by I use Google search a lot to help me sort through my day. I find Google especially helpful when I’m looking to link an article published in one of 14 blogs in the Boles Blogs Network. I can usually remember a few keywords from a previously published article I want to find, but I can’t always recall the blog in which I published the article. Google can usually suss that out for me without much interactive prodding. Yesterday, when I was invoking The Google, I did a search for “david w boles books” and I was surprised there were 141,000 available search results and also that there was an Advertisement at the top of the returns for “Books By David W. Boles” with my hotlinked name.
Hmm… I thought that was a strange and unexpected turn of events. Sure, I have some books published, but I knew I wasn’t the one selling my books and I certainly didn’t pay for that advertisement. It turns out the hotlink for my name was paid for by a book reseller and I felt cheated out of my brand and my own being for a profit that is not my own!
I previously discovered a scam where nefarious people go on major bookseller websites, give you a rotten book review, and then turn around and sell your book in a pirated e-book form for profit! That’s sort of a smart con game that devalues the page, and punishes the author, while offering a “better price” and “better accessibility” to readers in the convenience of a downloaded book that bring the pirate fame, goodwill and money. At one time, several of my books were on the top of several piracy file sharing sites and it was a hard notion to crunch that my book was getting killed in one venue while finding tremendous success in another. Too bad they both don’t pay the same.
As an author, owning your name and controlling the worth of your work, is nigh impossible today. How does a professional writer make money publishing in a circumstance that rewards the thief and punishes honest labor?
Is there anything you can do to stop your name from being used without your permission like that, David?
You ask a great question, Gordon, and I have no idea what, if anything, can be done. I suppose a seller can use my name to resell a book, eh? I guess I could look at it like I’m getting a lot of free advertising that I don’t have to pay for — but somehow it all still feels wrong.