get a commission from me!
Rules:
sfw only
no problematic imagery
one character only
can be anywhere between a headshot and a fullbody at no additional cost!
$5 - sketch
a base sketch that i make for full pieces, but less messy.
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$10 - lineart
lineart! lineart! lineart! stopping right before the coloring process.
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$20 - full piece
the real deal, with all the crazy colors and filters you know and tolerate!
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that's about it in terms of what you're getting, but please don't skip out on the info below! it's important -- you can tell because it's in a FAQ format!
so... what's the process?
if interested, dm me either here, on twitter (@deanthebobcat) or on discord (deanthe_) and tell me what ys want! ref sheets are only needed if it's an oc. once you approve the sketch i make, you then send over the eshop code as payment and i work on the rest of the commission!
how do i go about getting a code?
you COULD go to a store that has eshop giftcards and buy one, but my customers usually just grab a code off of amazon and get emailed the code quickly.
why eshop codes?
i live with my parents, and they have a habit of sheltering me too much... they don't trust me with my own bank account. so, since i'm intending on spending the money on videogames anyway, eshop codes are the closest i can get to obtaining real money at the moment.
can i just buy you robux or nitro instead?
sorry... as much as i'd like that, eshop money is my preffered method, so that's what i'm sticking with.
why american codes/usd only?
unfortunately eshop codes are region locked, which makes sense given that, y'know... different countries use different currencies. i can't change my eshop region to get the money, because doing so will wipe the funds i have.
if you're not from america but really want a commission, you could use a vpn and buy an american code! it's a hastle, i know, but that's the best you can really do
wow, you draw fast!
i know, haha... i've been accused of rushing my art and commissions because of that in the past, but nah that's just how i draw! ^^
are you open atm?
i'll edit this post every time my status changes. check the very top!
thank you for reading this. hope to see ya soon! ^^
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Brazil, an agricultural superpower and the world’s largest net exporter of food, has also seen hunger and poverty rise in recent years, after the administration of Jair Bolsonaro dismantled social policies, amid an economic downturn. Heartbreakingly, almost three in every five households do not always have enough to eat, while 33 million people (about 15 percent of the population) are going hungry. But now President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was inaugurated in January, has stepped up. “I am obsessed with fighting hunger … I want workers to once again be able to have three meals a day in a dignified manner and to provide quality food for their children,” he said as he launched the Brasil Sem Fome (Brazil Without Hunger) plan in late August. Arguably the most comprehensive set of anti-hunger policies the world has ever seen, this bold plan opens a new front in the global war on hunger, just as hope was beginning to fade. The Brasil Sem Fome – on which the National Food and Nutrition Security Council (CONSEA), the organisation I chair, advised – has far-reaching but simple goals. It aims to wipe Brazil off the UN Hunger Map by 2030 – no ifs or buts – and to ensure that more than 95 percent of households are food secure by the end of the decade. It also aims to improve access to healthy diets and kick-start a transition to sustainable agriculture. Some 32 programmes and policies will be leveraged to achieve these goals – from cash transfers to poor households to the purchase of healthy school food from smallholder farmers; from agroecological transition payments to support for Black and rural women, to bolstering protection of the Amazon. All of this will come under an apparatus that is purpose-built to bring the voices of food-insecure and marginalised people into the decision-making process. If this plan sounds familiar, that is because it is a recast of the Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) policies introduced by Lula’s first administration in 2003 – but with an extra dose of ambition on democratic governance and sustainably produced food, reaching the most marginalised groups.
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How Amazon transformed the EU into a planned economy
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Amazon is a perfect parable of enshittification, the process by which platforms first offer subsidies to end users until they’re locked in, then make life good for business customers at users’ expense, until they’re locked in, then claw back all the value they can for themselves, leaving just enough behind to keep the lock-in going.
In a new report for SOMO, Margarida Silva describes how the end-stage enshittification of Amazon is playing out in the EU, with Amazon repeating its US playbook of gouging the small businesses who have no choice but to use the platform in order to reach its locked-in customers, making European customers and European sellers poorer:
https://www.somo.nl/amazons-european-chokehold/
The mechanism for this isn’t a mystery. Amazon boasts about it! They call it their flywheel: first, customers are lured into the platform with low prices, especially through Prime, which requires pre-payment for a year’s shipping, which virtually guarantees that customers will start their shopping on Amazon. Because customers now start their buying on Amazon, sellers have to be there. The increased range of goods for sale on Amazon lures in more buyers, who lure in more sellers, with both sides holding each other hostage:
https://vimeo.com/739486256/00a0a7379a
This flywheel creates a vicious cycle, starving local retail so that customers can’t get what they need from brick-and-mortar shops, which funnels sellers into offering their goods for sale on Amazon. The less choice customers and sellers have about where they shop, the more Amazon can abuse both to pad its own bottom line.
There are 800,000 EU-based sellers on Amazon, and they have seen the junk-fees that Amazon charges them skyrocket, to the point where they have to raise prices or lose money on each sale. Amazon uses both tacit and explicit “Most Favored Nation” deals to hide these price-hikes. Under an MFN deal, sellers must not allow their goods to be sold at a lower price than Amazon’s — so when they raise prices to cover Amazon’s increasing fees, they raise them everywhere:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/
It’s not hard to understand why Amazon would raise its fees: the company has an effective e-commerce monopoly. Like Ozymandias, they have run out of worlds to conquer, and so their growth has to come from squeezing suppliers and/or raising prices, not from bringing in new customers. This is likewise true of mobile companies like Apple and Google, who have run out of people who are so excited about incremental mobile hardware gains that they’ll buy a new phone every year, which means that growth has to come from squeezing app vendors:
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2023/06/09/Pixel-4-to-7
This is likewise true of the streaming companies, which is why Netflix is cracking down on “password sharing”:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes
It’s true of the movie studios, which is why they want to zero out their wage bills by replacing writers with automatic plausible sentence generators that will write stupid movies that they think we’ll still pay to see because there won’t be anything else:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/06/people-are-not-disposable/#union-strong
It’s certainly true of Uber, which is why they’ve double the cost of a taxi ride and halved the wages they pay drivers:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
Monopolies “grow” by making their customers and suppliers worse off. But they have to be careful about this: if it’s obvious that you’re using your market power to screw buyers, you can get in trouble with competition regulators. That’s because the only part of antitrust law that the neoliberal project left intact is “consumer welfare” — the idea that monopolies should only face enforcement when they raise prices and/or lower quality:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/10/play-fair/#bedoya
This focus on price-hikes has given monopolists a free hand to squeeze suppliers and workers, because a monopolist — from Walmart to Amazon — can claim that squeezing your workers and suppliers is necessary to enhancing consumer welfare. The less you pay to produce a product, the cheaper you can price it.
When a company has a lot of seller power, we call it a monopolist. When it has a lot of buying power, we call it a monopsonist. No one ever made a bestselling, family-destroying board game called “Monopsony” so most people haven’t heard of the concept. But monopsony is every bit as dangerous as monopoly, and monopsonists find it far easier to acquire market power than monopolists. Few suppliers can afford to have even 10% of their sales disappear overnight, so a buyer who accounts for 10% of your sales can demand deep discounts and other favorable terms.
Amazon is a monopolist, but it’s also a very powerful and ruthless monopsonist. For example, its audiobook division, Audible, has a 90+% market-share, and it used that market-power to steal at least $100m from audiobook creators, in a scandal dubbed Audiblegate:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate
For Europe’s 800k sellers who rely on Amazon to reach their customers, the monoposony conditions are blatant and shameless. Take listing fees: Amazon’s “flywheel” pitch claims that as the company grows, it achieves “economies of scale” that can lower its cost basis. But Amazon’s listing fees haven’t changed, even as the company experienced explosive growth in the EU (remember, sellers whose Amazon fees exceed their margins have to pass those fees onto buyers, and also raise their prices everywhere else to satisfy the Most Favored Nation requirement).
Amazon books the revenues from these fees — and other junk-fees it extracts from sellers — in Luxembourg, an EU member nation that provides a tax haven to multinational businesses that want to maintain the fiction that they operate their businesses out of the tiny kingdom. There is sharp competition in the EU to offer the most servile, corrupt environment for multinationals, and Luxembourg is a leader, along with Cyprus, Malta and, of course, Ireland:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town
But at least listing fees haven’t gone up, unlike other fees, which have climbed sharply. Amazon falsely claimed that its additional revenues from fees were the result of growth by independent sellers, which Amazon pegged at 65%. Later, the company admitted that the true growth figure was 22%. Meanwhile, fees are up 85%.
The true growth figure might be lower still. Amazon refuses to show the math behind its growth figures, or even say which sellers and sales are included in the figure.
The SOMO report cites research by Juozas Kaziukėnas of the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse, who finds that sellers are now giving 50% of their gross revenues to Amazon, an increase of 10% over the past five years across the whole EU. However, different EU (and ex-EU) countries have experienced much steeper increases in fees — in the UK, fees have nearly doubled (up 98%), and in France, fees more than doubled (up 115%).
Many of these increases come from the Fulfilment By Amazon (FBA) program, which is promoted as an optional service, but which is really obligatory — careful research shows that sellers who warehouse, pack and ship their own goods get banished to the depths of search results, even if they have ratings, costs and times that are competitive with FBA. This is especially true of the “buy box” that lands at the top of most searches. The company refuses to disclose how buy box positioning is determined, but 90% of products in the buy box pay for FBA.
Amazon has used excuseflation to hike its FBA prices, blaming higher energy prices for price hikes that predated the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and blaming covid for price hikes that predated the pandemic.
Italy’s competition authority did yeoman service in uncovering the sleaze of FBA, publishing an investigation that showed that Prime and buy box made the notionally “optional” FBA into a must-have for merchants, meaning that Amazon could jack up FBA prices without losing business.
Another notable source of gouging came in response to the UK and France adopting digital services taxes, which were meant to make up for the tax-base erosion enabled by Luxembourg’s flouting of EU tax law. Amazon passed these taxes straight through to its merchants, without seeing a comparable decrease in the number of sellers using its platforms — an unmistakable sign of market power. If you can raise prices without losing customers, then, by definition, your customers have nowhere else to go.
I’ve previously written about how Amazon’s $31b/year “advertising” market isn’t really advertising — rather, it’s a payola scheme that auctions off the top of a search-listing to the merchant with the most to spend:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola
This is how you get a simple search like “cat beds” returning results whose first screen is 100% ads, and whose next five screens are 50% ads, many of them for dog products:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/amazon-shopping-ads/
Auctioning off search results means that every time you search for something you want, you have to wade through screen after screen of listings for products whose vendors spent more on advertising, leaving less to spend on making quality goods.
This is as true in the EU as it is in the USA. The SOMO report shows that European merchants are required to spend ever-larger sums to show up in results for the exact products they sell, leaving them with a choice between making less money, raising prices, or skimping on quality.
But even the “winners” of Amazon’s gladiatorial combat among vendors can still lose. Amazon uses an automated product removal process that can delete some or all of a merchant’s products, without warning or explanation, and no one at Amazon will explain what a merchant did wrong. That remains true even if a vendor pays for Amazon’s “marketplace consultant” service — ask these paid Virgils why you’ve been cast into Amazon’s pit, and they’ll shrug their shoulders (and bill you for it).
And even if you can navigate the junk fees, the Kafka-as-a-service removals, the war of all sellers against all sellers for search primacy…you still lose. Merchants told SOMO that a product that survives Amazon’s gauntlet is likely to be cloned by Amazon and sold as an Amazon Basic or other house-brand product. Amazon doesn’t charge itself 50% junk fees, so it can always underprice the vendors it knocks off, and give its own products permanent top-of-search placement.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once testified under oath before Congress that this doesn’t happen — and then refused to return to Congress when multiple vendors showed evidence that he’d lied:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/18/amazon-congress-letter-third-party-data/
He definitely lied:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-india-rigging/
Amazon has faced investigations and enforcement in the EU over this, and settled a claim with a promise to “not use non-public seller data to compete with sellers,” but given the company’s record of broken promises on this score and the difficulty of catching them cheating, it’s pretty naive to think they’ll stick to this.
The report quotes Thomas Höppner, a lawyer who has represented small businesses that Amazon screwed over. Höppner says the problem is that the EU evaluates Amazon’s bad deeds on a “case-by-case” basis, missing the big picture: “By the time one identified problem was seemingly solved, Amazon had long made amendments elsewhere with the same effect. We require a more holistic approach that considers the entire Amazon ecosystem and the various interdependencies within.”
But the EU’s enforcement approach is about to change significantly. The EU just passed the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which imposes a bunch of obligations on Amazon:
allowing sellers to offer their products on other marketplaces at different prices (Article 5.3),
not obliging business users to pay for one of its services in order to use its platform (Article 5.8),
limiting the way Amazon uses non-public seller data to compete with them (Article 6.2)
preventing Amazon from giving top billing in search results to its own products or sellers that have acquired extra Amazon services (Article 6.5)
The report concludes with a suite of recommendations for improving EU enforcement. First, they argue for a return to traditional competition law, abandoning the “consumer welfare standard” that is so friendly to monopsonies and their abuses of suppliers and workers.
They call for a probe into Amazon’s Most Favored Nation deals (“fair pricing policy”), the practice of sponsoring search results, and spiraling fees. They want the EU to adequately fund DMA enforcement, with “measures to prevent regulatory capture.” And they want Amazon to publish clear explanations for how search results, buy box placement, and other practices hidden behind a veil of secrecy.
Amazon will doubtless claim that disclosing how those systems work will make it easier for spammers and scammers to game their way to the top of search results. We should be skeptical of this claim — content moderation is the last domain where anyone takes the bankrupt idea of security through obscurity seriously:
https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563
Finally, the report calls for breaking up Amazon, forcing it to choose between being a platform seller or a platform user, calling this the only way to “prevent the conflicts of interest between its role as a platform intermediary, seller, and service provider.”
The technical term for this measure is “structural separation” — a rule that bans platform companies from competing with their business customers. This is the principle at work in the US bipartisan AMERICA Act, which would force Google and Meta to spin off the parts of their ad-tech business that put them in a conflict of interest. Right now, Googbook represents both publishers and advertisers, while operating the marketplace where ad sales take place, and they take 51% out of every ad dollar:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech
Structural separation hasn’t really been applied in the US for a generation, but it’s gained currency in recent years, for the obvious reason that the referee can’t also own one of the teams. I was in Germany last week speaking to regulators and politicians, and they espoused skepticism that the EU would embrace structural separation anytime soon.
But they were wrong! Today, the European Commission announced plans to force Google and Meta to sell off their conflict-of-interest ad-tech lines of business, mirroring the provisions of the US AMERICA Act:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/google-may-soon-be-ordered-to-break-up-its-lucrative-ad-business-eu-warns/
Structural separation really is the policy we should be demanding. It’s amazing that lawyers who would never argue a case in front of a judge who was married to the plaintiff will turn around and defend the idea that Amazon can fairly operate a marketplace where they compete with other sellers.
With Amazon dominating online sales, and with in-person retail cratering, Amazon’s decisions have the power to determine the outcome of whole swathes of Europe’s economy. This is the “planned economy” that the EU claims it detests and seeks to prevent — but it’s an economy planned by distant autocrats in a Seattle boardroom, for the purpose of extracting the surpluses needed to launch an endless procession of penis-rockets.
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If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this postto read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/14/flywheel-shyster-and-flywheel/#unfulfilled-by-amazon
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[Image ID: A desert ruin. In the foreground is a huge Amazon box, with an EU flag in place of its shipping label. Atop the box are the feet and partial legs of an Oxymandias figure.]
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Image: Rama (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gladiator_with_sword-Louis_Ernest_Meissonnier-MG_1216-IMG_1223-white.jpg
CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/fr/deed.en
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lifblogs · 8 months
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Hi, I decided to make a post about Loki that’s much more organized.
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Here he is! This is Loki. He is my actual baby. We love each other so much, and have for 10 years.
On June 19th Loki had a seizure. Now vet bills are skyrocketing for his care.
Here’s proof of his initial visit payment being taken from my bank account.
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$1,200 for Ocean State Veterinary.
Loki has been having partial seizures for a month now, and here is an updated view of his seizure log.
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That’s 14 partial seizures and 1 full seizure in the span of a month.
My little guy is really suffering; and we, his family, are all suffering too because of how much we love him.
He had a consultation for an MRI, which was $451 (making the cost $1,651 in total).
We are going to go through with the MRI to find out the cause of his seizures and to see how else we can help him. That’s a whopping $3,000, making the total we need to pay $4,651.
This is what has been donated so far.
$242.78/$4651
I’m not asking for this goal to be met, but just asking for a little bit of help. Even $1.00 will be helpful, and I promise I will be grateful for it.
Donation links:
Fun news! Loki has merch! The clothes are very soft and part of the profit goes towards Loki’s health. The second link is a new design! I’m so excited about it. @thetrapperstrap helped out BIG TIME with it. @evilwriter37 and I are in the process of creating a third design.
Merch links:
While this is going on it would still be nice to make sure the cats have nice things, or feel special. Safety is important as well and I’ve found a new cat tree that would be much better for Loki. You can check it out here on the kitties’ Amazon wishlist!
Thank you for all of your support. Loki is such a great boy. If you’re interested in seeing more of him…
TikTok: lif.and.loki
Instagram: lokicatofmischief61
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nanowrimo · 2 years
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A Comprehensive Guide to Self Publishing Your Book
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Publishing a book is every author’s dream, but the path there can be rocky and blocked by a huge wall of information that you need to know. Today, Deborah Dixon has written a comprehensive guide to self-publishing discussing editing printing, distribution, ISBNs, and marketing.
Publishing a book is a rewarding experience, but it can also be confusing or demanding as well. Here is a very brief look at the steps an author can take towards being published.
Traditional vs. Self-Publishing
First ask yourself if you would prefer to be traditionally published or self-published. Both routes are viable and respectable, but they are very different. Traditional publishing involves finding an agent through the process of querying. Authors submit documents like synopses, query letters, and first chapters in hopes that the agents they submit to are interested enough in their manuscript to represent them. Once accepted, the agent finds a suitable publishing house for the author, and all parties coordinate to publish the book from there.
Self-publishing involves much more direct author participation. The author will generally handle editing, marketing, printing, and distributing the book, often with assistance from third parties. There is no need to query agents, but an author should still be prepared to explain their book from a sales standpoint. In self-publishing, the author is their book’s best advocate.
Editing
Usually, the first step in self-publishing is having the manuscript professionally edited. This is a crucial step that should be taken even if the author is an excellent self-editor. Even the best editors can overlook common mistakes in their manuscripts! The Editorial Freelancers Association is a wonderful resource for finding an editor.
Printing & Distribution
If you’re planning to print your book, you’ll want to decide whether you want to print a run of books upfront or set up print-on-demand. Book printers like Gorham can print many copies of your book and ship them to you for placement in bookstores and the like. Alternatively, though, you can use print-on-demand (POD) services like IngramSpark or Lulu. KDP Print is a great option for authors who are mostly looking to sell print books on Amazon. POD is often considered the cheapest option because you don’t have to invest as much upfront. Rather, POD vendors will take a (pretty big) cut of every book you sell, but you get the added bonus of not dealing with printing, distributing, or shipping. 
If you elect to pursue distribution through your own means, you’ll have to purchase your own ISBNs. Think of an ISBN as the ID card of your book. Every book needs one, and they will need a different one in every format. If you want to publish your book as an ebook, hardcover, and paperback, you’ll need 3 ISBNs. Therefore, it might be more economical to buy them in bulk. If you’re in the US, you can buy your ISBNs from Bowker, and they never expire, so you can use them for future projects. If you go with KDP Print, Amazon will provide you with a free ISBN, but bear in mind that it's not truly free. Since KDP “owns” your book, it will be difficult to get into brick and mortar bookstores, Barnes and Nobles, and other distributors that could get your book more reach. On the other hand, if you purchase your own ISBNs, you can distribute them anywhere.
Once you have your books in print, you’ll want to reach out to your local bookstores to place your books there as well. Many book stores will sell your books on a consignment arrangement with you, meaning that you receive your portion of the sale when the book is bought. Building relationships with your local booksellers is also a part of marketing, as booksellers make great advocates for books they like!
You may also want to consider distributing your work as an ebook. For this, you’ll want to create accounts at Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Amazon if you so choose. These all generally take a portion of your sales as payment, and so are free to set up initially.
Marketing
Another important step in self-publishing is marketing. It is a good idea to have a marketing plan set up in advance of selling the book. Marketing covers many facets, like book design, book promotion, and publicity. It is its own discipline, and many authors might not have the time or know-how to develop a solid marketing plan. For those authors, services like Reedsy, Scribe, and BooksGoSocial can be of great help.
Through all of these steps and going forward, you want to be marketing your book. Consider going to book fairs and other book events, whether in-person or virtual, and reach out to your local and national news outlets. It never hurts to tell people about your book—and the more who know about it, the more who will read it!
With this baseline information, I hope you feel ready to embark on  your self-publishing journey!
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Deborah Dixon is a writer and author advocate with Shalamar. She is also an editor for Radon Journal and a student of George Washington University's Publishing program. She lives with her partner and their dog, Spirit.
Photo by Stephen Phillips - Hostreviews.co.uk on Unsplash  
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izzb0o · 4 months
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Welcome to my page! 🌿🌙🐞
My name is Izz and I am 17 years old! I made this tumblr to help other struggling people like me through the use of witchcraft.
Here are some of the service I provide:
•Tarot readings
•Witchy information/guidance
•Personal rituals/spells
•And many other things witchcraft related!
Other information:
Refunds: Because of the types of services I provide, I have a no refund policy.
Payment: I accept payment in the form of Paypal or Amazon gift cards!
Services: For any service that cannot be done over text I will be sending pictures and/or videos for proof of service.
Guarantees: Keep in mind that the effect of any service done is not GUARANTEED. My job is to INFLUENCE things in your favor and help you along your process, not MAKE things happen.
If you are interested in a service from me shoot me a message!
~Have a blessed day/night❤️
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For Lula to be a climate leader, he must phase out oil
At COP28, the Brazilian president has sent mixed messages by aligning with OPEC. If he really wants to tackle the growing threat of droughts and floods, he must set a clear fossil-free, pro-nature direction for the UN climate summit he will host in Belém in 2025
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The biggest-ever UN climate summit is well underway in Dubai with eighty thousand participants discussing hundreds of agenda items to avert the climate crisis, but ultimately there is only one goal that matters: reducing carbon emissions as quickly as possible by phasing out fossil fuels and eradicating deforestation.
By comparison, everything else is hot air. Delegates can talk all they want about green technology, net zero pledges, compensation payments, scientific studies and other well-intentioned initiatives, but none of that will be effective unless the world halts the build up of carbon dioxide and other planet-heating gases in the atmosphere. That existential challenge, upon which all life on Earth depends, can only be achieved by phasing out coal, oil and gas and restoring the health of the world’s climate infrastructure: the forests, oceans, wetlands and other centres of natural vitality.
If anyone was still in any doubt about the urgency of the climate crisis, this horrendously destructive year has surely made them realise we cannot wait a second longer: 2023 is already confirmed as  the hottest year on record. July was the warmest month in more than 120,000 years. This has brought devastating drought to the Amazon, floods to southern Brazil, heatwaves to the Andean mountains, fires to Canada and death and destruction across many parts of the planet. This is just the start. If emissions from fossil fuels and forests continue to increase, then temperatures will continue to rise for decades. We will look back on 2023 as one of the coolest years of our lives. Soon, it won’t just be dolphins and fish that suffer mass mortalities, it will be people. “We are terrified,” a group of 1,447 scientists said in an open letter released at Cop28. “If we are to create a liveable future, climate action must move from being something that others do to something that we all do.”
The first week of Cop28 shows the desperate need for a new perspective. The process has been captured by the very people who profit most from increasing carbon emissions. The president of this climate conference is Sultan Al Jaber, who is the CEO of the biggest oil and gas company in the United Arab Emirates. As many climate campaigners have joked, this is like putting a fox in charge of a henhouse or asking Dracula to run a bloodbank. But it is not funny when the man in charge of addressing the most difficult and important challenge in human history goes on record to deny that eradicating fossil fuels is the only way to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or that a life without oil would send humanity back into caves. These comments, which have been thoroughly rebutted by scientists, reveal the true face of the fossil fuel industry, which has been holding up progress for more than three decades.
All of which makes Brazil’s decision to align itself more closely with the world’s biggest oil cartel Opec, more disappointing. Announced at the start of the climate summit, the timing of this move could not have been more of a kick in the teeth to international efforts to tackle global heating. It is brutally pragmatic. Brazil aims to expand oil production in defiance of advice from the International Energy Agency that 1.5C is impossible if countries open new fields. The day after Cop28 finishes, Brazil will hold an auction of dozens of new oil development blocs. All of these steps will mean more drought, more suffering, more death in the years to come.
Continue reading.
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Indie Publishing Companies Versus Publishing Houses
There are pros and cons about writing a book. Fortunately, the pros outweigh the cons. The writing process of a story isn’t as challenging you would think it is, but the stress of what to do with your story once your manuscript is completed.
Aren’t we very excited to publish our first book to showcase our hard work, to be a well-known author, but mostly, to earn money from high-volume sales. Wow, the indescribable euphoric high we have flowing through our veins makes us lose sleep from excitement until we’re faced with the dilemma of turning our manuscript to print.
There are a lot of options to select from when it’s time to publish, however, it’s not as simple as you may think it is, especially for the majority of persons that are limited with financial means to pay for publishing. Yes, I said the naughty word: pay.
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You need to pay for publishing and this is one reason people choose to not write because of cost. Reality is that this is an inevitable escape, but there are means to get your book published without worry.
Publishing Houses
There are so many companies awaiting good authors to add to their list of astonishing writers which helps build their brand as a reputable publishing company. Getting a company to invest can be quite challenging, but marginally thin to accomplish. High-end publishers have a team that reads manuscripts and if they are engaged in your story, they’ll offer you a contract that you must pay for and it is quite expensive. Publishing houses of onsite editors available to read your work and they will provide constructive advice to correct writing errors and redirection of your story if needed. This service is provided if you haven’t had it edited for a fee. If you did send your story to a private editor, some publishers will allow you to skip this part, but most won’t. If you don’t have a cover design, there is a team that can provide you a suitable design, of your choice, for a fee. Printing your book is next. There are cover types and book size that matter and that is costly. Then, to guarantee your book sells, there’s a marketing team that knows how to do that, but for a fee. Some publishers will include these services in their fees, so, it’s important to ask.
Always research publishing houses online. Call the ones that you’d like to work with - never select one, and ask as many questions that you think of and never hang up until you’re satisfied with the information you have. Compare answers and use your gut to determine which one is suitable. After you’ve learned the cost, you can save money to pay for services. Some publishers offer payment plans to help ease the burden you have. The average cost to do all of this can range from $4,000 and way more.
If your story is a must-have, certain publishing companies will offer you a check in a lump sum amount for predicted sales of your book. However, there’s a catch. You will need to repay the company for the advancement with royalties you earn from sales and after they’ve been paid in full, you will then get to keep your royalties. It’s wonderful that your story is favorable for this, however, this can be a hit or miss prediction and you’ll need to repay the company the remaining balance in full if your book isn’t as popular as they’d hoped it to be.
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Indie Book Publishing
Publishing your book through non-publishing houses is a less expensive process, but you’re responsible to market your book entirely. Yes, these agencies, like Amazon, do offer editing, cover designs and marketing services for a fee, but it’s not required for you to use them. Research and ask reps the same questions you’d ask a publishing house.
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Final Note
Your book is precious and should be safeguarded as much as possible. I’ve had my share of bad experiences with publishing companies and I wouldn’t want anyone to experience what I did.
Writers without financial binds will hire agents, and if you can afford one, caution should be heeded when shopping for a reputable book agent - I will offer advice for this in another post.
Think of writing like starting your own business. Time and money is needed and if you have a story to write, let the world appreciate your creativeness. You deserve to be recognized. Until next time, happy writing.
Photos: *Sloan Dental, Pan McMillan, Classcapades
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mariacallous · 4 months
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Palestinian graphic designer Bilal Tamimi’s YouTube videos from the village of Nabi Saleh in the West Bank have received 6 million views during the past 13 years. His uploads document joyous festivals and peaceful protests—but also violent skirmishes between Nabi Saleh’s 600 residents and occupying Israeli soldiers. “I need to show to the world what’s happening in my village and the suffering of my people from occupation,” he says.
The platform has helped Tamimi broadcast to his more than 20,000 subscribers, but he’s locked out of YouTube’s revenue sharing program that pays a share of ad sales to more than 2 million video creators in 137 countries or territories. When Tamimi tries to sign up, YouTube’s app says, “The YouTube Partner Program is not available in your current location Palestine.”
The internet has given some Palestinians a global audience, but many benefits of online life that billions around the world can take for granted simply don’t work for people in Gaza and the West Bank. In addition to YouTube’s partner program, money transfer services such as PayPal and ecommerce marketplaces, including Amazon, largely bar Palestinian merchants from entry. Google tools for generating revenue from web ads or in-app purchases are technically open to Palestinians but can, in practice, be inaccessible due to challenges verifying their identity or collecting payment.
As Israeli forces have bombarded Gaza in pursuit of Hamas, tech workers’ and rights activists’ frustrations with the region’s digital inequality has grown. Palestinians are barred from YouTube’s Partner Program and struggle with intermittent connectivity. Israeli YouTube channels in the program could be bringing in some revenue from conflict-related content. Popular Israeli singers have drawn views with songs honoring victims of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, while travel advice channel Traveling Israel has received millions of views on historical explainers.
Human rights organizations say the disparity in access to online sources of income weakens the Palestinian economy. "Many Palestinians who work online struggle to be paid," says Marwa Fatafta, a policy and advocacy manager at the rights organization Access Now. YouTube’s policy “fits a larger pattern of tech companies’ discriminatory approach to Palestinians.”
Google spokespeople, who asked not to be named for safety concerns, say in a statement that the company is committed to creating economic opportunities for Palestinians through services and training. The YouTube Partner Program won’t be available in the Palestinian territories until Google launches a local version of YouTube, which involves customizing features and options to the language and culture. "We continue to invest in the infrastructure that's needed to offer more tools to monetize with Google to ensure it’s a seamless process and follows local legal requirements,” one of the spokespeople says.
To get a sense of how Palestinians are excluded from or face barriers to tapping the world’s largest ecosystem for making money online—Google’s—WIRED reviewed popular Palestinian YouTube channels, news websites, and apps associated with the region. Interviews with content creators, activists, and current and former Google staff familiar with the region and company policies helped fill out the picture. The investigation revealed how a series of Palestinian projects and companies hit financial dead ends when attempting to monetize online in ways easy for people in countries such as the US and Israel. Others resorted to complicated geographic workarounds that siphon off revenue.
The Google sources not authorized to speak to media allege those challenges reflect years of internal politics and neglect of Palestinian users at the company. The sources say a localized version of the company’s search engine, Google.ps, launched in 2009 only after a desire to provide more relevant results narrowly beat out concerns about public backlash for an action some people could view as endorsing disputed territories. But there hasn’t been management resolve in recent years to risk changing the status quo to introduce a Palestinian YouTube that would give local creators access to monetization.
US congressman Mark Pocan of Wisconsin says Israel’s current attack on Gaza underscores how wrong that pattern of online exclusion is. “When massive companies make money hand over fist from creators but deny them their fair share just because of where they live, that is just plain wrong,” he says. It is crucial, he argues, that “Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have equal opportunities for economic participation.” In May, Pocan led several Democratic US lawmakers in urging PayPal to allow Palestinian accounts. PayPal, which declined to comment, hasn’t changed its policies.
Duty First
Tamimi, 57, started posting on YouTube in 2010 and views it as a duty in service of his villagers, not a way to get rich. He first tried to join the service’s revenue sharing program a few years ago as a way to defray his costs. “I would for sure try to improve my work, to have a good camera,” he says. “And maybe I can help other people who are doing what I am doing through workshops and cameras.”
Today Tamimi uses an iPhone 12 Pro Max he bought himself and camcorders and equipment donated by B'Tselem, a Jerusalem-based nonprofit organization that aims to document human rights issues in Palestinian territories.
Tamimi’s focus on winning attention over profit is no different than other YouTube creators, says Bing Chen, who once led global creator initiatives at YouTube. “Revenue is of course an incentive, but fame is more so,” says Chen, who now develops and invests in creators through his company AU Holdings.
You don’t need a fancy camera or editing to draw an audience. When Israeli professors analyzed about 340 TikTok videos from 2021 related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict they found pro-Israeli videos had higher production values but received lower engagement. They argued that viewers preferred Palestinian content because public sentiment tends to favor those seen as victims.
At a time of widespread suffering now on both sides of the border and an intense period of global attention on the region, Palestinian channels like Tamimi’s could be drawing record engagement and revenue—money that could, one day, make rebuilding easier.
Instead, Tamimi has withdrawn from YouTube. He started posting only infrequently after his village stopped organizing weekly protests around 2018 and with no income available feels no loyalty to the Google service. When an incident flares up, he is now more likely to livestream on Meta’s Facebook, where he draws thousands of viewers. “YouTube is like an archive,” he says, not a place to share new content.
Geographic Gaps
YouTube’s revenue program for creators, known as YPP, launched in 2007 and pioneered the concept of a major social media platform turning amateur stardom into a well-paying job. It now has competition from Meta, X, and TikTok—which also don’t offer their programs to people in Palestinian territories—but remains the leader in influence and geographic reach.
Despite YouTube’s dominant position, WIRED’s review found that YPP doesn’t let in creators from over a quarter of the world's 100 most populous countries, most of them in Africa. It welcomes people from many countries with smaller populations than the Palestinian territories, where, combined, an estimated 5 million people reside. Creators from Iraq and Yemen, also Arabic-speaking places troubled by conflict, are listed as supported.
Chen, who helped develop YPP while working at YouTube, believes that the platform’s leaders may want to avoid funding creators whose content puts them at risk from local authorities, and also worry that language barriers or limited staffing could make it difficult to provide suitable customer service.
But it’s not impossible for platforms to work with creators in Palestine. California-based fundraising service Patreon gets money to Palestinian users through the payments provider Payoneer, and smaller money-moving tools such as Saudi Arabia’s PayTabs say they support transactions with Palestinian accounts.
Other parts of Google’s vast empire claim to serve Palestinians businesses, but people reached by WIRED say the reality is very different.
Google documentation says the Google Play app store allows developers from 163 markets, including one listed as “Palestine,” to sell apps and in-app purchases and that Google’s AdSense advertising system supports 232 countries or territories, including “Palestinian Territory.”
Odeh Quraan, who runs a Ramallah-based software development agency called iPhase with overseas customers, says the sign-up process for AdSense requires entering a PIN mailed by Google. But Israel controls the flow of mail to the West Bank, and many items never arrive, he says. He circumvented that by using Stripe’s Atlas service to establish a company in the US state of Delaware without ever setting foot there. But it comes with downsides. “Taxes are a headache, and transferring money from the US bank account to the local banks has turned out costly,” Quraan says.
Three out of 12 popular Palestinian news websites display ads using Google technology, compared with 11 out of 12 well-known Israeli news sources, WIRED found. One of the Google spokespeople says the company in late October began notifying websites in the region about a virtual alternative to the mailed PINs, though the option is not stated in public support documentation.
Elsewhere in Ramallah, software development company Mongid stopped offering in-app purchases from an ecommerce app on Google Play and abandoned a YouTube channel with tutorials on using online learning tools because it was too difficult to receive revenue via Google, says CEO Mongid Abu-Baker.
This month, he and two other app developers interviewed by WIRED have been stymied by a new Google Play requirement that all developers get verified by global professional services firm Dun & Bradstreet. Neither the Palestinian territories nor their country code for phone numbers are listed as options on sign-up webpages, and Palestinian developers must seek customer service from Dun & Bradstreet through offices in Israel rather than an Arab country.
Abu-Baker calls the lack of recognition an affront on his identity. “Palestinian companies hold an importance no less significant than any other worldwide,” he says. He downgraded his account to avoid verification and now worries about losing access to some Google Play features.
Efrat Segev, chief of data and product for Dun & Bradstreet in Israel, says hundreds of Palestinian businesses have finished verification over the past two years and that complaints are few but that it is trying to remedy the concerns. Google declined to comment.
The difficulties faced by Abu-Baker and others in Palestine clash with messaging from Google’s leaders in California about its work in the Middle East. Last year, Google chief financial officer Ruth Porat announced that the company would spend $10 million over three years to help Palestinian graduates, developers, and entrepreneurs “advance their digital skills and find employment.” Just weeks before the recent war broke out, Google said it aims to serve 3,500 Palestinians from the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem through the investment.
Asked on stage at a conference this month about Google’s role in contested areas like Gaza, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said his company can be a critical technology partner. “We don't see it in the geopolitical context,” he said. “We see it in an enabling context.”
Some Israeli creators, like those in Palestine, feel Google isn’t living up to that. Oren Cahanovitc, owner of the Traveling Israel channel, says videos discussing politics are being flagged by YouTube as not suitable for ads. Corey Gil-Shuster, the Tel Aviv-based creator behind the Ask Project, which interviews Israelis and Palestinians about their views on the conflict, says he’s seen the same pattern.
YouTube’s screening tools can deem videos showing violence or capitalizing on war as inappropriate for advertisers, although partner program participants also get some revenue from paid subscribers to YouTube who don’t see ads. That business, and revenue stream for creators, is growing.
Palestinians lack the opportunity to receive checks from YouTube at all. The Israeli creator Gil-Shuster says the disparity was news to him and that the fix seems clear. “Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, obviously,” he says, “should have equal right to benefit from monetization as anyone else.”
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I'm going to open commissions again soon!!!
There will be some changes for the payment process. I won't ask for PayPal payment, but amazon gift cards or other gift cards! Due to personal reasons I can't accept other payments.
Don't be afraid to send me an DM if you're interested. More information is coming soon!
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cyberpunkonline · 2 months
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The Race for the Everything App in the West: Unraveling the Quest for Digital Domination
In the neon-drenched, cyberpunk reality of the 21st century, the digital realm is witnessing a colossal battle, reminiscent of Neal Stephenson's speculative universes. Tech corporations, with their sights set on the horizon, are not just competing but are on an ambitious quest to forge the "Everything App"—a digital El Dorado that promises to centralize our online lives. This pursuit, led vigorously by X (formerly known as Twitter) and echoed by a symphony of other platforms, is transforming the way we interact with digital services.
At the heart of this evolution lies a simple, yet profound strategy: expansion beyond core functionalities. Apps that once specialized in specific domains are now crossing into territories uncharted, offering a suite of services that range from messaging and social networking to financial transactions and beyond. This trend is not a mere coincidence but a calculated move towards creating a digital ecosystem where users can perform every conceivable online activity within a single app.
The Vanguard of the Everything App
X, under the stewardship of Elon Musk, is potentially the most audacious contender in the race. Initially a platform for microblogging, X is now venturing into areas like payment processing and content creation, aiming to transform itself into an indispensable tool for its users. However, X is not alone in this pursuit. Apps like WeChat in China have already demonstrated the viability of the "everything app," serving as a model for Western counterparts.
Facebook (now Meta), with its vast suite of services including Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus, is another titan striving to stitch together a comprehensive digital tapestry. Google, through its ecosystem encompassing Gmail, Google Pay, and YouTube, is also inching towards creating a unified experience. Meanwhile, Amazon's expansion into cloud services, media streaming, and even groceries underscores the same ambition: to be the one-stop digital shop for its users.
The Siren Song of Convenience
The allure of an everything app lies in its promise of unparalleled convenience. Imagine a digital Swiss Army knife that not only connects you with friends and family but also handles your finances, entertains, educates, and even shops for you. The potential benefits are immense, offering a seamless integration of digital services that could simplify user experience, enhance efficiency, and possibly even reduce the digital clutter of having multiple apps for different needs.
A Dystopian Shadow
However, beneath the glossy surface of convenience, there lurks a more sinister possibility. The consolidation of services into a single platform raises alarming concerns about privacy, data security, and monopolistic control over the digital lives of billions. The more we rely on a single app for our daily needs, the more we risk creating a digital monoculture vulnerable to surveillance, censorship, and exploitation. In a dystopian twist, the everything app could become the ultimate tool for digital hegemony, where choice is an illusion, and autonomy is traded for convenience.
The Unstoppable Momentum
Despite the dichotomy of potential outcomes, the race towards the everything app is unlikely to slow down. The convergence of services into unified platforms reflects a broader trend in digital evolution, driven by user demand for efficiency and the corporate quest for dominance. As this race accelerates, we find ourselves at a crossroads, navigating between the utopian dream of digital convenience and the dystopian nightmare of centralized control.
The everything app is both a looming threat and a beacon of progress in our communications landscape. Its emergence is a testament to our insatiable appetite for innovation and our willingness to explore the unknown. As we venture further into this digital frontier, the decisions we make today will shape the cybernetic world of tomorrow. The everything app is not just a possibility; it is an inevitability. Time will tell whether it becomes a tool for liberation or an instrument of control.
In the words of Neal Stephenson, we are coding our own new world, and in this world, the everything app stands as both the zenith of our aspirations and the nadir of our fears. As we hurtle towards this uncertain future, one thing is clear: the digital landscape will never be the same again. - REV1
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epic-solemnity · 1 year
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Immunity Series
I have to come clean to my readers of Immunity.
I have recently decided to take the leap and self-publish the series. I’m incredibly excited to put the books out there in another capacity (in a more official capacity), and I hope you’re equally as excited. I understand there are many of you who have been following the updates for many years now, and you may be disappointed that we were *so* close to finishing with Part V (and what an eventful last part we have in store!).
However, I have the energy, the drive, and the desire to go forward /now/ with something that once seemed too daunting for me.
Will there be a lot of changes? How long do you think this will take? I don’t anticipate there will be a ton of changes to the series, so publishing them/releasing them won’t take a crazy amount of time. There will be changes, however, enough changes that it will be worth a reread 😉 
What publishing platform? I probably won’t be able to afford them. I plan on publishing initially on Amazon Kindle (internationally). This allows me to promote the books with ‘free promotion’ days. Meaning? You get to download it for free. I know there are some of you who cannot afford books, and while I don’t anticipate charging a lot for the series, I will offer free book promotions for those of you who want to download them without payment. But reviews are still greatly appreciated and treasured. :)  Digital or paper copies? For those of you who are not familiar with Kindle, you don’t even need a Kindle to download ebooks. Just the application (whether on a desktop or phone or tablet). There will also be the option for physical copies of the books themselves (if you’re old school like I am).
Anyway, for those who are interested, I will keep you all updated here for any news. Until then, thanks for your patience, support, and I hope you’re just as excited as I am. And also a special thanks to those of you who are helping me with this process. You know who you are, and I cannot thank you enough for all that you’ve done already (proofreading, revision suggestions, etc.) 🤍 
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feyreandhercourt · 2 years
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Tropes: Hades x Perseophone Werewolves/Shifters Rejected Mates Slow Burn
Dying was supposed to be the end. For me, it was the beginning. But I'm getting ahead of myself. My name is Avery Ward, and I'm a werewolf. On my twentieth birthday, the moon chooses him. My fated mate. The wolf who's sworn to protect me, to cherish me, to love me. The one I should be drawn to above all else. It's the alpha's son. My tormentor. A monster. He's all too quick to forsake me. Except that's not the end of my story. Not even close.
You can check out Rejected Mate on Kindle Vella now
But wait! Not interested in reading, but still want to help an author out at no cost to you (and cost to Amazon?)
The Short Version
Read the first free chapters of my story, Forsaken Mate, and like/follow/rate the story to help me earn a disproportionate amount of money. This costs nothing and takes only a few seconds (if you just scroll through the chapters)
The Long Version
What is this?
Amazon released a "new" way to read back in July, which is essentially a rip-off of Wattpad/Radish/Royal Road etc. The way this works is authors post episodes AKA chapters. The first three are free, the rest are paid for with tokens. This is Kindle Vella. I'm publishing a novel there (currently 50k of about 60k is live and available, with new chapters weekly)
Why haven't I heard of it?
Amazon is being Amazon in the loveliest (and by loveliest I mean dumpster-firey-est) way it knows how. They've offered authors no support in this process. The payment system is as transparent as tar, the search function is about as useful as yelling out a window and asking some random dude where to find your car keys, and on the whole, the program is unsupported.
So how does reading the free chapters help me?
Amazon, rather than fixing the myriad of issues with the budding platform, has essentially decided to chuck a crap ton of money into "bonuses" (rather than… IDK, paying a fair rate for the paid episodes. That's another can of worms). How do these bonuses work? Who the fuck knows. But it's some combination of episodes read+engagement. Free episodes count. Authors with actual followings have made several thousand in bonuses, though everyone agrees this is unsustainable.
Basically, even if you do nothing but click the link, browse the first three episodes (or more, if you claim your one-time free coins), you are majorly helping me while I try to handle the latest rent hikes curtesy of my landlord =)
Or you may actually like it, because this is a story with some of my personal favorite tropes.
Check out Forsaken Mate
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bizzopp2024 · 4 months
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How are startups disrupting traditional industries?
Startups are often at the forefront of disrupting traditional industries by introducing innovative technologies, business models, and approaches. Here are several ways in which startups are causing disruption:
1. Technology Integration
   - Startups leverage emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and the Internet of Things to create more efficient and streamlined processes in industries like finance, healthcare, and manufacturing.
2. E-Commerce and Direct-to-Consumer Models
   - E-commerce startups have revolutionized retail by providing direct-to-consumer sales channels, cutting out intermediaries and reducing costs. Companies like Amazon and Alibaba have transformed the way people shop.
3. Sharing Economy
   - Startups in the sharing economy, like Uber and Airbnb, have disrupted transportation and hospitality industries by connecting service providers directly with consumers through online platforms.
4. Fintech Innovation
   - Fintech startups have transformed the financial services sector by introducing digital payments, robo-advisors, crowdfunding platforms, and blockchain-based solutions, challenging traditional banking models.
5. HealthTech Advancements
   - Health technology startups are disrupting healthcare by introducing telemedicine, personalized medicine, wearable devices, and digital health platforms, making healthcare more accessible and efficient.
6. Renewable Energy and CleanTech
   - Startups in the clean energy sector are disrupting traditional energy industries by developing innovative solutions for renewable energy, energy storage, and sustainable practices.
7. EdTech Revolution
   - Education technology startups are changing the way people learn by offering online courses, interactive platforms, and personalized learning experiences, challenging traditional educational institutions.
8. AgTech and FoodTech
   - Agricultural technology startups are improving efficiency and sustainability in farming, while food technology startups are introducing alternative proteins, lab-grown meat, and sustainable food production methods.
9. InsurTech Transformation
   - InsurTech startups are leveraging technology to streamline and personalize insurance processes, making insurance more accessible, affordable, and customer-centric.
10. Space Exploration and Aerospace Innovation
    - Startups in the space industry are disrupting aerospace by developing cost-effective satellite technologies, commercial space travel, and new approaches to space exploration.
11. Smart Manufacturing
    - Startups in the manufacturing sector are implementing Industry 4.0 technologies, such as automation, IoT, and data analytics, to create more agile and efficient production processes.
12. Telecommunications Disruption
    - Telecom startups are challenging traditional telecommunications companies by providing innovative solutions for connectivity, communication, and data transfer.
These examples showcase how startups are challenging the status quo across various industries, prompting established companies to adapt, innovate, or risk becoming obsolete. The agility, creativity, and willingness to take risks inherent in many startups enable them to drive significant changes in traditional business landscapes.
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lilli-sturmreiter · 3 months
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had to cancel my christmas present to myself because the payment didn't process when i actually fuckin ordered it and instead tried to process when it was about to ship an hour ago when i no longer had the money because i thought it had already been spent on the goddamn thing i ordered and ended up spending it on other things.
i am just, so so pissed at amazon right now.
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