as small as a world and as large as alone, Thanks for the signal boost re ebook-tree. I just...

8:37am April 14, 2015

themagdalenwriting asked: Thanks for the signal boost re ebook-tree. I just sent my first ever DMCA takedown notice, which is something I'd never thought to have to worry about, being "only" a fanficcer. Since you mentioned having to keep on top of illegal-upload sites, I was wondering how one does it? I mean, I tried googling my pseudonym, but ebook-tree didn't come up at all, and they'd snarfled nine of my stories ...

dduane:

Googling is part of it, and self-Googling doubly so (which can be embarrassing to discuss, but I’m in the habit of doing that because there is a naughty lady who was impersonating me at cons and elsewhere, and I have to keep an eye out for her; she pops up again every now and then).
Anyway, here are things I do:
Do searches on the titles of your works as well as on your pseud. (If your fanworks are part of a series at AO3, probably you should search on the series name as well. I find that when the YW books are co-opted in this way, a lot of people who upload them routinely title them “Young Wizards #1,” “Young Wizards #2″) etc. )
Try searching on one or another text string from your work (don’t omit the quotes around it to make sure Google keeps the words together).
When searching, don’t forget to use the version of the Google search command that invokes / duplicates the now-deprecated Google Blogsearch:
http://www.google.com/search?tbm=blg
Additionally: search for your work titles with the “.rtf”, “.doc”, “.pdf”, “.epub” and “.mobi” suffixes: other people may have converted them to one format or another and then posted them.
Also, it may benefit you to open an email address at Gmail that is only for registering at the biggest of the suspect upload sites so you can search them from the inside (as many of them have robots.txt files running that keep Google from indexing them properly. Ironic, since some of them, like ebooks-tree, use scraper bots that don’t honor others’ robots.txt files). I have a few of these. Once you’ve tracked down where a book is being hosted then you can start DMCA’ing the people in question using the email address associated with your pseud.
…Believe me when I tell you that I hate every second that this takes away from my writing time. But lost ebook revenue is noticed at one’s publisher, and can make the difference between selling your next book and not selling it… or selling it for a much lower advance than you might have if your ebook sales were better.
HTH.