Saturday, July 20, 2013

The infringement of copyright; and Quaker weddings

On the plus side, we are getting some great feedback from peeps who have read PLOTTING FOR GROWN-UPS. They love it!

On the minus side, Amazon emailed me last week to tell me that we were in breach of our Kindle publication contract, because although we should be selling PLOTTING FOR BEGINNERS exclusively with them, Kobo were also offering it for sale. Kobo is a large American company who sell e-readers and ebooks. I emailed Kobo immediately and have been emailing them most days, and still, a week later, they have not taken PfB off their site. The file is inferior and the price is ridiculously high, but that isn’t the point.  They are infringing copyright.

Snowbooks, the original publisher of PfB has also emailed them. Kobo’s answer? We need to contact their supplier – a firm that neither Snowbooks nor I has heard of. Is this how a reputable company would behave? It is outrageous. Scurrilous hounds pirating copies and offering free downloads is one thing (how are authors supposed to live?) but a large company taking money for something they have no right to?

Matthew and Daisy Willis

On the plus side, I am going to a Quaker wedding today at Bakewell Meeting (where I go every Sunday.) Quaker weddings are the most romantic of any weddings. We have no minister, and the bride and bridegroom marry each other in the presence of the rest of the Meeting. They stand up together and each one in turn says “Friends, I take my friend X to be my…..”   The marriage ‘ceremony’ is wreathed in the silence of a meeting for worship, which silence is occasionally broken by members of the congregation getting up to speak (as they are moved) about the couple or about marriage, or about anything else that is pertinent.

All the guests are witnesses and sign the certificate. I have my mother and father’s huge wedding certificate and also the huge certificate from my grandmother’s and grandfather’s wedding. The photo above is the wedding photo of the latter, Matthew Willis and Daisy Jacob, after their marriage at Cartmel Meeting House in 1909.

(There will be no hats today.)

p.s. The new blog header is the view over our front garden wall.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Shame there won't be any hats, they are glorious!

And shame on Kobo. Find their Facebook page (they have several) and write a warning to readers not to buy your book from them...it has a way of making businesses sit up!

Chris A

Sue Hepworth said...

I saw three women wearing hats, and one man.
It was a warm, loving meeting and just as sweet as I expected.
And thanks for the suggestion about Kobo.

Anonymous said...

I find Quaker meetings very loving events. Never been to a wedding though...

Chris A

Christine said...

Love those hats! I want one.