Sarah Robinson's Blog, page 32
June 22, 2014
Shark Feeding Frenzy... I'm the bait.
When did we become a society that thrives on creating pain? That gets a thrill from bringing a tear to someone’s eye? That smiles when someone has been broken beyond repair?
When did this happen?
We are sharks who smell blood and rush for it, hoping we can tear out a chunk too.
I’ve done…
I had such a wonderful and fun bridal shower today!!!! The puppy...
I had such a wonderful and fun bridal shower today!!!! The puppy is officially pooped out!!
Scribd - Good or Bad for Authors?
Unlimited access to 400,000+ books with Scribd. Read on your iPad, iPhone, Android phone & tablet, or web browser. Start your free trial today.
Like many independent authors out there, I use Draft2Digital to get my books onto several ebook platforms. I have LOVED it. No seriously, LOVED it. It is unbelievably user friendly and takes a few minutes at most.
Compare that to Nook Press and KDP, which I also use, and it’s a freaking walk in the park!
Now Draft2Digital just announced that they are offering Scribd as another platform for authors to place their books. From the limited research I’ve done, it seems like it’s the Netflix for books? Do you use it?
All of this would sound fine if it wasn’t for the ever looming cloud over every author’s head…. piracy. Scribd states that they have fully dealt with this issue and even D2D said this in their introductory email:
"We know that some authors have expressed concerns about Scribd’s enforcement of copyright claims. We investigated the matter thoroughly before entering into a deal with the service, and we’re entirely satisfied that the administration is committed to combating piracy and providing a robust, legitimate reading platform. All Draft2Digital books submitted to Scribd will be added to their content fingerprinting system, removing any unauthorized copies from the site and preventing new ones in the future."
Well, I took the plunge and opted into the Scribd program on D2D. I can opt out anytime and believe me, I will, if something seems fishy. But the way I see it is this, the indie author world has become a place of fear. It thrives on fear.
Fear that someone will steal your work. Fear that no one will care about your work. Fear that another author will bring ruin to you. Fear of a bad review. Fear that you’ve put your heart into several hundred pages, waiting for someone to come along and tear it apart.
Well, I’m tired of living in fear. If someone is going to steal my book, I can’t stop them. I can take as many preventative measures as I want, but if they are determined- they will succeed. Just like it doesn’t matter where I hide the cookies in my house (even going so far as to stick them in an oatmeal container)- my husband WILL find them.
Can’t stop people from getting what they want, so why don’t we stop being afraid and see where it takes us.
Let’s give Scribd a chance and see what will happen….
June 21, 2014
"Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction..."
-
Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming | Books | theguardian.com
Shark Feeding Frenzy... I'm the bait.
When did we become a society that thrives on creating pain? That gets a thrill from bringing a tear to someone’s eye? That smiles when someone has been broken beyond repair?
When did this happen?
We are sharks who smell blood and rush for it, hoping we can tear out a chunk too.
I’ve done it.
You’ve done it, too.
Here is a little story about a recent feeding frenzy, where the sharks were other authors, and I was the delicious little fishy, ripe for their late night snack. No, this isn’t a vigilante post calling them out, their identities will be kept secret because who they are isn’t the point.
The point is to show you what we look like at our ugliest, because we have all done it. We have all been guilty of it. I know I am. I know I’ve done it. I know I’ve hurt others, even authors, for no good reason. Is there ever a good reason?
The point is to show the quick progression from hungry shark, to savage beasts killing for sport. Sometimes we get so quickly wrapped up that we didn’t even see what we were involved in until… until it’s too late.
Until there is blood.
Let’s start with my crime. I had a group on Facebook that only consisted of my street team leaders, a group with 4 total members, the people I trusted the most. It was secret, yes, but not for any scandalous reason. Mainly it was for strategizing, coming up with things to do in the street team, and stuff like that.
Almost every single person in this group would turn on me within the next 24 hours, with the exception of one. People I considered some of my closest friends. People I thought knew me.
One of these ladies, let’s call her Bruce- anyone here love Finding Nemo as much as me? Well, my favorite shark in that movie is called Bruce….
Anyway Bruce decided (for a reason that still alludes me) to take the picture below and share it with the authors mentioned in the post.
What a grievous crime I’ve committed, right? Deciding who I do or don’t want my brand to be associated with? Because that’s so out there and unusual. And asking them to pick the other authors over me if they ever felt the need, well, I must be a monster!
Fast forward to me, la dee da, going about my day, when my Facebook message pops up.
And when I say pops up, I mean EXPLODED like a cat out of a bathtub.
Good luck trying to get that sucker back in. The messages were coming so rapidly my computer froze! Author’s worst nightmare- broken computer!
Did I mention it’s like 2am at this point? Has How I Met Your Mother taught us anything? Nothing good ever happens after 2am.
So, then a little later, Facebook actually shut down. Now, I’m not saying their rapid fire feeding frenzy shut down Facebook for seven minutes, but that would be really funny if it did…
Anyway, let’s get back on topic. Here’s some of the convo (the nicer bits- gotta keep this PG):
Oh, did I mention that these were 8 authors who were listed in my original crime? Feeding frenzy. These shots are from before they even added me to the conversation, feeding time came early! Bruce had given each one of them that picture of my crime and alas, a riot ensued. Vengeance must be had!
They could smell the blood in the water…
I just want to interject that I find it funny that in one sentence someone says “she will claim victim”, then the next sentence is “I don’t want her to see this…” – Shady? I think yes. At this point, they are still trying to decide whether to add me to the conversation yet or not. Should you tell your prey you are about to attack?
Let’s watch and find out!
Oh, but in the meantime, let’s share “I hate her” stories. As if they were coming up with pages for the Burn Book from Mean Girls, ever seen that movie? No? Just me. Watch it, it’s good. A girl has ESPN powers. You can’t beat that.
Oh and…. I am awesome… I don’t take that back. :P
The plot thickens!! They have added me to the message, my computer has had a meltdown, and as you can see on my line at the very top, I told them I would have no part in their witch hunt. So I “left the conversation” thanks to that handy action button on Facebook.
Well, Facebook is a brat and this was moments before the entire site shut down, so maybe it was a glitch, but somehow even after blocking them and leaving the convo… they added me back.
Because I wasn’t beaten enough.
My tear soaked keyboard needed more ass-kicking to meet their satisfaction.
Thankfully, Facebook finally decided to die and went through a seven minute down period in which my husband, a police officer, came home from work to find me crying hysterically. He took the computer from me and held me close the rest of the night. My real life book boyfriend who still makes me swoon at the very sight of him… he is always there for me and I honestly don’t know why. He would put himself through hell and back for me if I asked him.
I thought things were over… I thought that was the worst of it. Status’ were even posted saying it was over. They had eaten every last piece of my soul and spit it out as if I were nothing. The sharks were full.
Except that things weren’t over. Days and days of Facebook status’, messages, attacks… they continued…. even deactivating my Facebook didn’t work. Emails came, other avenues… I still don’t know what to expect when I open my laptop.
I became their inside joke, as they laughed at the things they might do to me… People began to question them, ask why they were doing this… ask why the people begging for the “drama to stop” were the ones creating more of it, because I was nowhere to be heard of, I was not creating drama, I was trying to heal myself… so they defended themselves with posts like this.
So now I was “playing the victim card” for shutting down my Facebook. How dare I not want to leave the door open for their mudslinging. So I spoke up.
Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe I should have just kept letting them kick me while I was down until they were too tired to continue. But I stood up and said, show the world the proof. If I’m such a terrible person, the horrible villain you claim me to be, show the world. I have nothing to hide.
That’s when all the sharks went quiet. Sharks don’t seem so scary when they are suddenly little field mice. I felt better, more confident. Things were looking up! I had found my way out!
Think again.
The authors were silent which made Bruce mad, because Bruce had started everything to begin with. He had thrown the chum in the water and begged the onslaught to occur. And Bruce was now alone, still a hungry, angry shark throwing jabs at everyone and anyone, hoping to find a way out of the hole he dug himself into. So, then the posts on my author page began.
Bruce’s panic brought back a solitary author. One who had disgraced herself so publicly that when the spotlight suddenly shifted to me, she sunk her teeth in and ran with it. Can you blame her?
The way to redeem yourself is to make other people look worse, right? Step on the bodies until you are tall enough to hold your head high again.
No? Is that not right? Hmm.
Of course this author didn’t want to be alone with Bruce since Bruce’s acquaintances were dropping fast, so she tagged tons of her friends to come join her on MY fan page to attack me. Saying Bruce needed love and support since I was so viciously attacking her…. on my fan page. Oh yeah, that makes total sense.
So what now…
Well, here is the thing that those lovely girls didn’t know (though I should say women since I am only 24 and they are all older than my mother); the thing they didn’t know is that you can’t break what’s already been broken beyond repair.
Beat me as much as you want, it will never be more painful than the beating I give myself everyday when I look in the mirror. This feeding frenzy thought they had found live bait to rip apart and destroy, they eagerly went for the throat.
But what they didn’t know is I’ve been dead for a long time.
I wrote Tainted Bodies based on my own life, my own victimization. But I haven’t moved on like Kate has. I look in the mirror and my eyes are dead, they are hollow. He reached into my life and took what I savagely clung to, defending to the death that last part of me, the last bit of innocence.
And he wasn’t the first.
Some days I wonder if he will be the last.
When I entered the author community six months ago, I was so overjoyed. I was suddenly surrounded by book people! People that understood me, understood my love of reading, understood that when I was writing, parts of me came back.
My eyes come alive with a pen in my hand.
When you’ve been dead for as long as I have, how can you give up that feeling? It’s intoxicating. But how can you explain it to those who don’t understand. I was adrift in a lonely world of logic, business, and reality. Until someone introduced me to writing, introduced me to the indie community, and introduced me to the fantasy of being me again.
I will never be able to thank that person enough, because while they brought me into a hellish world, they also gave me a ticket back to life.
Bringing back a little more of myself, of my life, with each and every stroke against the page.
It was everything to me. I bounced home to my husband, raving about the wonderful people I met online today and the amazing books I discovered. How thrilled I was to talk to legends I had only read on paper! How I hugged the very ground that they walked on!
What’s that famous Bible verse?
“The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away…” Job 1:21
My naïveté was short lived. I was suddenly privy to things I didn’t want to know. Scandals of authors cheating merchandise makers, authors attacking other authors, bloggers stealing author books, piracy, brown nosing, underhanded tactics that seemed ingrained in the very culture of the writing community. The two can not be separated.
And I lost hope. I clung to it desperately, believe me. Don’t think I didn’t try.
I did. So badly.
But with every cheek I turned, I was slapped again. The sharks were never full. It was never enough. And it all came to an end in the final blaze of glory of the feeding frenzy I shared. The parts I shared with you are only the most tame, kind parts. The parts that didn’t make me curl over, crying, and seeking comfort in the bottom of a bottle of pills.
And so the fan page has had to block a few people, the author profile is down, and communication avenues have been cut. I am cancelling every signing I am scheduled for, or any events and takeovers once planned. My days of being in the public eye are over. I am done with the traditional route of promotions and marketing. I will let my work speak for itself. I will keep writing. Not because I want fans, or to make a list, or even for the profit (because if you’re an author… you know that’s not happening haha).
There is only one reason that I write. I write to bring the life back to my eyes. To heal wounds so deep, I never thought I would climb out of them. Until I picked up a pen.
I will let you have my books and I will keep writing.
But you will not have me again.
Lesson learned.
The End.
Limited Edition Logan Clay Rocker Tees!!
Do you love Logan Clay from Logan’s Story and Sand & Clay by Sarah Robinson? Grab this limited edition t-shirt!! There are a lot more books about rockstar Logan Clay coming your way soon :) Check out the books below! Logan’s Story: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KUN7K28/ Sand & Clay: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HGIC5L6
Shirts come in both women’s t-shirt and women’s tank top!! Ships internationally!! ONLY 17 DAYS LEFT!
"I find it only natural for a storyteller to be interested in storytelling and, for anyone who spends..."
- The Rumpus Interview with Norman Lock (via therumpus)
"Hater’s are my motivators!"
- Ellen Degeneres
Someone sent me this quote today… I needed it…...
Someone sent me this quote today… I needed it… it’s perfect!
Cover Reveal for UNTAINTED!!!!!
Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with…
I cannot wait to bring you the most beautiful cover I’ve ever had
