Attitudes in the book blogging community

There are some outliers that make the experience of sharing love and support for fellow writers very difficult.

I love reading. I love sharing my thoughts on what I read. I love recommending great novels. I also love sharing my experiences with writing and tidbits of information around writing, editing, publishing, and marketing. For the most part the online community is greatful and supportive. I have delightful conversations and garner knowledge from other bloggers on their own journey.

In dealing with a wide sample of the population we get a plethora of experience, knowledge, and attitudes.

Helping younger bloggers and writers elevate their content. Provide more critical reviews and recommendations, more insight into the craft of writing is what I consider what this community this community is all about.

One of my biggest dislikes has been the spam, the unsubstantiated emotional responses (*cough*trolling*cough*) and professionals coming back to members of the community with cold, threatening attitudes because they are trying to monetize and ‘own’ the content that a multitude of bloggers are posting for free. Granted it’s a small minority of the community at large, but it exists and can have an enormous impact on the person targeted with this type of behaviour.

I’ve personally had my content plagiarized. And it takes nothing to reach out to the instigator and politely ask them to either take the post down, or link it to your original material. There is no need for threats of lawyers, being rude, or charging them money for using your content. After all, you can contact the hosting service if they are in breach of copyright (WordPress has its own guidelines and governance regarding this) and the material can be taken down as a last resort. Or ultimately there is the registrar, the DMCA, or even google. (I have previously written a post with step-by-step actions about these topics here.) There are always steps to take other than a heated emails with no response.

On the other side of the coin, I have myself inadvertently breached copyright. In researching an article, I copy and pasted material into several documents for reference later offline, and to link to when I wrote and published my article. However after writing my post, I accidently deleted the finished article, and saved one of those source material documents under the title… and then it was subsequently scheduled to post. So what was published were notes cut and pasted without context of someone else’s material. Plagiarism out right. So embarrassing. A lesson learned in triple, quadruple checking the line-up of scheduled posts. I received an email the next day of a threatening nature. Granted it was my mistake, and I was able to find my original article and upload it in place of the mistakenly published article – the in-question material having only been live for 10 hours. However, this time I expanded on the topic, researched more and made it even better. The thing is, if I’d received a better toned email, I would have admitted my mistake, altered the article and the owner of some of the source material would have been credited and given a lot of hype in the article – benefitting us both. But instead I found alternate source material – who don’t require a paid subscription to access – and much more examples. My newly edited article was infinitely much better, and all reference to the nasty emailer removed. They missed out on engaging any audience funnelled from my publication just because of their attitude. I would have responded to a nice email… but I don’t reply to threats. You don’t get results for inciting negativity. You can escalate the issue for importance sure, but keep it neutral in tone. I hesitate to mention, that even after I had uploaded the correct and finished article, removing reference to the emailers original content, they continued to harass me to the point I had to block them on all of my social media accounts. This person clearly did not check the updated article, or check her tone. I wanted to issue a public apology, I wanted to contribute some of her material as inspiration for my article, but after the bullying nature and threatening nature of their correspondence (from a professional in the industry mind you,) I’m doing what my mother always said. Ignore the bullies and eventually they will find a new target to annoy.

I guess with a background in teaching – you learn a bit about reacting to attitudes; a little about conflict resolution. But with the rise of social media we are seeing a lot of this clapback mentality. Off the cuff posts, tweets, DM’s, emails designed to hurt, scare, or embarrass the target when you could take a night to sleep on the matter and craft your response more maturely. It’s hard to make this point in a world where sensational content trends regularly. Cancel culture, online bullying, clickbait, response videos, apology videos… they are big business in the news cycle. We are seeing more and more inexperienced (and some who rightfully know better) falling into this trap.

It’s a form of bullying, of hate culture, of negativity that stalls the growth of our community and the publishing industry as a whole. Sadly this is not going to go away. The only way we can start to change attitudes is to not react, or react appropriately. Know appropriate ways to respond to threats. Know the avenues you have available to protect yourself online.

Granted I don’t see this bad behaviour happen a lot within the book blogging community, but it does happen; and when it does it can really impact you.

Anyway I thought this was an interesting discussion to bring to the blog – have you experienced any of this type of behaviour? How did you deal with it? Have you made a faux-par with copyright or plagiarism, and what did you do to make amends? Do you think information around the craft of writing, editing, publishing, and marketing should be widely free and accessible to anyone online, or is it something that should be paid for?

© Casey Carlisle 2020. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Casey Carlisle with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Fiction or FanFic?

When is a book not a book?

I recently came across a competition where an author was offering free publication for the winner, where the entrant can write a novel using the characters mentioned in his trilogy, with exception of the main characters.

While it sounds like a fun and exciting opportunity; a great way to expand the universe of a series you loved and get published. (Because, I gather you wouldn’t enter the competition if you did not like the series.) I even entertained the possibility for a moment. And then I realised that even if you get credit for the writing, you don’t own the intellectual property. The characters belong to someone else. And I’m sure the publishing deal would recoup the publishing costs and goodwill from the sales.

Which I hate to say, reduces the work you’ve put your blood sweat and tears into as simply fan fiction.

There is still a bit of stigma in the writing and publishing world around this kind of writing. It is slowly merging into a genre in its own right, but there are still legal issues around copyright, plagiarism, intellectual property and distribution rights that keep the waters muddy. Arrangements have to be made each step of the way with the author of the fan fiction and the creator or the source material for it to step into ‘big girl pants’ and become a real source of income from writing.

Maybe the author running the competition is looking for a co-writer to inspire him and keep the series alive, or grow the universe much like Marvel or DC Comics? I praise his ingenuity, but at the same time can see major pitfalls for emerging authors. Especially as a debut author. You’re not likely to get another traditional publishing deal when you have already pigeon-holed yourself as a fanfic writer.

That’s the information I’ve gotten back from many of the publishers I’ve questioned.

Having said that, many well-known authors are now writing in someone else’s intellectual landscape: Margaret Stohl with the Black Widow series, Leigh Bardugo with Wonder Woman, James Luceno within the Star Wars Universe, and I could continue listing more and more. Franchises are becoming larger and more lucrative, and writing fan fiction, is becoming a legitimate career. But, this would only be true for established, cult, and large franchises. Small and mostly unknown (like in the competition that sparked this blog) end up doing a huge disservice to an emerging author if they plan on releasing their own work in the future.

There’s a lot to be said for ghost writing, or releasing work under a pseudonym in these areas to protect your brand and credibility. But in a landscape that is in a major state of flux, the publishing industry struggling to catch up with technology and pop culture, claims professionals have made today, may change tomorrow.

In the end, it is the readers who hold all the power. Their decisions on what to buy and read will determine the future. Whether it be growing and expanding the fan fiction genre or not – remember YA and NA are only new genres specifically created from market trends in the last 5 or so years after the popularity of series like Harry Potter, Twilight, Divergent, and The Hunger Games.

We even see this dilemma play out in Rainbow Rowells ‘Fangirl,’ as the protagonist, Kath, struggles to find a voice with her writing and her professors deeming fanfic not a real form of writing… Like Kath’s world, fan fiction is massive on the internet in real life. Even Amazon.com have recognised this growing market and launched its own Fan Fiction Publishing division, splitting royalties between the company, the original author, and the fanfic writer. Though all that time and effort only reaps you a 20% cut, compared to a 90% share for original work in e-book format. It’s certainly food for thought, and at the end of the day you need to be passionate about your work; and maybe the monetary recompense, or credibility, pale in the enjoyment you get from your creative outlet.

In any event, I’m fascinated to see where this phenomenon will go now that a wave of franchises and cross-media events are taking place in popular culture right now.

In the meantime, happy writing.

© Casey Carlisle 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Casey Carlisle with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Bloggers Beware!

The shine got taken off posting to my blog recently when I found someone had stolen my identity…

I love blogging, sharing stories, recommending great books, but in the past weeks all of my enthusiasm for this activity was soured when I came across a new blog. It only had one book review, which was intelligent, cited, and made some really good points. But on closer inspection, total click bait, posting links to other websites. And to make it worse, listed my details as the author – including links to all of my personal social media.

I just about threw up in my mouth. It was like a large block of ice formed in my stomach. I could barely believe what I was looking at. I clicked around on everything, to make sure it wasn’t some type of computer error and ensure I could duplicate the results. But it was legit. Legit piracy. The author of the site had totally hijacked my identity.

It looked innocent enough, but where would it stop? It was endorsing other websites I certainly had no knowledge of, or interest in. It was reviewing a book I’d never read… and suddenly the prospect of my identity in the hands of a stranger had my nerves in knots.

As my best friend said ‘That’s just not cricket.’

I got the site taken down by the end of day, it took reporting it to WordPress admin, Gravatar Copyright Division, and the regulation board, and a firmly worded comment to the owner of the site explaining my actions and readiness to take legal action.

It turns out the site author took it down pretty quickly.

The whole experience left me a little gun-shy about posting for a while.

My social media is secure; they had never hacked any of my accounts. But someone had started a new blog, listed my information and linked it to my platform. That’s some audacious human being. So, just a polite warning to my fellow bloggers out there – be vigilant, check out the author of blogs and articles you’re liking to make sure they are legit. We need to keep our community ‘real’ and sift out fakers posting clickbait.

This is meant to be a fun safe place to share our thoughts and writing, and though it has been somewhat sullied by this experience, I still enjoy blogging and will continue.

I guess this was the best type of scare to give me a kick in the butt to overhaul my security (and privacy) online. Change passwords frequently, and use ones that are hard to guess. Use numbers and characters, change cases. Don’t list or broadcast too much personal information. Occasionally do a search on yourself, or your image. It’s not an ego thing – it’s protecting your identity/brand. Choose to have added steps in authentication for your sites. I know it sounds painful and unnecessarily drawn out, but it is definitely worth it. If someone does hack your account or steal your identity to ‘catfish’ and are particularly stubborn; the lengths you have to go to to protect your content or image may be stressful, lengthy, and in some cases if legal action is taken, expensive.

Familiarise yourself with the rules and regulations of the medium you post your content to – and the avenues you have for appeal and policing.

It’s simply the other side of having a presence on the internet we all have to be aware of.

So after you’ve done all of the boring stuff you can get back to being creative, sharing your thoughts and revel in writing again with the knowledge that you are protecting your stuff.

Happy writing and take care out there…

© Casey Carlisle 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Casey Carlisle with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.