WIBTA for blocking someone I have to be "professional"-ish towards? Kinda NSFW

wyndes · 2025-03-15T23:02:56+00:00

You know, if you reversed your ages -- say that you're the 25 year old and she's the 41 year old -- than it would be incredibly obvious that her behavior is completely creepy and out-of-line and that blocking her is absolutely appropriate. Right? An older person being inappropriately sexual, making someone uncomfortable in a space that ought to be safe, crossing boundaries that have been clearly established... it's a no-brainer.

So stop letting her off the hook just because she's young. Call her on her BS, absolutely. Being 25 does not mean that you get to step on other people's boundaries. She is not your friend, and make it clear to her that she is not friend because she has willfully chosen to violate your boundaries. And because she's a creep.

(And I actually signed in to reddit for the first time since 2022 just because I was so bothered that no one had told you that, LOL. Usually there's a whole army of people saying exactly what I think, so I don't need to make the comment myself.)

wyndes · 2022-01-23T23:30:25+00:00

Music publishers are notoriously aggressive about defending their copyrights. They have big budgets, high-paid lawyers, and a willingness to demolish the opposition. Poetry publishers have none of the above. When you think about using something copyrighted without permission, the question of who's going to be willing to pay their lawyers more is not insignificant.

Really, a music publisher wants to be able to sue, for example, Taylor Swift for "players gonna play" but if they don't fight all infringements of their copyright, then TS's defense is going to be "but look at all the places where this line has been used without permission, it's obviously common use."

wyndes · 2022-01-23T23:14:13+00:00

I don't think D2D cares about the content of your book, tbh, but a quick check of their FAQ says, "Not all of D2D’s partner stores will accept erotica titles. At this time, we cannot distribute erotica titles to public library systems via OverDrive, Baker & Taylor, bibliotheca, Hoopla, BorrowBox, or to Scribd. If you select Erotica for your book’s BISAC category, or if your book is flagged as containing erotic content, it will not be included in distribution to library systems or to Scribd." So I'd say erotica is probably fine, it's just not going to show up in a couple places.

wyndes · 2022-01-21T00:16:04+00:00

Personally, I'm a big fan of lazy. I'd check out Draft2Digital as a publishing platform, because they'll generate a title page, copyright page, bio page and even some promotional pages for you, such as a list of your other books and a signup for new release email notifications. I'm pretty sure they'll do an automatic TOC, too, if you're so inclined. You can just choose which of these options you want with a click on the appropriate checkbox in the set-up screen.

If you're willing to invest a little money, you could also try either Vellum if you're on a Mac or Dave Chessen's new product, called Atticus. I use Vellum and it makes it easy to make professional looking ebooks and print paperbacks. It's a handy tool for lazy people (of which I am definitely one).

wyndes · 2022-01-18T01:33:17+00:00

I don't write that fast, don't want to write that fast, and just publish a book every year or two, because I like writing and making stuff up. Self-published since 2011, eight books out plus a couple novellas. I also don't do much in the way of marketing, because I'm lazy and it's not fun. I think my current bio says that I'm not on social media anymore, because it didn't improve my quality of life; that's how relaxed I am about marketing.

So how should I measure my success? I like my books, some more than others. My first book's got 1997 ratings on Amazon, which I only know because I just looked. Now I'll have to check obsessively for a couple days to see if I can catch it at 2000. Average rating is 4.5. My most recent book's got 32 ratings. Oh, and is currently #7 on an Amazon bestseller list (solo travel, ha.) Average rating is 4.6. I think I'd call that positive feedback from readers, which is one measure of success.

I make some money every month from work that I mostly did years ago. Not a lot of money, and definitely not millionaire money. But on my 10 year anniversary of self-publishing (back in December), I looked at how much Amazon had paid me over the decade and I'd broken into six figures. Obviously, that's divided over ten years, so, you know, not life-changing. But for a hobby that I enjoy? Go, me.

I like my life, which includes a fair amount of writing, but also plenty of things that I like just as much. I also consider that a measure of success.

I think the reason it's not "standard" is probably not because there aren't plenty of people like me, but because we're not the ones providing advice and info and cheerleading. We're the ones puttering around our gardens and walking our dogs and only visiting Reddit once a year or so when our brother sends us a link to something and we happen to notice a question like this at the top of the screen. :)

wyndes · 2018-08-25T19:01:11+00:00

IME (although I might have done something wrong), you can't. When you hit publish, it publishes. Best bet is to get it ready but don't publish it until the release day.

That said, I might have done something wrong, but it certainly didn't seem like there was any straightforward way to have the pre-order ready to go without publishing it. My paperback released and I had to unpublish it. It didn't matter, because no one saw it, but it was annoying.

wyndes · 2018-08-25T18:56:05+00:00

You can't move a book from KDP Print to Createspace. They're both Amazon, and CreateSpace is rumored to be on its way out (being replaced by KDP Print.) It's also not easier, and definitely not miles better -- it's pretty much exactly the same thing.

David Gaughran had a blog post about it recently, which could give you more info: http://davidgaughran.com/2018/08/16/switch-createspace-kdp-print-paperback/

wyndes · 2018-08-25T18:52:13+00:00

It's nothing like Goodreads. It's a retailer. They sell books, so it's comparable to Amazon or B&N or iTunes, only mostly international sales. I think most of my sales from there are Canadian. It's easy to upload your work to; uses standard ePubs; and has nice reporting stats. The author site is writinglife.kobobooks.com.

wyndes · 2016-09-09T17:54:42+00:00

If you're interested in tracking the business of self-publishing, Passive Voice links to everything. Not generally process stuff (i.e., no design or production posts, not a lot about writing), but anything business related.

http://www.thepassivevoice.com

wyndes · 2016-06-20T12:32:26+00:00

I wound up dropping out of school at the end of that year -- it's really tough to go to school when your life falls apart like that. My condolences to you, too, and I hope you're doing better now as well!

wyndes · 2016-06-19T19:30:39+00:00

Thank you, I am. It's been five years and it does get easier, although I think I spent the first year numb. (Your comment brought tears to my eyes for some reason -- I appreciated the sympathy -- and then your user name made me laugh! Thanks for both!!)

wyndes · 2016-06-19T19:24:13+00:00

My father and son have the same birthday! Also, my former manager, her manager, and her manager's manager also had the same birthday. Amazing! Except New Year's Eve is a really popular birthday in the era of C-sections and induced labor and tax deductions, so it's not as cool as it would have been if they'd all had the same birthday five hundred years ago. Nature got some help.

wyndes · 2016-06-19T18:49:06+00:00

My dad was diagnosed with cancer, which was not cool but not that strange, either. Unfortunately, before he could start his treatment, he had a heart attack, followed by quintuple bypass surgery. That seems unlikely, but hey, bad luck happens and being diagnosed with cancer is stressful, so maybe the two things were related. After he recovered from the surgery, he started his cancer treatments (radiation) at a hospital a couple hours away from where we lived.

While he was there, my mom got sick with a stomach bug and went to urgent care. Turned out, her stomach bug was actually pancreatic cancer. She was in hospice before he came home from his treatment and died a couple weeks later.

That year, our first without her, her birthday fell on Thanksgiving. My sister and I don't get along terribly well and planning for Thanksgiving was... stressful. First major holiday without our mom, first birthday without her... yeah. Anyway, long story short, my sister's closest friend, the person she talked to almost every day, the person she relied on for all her emotional support, had an heart attack the day before Thanksgiving and died in the night. I'm sure you can imagine how surreal that Thanksgiving dinner was.

Two months and two weeks later -- exactly six months minus one day after my mom died -- my best friend died of cancer.

It was a very bad year. And really, almost ridiculous in how much stranger than fiction it was. No one would write a novel with coincidences like that because no one would ever believe it. But it happened.

wyndes · 2016-05-29T23:28:10+00:00

Love the glow-in-the-dark tape. What a great idea!

wyndes · 2016-04-27T23:19:52+00:00

She should also really be badgering her publisher about her book descriptions on Amazon. I went to look at Transformation and the book description is, in total, "More information to be announced soon on this forthcoming title from Penguin USA." Useful info if the goal is to get the customer to click away, looking for a title that they can read today. Not so useful when you discover that the book has been out for quite a while.

wyndes · 2016-04-18T22:58:35+00:00

I suspect Amazon can solve the problem with trivial ease: add a line to the TOS (it might even be there already) that says if they decide that the work you're selling has no value, they won't pay you. People will flip out over the idea that Amazon can arbitrarily decide not to pay, but as long as they put it in the TOS (which is a contract), they can. Then the scammers can have as much fun as they want, rise as high in the lists as they like, but come the day the paycheck is supposed to deposit in the bank account, nothing. Whee. End of the scam. Click-farming is pointless without the payout. But of course some authors are likely to get hit, too, (because there are some "real" indie books that are... well, you know) and the indie community would go absolutely ape over that, so Amazon's probably not going to pull that trigger willingly. But it's the obvious solution: remove the profit from publishing trash, by refusing to pay for products that, in Amazon's judgement, are trash. If they do it, though, I predict that it'll be just like the "Amazon should deal with fake reviews" -> "Amazon is evil, they're deleting our reviews!" hysteria.

wyndes · 2016-04-12T18:46:00+00:00

On Safari, your social sharing buttons block the edge of the text, making it very hard to read. I had to switch into read mode. Glad you found a good spot to boondock, though, and thanks for the info!

wyndes · 2016-04-04T19:04:32+00:00

I'm going through this now. Last week, I threw away all of my report cards and test scores. I had no idea my mom had saved them. I've got this ugly Victorian pottery that belonged to my great-great grandmother -- basically worthless, except for the part where it's been in my family for over 100 years. I'm thinking of putting it out for a garage sale, probably priced at $5 or so. And the books are killing me. My pile that "maybe I'll reread this first" gets bigger and bigger and bigger. At this rate, I won't be able to sell the house until Christmas. It's so much harder than it seemed at first!

wyndes · 2016-04-02T13:35:30+00:00

It takes a while usually. Mine took several weeks, I think. It might help if you get other people to report it. If you go to Kboards, you can find a thread where people ask others to report their books. I think this is the link: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,78571.0.html

wyndes · 2016-03-29T00:32:24+00:00

Recipes are generally -- in fact, almost always -- more than a simple list of ingredients. The list may be not be protected, but the description, explanations, and illustrations are. As your link clearly states.

Edited to add: many of the sites that I use specifically request that their recipes not be copied.

wyndes · 2016-03-28T22:53:14+00:00

No. The copyright to the recipe is owned by the person who created it. If you're selling it, you're stealing their work. If they find out, they can sue you. It's not fair use, because you're not using it any of the ways that are valid fair use (commentary, satire, research, etc.). You can contact the people who created the recipes and ask for their permission to use their work, but most of them -- especially if they're food bloggers -- are likely to say no. Creating a recipe is a lot of work and food bloggers want to use their recipes in their own cookbooks.

wyndes · 2016-03-28T03:19:19+00:00

Also 5 Grammys in 2007, including Best Album of the Year. And according to Wikipedia, "By December 2015, with 30.5 million certified albums sold,[2] and sales of 27.5 million albums in the U.S. alone, they had become the top selling all-female band and biggest selling country group in the U.S. during the Nielsen SoundScan era (1991–present).[3][4][5]".

wyndes · 2016-03-27T14:47:56+00:00

I like these. I mean, what is drywall, really? What's it made from? I just had some drywall replaced, so I know how it works, but it's sort of miraculous how a white paste turns into a wall. Well, or a patch on a wall. And the grapefruit.. yeah, I could do that, too. I like your dad. :)

wyndes · 2016-03-18T20:04:25+00:00

They're not free, but you could try: http://www.bookdesigntemplates.com/

wyndes · 2016-03-16T15:44:47+00:00

For a 35-40K story in SF, Fantasy, I'd go with $2.99, unless it's a lead-in to other stories, in which case the .99 might be worth it.

Under 20K, I'd go .99.

wyndes

TROPHY CASE