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FYI: Virtu
Apr. 28th, 2009 11:17 am[ETA For those of you who would, in fact, like to own The Virtu in hardback, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sleary is the Hero of the Revolution to whom you should apply.]
Right now, The Virtu is out of print in both hardback and paperback. My editor is trying to get it into the POD program Ace is starting up, and my agent is making a formal protest on my behalf to Ace Books. But unless and until Ace changes their mind (or the rights revert to me and I figure out what to do to make the book available), you're going to have to look for it used or remaindered.
Yes, this also means the Google Book Settlement is, hello, extremely concrete and personal right at the moment, and I have to say, for a company whose motto is, "Don't be evil," Google is and has been behaving like, well, serious evil on this subject. Essentially, as I understand it, what Google's position boils down to is, We aren't going to respect your copyright and you can't make us respect your copyright. If you want ANY say in what we do with your copyrighted material, you have to agree that it's ours to begin with. [That would be opting in to the settlement. And please notice that this involves agreeing to Google's false premise that they can ignore your copyright in the first place.] And if you don't agree [i.e., if you opt out], well, we're going to do it anyway unless you sue us. And if you sue us, we can squash you like a BUG, little author, because we're Google and you're not. Neener neener. Opting out of the settlement doesn't actually protect your copyrights from Google, it just means that you don't agree with the deal the Authors Guild worked out. Which I don't, because it looks pretty much like signing away your birthright for a mess of pottage.
So, yeah. Dear Google, what happened to "Don't be evil"?
[ETA: And opting in ALSO tacitly agrees to the false assumption that the Authors Guild has the right to represent me. As someone pointed out on a mailing list I'm on, Google is not the only entity behaving like an asshat here.]
sleary is the Hero of the Revolution to whom you should apply.]Right now, The Virtu is out of print in both hardback and paperback. My editor is trying to get it into the POD program Ace is starting up, and my agent is making a formal protest on my behalf to Ace Books. But unless and until Ace changes their mind (or the rights revert to me and I figure out what to do to make the book available), you're going to have to look for it used or remaindered.
Yes, this also means the Google Book Settlement is, hello, extremely concrete and personal right at the moment, and I have to say, for a company whose motto is, "Don't be evil," Google is and has been behaving like, well, serious evil on this subject. Essentially, as I understand it, what Google's position boils down to is, We aren't going to respect your copyright and you can't make us respect your copyright. If you want ANY say in what we do with your copyrighted material, you have to agree that it's ours to begin with. [That would be opting in to the settlement. And please notice that this involves agreeing to Google's false premise that they can ignore your copyright in the first place.] And if you don't agree [i.e., if you opt out], well, we're going to do it anyway unless you sue us. And if you sue us, we can squash you like a BUG, little author, because we're Google and you're not. Neener neener. Opting out of the settlement doesn't actually protect your copyrights from Google, it just means that you don't agree with the deal the Authors Guild worked out. Which I don't, because it looks pretty much like signing away your birthright for a mess of pottage.
So, yeah. Dear Google, what happened to "Don't be evil"?
[ETA: And opting in ALSO tacitly agrees to the false assumption that the Authors Guild has the right to represent me. As someone pointed out on a mailing list I'm on, Google is not the only entity behaving like an asshat here.]
