Questions Answered for Readers and Authors

Administrator Note:  There are two sections here – one for readers and everyone, and one mostly for authors and would be authors.  We hope that you will read this because it answers many of the questions that people have raised with us.


Part I: For Readers -- The Direction of the Site -- With Answers


Background: This is an unusual site with an unusual mission, and every reader has a perfect right to understand what this is all about and where we are taking it. The first objective of this site is to create a financially self-sustaining clearing house for ideas, books, and blogs dealing with political reform in the democracies. Our democracies in Europe and the United States are in a state of crisis, and that crisis is not going away and the causes of the crisis are simply not well understood by most citizens.

Our second objective is to recruit, educate, organize, train and finance an army of citizen-democrats in order to reform and reshape our elections and ethics in the democracies to cure the underlying real causes of our current crisis. Simply put -- we are asking you to join us in this effort.


1. Who are you? Basically, we are just like you -- we are ordinary citizens from every political party and persuasion who are appalled at the current election systems whereby special interests of all types, in co-operation with the incumbents of all parties, have converted the election systems in the democracies into systems of legalized bribery and extortion, whereby the politicians gain longevity, special privileges, and substantial income in exchange for direct access for the interests to the legislative processes that permit them to loot our treasuries, subvert regulations, and win resources that the public would never grant them, if they knew what was going on and could stop them.


2. How are you organized? The site, www.indielitworld.com is being converted into a charitable organization located in the US Virgin Islands, with tax exempt status for our educational activities and tax-deductible status for donations.


3. How will you finance your efforts?  Dr. Gordon Black has single-handedly financed this effort up to now.  He has pledged that all of the proceeds from the sale of his own books, short stories, and non-fiction will be used to help finance the site.  However, the only way for this site to be effective in the long run is to have a stable and growing revenue source based on the sale of fiction and nonfiction, short stories, and the like. When we are further along, we will start to sell eBooks of authors of all kinds, and we will use the 30 percent commission to help finance this effort.  In the longer run, when we have proved the effectiveness of our approach, we will begin to raise money from the many people among our readers and in the general public who believe in our cause and its effectiveness, and are willing to help with contributions, small and large.


4. Why the Virgin Island?  Convenience! The current owner of the site, Dr. Gordon S. Black, is a US resident who resides about half of the year inin the Virgin Islands and the other half in Versailles, France, or visiting his children and grandchildren.  Before moving to the Virgin Islands in 2002, he was a resident of Rochester, New York for over forty years. Given his daily involvement, it is easier to keep the location of the site where he is a resident.
5. What is your focus:  Our political focus is intentionally narrow – institutional, ethics and electoral reforms that --  limit the power of the money of special interests over elections, increase the fairness and balance of the competition for public office, provide a higher standards of ethics for office-holders, reduce the control of the lobbyists over the legislative process – all with the goal of reducing and eliminating the obvious tendency of our democracies to run up massive deficits and public debt that that generations of irresponsible politicians pass on to our children and grandchildren.  Other than electoral, ethics and political reform, we will not be involved with other issues because we want the broadest possible coalition for reform, and every other issue – particularly immediately inspired partisan issues -- drives away some people who agree with us on election and institutional reform.  As you will over time three of every four voters will endorse the kinds of changes we are likely to propose


6. Will I have a say in the specific reform proposals you put forward?  Absolutely!  All along the way, we will invite your participation as a reader – comments on the blog, essays that some of you will contribute forums for discussion issues, focus groups with authors, direct polls of our members, and the like.  In the end, however, we will ask our readership – hopefully in the millions – to vote on the very specific proposals for political action – and we will not pursue any proposal that is not supported by our readership.  After all, we are proposing to improve our democratic processes.  We have to be true to our objectives and values.  Moreover, we will treat you with respect, inviting an opponent to each proposal to make the case against, while someone of us will make the case for it.


7. How are you different from other reform efforts such as the Occupy Wall Street Movement or the T-Party Movement?  A later blog will answer this question in detail.  In truth, we share with the Occupy Wall Street effort a deep concern about the growing real gap between the top one cent and the rest of the people, but we think we understand why this is happening and that the problem is rooted in the system of financing our elections and the corrupt connections between the lobbies and the incumbents.  We share with the T-Party Movement a deep concern over mounting deficits and debt, and the ruinous effects they will have on our future, but we do not believe that this financial irresponsibility can be cured without correcting the flaws in our elections and lobbying systems that makes this fiscal irresponsibility a reality. One of the reasons for keeping our focus narrow is to be able to recruit allies from both side.


8. Why focus on the world – why not just the United States?  If there is anything we have learned as educated citizens, it is that we are all part of a movement of enlightened democrats from all over the world. If there is anything that we should have learned from the catastrophe of 2008, it is that the failures of democracies in one part of the world will affect democratic-citizens everywhere.  The problem of the corruption of our democracy is not unique to the United States; we watch a similar corruption of democracies in Europe undermining Europe and spreading their failures to us.  The problem of the near bankruptcy of some of our largest states, such as California, have roots similar to the problems in Greece, Italy, Spain and other parts of Europe.  The origins of our great experiment of democracy in the United States are rooted in the writings of the founders of the Enlightenment in Europe; and the American experiment has spread back to Europe to shape the world we enjoy today.  Very specifically, we will invite our citizen-democrats in Europe and elsewhere to create mirror efforts in Spanish, French, German and even Russian and we will license at no charge our intellectual property to those efforts.


9. What do you mean when you use the term “army?”  An army is the furthest thing from a mob!  An army is a large group of people, highly organized, disciplined, sharing common goals, moving relentlessly toward common objectives.  When we say an army, we mean the same thing for a large mass of democratic-citizens, seeking through democratic, peaceful, nonviolent means to prevail at the ballot box for changes that will benefit and perfect our democracies everywhere.  We are armed not with guns and knives and hatred, but with ideas, commitment, passion, and persuasion – all based on the love we feel for our countries, our families, and our desire for our children to live in a better world.  But, make no mistake about it, we must organize in the end like a multi-national army, sharing common objectives democratically determined, and directed at changing our institutions to make them less responsive to special interest and more responsive to voters.


10. Why do you feel that you can win against such organized and powerful forces that profit from the current system of corruption?  The “interests” have, at the moment, most of the money behind them. They have been waging class warfare against all of the rest of us three generations, and they are winning.   They have been organizing and perfecting their corruptive influence for more than four decades – buying public officials wholesale and looting our treasuries for their private gain.  The only way for us to prevail is through massive collective action, financed initially by this site, where our goal is to use our sheer numbers to force the system to change.


11. How much support is there for what you are attempting?  The overwhelming majority are with us on every poll on the subject in Europe and the United States. We have the overwhelming support of the people in the democracies, who can prevail democratically if they are organized, educated and directed at a common objective.  The special interests will do everything in their power to divide all of us by party, ethnic group, religion, or ideology.  We can only prevail if we understand what unites us, which is precisely what made the American Revolution possible.  We are seeking among our readers, authors and advisers the next generation of enlightened leaders who can make this successful.  We are convinced that they exist, and we need them for the lengthy struggle ahead.  You have the ability to be an active part of this effort – but you have to decide for yourself whether it is worth it.

12. If you are successful, where do you think you will find your support?  Frankly, we realize that the perfection of democracies have always been accomplished by small, highly organized groups of dedicated citizens.  During the American Revolution, only about one in three citizens had any real commitment to the cause, and the entire effort was pushed forward by less than 1000 serious leaders committed to the cause.  Most Americans, even when they agree with our goals, are too busy, lazy, preoccupied with their personal problems, or otherwise engaged even to read about the problem – much less do anything about it.  We are looking for readers who do not fit this description, but who are willing to sign on for a long term effort to reform our institutions. We hope that we can attract serious, long-term oriented citizens of all ages who are willing to do the persistent work required to build an army of citizen-democrats, and who will provide a political leadership dedicated to these changes.  Such people know who they are, and they only ask – what can I do to help?  We would rather find 100 of these kinds of people rather than thousands who want to distract us with issues and debate that goes nowhere!  Those who feel the same ways we do will know instantly that they belong with us after reading what we are all about.


Administrator Note:  We cannot sell your books at the moment because we lack the back-end accounting and reporting systems to get from sales to revenue to you, your agent, and/or publisher.  We can, however, promote your eBooks to readers by inserting a sales location into the sample, so that readers can go directly to where your book is for sales.  There is simply no risk and much to gain by listing your books with us, and we will market the ones we get aggressively as our readership grows into an army.

Part II:  For Authors:  Writers Beware Check List - With Answers

1. Background: There is an entire industry out in the marketplace designed to provide services to authors, and many of these are scams, ineffective and unfair to authors. The following is the lists of things on writer beware, and how it relates to our very legitimate enterprise.

2. Fee charging: Do you charge upfront fees? We charge authors no fees at all at the present time! However, we expect you to submit only samples of work that are already accepted for publications on other eBook sites – Amazon.com, Nook, iTunes, etc., and we will only accept samples at the moment that are in doc, docx, and pdf.. Your sample must have an embed Web address where readers can purchase your full book if they wish.  Finally, you have to provide us with an unlimited right to allow our readers to download your samples.

3. Eventual Commission Selling:  Do you charge commissions on the sale of my books? Not at the moment!  As soon as we develop a bank-end accounting system for authors, we will come to all of our authors and ask to have the right to sell their books and works directly to our readers – with a 30 percent sales commission kept by the site.  All of the commissions will be reinvested to grow this site into a place for readers, worldwide, in the millions – readers who share with us a commitment to democratic reform of our political institutions.

4. Paid editing or publishing referrals: Do you recommend editors or publishers, from whom you receive a commission? We are not editors and we do not want to be editors, and we will not recommend editors or publishers. We assume that our author's take responsibility for the preparation of a clean, thoroughly proofed manuscript, in a standard format that is ready for listing on our site. We insure this condition by only accepting samples that are currently for sale elsewhere. If you do not have a proof reading agency (and most of us need professional proofreading), we have arranged a special, fifteen percent discount with www.Scribendi.com in Canada, whose services we ourselves have used, and you are free to use them or any proofing service you choose. We do not receive any fees for recommending them!  We are creating a new page, called Resources, which will list resources for authors with which we have ourselves had some experience.

5. Conflicts of interest: Do you have conflicts of interests with agents or publishers? NO! We are not agents. We do not represent authors. We are not publishers of traditional hard or soft copy books, and we do not recommend publishers. We do not recommend editors. You are free to select any agent of your choice, and you own the copyright to your work. We do market unpublished new eBooks of fiction, nonfiction and memoirs for our authors.  We will market our site to agents and to interested publishers, who are just as free as any reader to sample your work and to purchase a copy if they like, wherever you have it for sale.

6. No track record: Do you have an established track record? We are at this point a startup enterprise, specifically designed to provide a very large number of extremely frustrated authors an opportunity to find readers and buyers of their works. Your sales on other sites will be determined by the quality of the manuscript, the enthusiasm of the readers, and the growth of those who want to experience new voices in literature, politics and political reform. We depend heavily on our authors to market their manuscripts on our site to their contacts, friends and family, and on the social networks. In this manner, we all benefit from the efforts of each other. This is precisely what makes this an author’s cooperative. We will provide you with a copy of every blog written, embedded in an email or as an attachment, which you can forward to your friends and family members for their consideration.  The logic for authors is ridiculously simple – the more readers you bring to the site, the more every author will benefit, including you!

7. How will you market our eBooks? First, once your manuscript is uploaded and available, an email will be sent to all readers registered on the site along with your description of the manuscript and one of our reader’s reviews. Second, we will market continuously to build up the number of registered readers and writers. Third, we will expect our authors to market the site by marketing the blog by Dr. Black, and others among our bloggers, to people whom they believe are interested in this genre and the problems of our modern democracies. Third, we will attempt to promote the site on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and the other social media. Finally, we will conduct a marketing effort with a dedicated list of approximately a half million people with email addresses.

8. Nonstandard author-agent contract terms: Do you expect authors to sign a contract? No contracts at all! You are free to remove your samples at any time. Your marketing is an honor agreement with the rest of us – if we promote you, you are expected to promote the rest of us, and together we will build an audience for what we have to say.  When we reach the point that we can sell your work with proper accounting and reporting, we will sell it with a commission of 30 percent to the site, with the remaining revenues passing directly to you or to an agent that you might have representing you. At that point, just will with any of the retailers, we will ask you to sign an online contract that gives us permission to sell your work and describes royalitis.

9. Ownership of your Manuscript: Who will own my manuscript if I list with your site? We have the right to download a sample of your manuscript to our readers free of charge. You own the manuscript. You are free to sign a contract of representation with anyone, with no fees to us. If and when you secure an agent and publisher, we will agree to remove your manuscript sample from our site until the time when the book is finally published. However, you are required to allow us to promote your success story on our site as a way to encourage others.  Finally, when we have the reporting system in place, we will sell you book to our readership under whatever terms you have with an agent.

10. Misrepresentations of skill or experience: Are you making claims of experience or skill of which authors should be aware? Dr. Black spent a lifetime as an academic political scientist, well-known pollster and owner of the Harris Poll, and he created Harris Interactive, which under his leadership became the fastest growing and most most profitable market research firm in the world. He has an undergraduate degree in Political Science from Washington University in St. Louis and a Doctorate in Political Science from Stanford University. He is, at the moment, solely responsible for the content of this site, and he will adhere to the highest standards of intellectual vigor, analysis, quality, and candor. He is a political independent, a supporter of Ross Perot in the 1993-96 period, and he is supporting no candidate in 2012, He will determine the content that is posted here. He has no affiliation, formal or informal, with any political party or movement.  He does have a growing number of advisers to the site who he relies on for input into everything. He describes his political views of that of a free market/civil liberitarian, which makes him a fiscal concervative on fiscal issues and a social liberal on the social issues.  However, he believes that all of this is irrelevant to the pursuit of political and election reform.

11. A mutual pledge of fairness and equity: What should authors expect in our business dealings with your site? Our relationship with each author is important to us. We pledge to attempt to sell your manuscript to our readers to the best of our ability. We pledge to enhance the collective quality of all of the manuscripts on our site, and to remove work that is found by our readers not to be acceptable. Finally, we will do nothing to injure your opportunities to publish your manuscript through a traditional agency representation or with a traditional publisher. We ask you to pledge to write to the best of your ability, to help us with the marketing of your manuscript, to agree to remove your manuscript if our readers object, and to remove your manuscript if you acquire traditional representation. Remember, we are mutually marketing your manuscript, but you are selling it through other eBook sites.

12. Listing with multiple sites: Can I post my manuscript for sale with multiple sites? Absolutely! Your objective is to maximize the sales of your manuscript, and we are part, but not all, of that process. We expect you to list your manuscript with other on line publishers and retailers. All online publishers and retailers will attempt to increase the number of people who buy though their site, and there will be a number of companies that sell successfully online. Some of these will be traditional publishers who have their own online sites, but others will be independent organizations such as us. It is in your interest to get as wide an exposure as possible, by listing your work for publication on multiple sites. Anyone who tells you differently is not being honest with you.

13. The Effects of self-publishing: Will I injure myself with online posting of my books for sale? You are going to have to use your common sense when evaluating claims by people who say they know the answer to this question! We have been asking traditional agents this question now for months, and not one of them has come back to assert that online independent self-publishing injures your chances at representation or traditional publishing. Several agents have told us that successful sales on line will interest agents and publishers alike. The people who claim that self-publishing or eBook publishing will injure your chances at traditional publishing have no evidence to support that claim – other than their own, generally unstated, self-interest.

14. The Growth of eBook Sales: What is the future of eBooks? The world of publishing is changing very rapidly, and eBook sales are exploding, with triple digit growth, while traditional hard and soft cover book sales contracting  rather sharplyy, at 6 to 10 percent per year. We believe that many new authors, who cannot succeed easily in this contracting traditional market, will find audiences on line, over time. That is the reason we are listing our own manuscripts on this site and for sale on Amazon.com, and others. Personally, we think that it is just plain foolish not to take advantage of the possibilities of online sales. The returns to the authors are vastly higher on each book sold, so that an author can make a decent income with fewer sales.

15. What do I have to lose if I list and mark with IndieLitWorld.com? Nothing, absolutely nothing! The benefits are real and immediate. We provide you with real feedback, from readers, before we will list your book. We require you to proof read the manuscript completely. We help you to get a cover if you feel the need for a cover. We will promote your book to readers in the genres in which it is located. We will create a community of interest for your book, with reviews from people who liked it, and you can use that information with agents and publishers. All of this will happen without waiting months and sometimes years for publication. If you book is outstanding, the audience will grow for it through word of mouth, because we intend to encourage our readers to recommend books that they really enjoy. If your book has problems, you will find out about them so that you can correct them – objective comments from people who are anonymous to you. The founder of IndieLitWorld.com, Dr. Gordon Black, is putting his money where his mouth is, and he is posting three finished novels, a memoir and three short stories, on this site, and he will pour all of his royalties from sales back into the marketing effort to expand the reader base.

16. Will you help with publishing my manuscript as an eBook on one of the eBook sales site? The answer is no – we simply do not have the time or the personnel. We are only interested in marketing works that have already gone through this process and gotten posted for sale on their own. In this manner, you will be already properly formatted for downloading, you will have a cover, and you will be ready for sale through the links within your sample.

17. Start uploading your manuscript today:  Please join us.  The site is still under development, and while it is getting easier, it is not perfect.  The specifications for the covers are on the site, but we will help you convert the covers if they will not upload.  Your samples can be either: DOC, DOCX (the latest version) or PDF – up to 50 pages, including cover pages.  You should remember to embed your chosen retail sale site both at the beginning and at the end of your sample so that readers, who want to buy your book, can go directly to a retailer of your choice to do so.