Coming Out of the Cave!

Over the last several weeks I've been in my cave heads down writing, attended the RT Convention in Chicago, and back to heads down writing.
It was my first experience at RT and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's wonderful to immerse yourself with other authors that speak the same language. Who else understands what you mean when you say you talk to imaginary people and they answer you. Jimmy Stewart and his Harvey would fit right in. I reconnected with old friends, met many new ones, and had fan girl moments with some of my favorite authors.

With Scott and Brooks at RT

The RT Convention has a reader component that I found exciting. It was a wow moment when a group of readers at the Carina Press cocktail party rushed to meet me. Yes, my signature was the last one they needed for the drawing for the iPad but the excitement was still the same.

I've also walked out of the cave to join fellow authors on a live chat at Night Owl Reviews. I finally had the courage to request a review of Knight of Runes. My Dear Husband is my 'taster.' In historic times, tasters sampled the food before it was served to the king. My 'taster' samples the review and deems it OK for me to read. He was as excited as I was with this review. It scored 4.5/5.0. It's a Top Pick!

I've read two articles this week that I think you might find interesting. Both are from Writer's Digest.

One article is on How to Use Pinterest to Market Your Book. The article by Rob Eagar is very interesting. The statistics in the article are eye openers. I love pictures but when I read a book what I love more is envisioning things my way. But Mr. Eagar clearly states that Pinterest is the 3 largest social network behind Facebook and Twitter.

The other article is Amazon Let's Authors Spy on Reader. The author, Phil Sexton, sees some innovative promotional opportunities for authors.  One of which is looking at what someone highlighted in their Kindle when they read your book.

Enjoy the articles. I hope you read the review. Have a great week. Now... back to the cave!

Pinterest - Terms of Service

We’re planning a wedding. For those of you with daughters, you know how exciting and frustrating that can be. This is our second wedding and I’m trying to apply the lessons learned from our older daughter’s wedding. Stay calm, pick your battles, and clearly establish the limits. Both my daughters are wonderful and the wedding plans are realistic, so far.

My daughter has been on a pinning frenzy. Since she doesn’t live at home, and while we do talk almost every day, she’s been sending me pictures via email and text messages. When I missed the emails with wedding gown pictures she told me to get a Pinterest account. I opened and she walked me through what to do and how to do it. I thought it was pretty neat. To start my account I added one picture, my book cover.

Over the last several weeks I received Pinterest invites from many of my author friends. I’ve been writing my next book and while doing research have come across some wonderful pictures that I find inspirational. I had plans to pin some of those inspirational pictures into my Pinterest board that is until I read an article about copyright infringement and Pinterest. According to the article, Pinterest has shifted all the liability of copyright infringement onto the Pinterest user.

As an author who has worked to get my book off pirate sites I understand the issues around intellectual property. Most of the pictures I’ve found are in Google Images or within research documents. I’ve not worried about copyright thinking… well maybe I wasn’t thinking. After reading the article written by a photographer, Kristen Kowalski, who is also an attorney I have to rethink whether or not to use my Pinterest account or, at best, how to use it. Her post generated nearly 600 comments.

Here is the article-she’s given permission to share.

Why I Tearfully Deleted My Pinterest Inspirational Boards byKristen Kowalski

Pinterest has been reviewing it's terms and conditions. New ones have been developed and go into effect April 6, 2012. I've included them below.

Do you have a Pinterest account? What do you think of the copyright issues and the new terms of service? 

Updated Terms of Service

Over the last few weeks, we've been working on an update to our Terms. When we first launched Pinterest, we used a standard set of Terms. We think that the updated Terms of Service, Acceptable Use Policy, and Privacy Policy are easier to understand and better reflect the direction our company is headed in the future. We'd encourage you to read these changes in their entirety, but we thought there were a few changes worth noting.

• Our original Terms stated that by posting content to Pinterest you grant Pinterest the right for to sell your content. Selling content was never our intention and we removed this from our updated Terms.

• We updated our Acceptable Use Policy and we will not allow pins that explicitly encourage self-harm or self-abuse.

• We released simpler tools for anyone to report alleged copyright or trademark infringements.

• Finally, we added language that will pave the way for new features such as a Pinterest API and Private Pinboards.

We think these changes are important and we encourage you to review the new documents here. These terms will go into effect for all users on April 6, 2012.

Like everything at Pinterest, these updates are a work in progress that we will continue to improve upon. We're working hard to make Pinterest the best place for you to find inspiration from people who share your interest. We've gotten a lot of help from our community as we've crafted these Terms.

Thanks!

Ben & the Pinterest Team