Do you create topic descriptions for writers to make proposals or submissions on? There’s an art to creating a useful description. Some common omissions regularly evoke complaints from writers. A description that doesn’t work well will result in submissions you can’t use or none at all. When you have to reject them, that sours writers who might have provided you with good material. Here are some tips, based on my experience:
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Seanan McGuire has a good article on Tor.com on how she wrote her new novel Middlegame and on writing in general. It’s a reminder of how much of writing is just working steadily. “Every book is sit down, write, keep writing, edit, edit again, try to sell, hopefully succeed, buy some groceries, nap.”
Middlegame sounds interesting to me because of its philosophical tie to Mary Crowell’s song, “Doctrine of Ethos.”
Update: My book wasn’t exactly pirated, but involved a rather dubious maneuver on Smashwords’ part. See the additional information at the end of this post.
Just this morning I learned that Scribd hosts a pirated copy of my ebook Files that Last. I’ve submitted a takedown request. We’ll see if they do anything about it.
According to the automated email response, “Content on Scribd is uploaded and maintained by our members and publishers with no editorial approval or other intervention by Scribd’s employees. Scribd takes the rights of intellectual property owners very seriously and complies as a service provider with all applicable provisions of the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) of 1998. We expeditiously remove infringing material and terminate repeat infringers when such action is deemed appropriate.”
Translation: Scribd makes no attempt whatsoever to stop pirated works from being uploaded yet claims to take copyright “very seriously.”
I put months of effort into writing Files that Last. I paid for copy editing and cover art. Scribd is siphoning money off my work, getting ad revenue, without having lifted one finger to contribute to the book’s creation.
I’m sure there are lots of other pirate sites where you can find copies of just about anything ever published. But Scribd pretends to be respectable.
As thanks for reading this, here’s a coupon code for Files that Last on Smashwords, letting you buy it for just $4.50 (regular $7.99): VN54Y. Expires May 11.
Within a few hours of reporting the incident, I got a reply from Scribd. It included the following:
was delivered to Scribd as part of a content distribution agreement with Smashwords. As part of this agreement, Smashwords content is automatically added to Scribd’s BookID copyright protection system. The agreement is described on Smashwords’ blog at http://blog.smashwords.com/2013/12/smashwords-signs-distribution-agreement.html. This content was not removed from Scribd.
You can disable delivery of your content to Scribd with the Smashwords Channel Manager.
So it isn’t actually piracy, but I never agreed to let Smashwords put my content on Scribd. Smashwords is a distributor, not a publisher, as they make very clear to their writers. A “copyright protection system” sounds like DRM, and I do everything possible to keep my books from being distributed under DRM. It does nothing to hinder the crooks but keeps legitimate buyers from having “files that last.” I just logged in on Smashwords and “opted out” from Scribd, as well as a couple of other channels that didn’t look familiar. I don’t know how long it will take for the page to disappear from Scribd.