From his blog at http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2012/08/this-is-where-we-are.html

Ken's cancer has just recently begun to spread to his right lymph node but his Oncologist has assured us that this is 80 percent curative if he gets the needed surgery in time.

Unfortunately, his 1100 dollar a month SSI disability disqualifies him for Medicaid care and the local county low-income insurance he was receiving. This leaves us with about 2 weeks to either raise enough money for at least the OR for the surgery (we are hopeful of finding a surgeon to do the work pro bono) or raise enough money for the entire procedure. We've spent hours upon hours researching and contacting the links some of you have provided but they are so limited in scope that 90 percent of them are not helpful at all.

We are looking at two weeks, maybe three before the cancer spreads past the point of surgery being an option. After that, we've been told just to make him as comfortable as possible until he passes. I'm not ready to accept that.

I have a blog post up here as well:

http://thomasaknight.com/blog.php?id=71

and there is an indieGoGO campaign going on here:

http://indiegogo.com/helios

Ken actually had an offer from an off-shore surgeon to do the work pro-bono. Sadly, Ken's passport has expired, and the amount of time to get a new passport is prohibitive. We have 2-3 weeks at most to scrounge up the money for the surgery, after which the cancer will have spread too far to be operable. :(

Sadly, no.

I'm the guy who set up the donation drive, and had to work within my means, which was basically using the paypal donation button, and later the IndieGoGo campaign.

If anyone in the community has the means to set something like this up, we need all the help we can get. This will save Ken's life if we can make it happen.

Amazon already has a system in place to allow customers to redownload my book if I make a future revision. I've used it once to send out an update after a few minor mistakes made it through to the final release. I did a new revision and had Amazon notify all of my customers of the new version. Worked wonderfully.

And no DRM.

DRM is defective by design. It doesn't stop piracy. It only causes problems. As a rule, I don't enable DRM, ever.

I think it would likely be easier to find a ruggedized case for a popular cell phone than an eReader, and then you could load the eReader app of all the popular sites onto it. (Amazon, B&N, and Kobo all have Smartphone apps that work with their services)

I'm actually quite fond of reading on my cell phone. I carry it with me everywhere anyway, so any time I have a few seconds to read, I've got it out with a book open.

Book piracy is very much like Music Piracy.

You can't stop it, no matter how hard you try.

I don't enable DRM on my books. Why? Because DRM doesn't stop piracy. I don't *want* people to pirate my book, but I don't honestly believe there is a damn thing I could do about it if my book *did* get pirated.

The hope is that the exposure I gain from any kind of piracy will offset the piracy itself. Right? :)

This really disappoints me. :(

I saw this coming when the site started circulating the facebook groups I'm involved in. In each case I explained how the site worked, and defended LendInk.com for what they were doing.

The knee-jerking that resulted in this sites shut down is a perfect exampled of what happens when a bunch of frustrated indie authors don't take the time to read or research a site before crying foul.