Inkshares is a forward thinking company. I used to be concerned about their future because much of what we do is insular -- authors come to the site to publish their book, we bring our small audiences and connect with the user base here to promote our projects, the vast majority of which are also authors looking to publish. The percentage of projects funded through legitimate reader fan base versus those funded by other authors -- that used to worry me. After all we’re not only trying to publish a book here, we’re trying to build a genuine readership, and flooding a project with preorder trades will eventually backfire because of a lack of reader conversion. It’s not like someone who buys 10 copies of my book will send those ebooks out to 10 readers.  They are essentially empty numbers.

But as I said, Inkshares is concerned with the innovating the future. They wanted to innovate the book publishing industry by providing an avenue for indie authors to use their promotion skills up front to get their books made. Now they are revolutionizing the licensing of books in their roster and building a pipeline to make it easy for great stories to have their rights sold for audiobooks, movies, and foreign language adaptations. All of this is forward thinking and forward moving. It’s very Walt Disney of them.

Back to the manipulation allegations. Knowing that Inkshares is a forward momentum organization, I can’t see how a handful of people leaving the site is going to crash the company -- and that is regardless of whether or not the people in question really are goldfarming (Their intent actually doesn’t matter to this discussion).  Again, the majority of people in an Inkshares book reader base are authors already on the site. That is across the board, with the exception of some who brought their audiences to Inkshares and funded with ease.  Those readers are also funding books on the site. They aren’t going anywhere because they are invested in this platform. 

I have seen an additional concern that people in the contests that don’t win will start leaving the site because of the few outliers that are (theoretically) intentionally goldfarming email lists.  Again, I don’t see this being the case. People who lose the contests fall into two groups: People that leave and people that stay. This has been the case since the first Sword & Laser contest. Many of us fail and stay, many fail and leave. The site has grown exponentially throughout, regardless of this ebb and flow.

I see a level of righteous indignation here directed at a couple of authors who have made choices about their projects, choices that really don’t affect us as authors on the site. Inkshares is building partnerships with strong geeky companies and will continue to flourish by establishing themselves as the leading name in hybrid publishing. If two writers or ten or fifty take their books off site and take their email lists with them, then that’s a selection of people who are now familiar with the Inkshares model, who are already connected to the site, and who take that knowledge with them. If one of those books who leave the site become huge, that indirectly HELPS Inkshares because their story began here and that helps with brand saturation.

I am by no means a sunshine and roses person. Ask anyone who knows me, I tend to side the the cynical on any given conversation. But this one just doesn’t hold water.  Even if the writers in question are mining the site for users, which I don’t think they actually are, that is not harmful to the business model of the site as it spreads brand recognition for Inkshares, and Inkshares is continually innovating so any theoretical harm done to the current phase of the company could not possibly work against them in their other endeavors.