After we got back from our tea the poet had some work to do, so while he did that I started to brainstorm my story for 12 STORIES IN 12 MONTHS. My story title is A DAY AT THE RACES, which is also the title of a Queen album. So that gave me a leg up to make it a Marcie Craig story. Deciding this one little thing makes a 1,500-word story so much easier to plan.
I didn’t finish the brainstorming, but it was a good start. I didn’t get around to any pre-writing for THE HAUNTED HOUSE HOTEL, though, so that was a bit disappointing.
Even more disappointing and very discouraging was the news we woke up to: those ‘pirated’ stories weren’t pirated at all. The magazine publisher is deliberately ‘testing new platforms’, which is fine if it’s in a writer’s original contract. What isn’t fine is if they do it without notifying the copyright holder, i.e. the IP owner.
It isn’t only book-length material this is happening to. Friends of mine are also seeing their ‘longer reads’ appearing online as poorly produced ebooks. Most authors reproduce their own work to a high quality.
I only had one story on submission to this particular publisher. It has now been withdrawn and I will publish it myself. Great! It’s an autumn story and will fit in with the autumn issue of WORDS WORTH READING.
And the other few stories they published most recently? Those will be up before Christmas. Sooner, if I can. I might put them ALL in the October issue. I might not have room for a full-length novelette as well…
At the very least, they should notify the authors of what they’re doing. At the very best, they need to either stop this practice IMMEDIATELY, or arrange recompense for the authors who will lose further revenue as a result.
Anyway, I had to step away from it in the end. I didn’t lug a 170-page pdf all the way to Ireland to not do any work on it. Plus, I had a short story to brainstorm (that WON’T be going to them or their sister title) and Act 1 of a novelette to finish pre-writing.
The proofreading got it first and despite being quite distracted throughout the day, I was very good, resisted it (mostly), and cleared 75 pages.
I updated my word-count spreadsheets and my record of submissions (to record the story I withdrew) then came and finished today’s blog post.
It was our last night in Ireland and we were off to Cork city for tea.
So frustrating. Is there an equivalent of the Authors Guild in the UK to whom the writers can report this? the US Authors Guild is working on a number of issues around rights at the moment. They’ve also got a great “no AI” clause to add into contracts during negotiations.
We have the Society of Authors and the Creative Rights Alliance both on with the AI stuff. I think one of my friends affected by this particular issue volunteered to tell the Authors Licensing Collection Service (? ALCS – they collect photocopying royalties for members), who should be willing to jump on it for us. The contracts *were* pretty much forced on people and most didn’t know how, nor be willing even, to renegotiate. We’re sure the contracts cover this under something like ‘…and any future technology not yet known’, but we feel communication might have at least been courteous.