Maegan Provan's Blog, page 14

Independent Publishing and DMCA Abuse, or “How a Scammer Got My Book Blocked with Very Little Effort”

Maegan Provan:

This is a definitely good read. Indie authors, please check this out!

Originally posted on The Active Voice:

Okay, I���ve got a story. It���s a sort of scary one. I think independent/self-publishing authors need to know about it, and telling it carefully and correctly is also important for my own situation, so I���m going to take my time and lay it all out in order.

Pressed for time? You can skip to the bottom for the TL;DR summation.

On Friday, February 27, 2015, I noticed that my bookmarked��Amazon.com link to my first novel,��

Nolander

, was yielding, ���We���re sorry. The Web address you entered is not a functioning page on our site.��� I went to my Amazon dashboard and discovered the book had been blocked.

In my spam folder, I discovered an email from Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Amazon���s self-publishing arm, informing me that someone had sent in a DMCA notice. In response, Amazon had summarily blocked Nolander from sale.

���DMCA��� stands for ���Digital Millennium Copyright Act.������

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…Susan Toy outlines 10 Ways to Kill Your Writing… PART ONE…

Maegan Provan:

An amazing look at writing. I love this!! I will try to stay on top of the posts to share the rest of the five part series. I hope you take time to read this.

Originally posted on Seumas Gallacher:

���I���m delighted to run a five-days consecutive series of posts from my terrific pal, Author, Susan Toy, for every author to enjoy and prob���ly learn lots from��� here���s PART ONE :

10 Ways to Kill Your Writing

This 5-part article is from a talk I gave at the Calgary Public Library Writers��� Weekend Feb. 4, 2012.

Thanks to all of you for reading this series that is very kindly being hosted by the ONE, the ONLY, SEUMAS GALLACHER!

Part 1

Since you���re taking time to read this series, and if you promise to stick with me right to the end, you will receive a very special gift, because I���ve been asked to talk about . . . 10 Ways to Kill Your Writing . . . and for today only, your very special gift includes 3 bonus ways!

First watch this video . . . Inside the Writer���s Mind

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Authors and Bloggers Against Piracy Blog Tour

You know, you hear about authors having their books stolen all the time, and you pray it never happens to you. Yesterday, the latest website to��illegally distribute books from hard working authors was exposed. The community rose up and has done a lot to have those books removed. Of course, the sad fact remains that that won’t be the last website to provide illegal downloads of books.

Tricia pointed out to me that simply holding copyright doesn’t mean as much as it should. Anyone can still come in and take your hard work simply because they want to. If you don’t have the money to hire a lawyer to fight the person that stole your work, you are out of luck. She also made an excellent point. People think that because we are published, we are all like J.K. Rowling, rolling around in money and on the cusp of a movie deal. They think that we have countless agents and a huge fat cat publisher backing us. So they aren’t really taking money out of our pockets. They’re taking money out of the hands of corporate fat cats… How wrong they are.

So that got me thinking. How can we as a community educate our readers and the general public as well as keep people from downloading our books illegally? The answer was quite simple; a blog tour! A week (or more, depending on how many people sign up) set aside for authors to share as many of their books as they wish for free.��Why free you ask? Well, people pirate books because they don’t want to pay for them. So, why shouldn’t we as authors control that? Why shouldn’t we offer our book(s) for free for a week��and encourage people to get our books the right way?

So this is a call to arms. We need bloggers to promote and host as few or as many days as they would like.��You will not be comp’d because this is a free tour. No money is exchanging hands. If you are willing to use your blog as a platform to speak out against book piracy, please volunteer.

We need authors to offer as few or as many books for free as they can. If you’re fortunate enough to make a living off of your writing, don’t put yourself out. One book is what we would like to see but if you want to contribute more, you are more than welcome to.��If you already have a book that is offered for free, you are welcome to contribute that.

I would also like to encourage giveaways, raffles, personalized prizes… Whatever you want to do to make this a fun event. If you sign up for the event, you are not required or expected to do anything more than put one of your books up for free for a day.

This tour isn’t going to be about putting one out or in an awkward position. It’s just a way for authors to take back control of how and when their books are free. It is a way to discourage book piracy.

We also need a logo, so if you’re a graphic artist and are willing to donate a logo, that would be awesome! Depending on the turn out, we’ll do a vote to determine the official logo. If this is successful, I’d love for it to be an annual thing.

I will share more information as it comes in.

Thank you for your time. If you are interested, please request to join our group on Facebook

Less complaining, more thanking

More and more authors are flying off the handle and complaining about reviewers, bullies, trolls and more. They are making grand blog posts, or emotional videos about how mean people can be. They remind us that it isn’t fair to get a bad review, or that people can be so nonconstructive in their review, and the author doesn’t think it’s right. The problem is that before these gestures, those authors aren’t getting bad reviews. In fact, their books do quite well.

So why do they do it? Why do they make grand statements and try to “teach the bullies a lesson” about how to treat authors? To put it bluntly, they do it for the attention. We’ve all heard the saying “any publicity is good publicity.” These authors seem to be willing to sacrifice their work and their good name just to get themselves and their work out there. Of course, more often than not, these authors cannot handled the reactions and end up pulling themselves off of social media, remove their books from publication, and dissolve the career that they worked so hard to start in the first place. Please don’t mistake this as an over-generalization, but see this more as an observation.

As both an author and reviewer, I dance a fine line between being kind (because hurting feelings really does suck) and being honest (because how is an author going to grow if they don’t know where they need to improve?) I preach about honest reviews,��but��there are times that I am honestly afraid of hurting someone and burning a bridge. I have seen what an author crazed by a bad review can do first hand, and I have seen how mean reviewers can be when they think an author needs to be knocked down a few pegs.

Every author dreams of their books gaining fame and notoriety, even the introverts��who��could do without the attention. There is nothing wrong with that. We work in a world where vampires can blend in perfectly with humans,��where fairies and dragons really exist,��where the geeky girl can and will get the hot guy every time; our world is truly a wonderful place to be. It can get frustrating when an author has��created such a fantastic world��and no one seems to be paying it any attention. The lack of sales and heartache can sometimes be overwhelming, and it can sometimes drive an author to extremes.

An idea can seem really great in the beginning. Either they’re frustrated with the lack of readers, or they’ll read a post about an author getting bullied and they want to speak their mind. The sarcastic authors think that a deadpan post about the lack of attention, or what authors really want from reviewers is the way to go, their readers will get it. ��The emotional/ sensitive authors think that a crying plead for kindness will be understood by their readers.��Typically, their readers and friends really do get it! It’s the outsiders that come across it while strolling across the web, and the trolls that are just waiting for drama that don’t. When a book is doing really well and the author starts complaining about how bullies and bad reviews suck, there is a disconnect that many people don’t understand. A misunderstood post can be the death of an author’s career.

I hate to see an author get destroyed over a stupid mistake like that, so I decided to write this blog post. You know, every time I sit down to write, I wonder if that day will be the day that my work gets discovered. I wonder if the right person will pick up Celine, or one of the Becoming Night Touched Shorts and decide that I am talented enough to hit the big time. I’m positive that all of us do that. We just have to be patient. I recognize that I may never be the next Laurell K. Hamilton. Harper and the others may never get the opportunity to get their time on the silver screen. You know what? That’s okay. I am so grateful for every day that my books are on the market. I am grateful for every person that decides that my work is good enough. Joe Schmoe out in Hollywood or Jane Doe at the big publishing house in New York may never see my work, and that’s just fine with me, because they aren’t my audience. It’s you, the person reading this, that I am writing for.

So��I would like to challenge every author out there. Instead of making a video or writing a blog post complaining about negative reviews, or the lack of sales you’re getting, take a few moments to thank the people that��are reading your work and those that do think that your work is good enough. I hate to see another author make a silly mistake.

A big announcement or two

On March 8th, 2013, I hit publish on The Night Touched Chronicles Book One: Celine.��For those of you that have been a part of the Night Touched universe since the beginning, and for those of you that have just joined, you know that next weekend marks a big milestone for the series. We will be celebrating the two year anniversary of the release of Celine! I will be offering Celine��and Jeremy free for��Kindle for that entire weekend. Promotional artwork will be coming soon.

On that note, I have another big announcement. Texas (Book Three) is being put on hold for the time being. Don’t worry, I’m not abandoning the series or going on hiatus with my writing. I am actually planning on completely revamping (pardon the pun) Celine. Jeremy is in a league of his own, and Celine is just kind of the dorky big sister that doesn’t get a lot of attention. I want to change that. I won’t give anything away other than the base story will remain the same, but things will be changing. I want to have those changes made and released before I get back to work on Texas. Becoming Silas and Becoming Jeremy are still going to be out soon, but after their release, my work on Celine will commence.

I hope that you all grab your free copies next weekend, if you don’t have a copy already. Thank you so much to everyone that has supported the series since the beginning. Thank you to those of you that are just discovering my crazy little vampire world and find it interesting. I appreciate all of you so very much.

How much is too much?

Thanks to sites like Smashwords, Createspace, KDP, etc., there are a LOT of self-published authors out there. Everyone single one has a story to tell, which is awesome! However, it seems like more and more people are getting in to self-publishing for the wrong reasons. Please note that I am not suggesting that any one should stop writing, I am simply observing. I couldn’t imagine not being able to share my stories with the world, and I would hate to have someone telling me to stop. Please keep that in mind.

I was looking through Goodreads today; partially ��searching for a book that I read many years ago that I can’t for the life of me remember the title, and partially because I am always looking for new authors to connect with and new works to read. I noticed a somewhat disturbing trend with many of the authors. Some of them have only been publishing��for a little over a year, yet they have��25��or more published books. I even saw one author that had been publishing for 3 years and had 92 published works. I realize, of course, that some of those books could simply be short stories, but even so, that is still a lot. So I started thinking about how long it takes to edit a book, and I mean��really edit a book, as well as how long revisions take, formatting, and everything else that goes into it. Let’s assume that those are all short stories, that would mean that they would have to publish a work every two weeks to even kind of keep up with that kind of work. The author would have to jump from one first draft to the next, effectively jumping from story to story without spending any real amount of time on them. I don’t know about you, but that seems nuts to me. How can one even remotely produce a good story if they’re not focused on it long enough to develop it?

We are constantly criticized as a community because so many authors are just vomiting words on to a page, slapping it up online, and calling it a day. I don’t see any possible way that an author that has put out that much material in that short of a time is producing any kind of quality, and it feels like they are just��perpetuating the stereotype. There are authors that work hard to be taken seriously and put a lot of time and effort into their work. I know that some of the bulk authors are full timers, and could put all of their focus on a work. Even so, 25 books in a year seems like way too many.

I would really appreciate a counter argument to this, and I am opening the door for a guest post, but I am being very serious. I try to advocate for indie authors as often as possible. But poorly thrown together work makes my side of the argument a bit hard.

Jeremy (The Night Touched Chronicle) – Maegan Provan

Maegan Provan:

Jeremy got some amazing love from Joleene Naylor! Check it out.

Originally posted on Jo's Random Book Reviews:

The second in the Night Touched series bounces back and forth between the Night Touched Harper ��� a vampire who was turned by the Firs Born, Jeremy ��� the newest Night Touched, and Silas ��� a slayer sworn to destroy them both.

After Silas and Harper���s disastrous relationship in New York, they are both determined to move on. Harper and her family of vampires head to New Orleans to find the newest night touched. Meanwhile, Silas tries to win back the trust of his organization by hunting her and her friends ��� and using the priest Jeremy to do it. Little do they know they���re both being played.
In this book we get to see and hear more from Silas and begin to understand what made him who he is. Flashbacks reveal a new side; a vulnerable kind side that he has tried to suppress in an effort to uphold���

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Looking for an amazing read this Valentine’s Weekend?

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Battle For The Net

Originally posted on :

If you woke up tomorrow, and your internet looked like this, what would you do?

Imagine all your favorite websites taking forever to load, while you get annoying notifications from your ISP suggesting you switch to one of their approved ���Fast Lane��� sites.

Think about what we would lose: all the weird, alternative, interesting, and enlightening stuff that makes the Internet so much cooler than mainstream Cable TV. What if the only news sites you could reliably connect to were the ones that had deals with companies like Comcast and Verizon?

On September 10th, just a few days before the FCC���s comment deadline, public interest organizations are issuing an open, international call for websites and internet users to unite for an ���Internet Slowdown��� to show the world what the web would be like if Team Cable gets their way and trashes net neutrality. Net neutrality is hard to explain, so���

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Clash of Legends Official Release Date and Cover Reveal

Maegan Provan:

If you follow my blog closely, then you know how much I adore the Amaranthine series. I cannot wait for Clash of Legends to come out. Yes, there will be a full review post and video. I’m so excited!!!!

Originally posted on Amaranthine by Joleene Naylor:

Yes, it���s time to share the good news with the world, or with the twenty or thirty people who care. (Trust me, that���s an awesome number. I remember when it was six.) ��At last, after months of waiting, there is an official release date for Clash of Legends, book 7 in the Amaranthine series:

March 31, 2015

No, it���s not on pre-order yet, but hopefully it will be by the end of the month. I have to check into Amazon���s new pre-order and see how it works, but it will definitely be available on Smashwords, B&N, Apple, and Kobo.

And now for something��even more exciting. The eBook cover reveal:

For the five or six people who collect the paperbacks and want to know if there will be a hand drawn version, the answer is YES! The Collector���s Edition will feature a cover that matches the original paperbacks. (I am���

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