Episode 277: Digital Content Ownership For Readers & Writers

In this week's episode, we discuss the advantages of digital content ownership for both readers and writers.

This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Ashes, Book #3 in the Cloak Mage series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store:

CLOAK2025

The coupon code is valid through November 24, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we’ve got you covered!

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 277 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is November 14th, 2025, and today we are discussing the benefits of owning your own content for both readers and writers. Before we get to our main topic, we will start off with Coupon of the Week and then a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects.

First up is Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Ashes, Book #3 in the Cloak Mage series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy), at my Payhip store. That coupon code is CLOAK2025. And as always, the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through November 24th, 2025, so if you need a new audiobook for your Thanksgiving travels this month, we have got you covered.

Now for an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I'm pleased to report the rough draft of Blade of Shadows is done. This will be the second book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. Right now, it is just about exactly as long as Blade of Flames. It may be a little longer or a little shorter depending on how editing goes since there's some stuff I'm going to cut out, but there's also some scenes I'm going to add. I also wrote a short story called Elven Arrow. Newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of Elven Arrow when Blade of Shadows comes out, which will hopefully be before American Thanksgiving at the end of the month. I'm about 23% of the way through the first editing pass, so making good progress there and hope to keep up with the good progress.

I am 11,000 words into Wizard-Assassin. That will be my next main project once the Blade of Shadows is published and probably the final book I publish in 2025, because I think the first book I do in 2026 will be Blades of Ruin #3, if all goes well.

In audiobook news, the recording for Blade of Flames is done and it's gradually making its way out into the world (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills). I think as of the time of this recording, the only place where it's actually live is Google Play, but hopefully more stores will come online soon, and it would be cool if the Blade of Flames audiobook was available everywhere before Blade of Shadows came out. Hollis McCarthy is still working on Cloak of Embers and we hope to have that to you before the end of the year, if all goes well. So that's where I'm at with current writing, publishing and audiobook projects.

00:02:25 Main Topic: Digital Content Ownership as a Reader and Writer

Now let's move on to our own topic, the ownership of digital content as both a reader and a writer. As the digital revolution has gone on and on and put more decades behind it, people are increasingly building very large digital content libraries and it's an increasingly tangled point of law what happens to those digital libraries when for example, their account gets suspended, or for example, someone else dies and wants to leave their Steam library of games to their heirs. We're today going to be focusing on digital content ownership for readers and writers, and we'll start with readers. Although the price of an ebook and print book of many traditionally published books are roughly the same at this point (and sometimes bafflingly, the ebook versions cost more), the rights you have as the owner of the ebook copy are substantially less powerful. In fact, technically speaking, you aren't actually the owner of an ebook purchased from Amazon or other retailers. It's more accurate to say that you purchased a long-term conditional lease.

As a side note, I'm talking about this from the perspective of United States Copyright law and ebook/audiobook stores there. The laws and standards in your own country may be different. Also, I am not a lawyer and nothing in this episode should be taken as legal advice. You obtain legal advice by hiring a lawyer licensed to practice in your jurisdiction. But now back to the main argument.

In America, there is something known as the First Sale Doctrine. This section of the US Copyright Act allows physical media to be lent out and resold, among other things. For example, someone who purchases a physical book is considered its owner and the publisher can't take it back from them. The physical version of books can be used in libraries or as classroom materials until they literally fall apart, unlike their electronic equivalents, which face complicated licensing agreements that generally offer far less favorable terms of use for a much larger cost (especially for libraries and academic institutions).

In the US, electronic content ownership is covered by contract law instead of the First Sale Doctrine. Although each seller has their own licenses and standards, a few things tend to remain consistent across those licenses: the inability to lend or resell the content, the inability to remove DRM from the content, and the right of the seller to alter or even remove the content. Ownership is not a right guaranteed for digital content.

There is an American lawsuit currently challenging Amazon Prime Video and its use of words like “purchase” and “buy” for its video content. The lawsuit accuses Amazon of misrepresenting a heavily conditional license as a purchase, giving the average customer the impression that they own the content in perpetuity. Amazon lawyers argue that the average customer understands the difference, but frequent outrages over content being removed from users’ libraries suggests otherwise.

Here are four reasons owning your ebook content is important.

#1: Keeping access to the content if the company closes or gets bought out. One of the early leaders in the US ebook store market way back at the start of the indie revolution was Sony. When their Sony Reader store closed, they gave readers the option to migrate their libraries to Kobo. Books that were not available through Kobo were not able to be transferred, so some purchased content was lost for readers.

A more egregious example comes from, as you might expect, Microsoft with the closing of the Microsoft ebook store in 2019. When the store closed, they offered refunds instead of giving readers an opportunity to self-archive or transfer their purchases. Any margin notes taken by readers were lost, and they were given a $25 credit for the inconvenience. Although refunding customers was a good gesture, it's not a guarantee that readers are able to repurchase the ebooks elsewhere or even that the price would be the same when they did. As an aside, I spent a good chunk of time in 2018 trying to figure out how to get into the Microsoft ebook store and then finally gave up because it was too complicated, which in hindsight turned out to be a good decision. Owning your ebooks outright gives them independence from the store that you bought them from.

#2: Keeping content from being altered. Ebooks can be altered anytime. Most of the time these changes are harmless, such as updating a cover, fixing a typo, or adding a preview chapter. I do that myself all the time. Every time I get typo corrections, I upload a new version. Yet there is a potential for books to be edited or censored from the original copy that you purchased. Chapters could be removed, scenes altered, or in extreme cases, the entire book could be removed. Owning a hard copy means that you have a version that cannot be changed without your knowledge.

#3: The ability to self-archive. Most ebook stores use a form of digital rights management (DRM) that makes it difficult to transfer or permanently store your collection outside of their collection or library. Trying to do so is a violation of the license you purchased from the store, so I won't discuss how to do that. Amazon recently made self-archiving more difficult by discontinuing the feature to download and transfer Kindle books via USB.

Finding DRM-free ebook stores is important if you want to organize and store your ebook collection as you see fit. Two examples of stores with DRM-free ebooks are Smashwords and direct [sales] sites like My Payhip store. Other stores like Kobo have a dedicated section devoted to DRM-free ebooks.

#4: Keeping your reading habits private. Companies like Amazon track reading data, mostly out of a desire to sell you similar books or ad space. They track what you're reading, the amount of time you spend reading, your reading speed, and the highlights that you make in a book. Now, most of the time this is generally pretty harmless. It's mostly used for…you look on Amazon, you see that the section “customers who enjoyed this book also enjoyed this”. Then if you use the Kindle app on your phone a lot, it has a lot of badges and achievements and it tends to be used for that kind of thing. However, there could be sinister undertones to this, especially if you're reading things you would prefer other people not know about. So if this concerns you, if there are some settings that you can adjust, but if you want complete privacy, outright ownership of your ebooks is the way to go.

So what is the easiest way to own your own ebooks as a reader? The easiest way and perhaps the safest way to own your content outright is to buy print copies of books. That said, buying direct from authors or finding ebooks that have more favorable license terms is easiest way to own your ebook purchases. One of the reasons that opening a Payhip store was important to me was I gave my readers a chance to outright own purchased copies of my work and self-archive them in the way that they saw fit, if that was important to them. The price is the same on my Payhip store as other ebook or audiobook stores (and sometimes even cheaper if you're using Coupon of the Week). The ebooks and audiobooks there are DRM-free and untethered from specific stores and companies. You have the option to download files in a variety of file formats and store them in a way that makes the most sense to you. Buying direct also gives a greater share of the sale price to the authors, especially in the case of audiobooks.

In conclusion, ebooks lag behind print books in terms of ownership rights for purchasers here in the United States (at the time of this recording). That said, you can be an informed consumer by reading terms of use carefully and educating yourself to make sure that you have the most possible access to your purchased content.

Now, we've covered that from the reader side, and let's look at it from the side of the content creators, specifically writers. This can also apply to other content creators such as musicians, and we're going to use a very famous example for that, Taylor Swift. The general public learned about the importance of fully owning your content as a creator during the long and very public battle between musician Taylor Swift and the record company that sold her work to a private equity firm associated with someone she personally disliked. She owned the copyrights to the works (along with her various collaborators), but not the masters, the specific recordings of each song.

As long as she didn't own her masters, she didn't have control over song choices for her public performances, the label releasing older content against her wishes, or how her music would be licensed out for commercial use. Swift reasserted control by rerecording old albums (a strategy previously used by the musician Prince), which gave her ownership of these new masters and devalued the original masters to the point where she could later afford to buy them outright. Many artists, including Olivia Rodrigo, credit Swift for helping them to negotiate adding the ownership of their masters into their contracts. As predatory as the publishing industry can be, the music industry tends to make them look like rank amateurs in terms of sheer evil. So it is a testament to her popularity and business success that she was able to convince them to do this. The world's most famous pop star taught millions of fans that owning your work is the ultimate goal of a creative.

Why is ownership of your work important for writers specifically and not just American pop stars? We'll discuss six reasons why it's important for content creators and specifically writers in this episode. And as a reminder yet again, I'm talking about this from the perspective of United States law. Laws and standards in your own country may be different. Also, I am not a lawyer and nothing in this episode should be taken as legal advice. You obtain proper legal advice by contacting a lawyer licensed to practice in your jurisdiction. So with that in mind, let's get into the topic.
What is ownership as a writer? Writers generally keep the copyrights to works they sell to publishers. Writers are essentially selling the right or a license to produce and distribute their book in a certain format, language, and geographic area. Most of the time, geographic area rights are sold separately. For example, rights for the Harry Potter books are owned by Scholastic in the United States and Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom. Sometimes writers will keep the rights in a specific format, like when I signed with Tantor to give them the audio rights to the first five Frostborn books while keeping the rights to my print and ebook formats.

What writers lose in the process of selling to publishers is the ability to control how their work is marketed, packaged, and sold. They do not have the freedom to make major decisions such as when a book is released or where it is marketed. Today I am going to share six reasons that retaining ownership is important for writers and what things you generally sacrifice when you sign with a traditional publisher instead of self-publishing or indie publishing.

#1: Creative control. It is not standard to have complete control over your book's cover design. Often an artist is able to submit suggestions to the designer, but the publisher has ultimate authority over the book's cover. Sometimes covers end up being wildly inappropriate for the book, but the author has no recourse. The same is usually true with the ability to pick an audiobook narrator or change anything about the narration. At times, writers (especially new ones) are pressured into changes they do not want by editors.

The surest way to completely lose all creative control is signed with a book packager like Alloy Entertainment. If you want to hear the story of how L.J. Smith was fired from her own series due to a plot dispute with that publisher, YouTuber Jenny Nicholson covers it in her epic length summary of The Vampire Diaries show. Although a certain paycheck from a book packager is tempting, you'd be wisest not to create any fictional characters or worlds for this type of publisher for that reason.

#2: Dead Series Syndrome. If the first book in a series does not sell well, the publisher tends to abandon the series. The next book in the series might be ready for publication, but they're not obligated to publish it if they suspect it will not be profitable. Unfinished series are extremely common in traditional publishing, unfortunately. Writers who are locked into a contract for a series are generally out of luck putting out the books on their own. Even if they put out later books on their own, not having the rights to the first book in the series makes it difficult for a writer to sell and market subsequent books.

I had a series (Demonsouled) that I wanted to continue even though the first book was released by my publisher. I was able to get the rights back for it and then was able to self-publish this rest of the series. This was much easier to do 14 years ago than it is now. Modern contracts, especially from larger publishers, are not so generous in letting authors do this. It would be much easier to start as a self-published author and have full control over the trajectory of your series and make sure readers are able to finish it instead of waiting for a contract to elapse or fighting a difficult, hard to win battle to get the rights back.

#3: The ability to change. One of the perks of owning your book is the ability to make quick changes that react to data. For example, I was able to retitle the Stealth and Spells series fairly quickly when it became immediately clear upon release that some found the original title confusing. A traditional publisher would likely not have bothered to make the effort unless there was a legal reason for doing so.

The ability to change covers, repackaging books in different ways (like omnibus editions), and to make quick changes to the book on the fly (such as fixing typos or continuity errors), is the unique privilege that comes with owning your own work. Publishers are slow to make these types of changes, if they do it at all.

#4: Profit. Writers typically only receive an advance (an initial lump sum) when working with a traditional publisher. The complexities of publisher accounting usually ensure that only great successes receive royalties, and often even those that do can take a while to reach that benchmark. Royalties are typically doled out quarterly or semi-annually, for those who make enough to receive them. The earning statements are fairly byzantine. It's hard for the average person to understand them fully to make sure they're being paid exactly what is owed to them. Owning your own work and publishing yourself means that you keep all of the profit after the cut taken by the ebook store and whatever you pay cover designers, editors, and so on.

You can see all of the sales as they come in and don't have to wait for those two to four royalty checks each year in order to get paid. It's much easier to make a living as a writer and to feel confident that you can pay others when you have more accurate data on the money coming in. Indie publishing sacrifices the certainty of an advance for a far, far greater share of the profits in the long run. Additionally, agents typically take a 15 to 20% commission on author earnings, and they are an essential part of the process in traditional publishing. It's just about impossible to get foot in the door with traditional publishing without one. Most self-published writers don't bother with an agent, which means they're able to keep that cut of the money and don’t have to shape their work around the preferences and whims of an agent. They also spared the stress and hassle of working with an unethical or bad agent (of which they're unfortunately far too many).

#5: Professional freedom. The publisher decides when the books are released or if they're released at all. Are you ready to publish a book two months after the first one is released? Too bad. A publisher is not going to put out the next one that quickly. The traditional wisdom of publishing schedules seems wildly out of date in the content-heavy modern world, where algorithms reward recent titles and frequent publishing. Publishing more often also helps fans stay connected to your work, and frankly, it's much easier to make a living as a writer putting out several books a year instead of just one.
Additionally, traditionally published writers do not control how a book is marketed. Are you upset that your book is being marketed as a romance when you think it's complex literary fiction? Too bad. It's not your call. In fact, writers may be contractually obligated to post content to their social media pages written or approved in advance by the marketing department at the publisher. You might have to put your name publicly to marketing copy you dislike or disagree with in order to not violate your contract.

In a related vein, you might find that if you post heavily on your social media pages about political or controversial topics, you may be reprimanded by the publisher or in some cases, have your contract canceled entirely. Although indie authors aren't immune from social consequences of what they post, no publisher is holding them back from posting what they want just because they're writers and the publisher is scared of what the shareholders might think.

#6: The publisher being sold. One of the biggest problems for traditionally published writers is when their publisher is sold to another one. This may mean restructuring that takes away staff they worked with a long time (like a favorite editor being replaced by an inexperienced one). As smaller publishers are eaten up by the larger ones, you might find that your books become an afterthought and you don't have any power to fix that.

You might even have to fight to get paid what you're owed in your own contracts, which writers of Star Wars books found out when Disney acquired Lucasfilm. Apparently when Disney bought Lucasfilm, it decided it no longer owed royalties to several writers of Star Wars tie-in novels that Lucasfilm had published and weren't going to pay them until it went public and caused a bit of controversy. Finally, a settlement was reached. This is sort of the shifty behavior that Disney is well known for in certain circles, and it is something you have to watch out for with large publishers and media conglomerates. The easiest way to keep this from happening is, once again, to publish yourself and keep ownership of your work.

In conclusion, when traditional publishing was the only way to become a writer, their restrictions and control were something you had to live with because you had no other option. Now that self-publishing is extremely accessible and traditional publishing is shrinking, it's no longer worth making the trade-offs that authors once had to in order to gain readers of their work.

Although I never actually listened to a Taylor Swift song all the way through, her career and business ventures are proof that owning your work as a creative is the best way forward. Ownership should be the starting point, not the end goal of anyone who values creative control and fair, transparent payment for their creative work.

So that is it for this week. I hope that illuminated the importance of owning your own work, especially if you are a writer or other creative. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.