The A. Victoria Mixon, Editor Blog Summit
So, we’ve been in big conference over here at the blog all weekend, and I think we’re coming to some decisions:
1) I’m going to start a new blog so I can continue writing the essays you’re all familiar with, which have been log-jamming in my head for the last few weeks (quickly reaching critical mass).
The new blog will also have guest posts and interviews. (I have claymation pioneer Craig Bartlett lined up next, one of the best animators working today. He’ll talk about storyboarding, storytelling, and the creation of vivid characters, as soon as he gets his head above water after the launch of his new cartoon, Dinosaur Train.)
I’ll charge a nominal fee for the new blog to strip out the freebie scrapers and post a copyright notice in clear, straight-forward English so we all know the ground rules. If I still have trouble with freeloaders, I’ll refer to the expert mentioned at the end of this post.
The blog should go up sometime this week—we just have to wait for late night so my sys admin can move this whole kit-&-caboodle to our own servers and get off WordPress’s. Two birds in the bush, as it were.
The fee will be intentionally low in order to keep the essays available to starving artists as part of my karma, however the old posts will probably not be available anymore, as I’m shopping them right now as a book. Don’t worry—I always revisit the same information over and over again, anyway, presenting it in different lights to help you grasp it.
It’s just like fiction: the basics may be limited (they are), but the potential for great uses is infinite.
2) I’m going to maintain this blog for calls for fiction submissions, links to articles of interest to fiction writers, the blogroll, information about my editing services, and teasers for the essay blog. You’ll go through this blog to subscribe to the essay blog, so you’ll all be notified when that goes up, and it’ll be simple and obvious how to get onboard.
3) As far as the wonderful world of free information on the Internet, we are pretty conversant with the issues here at Blog Mixon. My sys admin is a community leader of some repute in the Linux open-source world, a regular contributor to IBM’s Developerworks site, and a frequent speaker at some of the major Linux open-source conferences—we actually talk free information over our dinner table quite a bit. You can only imagine the conversations our son has had to sit through in the last few weeks.
And I’ve decided to draw a distinction on this blog between “free” information (which isn’t really free, since it does cost someone some time and energy to investigate and post it, including whatever scientists or artists are involved in the original source) and content.
Information is facts. Stuff you can look up and verify in a variety of places.
Content is facts filtered through a particular person’s individual consciousness, shaped and colored and presented by that person’s accumulated life experience and wisdom (or lack thereof).
If that person’s a technical or informative blogger, they’re synthesizing information about their industry to illuminate certain issues they find important, using their personal worldview to share the significance of those issues with others. If that person’s a casual blogger, they’re synthesizing information about their personal life, and again their personality is what’s significant. If that person’s an artist, they’re synthesizing everything they know about their art through their own interpretation, sharing Art itself with other artists and art-lovers.
Starting to sound familiar? In a language-based blog, your content is your writing.
Are you writers? I thought you were.
Now you know the difference between information and content.
(In a stroke of admirable luck, my sys admin came home from his sushi-&-mai tai—excuse me, “work”—trip to Silicon Valley with a fascinating contact. He’d made a side-jaunt to his old haunt Santa Cruz to visit someone he met at a conference last spring and see an organic urban garden, and the guy turned out to be a professional expert in online copyright law. If that’s not too convenient.)
Hi Victoria,
Congrats on the new venture. Have been reading the last few posts with some trepidation.
I gather you’ve been plagiarized. I’m new to blogging, and sometimes am inspired by another blog to link to it. Now I’m wondering if etiquette requires me to ask before linking. I’ve been assuming it’s ok (I’d love someone to link to me,) but have I inadvertently blundered? Rather than free advertising, is this seen as some weaselly thieving? Do I owe apologies?
M
Hi Maureen,
Linking to another blog is a friendly and helpful gesture. It is, as you say, free advertising. It’s a great way to build a network among like-minded readers—and it’s nice of you to do it!
It’s generally best to ask before you copy actual words from someone’s post, but so long as you only use a couple of sentences or a paragraph, credit it to them, and include a link to their blog, it’s considered minimal replication for review purposes under copyright law, so it’s okay.
If you pick up a whole (or even most of) someone else’s post and re-post it on your site without their permission, that is copyright violation and can be considered plagiarism. If you include a link to their blog, they probably won’t call it plagiarism, but it’s still copyright violation and they’re well within their rights to ask you to either ask permission or take it down.
Daniel Scocco and Tibi Puiu have written a couple of good articles on this, which I put links to in this post: https://victoriamixon.com//2009/09/11/other-bloggers-mentioning-copyright/.
Victoria
Thanks– very helpful!
M
I’ve enjoyed your blog for awhile now, and I’ve really appreciated your essays and comments. I completely understand your disappointment about your work being stolen, and how devastating starting over would feel. I most certainly would be happy to purchase your book when it comes out because you have valuable insight. But a few thoughts concern me regarding a “cost” blog. I subscribe to a ton of blogs, I can’t imagine paying separately for all of them. After all, the blog author has the freedom to choose how often they comment, what kind of content (or information) that they wish to provide, or if they just want to say “Happy Friday”. In other words, it’s at their convenience: it’s as if they’ve opened the door and said ‘come in, enjoy, make yourself at home’ in their little corner of the world. If they want a week off, they don’t have to justify to a paying audience why there are no new posts. Since there are so many writing related blogs already in existence that are free, it might just end up lessening your exposure (to both good and bad experiences, I fear).
The whole concept of blogging is an “at your whim” style of anything goes. As far as some blog readers being ‘freebie scrapers’ or ‘freeloaders’, I think that’s a bit harsh. Most blogs try and generate readers, that’s why the “follow” option is offered. They want people coming in, not out. I think your idea of keeping your more comprehensive essays aside is good, after all, why waste it if someone is going to plagiarize it? But if someone actually takes your advice to heart and tries to learn from it, are they freeloading? I can tell you that in many cases, subscription service would be incredibly complicated in the long run (from personal experience with financial sector subscription-based services)and often a time drain to try and keep organized.
Anyway, just a thought. I think a subscription e-mail based system would work better in your case than a subscription blog, but that’s just me! Just my two cents (actually more like 25cents that needs to be edited down to two cents!)
Amy
Amy – I am very curious, why would you be willing to purchase a book, which has static content, but not be willing to pay for a blog that is constantly being updated? Or why you would be willing to subscribe by email (again, static content) but not take advantage of the usability a blog has to offer? I have seen other people express this same opinion. Blogging software is a method of presentation, not a stylistic constraint. There is nothing intrinsic about the presentation style of a blog that makes it more “at your whim” than any other method of publishing information.
Would you have the same concerns if the information was presented as static pages on a “regular” website? What about a magazine site? Lots of magazines limit traffic to paying subscribers as well, but no one seems to question that they charge for the content. Not wanting to pay for multiple blogs isn’t really an excuse if you also go to the bookstore and buy multiple books, or subscribe to multiple magazines. You pay for what you get. In this case, you’d get Victoria’s articles, from which I have gotten FAR more useful information than Writer’s Digest or any other writing mag.
Taking off my Devils Advocate hat for a second, I understand what you mean about expecting blogs to be free, because lots of them are. And lots of them are plagiarized on a regular basis. I had a story lifted once, and for that reason I don’t blog or post any more. Victoria is working to prevent plagiarism. I understand from what she wrote that the monetization is simply to keep out the people who would otherwise feel free to lift large sections of text, which evidently happened to her site. The fact that she is doing this while also maintaining the very high usability factor of her website—by using blogging software—indicates to me that she cares very much about her serious readers. That caring plus the high value of the content is worth a small fee in my opinion. I wish I could get back the money I spent on Writers Digest for so many years and give it to Victoria instead!
Also, it looks to me like she is planning to have a free section and a paid section, what could be better?
Victoria—PLEASE keep us in the loop about shopping the book around, that could be a whole series of blog posts right there!
Sheldon,
It might not make sense in the internet age but I still prefer to have research books (yes, static) rather than print out sections or return to a website for information that I found helpful (I usually can’t find my way back).
For example, I love Noah Lukeman books, and refer to them constantly. But I don’t even know if he has a website!
As far as Writer’s Digest, I’ve never found it helpful. My mom has subscribed for years. And I have never subscribed to any magazine regarding writing, sometimes I find they are too trendy in their ideas and again, resort to my old faithful research books. And even online writing magazines don’t interest me, for the same reason.
I totally get where Victoria is coming from, and I respect whatever decision she makes. I know she does care about serious readers (and writers!) and she has the brains to back it up.
Perhaps if I knew the fee I would be less hesitant to resist the idea; like I said, I subscribe to many blogs and have found many worthwhile to read but I couldn’t possibly afford to subscribe to all of them. Yes, research books are expensive, but user-friendly to me is my deciding factor.
I do stand by my “at your whim” comment about blogs, just look at any list of blogs and notice that some days you get content, some days you get rants, and some days you get nothing at all. That’s a blessing to the author of the blog, as they are freed from the constraints of it being too much like a 9 to 5 job. They can be serious, goofy, or irreverant as they want. They can even take the day off! Or rant about the Dodgers (or Lakers!). They can share recipes! But I certainly wouldn’t purchase a book filled with that sort of randomness, unless perhaps by Tim Winton or Knut Hamsun. LOL
If any good comes out of this, hopefully we’ll all be more careful about what we put out that could be stolen. I can’t help but wonder though, how to prevent it if someone genuinely intends to plagiarize whole sections…couldn’t they do that with a book or magazine as well? It’s scary. Maybe someone should come up with a business of fact-checking blogs or articles to “certify” content, and market the abiding blogs with some sort of internet “seal of approval”?
Amy,
It’s $10 for a six month subscription. The only reason it’s limited at all is because I can’t plan my life any further ahead than that.
You can read all about it at: https://victoriamixon.com//2009/09/22/a-victoria-mixon-editor-pulp-rag/.
Victoria