Yearly Archives: 2019

Seanan McGuire on writing

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged books fiction on by

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.”

“Files that Last” pirated on Scribd

This entry was posted in Publishing Writing and tagged piracy Scribd on by

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.

Update

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.

Linux for writers

This entry was posted in Commentary Tools and tagged computers Linux software on by

Users are discovering that Windows 10, among its many annoyances, doesn’t work well if you can’t get reliable Internet download speeds of 10 megabits a second or better without a data cap. Macs are better in some ways (I’m using one right now), but they’re expensive. A lot of writers would just like a reasonably priced laptop that doesn’t make unreasonable demands on their connection.

Some writers consider a Chromebook a reasonable solution. It’s cheap and it doesn’t have ridiculous bandwidth requirements. You can use it in a library or a coffee shop. All your documents are online, so if you have a desktop machine at home, you can easily move documents between it and the Chromebook. But it means handing all your documents over to Google. I like having my files on my own computer, thank you. If Google locks you out of your account (I’ve had that happen temporarily) or terminates it for any reason, everything is gone. If you don’t like other people reading what you write before you submit it, how confident are you that Google doesn’t?
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A banned book you may never see 3

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged censorship law on by

“Banned Books Week” has become a joke. I call it “bland books week.” Its definition of “banned” includes being deemed inappropriate for elementary school libraries. This is at best deceptive, and it’s an excuse for not talking about books that face actual efforts to ban them. The list also includes “challenged” books; that means simply that somebody asked a library not to carry a book. Talking about real banned books would require entering real controversies.

Unless you think school libraries should carry everything down to and including hard porn, “banning” in that sense is justified in some cases. “Challenging” hardly deserves notice at all, unless it results in serious consideration of excluding a book. Whether a school library carries Captain Underpants or not isn’t an issue of freedom of the press. Whether a book can be published at all is. There are books which have actually been banned in recent US history.
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Misused musical terms 3

This entry was posted in Techniques Writing and tagged msuic writing on by

Musical imagery adds a lot to writing when it’s done right. The only trouble is that so many writers get it wrong. They misunderstand the terminology or the capacities of the instruments. Music is a big part of my life, so it especially bothers me when references to music are full of mistakes. Here are a few pointers which could be useful.
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Theft by the customer

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged plagiarism theft on by

Gunman from The Great Train RobberyLast week I experienced the one thing that every writer hates more than rejection: theft by a customer. A customer’s account on an agency site had expired without buying my article. That’s not unusual. I recycled the piece, following approved procedures, and submitted it with a few changes to another customer through the same agency. It immediately bounced back to me as plagiarized!!

This made no sense to me, and I immediately got suspicious. I did a Web search on the first sentence of the article. There was a match — on the site of the customer that had lapsed without buying my article! They had published it without bothering to pay.

In this case, the story had a more or less happy ending. The agency made good on the article, paying me for it even though they must have absorbed the loss. I say “more or less happy” only because a truly happy ending would have given the customer a bath in boiling oil.
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Mysteries in Manatas

This entry was posted in Reviews and tagged books fiction on by

Madness in Manatas coverWhat if the Reconquista hadn’t happened and the Iberian peninsula remained primarily in Muslim hands? What if Al-Andalus, rather than Christian Spain, had sent explorers and colonists into the New World? What if its people had colonized what we call Manhattan, mixing heavily with people from other cultures? This alternate history forms the basis of a series of mystery novels by Roberta Rogow. I’ve read the six that have come out so far and enjoyed them. The island is called “Manatas” in this version of history. Each book is presents one or more murders whose investigation falls to Halvar, a North European employed by the Sultan. The books so far are:

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Writers’ Zone on DZone

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged technical writing writing on by

A few days ago I came across the “Writers’ Zone” on DZone. It looks like a very useful resource for people who, like me, do freelance writing on technical topics. Two different skills intersect in our work: expertise on technology and the ability to present a compelling message. A good developer or sysadmin understands the stuff, but most of them find it a challenge just to write understandable comments. There are freelance writers who can research anything, but it’s not the same as really knowing the issues. We bring the technical knowledge and the writing skill together in one place.

Writers’ Zone has articles from many different perspectives. There are pieces for customers and editors, articles on how to write better, suggestions on tools and how to use them, and — as is their right — regular self-promotion. It’s a site any technically oriented freelancer ought to bookmark.

Just by the way, DZone loves it when people submit articles. However, they don’t love it enough to pay.