Tuesday News: Gawker implodes, Twitter goes bland, self-pub expose goes too far, and website features goofy crap
Publishing Newsbranding / Gawker / infringement / journalism / opyright / scam / Self-publishing / Twitter8 Comments
To All of Edit at Gawker Media – In case you missed the smoke coming from Gawker this weekend, here is part of the story of Gawker’s editorial implosion, which came after a controversial (and in many people’s opinion, a completely inappropriate and unethical) story was pulled from Gawker over the protests and without the consultation of its editorial staff. In the wake of this action, the editor-in-chief of Gawker.com, Max Read, and executive editor of Gawker Media, Tommy Craggs, both resigned (story here) http://gawker.com/tommy-
No, I was thinking in the broadest terms about the future of the company. The choice was a cruel one: a management override that would likely cause a beloved editorial leader to resign on principle; or a story that was pure poison to our reputation just as we go into the Hogan trial.
It was such a breach of everything Gawker stands for, actually having a post disappeared from the internet. But it was also an unprecedented misuse of the independence given to editorial.
Twitter removes background wallpaper from user homepages – So apparently Twitter wants to cultivate a more homogenous appearance among its users and has eliminated background wallpaper from homepages. If you haven’t used your Twitter account in the past 24 hours, you better check your homepage, because this change took effect yesterday. Assistance in customizing Tweet pages, etc. can be found here. https://support.twitter.com/
A Twitter spokesperson told Engadget, “we’re removing background images from the home and notifications timelines on web for all users. Now, background images are only available where logged-in users will see them publicly (Tweet pages, list pages and collections pages).” The images have been replaced with a blank background with a very slight hint of blue. By removing the background images on homepages and feeds, Twitter is able present a cleaner more unified look to new users.
World of Kindle eBooks – The new series at The Hustle on gaming Amazon has a doozy of an article up now, on a guy named John Havel, who allegedly ran an experiment to see how easily he could game Amazon self-publishing by putting out a Romance novel that he didn’t actually write. And which apparently ended up selling more than 1,800 copies within a week. Allegedly this was all in the interest of “science” – an expose of sorts. Interestingly, a paragraph in the original post seems to have been deleted, although the archived version of the post contains the very troubling section, so that is the link I have furnished for the story, along with the section itself, which appeared in the section “Writing the Book, Without Actually Writing”:
Plan B was more straightforward: find a romance novel in the public domain, make sure it reads well enough, change the character names, and repackage it. In other words, shameless plagiarism for the sake of science with little to no remorse. Thankfully, the internet exists. It took only 10 minutes of searching to find my golden goose: “Untamed Billionaire, Undressed Virgin” by the grandiloquent Anna Cleary.
According to our insider, the most popular romance novels involve billionaires, military men, or jungle fever. This book hit one of those, plus taking someone’s virginity.
It only took a couple hours to copy and paste the 60,000 words into a 160 page Microsoft Word document. Reading the damn thing took the longest time but, I wasn’t complaining… it was actually pretty good. Seriously, don’t diss it ‘til you try it.
To hit one more popular romance theme, I changed all the characters’ names and made the male protagonist black for a little jungle fever action. As soon as Connor O’Brien became Carter Voss we were in business. I was ready to move on to the title and cover image.
It took 9 years to write Atlas Shrugged. I wrote my best seller in 3 hours. Get on my level, Ayn Rand.
Jane’s note: When people confronted HustleCon about the fact that the took someone else’s book, they blocked us.
This Is Why I’m Broke – A friend got me hooked on to this website recently, and I thought I’d share it with you, in case you haven’t been similarly sucked in. Has anyone tried the cricket flour protein bars? Or how about the hot tub hammock?
I think it’s important to note that the vast majority of the “sales” of that book were actually free downloads, as the con-man thief (I refuse to call him an “author”) freely admits. For his self-congratulatory stealing of another person’s hard work, then giving it away, he netted less than ten bucks.
It isn’t any different from me breaking into your house, taking all your belongings, putting them out on the sidewalk with a poster saying FREE STUFF!, and after they’re gone publishing an article about my mad leet retail skillz.
I hope Anna Cleary takes that cached article and sues that author and shuts that whole website down.
So when he says public domain, he actually means available for free, not, you know, IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. Ugh. If you’re going to give yourself pats on the back for gaming the system, at least understand the rules of the system you’re bypassing. It’s like being smug you’ve found a way to avoid paying speeding fines by driving backwards everywhere.
Not a very important issue in the grand scheme of things, but geesh! I’ve been making myself crazy over the last day or so trying to restore the nice black background of my Twitter timeline. First patiently, then less so, repeating the same actions in different sequences, logging in and out, rebooting…all this time thinking it was my own ineptitude.
Twitter wants a unified look? It slays me when companies jettison key aspects of their own success. People want personalization. They want signs of affiliation. They want recognition and visibility. (Myself, I just find it easier to scan a wide screen with the high contrast provided by a very dark background behind the areas that need to jump out.) Twitter, this was a silly move undertaken with a minimum of communication to your users. Bah! But thank you Jane, for including the story today. At least I can stop my inane perseverations.
@hapax – yes, I did note that he extrapolated a lot of income earning from his $10 of revenue. And I’m not surprised that a book by Anna Cleary netted him a #1 in some sub rankings particularly with the number of his rigged reviews. He also missed that Amazon is suing at least one company for review milling, that Amazon regularly takes down reviews of people if there is any known association with the author. He’s also screwed himself from publishing in the future at Amazon because I have no doubt that they yanked his account and will ban him from publishing in the future. (Not that he had any intent to do so in romance but if he has any interest in publishing non fiction that would be problematic for him).
Wonder where he found that “free” copy of Anny Cleary’s work. On Amazon, the same place he sold his plagiarized version of her work, the original is for sale at $3.99. Hmmmm, so he started this little adventure in crime by pirating the book, do you think?
Somehow I got the feeling that Mr. Havel may have missed a few classes regarding ethics during journalism school (if he ever attended). I know he missed the lecture regarding copyright infringement.
Shame on him and The Hustle for not only trying this but also blocking anyone who pointed out their illegal & unethical behavior.
@minakelly: No, he understood perfectly well that he was stealing someone’s work. The public domain book was his first try, but he couldn’t quickly combine Girl of the Limberlost with a Literotica story (that’s where he went to look for the sexy bits his book would need. His second try was the pirated Anna Cleary.
I’m overdone on billionaires and virgin (women) stories aren’t usually my cuppa, but I had to buy this book from Anna Cleary just as a show of solidarity.
@Deirdre Saoirse Moen: “I’m overdone on billionaires ”
Funny, you’ve been keen enough on them in the past.