5 blog posts about ebook publishing

[elf]

Poking through various publishing/ebook blogs, these are the posts of interest to me recently. Some of them have multiple links to other blogs, and those are often worth reading too. The first one, especially, is worth some talk. I'm also annoyed at the growing number of self-pub authors who are releasing first drafts with intent to edit after the reviews start coming in and telling them what readers didn't like.

Dear Author: When I bought your book, I didn't sign up to be your beta reader (grumbling about major edits after release, like adding new chapters)

Carolyn Jewel: Why Ebook Formatting Matters (with screencaps!)

Guest post @ Publishing a Book is an Adventure: Amazon and Book Review Ownership (Amazon claims management rights for reviews on their site. Not quite claiming copyright, but they don't allow authors to use those quotes; authors would have to get permission from the reviewer.)

The Passive Voice: You Say Documents; I say Source Files (formatting manuscripts for ebook production; quote of another person's post + commentary by PG.)

Indie Author News: How to Avoid Bad Book Reviews (Importance of researching one's selected reviewers)

Comments

[stasia]

Wait. Wait, my brain just melted.

People are publishing books without getting them beta-read?

What the everloving fuck?

Stasia

[elf]

"Post without beta" is not the brain-melty part. Ten minutes on Smashwords will tell you that yes, people post stuff without having it beta'd. Some post stuff without any hint of proofreading. ("What was she going to tell her parent’s?") Some of them are arrogant enough to attach price tags to that stuff. (Not looking for examples. PLEASE DON'T ASK FOR EXAMPLES.)

The truly mind-boggling approach is "post for sale with the intention of using reviewers to point out weak spots and errors, and then (attempt to) correct them, and re-upload book for sale."

[tameiki]

Just how common is this practice of not proofreading and/or having a story beta'd before selling? I've witnessed several versions of ebooks being sold after each revision but thought that was fairly rare. After reading these links, now I'm not so sure...

[elf]

It's fairly rare, just common enough to be noticed. It's just *aggravating* because the authors who do it are mostly unapologetic and don't seem to understand why anyone would be unhappy about it--after all, they'll make the updated version available and buyers can just re-download that.

There seems to be a lack of comprehension that buyers were paying for a *finished* book.

[zvi]

I find it a bit astonishing disheartening that people aspiring to be paid, professional authors have such poor understanding of copyright.

Amazon's Community Guidelines (as quoted) didn't contain any bizarre claims or grabs, the first response was an over reach in administering rights, but the followup response was, again, perfectly ordinary and largely correct.

I do think there's a likely fair use argument to be made for authors excerpting reviews without permission to promote their books, but there's nothing wrong with Amazon pointing out that authors don't have rights to reviews of their books.

[elf]

There's a whole lot of people who think copyright means "if it was created for money, the creator owns ALL RIGHTS to how and where and by whom it is used, and if it's distributed for free on the internet, copyright doesn't apply." (I facepalm every time someone uses the phrase "public domain" to mean "accessible by the public.")

From what I can sort out, quoting reviews would not be fair use--it's not commenting *on the review,* and it's not parody or transformative, and it's pretty solidly grabbing someone else's writing for commercial purposes. However, since the reviews being quoted would, presumably, be positive (nobody wants to put "I couldn't get past the first two chapters" on a book jacket), and the reviewer, presumably, wants the book to sell well (hence leaving the review at all), most reviewers wouldn't be inclined to attempt to sue authors for using their words. (If you rec'd a fic you loved and the author quoted that in their updated notes, would you feel violated or honored?) (Might depend on other specific details, of course.)

So I can see why the issue hadn't directly come up before. Amazon can't go after people for infringement, so its corporate stompiness doesn't come into play. And individual reviewers are generally well-disposed towards the authors of the books they gave glowing reviews, so there's not much likelihood of a lawsuit.