Oh my God! Oh fck! I wake up to this big news and all I can say is fck! I went to bed having read something about Philip K Dick Awards (I can't even remember what I read about it!) and I wake up to learn that my book, Where Rivers Go To Die, has been nominated for this and its a big deal to me and all I can day is f*ck! What a way to start the year!
The next time you see a writer, an artist or another creative person promoting their work in the Fediverse ... and you are annoyed by this, please take a look at the quote by Durgadas Allon Duriel.
And this is also a friendly reminder that artists and small businesses are not huge corporations or companies with a lot of money. These people have to pay their bills etc. like everyone else. So they have to talk about their works and products.
I see writers are finding fake books attributed to them for sale on Amazon - again. If this happens to you and you're a member of The Society of Authors or your local equivalent, let them know at once. Writers' organisations can get through to key Amazon people direct and the more evidence they have of a problem, the more likely they'll get it resolved.
Hello #WritingCommunity
Apparently #Google has changed their privacy policy and now says that they'll scrape everything you post online to train their AI tools.
I even post my #Fiction online on #Substack & my #Wordpress blog and now wonder if this is a bad idea.
They say paywalls could deter the scraping.
What do you think writers can do to protect their content? Or should we just roll over and accept that this is the way things will be from now on?
Hold the British Museum accountable for copyright and moral rights infringement and the erasure of feminist poet Qiu Jin!
Recently, I discovered that the British Museum's "China's Hidden Century" exhibit used my published translations of Chinese feminist poet Qiu Jin's poetry without contacting me, and thus without any permission, credit, or payment.
"Yes…fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape? The moneylenders, the knownothings, the authoritarians have us all in prison; if we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can.”
Some friends have started this petition to support me and to hold the British Museum accountable for their use of my translations of Qiu Jin's poetry without permission, credit, or pay in an exhibit for over a month.
Oh crap, I've only been on #Etsy for a few weeks and made 3 sales, but it has been THE WORST experience! Endless spam, useless, automated "support", punishments that were never explained and finally getting my account suspended for no reason, and Etsy gets to keep my money for up to half a year — if you want to sell your stuff somewhere, I'd recommend anywhere else!
Check out my blogpost if you want more details. https://alinaleonova.net/blog/etsy #WritingCommunity#blog#shit
"Don't create anything, copy existing works from existing artists and alter it sufficiently to escape copyright laws. It's the largest theft of property ever-"