A few months ago a blogger and Twitter pal, Todd Trann posted “The Indie Author Social Contract”. It was a wonderfully generous way that he decided to help indie authors whose books he had downloaded during free promotions. You should definitely read the article for the full context and reasoning, he says a lot of great things (and not just about my books – he cites me as an example but that is not why I love what he has to say), but I wanted to post what I’ll call his three deals:

1) For every free ebook that I download and like, I will leave a favorable review for it online and tweet a link to that review.

2) For every free ebook that I download and love, I will leave a favorable review, tweet about it, AND I will find at least one other non-free ebook from the same author and buy it.

3) For every free ebook that I download and don’t like, I will simply delete the ebook and move on.

This system is more than fair and it was great to hear readers thinking like this. It prompted me to respond by offering my own deal. Here it is, the Indie Author’s End of the Social Contract:

As an author

1) I will do my best to do the best work I can. I will not rush out sub standard books just to add another title to my list. Everything I put out there should be of equal, but preferably superior, quality to the previous book.

2) I will appreciate every review, mention and word of encouragement and constructive criticism I receive from the people who have taken a chance on me and my work. That people have taken time, not only to read but, to recognize my labors and vouch for it is something I should never take for granted.

3) I will never act like a prima donna writer that is too good to communicate with the people that helped support my work and advance my career. Unless I’m like stupid rich. But I mean stupid rich and even then I’ll probably stay in touch just to gloat a bit from my super yacht.

It is for these reasons that I get nervous every time I’m about to release a new title. I don’t want to disappoint those that have supported me. And, I never want to lose those nerves because I want to be damn sure that each title is as good as the last.

Check out the original article and like and follow Todd Trann on Twitter @toddtrann. He’s always looking for new indie authors and he’d be a great friend to have.

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