Monday News: Author learns hard lesson about copyright for images; Debate over newly found historical undergarments, Pearson acquires Author Solutions
Publishing NewsHarlequin / Intellectual Property Issues / Penguin / self-published / vanity-press25 Comments
I think what is most remarkable about this video is that it contains actual photos of Earth and space, not computer generated graphics. Mind blowing and beautiful.
600-year-old linen bras found in Austrian castle – ” A revolutionary discovery is rewriting the history of underwear: Some 600 years ago, women wore bras. The University of Innsbruck said Wednesday that archeologists found four linen bras dating from the Middle Ages in an Austrian castle. Fashion experts describe the find as surprising because the bra had commonly been thought to be only little more than 100 years old as women abandoned the tight corset.” Yahoo News
I got excited about this and then someone deflated my balloon with the following post.
History Hoydens – “On to the “bra”. Please look closely at this garment. The bottom is frayed. Why? Because there’s something missing. Please look at the side. See all the little eyelet holes? Those are for lacing. What was the MAIN female undergarment of the day? The kirtle (a long, tightly-fitted smock). You can see tons of examples of this garment in the Wenceslaus Bible (dated to the late 14th century). There is NOTHING groundbreaking about finding the top portion of a kirtle.” History Hoydens
Pearson to acquire Author Solutions, Inc for $116m – “Pearson, the world’s leading learning company, is today announcing the acquisition of Author Solutions, Inc (ASI) from Bertram Capital for $116 million in cash. Formed in 2007, ASI is now the world’s leading provider of professional self-publishing services. It has enabled 150,000 authors to publish, market and distribute more than 190,000 books in print and electronic formats and benefits from several powerful growth trends including user-generated content, eBooks and digital publishing and marketing technologies.” Pearson Press Release
This is kind of interesting. Pearson has Book Country, a platform that is designed to encourage self publishing and now it is acquiring one of the largest independent self publishing arms. If ASI sounds familiar it is because ASI powers Harlequin Dell Arte and Thomas Nelson’s self publishing arms, only a few years ago this was known as vanity publishing.
Bloggers Beware: You CAN Get Sued For Using Pics on Your Blog – “Well, you’ve probably figured it out from the title, but it’s because I’ve been involved in a case regarding a photo I used on my blog. Like most of you, I’m a casual blogger and learned my way into blogging by watching others. And one of the things I learned early on was that a post with a photo always looked nicer than one with just text. So I looked at what other people were doing for pictures. “ Roni Loren
Roni Loren goes on to state that she was sued by the copyright owner of one of the images and even after she took the image down, she was asked for compensation. I didn’t realize that the use of copyrighted images was so widespread amongst bloggers although some of us did mention the irony of authors using copyrighted images (or talking about buying knock off handbags) while also being up in arms over piracy. One of the easiest and free things to do is use Flickr-Advanced Search-Creative Commons photos. Also look for sites that allow you to embed photos like LOLCats. Or pay for an image service like Big Stock Photo.
Zola Aims to Replace Google Books, Then Take on Amazon | Digital Book World – “A new bookselling start-up funded by authors and other investors is forming partnerships with publishers and independent booksellers and aims to replace the Google eBooks re-seller program as the go-to platform for indies interested in selling e-books. Oh, and the company plans on taking on Amazon, too. Zola Books is a New York-based start-up that has raised $1.3 million from investors, including well-known authors like Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler’s Wife), Josh Bazell, (Beat the Reaper) and Chandler Burr (The Emperor of Scent) and plans to offer independent bookstores an online storefront from which to sell e-books, much like Google Books.” Digital Book World
This site is apparently in private beta right now. There is a section for “curators” which I presume is like bloggers or people with large twitter feeds. Curators will be able to earn affiliate fees (like Amazon allows).
Tor/Forge E-Books Are Now DRM-Free | Tor.com – “Tom Doherty Associates, publishers of Tor and Forge, is pleased to announce that all of their ebooks are now available DRM-free from Amazon, B&N, Apple, Kobo, Google, and most other major ebook retailers.“It’s clear to us that this is what our customers want,” said senior editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden. “We see it in the success of SF publishers like Baen and Angry Robot that have preceded us in going DRM-free. To the best of our knowledge we’re the first division of a Big Six publishing conglomerate to go down this road, but we doubt very much that we’ll be the last.” Tor
Yay! Progress
Some really interesting and some quite strange news too, this week! Wonderful up to date post. Thanks for sharing with us!
New to your blog!
Steph @ Stepping Out Of The Page
P.S. I also have an International Giveaway on at the moment!
Loved the space video. Very inspiring.
Any new digital bookstore will succeed or fail on selection and customer service.
Yay TOR!!!!
The “panties” they found are also probably only worn during menstruation. Again, not revolutionary.
The Pearson acquisition – troubling. Now iUniverse and Xlibris can claim they are a Penguin company when they entice authors to publish with them. Last I heard, it was vanity publishing rather than self publishing (their name goes in as publisher, not yours). Check sites like Absolute Write and Writer Beware before you sign.
At least LOL Cats allow you to use their pic
The copyright images thing doesn’t surprise me at all. There is so much misinformation around on this whole thing. I’m really glad that blogger has posted what happened to her and people finally seem to be taking it seriously.
There does seem to be some unnecessary paranoia though. Bloggers panicking about posting book covers etc, which as I understand it, is covered by fair use. Maybe you could do a lawyerly post explaining when it is, and when it isn’t okay to use images?
I think it’s the cups that make this different from a kirtle. Most contemporaneous illustrations of kirtles I looked at on the net don’t suggest cups.
“Curation” seems to me like the latest publishing buzzword. Publishers claim to “curate.” Most people call it gate-keeping. I’ve thought that there’s a real market for small curators. Someone who loves the books I love, but doesn’t have the pressure to sell more that publishers have. I reject probably a good 75% of the published books in the categories I like. I’d like a curator who isn’t afraid to say, for example, “We love Evanovich, but we only have the Plum books upto 7, because after that, they get too silly and repetitive.” Whether the economics are ever going to support that approach, I don’t know.
I’ve figured that agents make the most logical people to become curators.
Can’t see Zola being successful with only $1.3 million is investments unless they get some real breaks from publishers if and when agency pricing ends – Amazon and Apple have billions in their bank accounts.
Yay Tor!
That space and earth picture is so cool. Thanks for sharing.
@Lynnd: “in investments” gah!
The pictures from space made a perfect start for a new week. Thank you!
I’m glad about that blogger’s decision to post her experiences on being sued by a photographer. And I’m still sorry it has to take that to get it through some selfish skulls that refused to recognise the difference between pirated books and using unauthorised images.
I headdesked every time authors bitched about piracy on their blogs where they regularly posted ‘man candy of the week’, artwork, photos of cute pets, opinions of BBC period dramas that hadn’t yet been broadcast or released on DVD in their countries, copyrighted photos of landscapes, buildings and castles (I’m looking at you, Scottish historical authors, who seem to love raiding Scotland’s local, tourism and B&B sites for photos), and many more.
Most said those were available online, which is “different from book piracy”. No, it isn’t. Piracy = copyright infringement. Use a non-cc/stock/copyrighted image without permission and credit = copyright infringement.
There are some royalty-free photo sites – e.g. stock.xchang (http://www.sxc.hu) – that allow people to use royalty-free images, often without permission (read the image licence agreement of each image first, though, to see if its owner has to be credited or not, whether its owner has to be notified or not, and how the image can be used as some allow their images to be used in commercial products while some don’t).
Those sites are far better legally than taking any from Google image search results or similar. It’d improve some authors’ anti-piracy stance greatly, too. And looking a lot less hypocritical, ignorant and/or selfish.
@Maili:
Which makes me snort because, eh, pirated books are available online, if you know what I mean. ;)
The strip of cloth hanging down the side does make it look more like the remains of some sort of kirtle bodice, rather than bra. Looks cool and comfortable to wear, if not very supportive.
RE: the video – I saw my house! Okay not really, but that was spectacular.
Given that the female anatomy and the effects of gravity, pregnancy, breast feeding and aging on it haven’t changed much in the last, say, 1000 years and the fact that few cultures find sagging, down-to-the-navel breasts attractive, not to mention the discomfort of stretching Coopers’ ligaments, it seems obvious to me that some women would have improvised garments that perform the function of bras, even if they were not an officially required undergarment with a recognized name.
@SAO: “required undergarment”? Required by whom? No one else gets a say in my underwear. Ever.
Thanks for that ISS video. Also, looks like Pearson is acquiring the whole “value chain” to become a “vertically integrated service provider” around publishing (That’s my entry today for the corporate bullshit bingo). Cross-promo opportunities galore.
@SAO: The Roman female athletes illustrated are usually described as wearing bikinis; however I would guess the clothing they are has a practical purpose rather than a fashion statement. None of them appear to be well endowed, but I don’t think I would much enjoy jumping around without some support– certainly not at my current age.
@DS: >Darn forgot to close and somehow cannot edit. See if this works. If not I would appreciate some help so that article doesn’t pop up repeatedly.
@Maili:
Quoted for absolute truth. If in doubt, link. And if you didn’t take it or pay to use it, or it’s not unequivocal fair use (eg book covers in a review), then you are in doubt. Don’t upload and use the image.
@Ros
While our society doesn’t “require” any undergarments, we generally make note of women who are braless rather than those wearing bras. The same with either sex foregoing underpants. So, there’s definitely a norm. Women ignore the norm for all sorts of reasons. When I lived in the tropics, I had a friend who struggled with recurrent yeast infections until she gave up on wearing anything under her (long) skirts. But in the past, when doing anything that might remotely suggest you were ‘fast’ damaged your prospects of a decent life, the norms were more like requirements.
I certainly got the impression that flouting the norms of mourning was a scandal, even if you’d been forced into a loveless marriage with a wife-beating louse.
@SAO:
Women did often wear something for support, but it was generally just a strip of binding. (The “bikinis” in DS’s link look like that) What got everyone excited about this was the appearance of separate cups. If it were a bra (and not part of a kirtle) the cups would be the extraordinary aspect.
I thought this post over at AAR really showed how ignorant of copyright the blogging community is. Not only is that image posted without attribution, it has a giant SAMPLE watermark across it.
While I’m sorry it took Roni Loren getting sued for this conversation to happen, I really hope more people come away with an understanding that just because something’s on the internet it’s not necessarily public domain.
For me, the most amusing aspect of the photographic theft case was that many people were outraged at the idea that a professional photographer actually expected to be PAID for their work. The general sentiment seemed to be that the photographer should have been satisfied with a heartfelt sowwy and an image takedown. It’s like there’s an entire segment of the population who no longer understand the concept of an honest paycheck for an honest day’s work.