Quote:
Originally Posted by nekokami
It can be quite difficult to tell if a site offering an author's work is authentic, as the recent story about the false Maya Angelou on Twitter shows us. At one time (before becoming so involved with e-books) I considered starting a service to set up Amazon referral "stores" for authors to sell their own books, the idea being that they would then get a cut even of used book sales. The question of how to validate author identity was one of the stopping points for me. (I did eventually set this up for one author, though: the Adrilankha Book Shop for author Steven Brust. I happened to be communicating directly with the author, and with others who knew him, sufficiently to feel confident of his identity.)
To make things even trickier, of course, copyright law is complex, with different rules in place for different periods of time, and no online resource to easily check the copyright status of a particular book in a particular jurisdiction (though Google may end up helping with that problem).
So to answer the questions: I generally assume that any free download of a work I believe to be in copyright is suspect unless it's on a publisher's or long-time commercial ebook retailer's site (e.g. Fictionwise). I make an exception for websites purporting to be relatively high-profile authors, because I assume the agents or publishers of said authors would force a take-down in those cases. I also make an exception for works by authors such as Cory Doctorow, who are well known in their support for free distribution of their books (and I think I can safely assume if Doctorow suddenly changed his policy, I'd hear about it here).
And I make an exception for MobileRead, because I have insight to the monitoring process that goes on behind the scenes and the vigilance with which this matter is regarded by the members of the moderation team. I feel confident in saying that if a given title was brought to the attention of the moderators as being in copyright and not authorized for distribution, it would be removed from the uploads section promptly, with an apology to the author in question. |
All good points.
On my blog I link to a lot of individual author sites, beginners, people you've never heard of (along with others you have heard of). The internet gives new authors a great way to get readers and feedback. I think all the sites I link to are legit, if I am suspicious, I don't link. But as you say, I can't know for sure. I check if they are offering only works of the one author (themselves) and look around at the website and try to get a feel for it. Distributing the works of several authors can be suspicious, particularly if it's hundreds. I know one author site with pdf files from about 6 other authors, I think is legit. You need a little knowledge, and then you just need to assess it for yourself.