Ford Madox Ford once said: “Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.” and I can agree with that. Apparently many others do as well.

And that brings me to the Page99test.com a new reader feedback website launching in October. Note: this is a separate site unaffiliated with the Page69test and Page99test over on blogspot. Same premise, and yes, there is a fee based service offered along with the free stuff, so I will share the FAQ from their website:

We’re doing the same thing here, but with a twist. Here, writers (published or not) share their page 99s with a world of readers… and get real-time feedback. Does your writing hook readers? Let them be the first to tell you.

So, how does it work for writers?
Writers – published or not – come to the site, sign in (easy 4-field sign-up), and copy-and-paste their ‘page 99′ from their manuscript (MS) into the text field on our site. They enter a few details – like book genre, title, and publication status – and submit it.

Writers can upload up to 3 page 99s (all from different MSs, obviously). Each page stays up for 30 days or 50 reads/ratings, whichever comes first. As ratings come in, writers go to their My Uploads page to see reader feedback, including comments.

And how does it work for readers?
Readers come to the site, sign in (easy 4-field sign-up), select their preferred genre, and get shown a page 99, which is randomly generated within the selected genre. They read the page from top to bottom (hopefully) and then answer these 2 questions:

(OPTIONAL: Add comment for writer.) Once you hit Submit Feedback, you’re taken to a page that reveals to you info you didn’t otherwise know, like:

• Whether the page is from a published book or not
• Who the author is
• What the average rating is for each of the 2 questions
• Verbatim feedback/comments

What’s the revenue model?
There are 2 phases to our site; the first phase has been described thus far – and the second won’t be described until we’re closer to launching it. The first phase is a free service; it will remain when the second phase rolls out, so there’ll always be this free, fun, addictive little reading part of the site.

In Phase 2, the plan is to focus on connecting unpublished writers and agents or editors/publishers. Essentially, we will eliminate for writers the entire [painful, soul-sucking, time-consuming] querying process and for agents/editors the towering slush pile. We’ll be charging for this service. Here’s how it works:

• A for-writer service called “Read My Chapter”, where writers pay ~$15 (TBD) to upload a chapter of their unpublished manuscript… and the readers who rated that writer’s page 99 favorably get pinged that the whole chapter’s ready to read, and nature takes its course
• Something with lit agencies and/or editors

We want to keep it free for as many writers as possible (because they’re usually starving!), readers, and writing clubs/classes/workshops. We’re also thinking of pulling in some cash to cover operating costs as Amazon affiliates (for published books).
–
So even though its fee based portion of the site is just another manuscript display service like Authonomy or Bowker’s new manuscript service or any listing site that claims to connect writers with agents and publishers, the free portion for actual readers is what interests me the most because it complements my own selection style, and hopefully, its ease of use and the fun factor will get more people reading Indie published books. If you are looking for simple reader feedback, then this might be a fun place to start.

In the spirit of Page 99, here is an excerpt from my latest release Logos:

I wanted to make passionate love to him, if only to keep alive what little humanity remained in me, but as I began to cast off my clothes for the portrait, his expression changed. It became tainted of fear mingled with an unexpected hint of dazed bewilderment. His eyes grew into great blue tearful oceans, and his lower lip paled and trembled when he asked, “What are you doing, Selena…that’s not necessary?”

The nervousness in his voice prompted me to tread lightly. I was trying to seduce him and apparently not having a great deal of success with the endeavor, but all I could manage to say was, “Don’t worry, Ian, I gave up any shred of modesty centuries ago…and this is what you want, isn’t it?”

Apparently it wasn’t. He whispered a shameful yes, then shouted a very dramatic NO, then he attempted to negate his anger with a softer no until finally admitting, “Shit, Selena, I don’t know what I mean. I simply want to paint your portrait.”

Simply paint my portrait? Again, it was the way he said it: Simply. He said it as if he were unaffected by my presence, as if our relationship were free of deceit. Nothing was further from the truth. “Nothing is ever simple, Ian, and why would you want to do that, so you can imprison my soul as well? Take care now, good sir, the waters might be muddy, but I can still make out the depraved desires hidden in the recesses of your mind.”

He had barely a reply, nothing more than an “I can’t,” which came stuttering out of his mouth as he continued his slow and steady backward stride.

“Can’t? Can’t what, Ian? Can’t get close to anyone unless they are covered in paint? Why on earth not?

Cheryl Anne Gardner

If you would like The Podpeople to feature your Page 99, send us an email to: podpeep at gmail dot com with the subject line Page 99. Please include a link to your preferred e-commerce site, a cover jpeg, and paste your page 99 into the body of the email or attach it as a .TXT file. If your page 99 happens to be a chapter start or chapter end and does not contain a full page, you may use the full page before or after your page 99. One page only please.

Cross-posted from The Pod People Blog by Cheryl Anne Gardner

Meh! What’s failed? That’s what I want to know. If you are writing and you love what you write and you love the process, then you are not a failed writer. A failed writer to me is the writer who gives up their dream. Self-published writers, if anything, can be said to have zealously embraced the dream.

My idea of success is exactly MY IDEA, and it’s not how many books I sell in a week or a day or a year or in a lifetime or my Amazon ranking. It’s about being happy with what I have written. It’s all about the art for me, and so validation generally comes from my own internal sense of artistic self-worth. For others, validation comes in many different ways: sales for some, reviews for others, or maybe it’s an award or a traditional publishing contract … and sometimes it comes in the form of recognition one might not be expecting. I had this happen over the weekend. An Amazon reviewer/author who had reviewed my novella The Thin Wall contacted me to tell me that a NY Arts Foundation wanted permission to cross-post their review to a new Literary Fiction site they were launching. They had said yes, but they wanted to notify me. In the mean time, I had gotten a Google alert on the posting. I did some research on the site and found it to be legit, and I didn’t specifically know anyone involved with the project. Of course, I was thrilled to death that an Arts Foundation would find literary merit in my work. That is the sort of validation those who write for the art of it hope to get. The only thing nagging at me was the question of how they found my work and why they selected that particular review of it. So I emailed the foundation… Yes, I am bold that way.

Dactyl Review is a new Literary Endeavour funded by The Dactyl Foundation for the Arts and Humanities in NYC, founded in 1996. Ms. Alexander, one of the founding members, is an author herself and has some strong opinions about the current state of the publishing industry, specifically when it comes to Literary Fiction. By Literary they mean:

That the author pays attention to, for example, the sounds, double meanings, etymologies, allusiveness, or rhythms of language. Literary novels are prose poetry, at the sentence level and also at a larger level where themes, characters and events should also relate poetically. The subject of the work is engaged with something that might be called weighty, questioning, for example, how we think, how we make meaning, why things happen the way they do, how we decide what’s right or wrong, or musing over what might have been.

Dactyl’s stance on literary fiction in today’s publishing climate is as follows from their website:

For a number of years, publishing has been dominated by commercial fiction. Literary fiction novels and short story collections by small presses or independent authors have little chance of being noticed by reviewers or placed on bookstore shelves. Even the literary fiction written by relatively well-known writers published by big houses has been pushed to the side by pseudo-literary fiction — written and reviewed by those who don’t know the difference between thought and sentimentality, poetry and the use of adjectives — such that the meaning of “literary” is lost. Moreover, with the way the publishing system is currently organized books aren’t given much time in front of judges and audiences. Those that don’t make it immediately are tossed in the remaindered bin. A deep pity, as literary fiction is slow-growing and takes time to find its audience.

So how did Dactyl find me? According to Ms. Alexander, they are attempting to seed the site while they look for qualified reviewers. That effort included a search of all Amazon Reviewers who use the tags Literary and Literary Fiction and who are published authors themselves. From that list of reviewers, they selected specific books and reviews for inclusion on the site. Books must meet their definition of “literary” as listed above.

Flattering — yes. To have an arts foundation award you by finding literary merit in your work, enough to profile your book alongside Cormac McCarthy, is definitely something. I am still basking in the glow, but now I have to wipe the shine off and get down to business.

Dactyl is looking for reviewers to contribute to the site with original content or cross-posted reviews, doesn’t matter. So…do you qualify to review for the site? Dactyl answers that:

Who Can Submit a Review
Any published [including self-published and micro-press] “literary fiction” writer can contribute a review. No reviews of one’s own work will be accepted. A contributing reviewer must give his/her name and the title of one or more of his/her own book-length works of literary fiction.

What to Review
We accept reviews of books both new and not-so-new. In fact, we encourage reviewers to consider the under-appreciated and older titles of any contemporary author. (No reviews of long-dead classic authors, please.) Only reviews of book-length “literary fiction” will be accepted, including short story collections. It’s okay to review a book that’s already been reviewed on this site. You can also submit any review that you have posted or published elsewhere.

Dactyl Review will not hold copyright on any review and you are free to publish elsewhere. Allow five days for your review to be approved and posted.

More information about submitting reviews can be found here.

Dactyl is also currently running a Literary Award program and information on that can be found here.

Will I be submitting reviews to the Dactyl Review site? I am not sure. I have to confirm that my work being profiled on the site is not a conflict of interest. The Podpeople reviewed my work prior to my joining the team, and actually, a favourable review was a requirement at that time, so we shall see. Whatever happens, it’s nice to have the validation. I have always been happy with what I write, but now I know for certain that I am writing what I am meant to write, even if it isn’t marketable in today’s publishing climate.

You are only a failed writer if you give up the dream of writing. The dream of writing, not publishing.

Cross-posted from the PodPeople blog by Cheryl Anne Gardner

The art is Forbidden Literature by Rene Magritte circa 1936

Last week I entered into an unfortunate discussion regarding Creative Commons licensing, free content, and intellectual property theft to the tune of Copyright Hijacking. See the discussion over on Tele-read with author Piotr Kowolcyzk titled: I have a Ghost Publisher at Amazon … Please Help!:

I’ve self-published my two books Password Incorrect and Failure Confirmed through Kindle Digital Text Platform in mid-January, a couple of days after Amazon opened a system to authors from outside USA.

Last Friday I’ve noticed that there is another edition of Password Incorrect, published on Feb 15 – by somebody else. The link to this book is here (I hope it’ll be removed soon). It uses a cover of a free edition, which I’ve published at many places including Feedbooks, Manybooks, Kobo and Wattpad.

I’ve downloaded a free sample – enough to check who originated this edition. A publisher calls himself Sugar Land Press (link to a site is here). I’ve never heard of them before. They have never contacted me referring to this book or anything else. After checking their site and other links they provided in an intro of a book, it looks like thy live on Google ads and affiliate programs, including Amazon Associates. This book, available for free everywhere else, costs $11 ($14,95 outside USA), is terribly formatted and full of other mistakes. I analysed the content and I’m almost sure it was downloaded either from Wattpad or Manybooks.

In light of this, I wanted to talk about Creative Commons licensing because, frankly, this can happen anywhere in any country when authors use file sharing sites like Scribd and Wattpad among others to publish their work for free. Let me clarify a bit, giving away free content and file-sharing are two completely different things. CC Licensing and Free Content are not mutually exclusive. You can allow free downloads of your work and still maintain your standard copyright “all rights reserved.” However, some file share sites like Scribd automatically default to a Creative Commons License, and if the author is not aware of this, they may find themselves in a bit of a pickle. Yes, that share button means “share.”

Readers who frequent file sharing sites often get confused between standard Copyright and Creative Commons Licensing. They assume that because the title is a free to read that it was posted intentionally by the author using a Creative Commons license, which grants the end user license to post and re-distribute the work without permission from the author. But there are many different types of CC licenses and they are also used to allow the creation of derivative works as well allow the sale of the work by third parties not affiliated with the copyright holder. Unfortunately, this is the gamble an author takes when they choose to use file share sites and CC licensing. You have to read the fine print about licensing before you post your work. You also need to know how CC licensing works. The worst case scenario with CC licensing is that, on occasion, the end user assumes they are free to do what they will with the content.

In the case of Mr. Kowolcyzk’s work, the end-user listed the title for sale on Kindle alongside the author’s original. The listing appeared under the Sugar Land Press name and even went so far as to slap a standard copyright notice “all rights reserved” on the work, which is illegal, since creative commons work can only be re-distributed and used under the same license it was originally obtained.

So is it illegal for the end user to sell someone else’s content? Well, it depends on the creative commons license that was used when the material was published on the file share site. Authors should be sure that the same licenses are being used consistently no matter the publication location. Unless the license specifically was an: Attribution/Non Commercial (By-NC) then the end user can turn around and sell it — legally. However, they have to attribute you as the author, and while they can sell it, they cannot claim themselves as the copyright holder, as the nature of a CC license is that it is non-exclusive and irrevocable.

From CreativeCommons.org

Work licensed under a Creative Commons License is protected by applicable copyright law. This allows Creative Commons licenses to be applied to all work protected by copyright law, including: books, plays, movies, music, articles, photographs, blogs, and websites. However, the license may not modify the rights allowed by fair use or fair dealing or exert restrictions which violate copyright exceptions. Furthermore, Creative Commons Licenses are non-exclusive and non-revocable. Any work or copies of the work obtained under a Creative Commons license may continue to be used under that license. In the case of works protected by multiple Creative Common Licenses, the user may choose either.

So to recap, once you CC a work, you cannot take it back. This is why I strongly advise authors against a CC-BY or a CC-BY-SA license if they plan to sell the work commercially at a later time. Actually, you can use a standard copyright license and still give your work away for free. It eliminates this problem entirely. But watch those file share sites, some of them default to a CC license only and once you are in, you cannot revoke it.

There are six major licenses of the Creative Commons:

1. Attribution (CC-BY)
2. Attribution Share Alike (CC-BY-SA)
3. Attribution No Derivatives (CC-BY-ND)
4. Attribution Non-Commercial (CC-BY-NC)
5. Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (CC-BY-NC-SA)
6. Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)

There are four major conditions of the Creative Commons: Attribution (BY), requiring attribution to the original author; Share Alike (SA), allowing derivative works under the same or a similar license (later or jurisdiction version); Non-Commercial (NC), requiring the work is not used for commercial purposes; and No Derivative Works (ND), allowing only the original work, without derivatives.[12]

As of the current versions, all Creative Commons licenses allow the “core right” to redistribute a work for non-commercial purposes without modification. The NC and ND options will make a work non-free.

As of 2010, all current licenses require attribution of the original author. The attribution must be given to “the best of [one's] ability using the information available”. Generally this implies the following:

Include any copyright notices (if applicable). If the work itself contains any copyright notices placed there by the copyright holder, those notices must be left intact, or reproduced them in a way that is reasonable to the medium in which the work is being re-published.

Cite the author’s name, screen name, or user ID, etc. If the work is being published on the Internet, it is nice to link that name to the person’s profile page, if such a page exists.

Cite the work’s title or name (if applicable), if such a thing exists. If the work is being published on the Internet, it is nice to link the name or title directly to the original work.

Cite the specific CC license the work is under (optional). If the work is being published on the Internet, it is nice if the license citation links to the license on the CC website.

Mention if the work is a derivative work or adaptation, in addition to the above, one needs to identify that their work is a derivative work i.e., “This is a Finnish translation of the [original work] by [author].” or “Screenplay based on [original work] by [author].”

Walt Gordon Jones explains everything nicely on his site in simple terms, and he has some suggestions for attacking the issue of license violations. The author will always remain the legal copyright owner. CC doesn’t replace Copyright. The author does lose the “all rights reserved” clause, but the end user does not gain them.

On a final note: I remember researching Feedbooks.com for a blog post last year when I was deciding myself if I was going to ebook my work, if my memory serves me, and in the end I had decided not to list my work with them because of a oddly worded clause in their terms of service, which states:

4. Intellectual Property Rights
FeedBooks being registered in France, the content of the Website is subject to the French legislation on copyrights and other intellectual property rights. However, the electronic books offered for reading are free from copyrights as, in accordance with the legislation of France, the said books fall in the public domain.

The wording here gives the impression that any/all the electronic books listed on their site are in the public domain. This can be very confusing and lead to issues with copyright infringement. So always check your file share site for ambiguous language.

I think the Creative Commons has its place in the world. Some authors have had a lot of success getting the word out by allowing file-sharing and derivative works. I just think authors need to be careful with CC licensing and make sure they choose the right license for the right work. Not to mention most readers are just as uneducated about CC licensing, and the ones that understand it know exactly what they can get away with and how to exploit it. If an end user violates your license, they lose it, and you can pursue for infringement. That’s the bottom line. So don’t let your work get away from you.

Zoe Winters shares her frustration with CC licensing as well.

Cross posted by Cheryl Anne Gardner from the PodPeople Blog