A few weeks ago our dishwasher, an old Kenmore that came with the house, gave up the ghost. After decades of barebones apartment living washing dishes by hand, the thought of not having a machine to do that chore was anathema to my middle class soul. So my wife and I immediately purchased a new one […]
The post Worth Knowing appeared first on Waiter Rant.
“There’s someone her to see you,” one of my volunteers, said. “Who?” I said, not looking up from my paperwork. “A couple with two kids. They said they need to talk to you.” Even though Christmas is just under two months away, the food pantry I run is already busy preparing for the holidays. In […]
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I was huffing and puffing on the Stairmaster at the gym a few weeks ago when I noticed a woman staring at me. In her early forties, she was fit, pretty, and wearing a tight workout garment that accentuated her shapely physique. Since I don’t suffer from the delusion that all women find me attractive, […]
The post Stealing Fire appeared first on Waiter Rant.
Dreamspinner Keeps Promising Authors to "Catch Up What Everyone Is Due" In PaymentsWriter Beware has been receiving similar complaints about late royalty and advance payments and confusing/conflicting explanations for the delays, with some authors saying they are owed four- and even five-figure amounts. According to a number of authors who contacted me, these problems have become more acute in the past few months, but they aren't new: periodic payment delays, with attendant excuses, began as much as two years ago.
Romance publisher Dreamspinner Press has not been paying royalties in timely fashion, authors have been reporting online, at least partially confirmed by emailed updates from the company that have been shared. Earlier this summer, authors posted on Twitter that the publisher had been inconsistent with payments for over a year, including delays in issuing both first quarter and second quarter 2019 royalties. In June, author TJ Klune posted, "Out of the last 8 quarters, this is the fourth time payments have been late, and the second in which I am owed penalties for said lateness." (Klune had said in March he would part ways with Dreamspinner after delivering three more books.) Author Suki Fleet posted, "I'm not waiting on a lot--but what I am waiting on is from foreign royalties paid to Dreamspinner this time *last* year, that I had to specifically ask for."
That month authors began announcing requests to revert their rights, a trend that continued over the course of the summer. There was some controversy within the romance community over whether authors withdrawing their work could cause the publisher to fail (or fail faster), in which case no one would get paid. Criticism extended to authors who supported the publisher as well, even though they were owed money.
Multiple agents PL spoke to said they were no longer doing business with Dreamspinner, except to negotiate their clients' rights back. They told us that acquisitions at the publisher had dwindled over the past year, confirmed by the sharp drop in PM deal reports, with Dreamspinner acquiring mostly from their existing authors, many of whom are unrepresented.
Dreamspinner provided authors a number of explanations in weekly emails, including writing that they had "not received payments from Amazon for UK or EU currencies," that they were awaiting deposits from "vendors," and that the late payments had been caused by a software glitch. In their latest update on September 4, the publisher said that they are anticipating a small business loan that will enable them to issue payments, and that they "can't offer a firm payment date to catch up what everyone is due." The email goes on, "With every set of deposits we receive, we've been sending payments, and we are continuing to respond as best we can to author requests." They added that they can't provide proof of the impending loan that authors have asked for because, "legal and banking documents are confidential and can't be posted online."
Meanwhile, authors including Indra Vaughn, Avon Gale, Jeff Adams, Will Knauss, CJane Elliott, Meredith Shayne, Tia Fielding, and many more have requested rights back. Fielding wrote on Facebook, "In the last year or so, they've repeatedly been more or less late in royalty payments." TJ Klune wrote in an email to the company that he posted on Twitter, that he is owed $27,448 in royalties and plans to involve a lawyer. A Facebook group of 75 former DSP authors has formed for people who have pulled their books or are considering it.
RWA has offered support for authors who have experienced trouble with Dreamspinner. They said in an August 21 statement: "We're aware of the situation, and members who need professional relations assistance, should contact memberadvocacy@rwa.org to reach our staff professional relations manager." Dreamspinner did not respond to PL's request for comment.
When you have to explain yourself by saying "We want to make clear that this isn't bankruptcy", it's not generally a good sign.And here's the latest Dreamspinner update. Um. Yeah. Financial restructuring. pic.twitter.com/dYjZaXKgrt— Anna Zabo (@amergina) December 28, 2019
The statement from Chizine neglects a number of salient facts, such as the moment in July 2018, at Necon, when I explained to Brett Savory that my partner was facing a layoff, our cat was ill, we were in severe financial distress, and I had *never* been paid a single cent of royalties in what was at that time almost two years for a moderately successful book. He actually grinned and said, "Things are hard for everyone right now" before walking away. The following morning it was reported to me that Sandra was loudly complaining in the dealer room about me having asked about my royalties, and of course the two of them went on a whirlwind trip around the world a few weeks after that, showing us all that things weren't so rough for them, after all.Kurtz's experience was not isolated.
In fact, I'd asked after my royalties several times and was rebuffed or given excuses every single time (usually something wrong with their accounting software or something similar, which I later learned they’d been saying to authors for years). I only went to the HWA after several other frustrated CZP authors (one of whom hadn't been paid in five years!) strongly encouraged me to do so. I expressed fear of bullying and/or retaliation, and some of these authors promised me they'd have my back (they didn't). And yes, a lot of us got paid through my efforts, though it is untrue I'm paid in full. I was never paid royalties for the months of my first year of publication, 2016, though CZP continues to claim I was. I just gave up on this.
For the purposes of the USA Today Bestseller Medical Thriller Author Publishing Collaborative Boxed Set program, Genius Media shall not incur any publication and promotion expenses of any nature in excess of the fees paid under the terms of its author agreements and shall have no power to obligate [redacted] or any other author for any publication and promotion expense above author fees paid whatsoever.There's a "cash call" prohibition and an expense cap. But Kairos wanted writers to believe otherwise, so it could inflate expenses and ensure a loss.
In 2013-15, I hired Mr. Bastian as a ghost writer and later co-author of a novel we wrote together called Henry and Tom, sold through Amazon/Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).You'll note a reference to a bankruptcy. Wid Bastian filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition on January 13, 2020.
In mid 2015, Mr. Bastian embezzled money from a joint bank account we opened to pay for marketing campaigns for Henry and Tom. Rather than pursue embezzlement charges, I hired an expensive lawyer in Washington DC to transfer all rights for Henry and Tom to me in exchange for a $4K payment to Wid and a non-disparagement clause for both of us. This seemed at the time like the most expedient and cost effective way to deal with all the problems Mr. Bastian had caused.
I thought this matter was concluded until recently when Amazon/KDP informed me that a debt collection firm had placed a lien on Henry and Tom due to a bankruptcy filed by Wid Bastian/Genius Media Inc. KDP is currently sending my royalties to the collector per the lien. I have filed formal complaints with Attorneys General in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York in an attempt to have the lien removed in states where the debt collectors are registered. I have also filed formal complaints against Wid and Genius Media Inc. with the Attorney General of Utah and the County Attorneys Office in Providence, Utah.
I think blogs like this are creating awareness of the depth and extent of Wid’s continuing criminal activities so we can all work together to stop him from doing this to others and get him to face justice.
Or this one?
Or this one?
Of course the books haven't undergone "extensive evaluation", or been "carefully chosen", or showed to "a team" that "really like[s] your vision". Such solicitations are just spam, blasted out to addresses scraped from the internet or stolen from self-publishing company customer lists.
| My home office, with feline assistant. |
| Sarah, my other assistant. Kittehs are a comfort. |
| Emily: Why are you taking my picture _again_? |
CDL relies on an incorrect interpretation of copyright’s “fair use” doctrine to give legal cover to Open Library and potentially other CDL users’ outright piracy—scanning books without permission and lending those copies via the internet. By restricting access to one user at a time for each copy that the library owns, the proponents analogize scanning and creating digital copies to physically lending a legally purchased book. Although it sounds like an appealing argument, the CDL concept is based on a faulty legal argument that has already been rejected by the U.S. courts.For a more detailed deconstruction of CDL's arguments, see this statement from the Association of American Publishers.
In Capitol Records v. ReDigi, the Second Circuit held that reselling a digital file without the copyright holder’s permission is not fair use because the resales competed with the legitimate copyright holder’s sales. It found that market harm was likely because the lower-priced resales were sold to the same customers who would have otherwise purchased new licenses. In this regard, the court emphasized a crucial distinction between resales of physical media and resales of digital content, noting that unlike physical copies, digital content does not deteriorate from use and thus directly substitutes new licensed digital copies.
The same rationale applies to the unauthorized resale or lending of ebooks. Allowing libraries to digitize and circulate copies made from physical books in their collection without authorization, when the same books are available or potentially available on the market, directly competes with the market for legitimate ebook licenses, ultimately usurping a valuable piece of the market from authors and copyright holders.
To address our unprecedented global and immediate need for access to reading and research materials, as of today, March 24, 2020, the Internet Archive will suspend waitlists for the 1.4 million (and growing) books in our lending library by creating a National Emergency Library to serve the nation’s displaced learners. This suspension will run through June 30, 2020, or the end of the US national emergency, whichever is later.What this boils down to, under all the high-flying verbiage: the IA is ditching the one-user-at-a-time restriction that is one of the key justifications for the theory of controlled digital lending, and allowing unlimited numbers of users to access any digitized book in its collection.
During the waitlist suspension, users will be able to borrow books from the National Emergency Library without joining a waitlist, ensuring that students will have access to assigned readings and library materials that the Internet Archive has digitized for the remainder of the US academic calendar, and that people who cannot physically access their local libraries because of closure or self-quarantine can continue to read and thrive during this time of crisis, keeping themselves and others safe.
IA is using a global crisis to advance a copyright ideology that violates current federal law and hurts most authors. It has misrepresented the nature and legality of the project through a deceptive publicity campaign. Despite giving off the impression that it is expanding access to older and public domain books, a large proportion of the books on Open Library are in fact recent in-copyright books that publishers and authors rely on for critical revenue. Acting as a piracy site—of which there already are too many—the Internet Archive tramples on authors’ rights by giving away their books to the world.Here's just one concrete example. Katherine Harbour's Nettle King is available for borrowing in the National Emergency Library as a scan, an EPUB, and a PDF (the IA's EPUB versions are OCR conversions full of errors). Published in 2016, it's also "in print" and available on Amazon and other online retailers as an ebook, in addition to other formats. The IA, which never bought a digital license to Ms. Harbour's book and scanned and uploaded it without permission, now is proposing to allow unlimited numbers of users to access it, potentially impacting her sales. How is this any different from a pirate site?
[U]sing the Coronavirus pandemic as an excuse, the Archive has created the “National Emergency Library” and removed virtually all controls from the digital copies so that they can be viewed and downloaded by an infinite number of readers. The uncontrolled distribution of copyrighted material is an additional blow to authors who are already facing long-term disruption of their income because of the pandemic. Uncontrolled Digital Lending lacks any legal argument or justification.UPDATE 4/9/20: The Chairman of the US Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Thom Tillis, has sent a letter to the Internet Archive, pointing out the many voluntary initiatives by authors, publishers, and libraries to expand access to copyrighted materials, and expressing concern that this be done within the law.
I am not aware of any measure under copyright law that permits a user of copyrighted works to unilaterally create an emergency copyright act. Indeed, I am deeply concerned that your "Library" is operating outside the boundaries of the copyright law that Congress has enacted and alone has the jurisdiction to amend.The letter ends by punting "discussion" until "some point when the global pandemic is behind us." So, basically, carry on and maybe at some point we'll talk.
In an early analysis of the use we are seeing what we expected: 90% of the books borrowed were published more than ten years ago, two-thirds were published during the twentieth century. The number of books being checked out and read is comparable to that of a town of about 30,000 people. Further, about 90% of people borrowing the book only looked at it for 30 minutes. These usage patterns suggest that perhaps that patrons may be using the checked-out book for fact checking or research, but we suspect a large number of people are browsing the book in a way similar to browsing library shelves.But this is hardly a compelling argument. Large numbers of these books are certainly still in copyright, and many are likely still "in print" and commercially available (in digital form as well as hardcopy). Just because a book was published more than ten years ago or prior to 2000 doesn't magically cause it to become so hard to find it must be digitized without permission in order to save it. "But they're older books" sidesteps, rather than addresses, the thorny copyright issues raised by the IA's unpermissioned scanning and digitizing.
Kamilita “Can U” The last time I wrote about this artist she was a mysterious and extremely prolific Bandcamp artist called Zizi Raimondi, but sometime recently she eliminated all her Bandcamp presence and rebranded as Kamilita. She’s still prolific, has put a lot of energy into her visual aesthetic on Instagram and YouTube, and is […]
Laura Marling “Strange Girl” Laura Marling sings with tone that suggests total clarity of mind, as though it would be a waste of her time to write from a perspective of uncertainty. “Strange Girl” is a character sketch of a young woman struggling to get by in a harsh economy that’s rigged against her, and […]
The Strokes “The Adults Are Talking” The Strokes is the type of act where the aesthetic premise is always the same – electronic music but played with rock instruments as rock songs – but the approach and execution changes. The interesting thing about their new record The New Abnormal is how that high concept, which […]
Hamilton Leithauser “The Garbage Men” “The Garbage Men” has a sort of shabby grandeur to it, particularly in the contrast of the unrestrained clattering percussion and a sampled horn loop that’s like a very rough approximation of a sentimental string arrangement from an old Hollywood film. It sounds like a guy stumbling around drunk through […]
Fiona Apple “Ladies” The big frustrating thing about loving Fiona Apple’s music is that she takes so long between records, but the immediately apparent thing about her new album Fetch the Bolt Cutters is that these particular songs simply couldn’t exist as they do without all that time for reflection and emotional processing. Whereas most […]
Theophilus London “Marchin'” Theophilus London’s new record is filled with impressive guest spots – two tracks with Tame Impala, features from Raekwon, Dev Hynes, Lil Yachty, and Ariel Pink – and on each of those collaborations the singer adopts their distinctive aesthetics and essentially sounds like he’s the guest. “Marchin’,” one of the few songs […]
Alexandra Savior “Bad Disease” Alexandra Savior belongs to a long tradition of torch singers, but the sound and lyrical concerns of “Bad Disease” place her in the overlap of a Venn diagram of Portishead and Lana Del Rey. I know it can read like a backhanded compliment to say an artist sounds like two others, […]
Cleo Sol “When I’m In Your Arms” Cleo Sol made her new record with the producer Inflo, who also produced the two Sault albums from last year. There’s a very similar aesthetic to this music – classic soul rendered with warm, foregrounded bass and ample negative space that highlights the precision of all other instruments […]
Kate Bollinger “A Couple Things” The music of “A Couple Things” is so loose, smooth, and assured that it’s a little surprising the lyrics are so anxious and obsessed with making mistakes. Kate Bollinger’s voice conveys some vulnerability, but even that seems measured, like she’s answering the concerns of her past self with a display […]
Cindy Lee “Lucifer Stand” “Lucifer Stand” is built around a keyboard vamp that sounds like a hollowed out version of Goldfrapp in their electro-glam phase. Everything else in the mix seems to echo off the walls implied by that riff, with the vocals sounding especially distant from wherever you are in this. Cindy Lee doesn’t […]
Negara Rusia ini merupakan negara multikultural yang dipengaruhi dengan berbagai macam budaya. Nah, salah satu budayanya yang mendominasi ialah budaya Gereja Ortodoks Yunani yang telah merasuk kedalam kehidupan negeri Beruang Merah ini. selain itu juga terdapat penambahan kebudayaan Slavia yang Ortodoks, Tatar yang Islam, suku Buryat yang nomaden serta Paganisme. Selain itu Rusia juga tercatat […]
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Makanan Rusia memiliki beragam bentuk dan juga rasa yang berbeda pada umumnya. Dimana makanan ini merupakan makanan yang sering sekali di konsumsi oleh para petani yang ada di negara tersebut. dahulu memang pada sebagian besar petani Rusia sangat amat miskin sehingga mereka semua mengharuskan emmutar akal mereka untuk bisa menghasilkan yang namanya makanan lewat beberapa […]
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Setiap orang pasti akan mengikuti suatu kebiasaan yang memang dari dulu sudah tercipta di negaranya tersebut. Misalnya saja kebiasaan orang Indonesia, yang dimana sering kali mengejar layangan yang sudah putus (kaum anak kecil, secara turun temurun masih menggunakan kebiasaan ini ), lalu kebiasaan melakukan tindakan seperti ” Salim..” setiap hari ke Orang yang lebih tua […]
The post Indonesia Mah Lewat, Kebiasaan Ini Cuma Ada Di Rusia!! appeared first on anni-sanni.com.
Jika kalian memiliki niatan untuk mengunjungi Negara Rusia sebagai salah satu Negara dalam destinasi kalian. Maka, kalian harus mengetahui negaranya tersebut sebelum kalian melakukan sebuah kecerobohan di sana. Misalnya kalian harus mengetahui peraturan disana, harus tahu akan etika saat berkunjung ke Negara tersebut, dan harus paham juga mengenai apa saja yang bisa kalian lakukan dan […]
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In last week’s midterm elections, Democratic and progressive political candidates flipped red House districts, key state legislative bodies, governors’ offices, and even Senate seats in Nevada and Arizona. We’ve elected one of the most diverse Congressional classes in history, with historic numbers of women and LGBTQ representatives, including the first Muslim and Native American women […]
In October, the Supreme Court heard a case that was painfully ironic, considering the Kavanaugh hearings the nation had just been subjected to: a challenge to the United States’ extremely restrictive sex offender registry laws. While opinions on the case Gundy v. United States, which challenges the Attorney General’s ability to retroactively impose registry requirements, have yet […]
