"Writing as a writer that writes." ~anonymous

...As opposed to what? A writer that does not write? I thought this was a weird quote posted on an agent's blog today. Just had to share it. What do you think?

Most of the posts I read today talked about stories and ideas being stolen with all the new technology out there on the internet. Authors have sent their manuscripts over plain emails and had them stolen, rewritten and sold under someone else's name with no knowledge until the agent trying to sell it to another publisher tells them it's been done. Shock and horror follow as they try to figure out just what happened.

Though that was the worst of the cases I read, a different type of stealing is fast coming popular. Before the book comes to the shelve, versions are downloaded into the internet published by strangers. It impacts sales that could have sent the book over the top, but because it had free access, stores lost good money from a promising novel.

This sucks. It is the main reason I do not send my book through email anymore. Full manuscripts have been snatched through the US mail system and read and either stolen and submitted under a different name, or deemed unworthy and sent on in new packaging that the author doesn't recognize when the agent (who funnily thought it was great) goes over the ms with them later. These are true stories that really happened. Illegal to be sure, but travesties that truly scare me as a beginner novelist.

I have four books that I am studiously working on. Several ideas for more, but these four really speak to me right now. Two books finished, and none of the six published or copywrited, I worry that someone will either come up with the idea genuinely and get there faster than me, or as I talk about them they will get passed, either in jest as people think the ideas I share with them are lame, or seriously as others truly think I have something, to people who write faster than me and come up with their own versions making mine not as unique as I was going for. This terrifies me.

Those of you who keep asking to read my book please understand where I am coming from. If you want to read it, find me a publisher or an agent who is willing to do you a favor and read it for me for serious contemplation to getting it hardbound. If you help me get my dream to happen for any of these books, I will give you for free one of the first ones off the press hand signed by the author. I promise.

But, and this saddens me, that is the only way I think you will be able to read it. I want to make money as well as get published. It is part of what makes the game worth it. I want to know that people are willing to but me in print. It makes me excited to think that I am going to be in print. I don't want that ruined by the slip that is more common than my niave little mind had previously thought it was.

And a small part of me refuses to believe that 8% of ms are stolen. That is huge when you think about it. 8% is more than a thousand incidents, people. Scary. Of course I don't want to believe. These took me a long time create to think they'll be carted and sold by a faker.

The worst is that it is hard to prove who the idea came from. Some of the authors like me were new and they had no public name to tie their idea to while they wrote it so when they went to claim their own work they had no proof it was really theirs. Very few had copies saved with a date and time that preceded all dates for the thieves. And as they pointed out in the posts, anyone could fudge a time record.

So what is an author to do?

Honestly I don't know.

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