Scan your books and search them on Google

[Argel]

omigod, c j cherryh is on mobileread. i am not worthy!

[Crusader]

Originally Posted by cjcherryh

I'm entering the market myself, with my backlist, and by what I see of pirate quality, I think the best counterattack is the production of better quality non-DRM copies. I have always had faith in the honesty of my readers, and feel if given a real and reasonable alternative to the pirates' bad copies, they'll rather have the real thing. Which is a little off-thread. Let me get back to it by saying I bear Google no ill will, and I think they do not have bad motives. The situation with official notification from the lawyers just put me in a position where I have to take some action or decline to act, the latter of which is not a good legal choice.

I definitely think this is the best way to go. If people can get original digital copies of an author's work without having to pay an arm and a leg (or even more than a hardback copy!) to own it chances are they will be less likely to pirate it. It's actually strange to see that more authors aren't embracing digitally distributing their works themselves. From my basic understanding I think the distribution costs for a digital version would be negligible and the author might even be able to show more profit on the digital works.

[jes1]

Ms Cherryh, I have been following your blog recently and am looking forward to being able to purchase some of the works you and the other authors with you will be offering. I have always wanted to be able to support the authors I like to read directly rather than go through the traditional channels where authors receive such a small percentage of the profits. Ebooks can make that possible. I hope you have success with your endeavor.

[bgalbrecht]

I was talking to another SF/Fantasy author today, and when he he discovered one of his books getting sold by Amazon for the Kindle, he investigated and discovered that it was covered in his contract under a "direct viewing" clause. I'm not a writer, but I would expect that this is the sort of thing that would normally be resolved by the writer's literary agent since it seems to all be tied into who owns the ebook rights.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

I was talking to another SF/Fantasy author today, and when he he discovered one of his books getting sold by Amazon for the Kindle, he investigated and discovered that it was covered in his contract under a "direct viewing" clause. I'm not a writer, but I would expect that this is the sort of thing that would normally be resolved by the writer's literary agent since it seems to all be tied into who owns the ebook rights.

What precisely is there to resolve? Unless you forgot to mention that he was not getting royalty payments for his eBook sales.

Or does your author wish to minimize the number of outlets selling his books and (indirectly) paying him royalties?

Forgive the snark, but you wrote as though having the book available for sale as an eBook was in and of itself something questionable.

- Ahi

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by ahi

What precisely is there to resolve? Unless you forgot to mention that he was not getting royalty payments for his eBook sales.

Or does your author wish to minimize the number of outlets selling his books and (indirectly) paying him royalties?

Forgive the snark, but you wrote as though having the book available for sale as an eBook was in and of itself something questionable.

- Ahi

No, he's happy that his books are available as ebooks. I bought all of them at Fictionwise. I asked him about ebook sales and things like Amazon LookInside after reading CJ Cherryh's complaints about her books at Amazon, Fictionwise and Google, and his response was that when he first discovered one of his books was available for the Kindle, he checked with his agent, and confirmed that he was getting paid for it, and that permission for was covered in his contract with his publisher.

My posting was a bit vague because my original versions of the post directly suggested that CJ Cherryh needs to chat with her agent, lawyer and/or publishers, because I think there's a disconnect between what she believes is in her contracts with her publishers, and what the publishers believe are in her contracts. I am obviously not privy to those contracts, but I really think she's been maligning Amazon, Fictionwise and Google because of this misunderstanding, and that Amazon, Fictionwise and Google are not the parties at fault here. If she is right and they should not have been making her works available, I believe that Amazon, Fictionwise and Google were operating in good faith with the publishers, and that Ms. Cherryh should be complaining about her publishers. If she is having difficulties getting her works removed from their sites, I suspect that it's because they are dealing with both the author and publisher and are getting conflicting stories about what has been authorized for her works.