I wrote an essay in university which I failed to provide any references for. I still passed but the lecturer found it alarming I didn't include it, and when I found it recently, so was I. Plagiarism seems to only be taken seriously in those environments. Online, it doesn't seem to matter, YouTubers can do it all the time and get away with it.
I have to act as my own legal department, so the stress of making sure I adhered to copyright in terms of making my own covers and releasing my work (I don't rip off other writers, not even for fun), the headaches associated just got too much. Even when I thought I'd stolen an idea from someone assuming we were both sourcing from the same mythology, I got pretty nervous considering the likelihood of this author finding out was minuscule. My first traditional publication was made more stressful for having used a song title as the book title, which is legal, but when it was brought into question, I went into a complete spiral. It's just a stupid idea to borrow a title, it's better to have something original for internet search purposes. There were two books called Cloud Atlas out at the same time and the lesser known version benefited from the confusion. I wanted to include quotes from songs and decided against it.
In the end, I just didn't want to create for the sake of selling. Amazon will forever put me through the wringer if I keep trying to make new versions of my first trad publication because I can't get them to take down the listing. I have to sit and wait for them to make a decision that should take ten seconds to do so. And even when I contest the flag, I feel like I'm standing trial and am terrified of committing fraud even though I know it's my work and I was given it back in a one sentence email. It's too exhausting to just send emails trying to prove a point. I still haven't been able to get across how demoralising it was to see people profit from plagiarism simply by swapping names, then gaining popularity through word of mouth, getting angry became so draining. It's draining thinking about it now. I had it drilled into me in college, even this reference slip up was from an elective course. I couldn't hand in a ripoff a popular novel and expect to graduate, or even remain in the fucking school. I was told I had to be original, so when I saw this wasn't true, I resented the entire course. My only saving grace from not becoming popular is nobody's trying to steal my stuff.
I've seen where the wind's blowing in another aspect and I'm going further out to sea the fuck away from it. I still get Bookstagram shit in my feeds now and then, so I had to stop on a post about a cosplayer who's had their deal revoked for posting fake negative reviews about other books, (apparently linked to her friends that were also racist posts) and was also making fake accounts to post positive reviews of her shit. Both are equally bad. But of course I go into the comments to see people condoning and letting the fake positive reviews slide, because the inverse action was really crossing the line and deplorable. If I go into that conversation and say, well she did it because shits like you turn a blind eye to fake positive reviews, she decided to take it further, I'll get dogpiled. Don't condone either. Don't say one okay one bad and complain about how bad the bad got. I'm sure some of these people engaged in review-bombing authors they didn't like, or didn't care if people they liked did it against bad people or people they disliked. I'm sure if they wrote and published shit and had the chance, they 100% would make up fake reviews praising their own shit. So, don't complain about Goodreads being a cesspool now because of it. Shut up. You created this scenario by ignoring the fake review problem. Then there were people who were begging the OP to not show this author's face. I don't care, she should be named and shamed but if you condone even 1% of her actions, you'll keep having this issue. Shut up.
I'm out. This is the environment I'm expected to participate in for the sake of recognition? I'm supposed to agree with these idiots? Fake five star reviews mean nothing to me. I hate them, I hate I can't remove them. I was asked to do it by my publisher to "get the ball rolling" so to speak and I didn't agree with it then. (I also don't know how she expected us to get pull quotes for a book that early without giving drafts to people, I guess if you ran it through a beta reader site, I don't know I don't engage in that BS either). You want me to talk to these people and respect they're BS opinions? No. I don't even want to do this publicly, I am too exhausted by that industry, Aubrey Plaza can just decide to make a kid's book about a Christmas witch (it's a collab, but still) and it happens. You let people with platforms circumvent the same path unknowns have to tread. I've had enough of it. I'm too tired to start over. I'm not going to track on Smashwords, my Amazon shit is staying as is, I cannot be bothered Kindlefying everything, or creating hardcover editions. Nope. Unless the others pick up miraculously, I'll consider it but they're not 100% fit for new editions or need new listings. I don't know why it even feels moderately tempting to do it and I have to resist the pull since there's no reward in the term of passive sales pending. I don't want to redo covers at all. If they could just reconfigure the paperback copies to Kindle, (or hardcover, because how have they not bothered to automate this by now? How hard would it be.) I'd do it but I know I have to make sure my chapter links are working etc. It would be easier to just reinstate the Smashwords versions. I'm just fuckin done. I'm really hoping when I try to find work they don't bring this shit up like it's a viable solution, if I could make this work financially I'd be doing it already, wouldn't I.
I forgot Kindle has a desktop app that's really not as good as it wants to believe it is, but since I don't care enough, I can use this to fix stuff then just upload something. It's sufficient despite some annoying factors I won't bother worrying about, like adding their own copyright page to the table of contents, and the application crashes, but it does all the shit I cannot be fucked doing via Word. I get other people have the patience to do this, and the options I had in the application are severely underwhelming but again sufficient for me to just put something on these placeholders. It did the bare minimum of isolating chapters and sub-chapters based on formatting, that's all I was asking for. I used to get pointlessly hung up on the flow of Kindle books as well but having seen some professional shit be as bad I don't see why I need to care. It was just having something to autocreate the fuckin' NCX files which were pointless banes on my existence. I thought the Smashwords files had them but they didn't in the end. I wanted the easiest, least fiddly way to do this and realised there was a program for it, it's just so cheaply designed considering it's Amazon's. I don't get for all their money why they refuse to step up their pussies in the publishing area to be taken seriously by everyone.
In the end I got three hits on one book, so I'm out now, best I can hope for is random lending library fees. Someone made a joke about Quibi and I feel like this is a weird comparative example of an indie publisher failing by being too niche. There's a service called Nebula which is basically by and for content creators which seems to be far more successful and has nothing to do with any major network, streaming service or individual billionaire producer. Dan Harmon's fiance had a show on Quibi which had to be saved by another service, so I always felt bad like someone threw her a bone, even if she got a billboard, Quibi was probably less selective about new shows once they realised it was going to flop. Seeing successful people flop at something is important. But the crazy part is all the content was given to another service, it didn't just disappear entirely from the platform, which successful platforms are still doing anyway, so even a Netflix or Amazon deal is no indicator of long term success. I sadly told YouTube to stop recommending another content creator who was an author, I've seen her on Instagram. If I don't do anything to do with books online can the algorithm stop showing me book accounts, please? I keep telling people I'm not writing anything, I don't know how long it'll be before I make a new folder for this year, I'm curious if I could go a whole year actually writing nothing.
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