Let’s face it, a large chunk of literature and non-fiction sales are nothing to do with people reading and everything to do with being seen to read. It was no surprise to early e-reader adopters that the romance and erotica genres took off as people on the bus to work could now read the stuff they wanted to without being judged. The Guardian posted this survey of readers (although I can’t find the source) listing off everyone’s favourite reading cred books, you know, the ones you claim to have read but fell asleep at page 2.
A recent survey of 2,000 people suggests that the majority of people pretend to have read classic books in order to appear more intelligent, with more than half of those polled displaying unread books on their shelves and 3% slipping a highbrow cover on books they’d rather not be seen reading in public.
The books most likely to be lied about are, naturally, the books most often filmed, talked about and studied in school (some of the respondents must have been lying since GCSE onwards). Are any of them in your pretend-I’ve-read/never-finished pile, or do you save your literary fibbing for Finnegans Wake and Infinite Jest? Share your guilty secrets below.
1) 1984 by George Orwell (26%)Â I have actually read this classic. I read it because Animal Farm was one of the only books I had to read in English Lit class that I actually enjoyed (I’m not counting plays, you’re not meant to read plays, you’re meant to see them performed!!!). I enjoyed it, but I can see how people would battle to read this one.
2) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (19%)Â Haven’t read this one and have no intention of trying. People always talk about battling through it in small chunks because it is such an important and blah blah blah book. If it was really important it wouldn’t have been so boring as to necessitate reading it in small chunks.
3) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (18%)Â I watched the old black and white film, does that count?
4) The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (15%)Â I’ve read this many times and hated it every single time. Each time I’ve re-read it I’ve done so because I felt I was too young and/or stupid to get it, so I must re-read it because I’m so much older and smarter now. Although, John Green did manage to convince me of its literary merits via Crash Course Literature, not that I’ll bother revisiting this novel.
5) A Passage to India by EM Forster (12%)Â I can honestly say I’ve never heard of this book.
6) Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien (11%)Â I’ve read it, but I will admit that I did so only after seeing the first movie. I really enjoyed the book, but it was long and waffly and I can see why others wouldn’t actually finish it. I will also say that I started reading The Hobbit when I was in school and then realised that life was worth living and stopped.
7) To Kill A Mocking Bird by Harper Lee (10%)Â Okay, I’m guilty of this one. It is on my TBR pile. I have it on Kindle and DTB.
8) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (8%)Â See #2
9) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (8%)Â I’m going to read the zombie version.
10) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (5%)Â If there is a zombie version of this I may read it.
You may remember that I previously wrote about a number of artists and songs that, despite their crappiness, I actually enjoyed. Well, it only seems fair that I talk about the music I enjoy and whose band t-shirt I would not be ashamed to wear in public. Let’s face it, it is too easy to write yet another article on the internet decrying which musicians suck. We already have science proving that pop music is becoming more generic and bland, I don’t really need to beat that dead horse more than a few times. Unless, of course, I get a particularly annoying song stuck in my head after accidentally wondering into a “hip” clothing store.
I’m going to have to limit my list to recent purchases, otherwise this list could become too awesome and might cause the internet to implode.
Kontrust
I discovered Kontrust completely by accident. Whilst searching for “cool ways to kill people with a spoon” on Youtube, I came across the song Hey DJ by this crossover act from Austria. If you don’t understand all of the lyrics in their songs, don’t worry, that just means you don’t know either Austrian, German, Polish or English. They have three albums out, but they really hit their stride with the second and third albums.
Krypteria – Get the hell outta my way
This German band have been around for quite a while and are part of the legion of female fronted metal acts in Europe. This is the only song of theirs that I like, the rest don’t really grab me like this one does.
Halestorm
There is nothing quite like a good rock act belting out some tunes. Lzzy is a great vocalist and I’m sure the other band members, including her brother, are very important to the music as well.
Amaranthe
I first came across this band because I like Kamelot. The latest Kamelot album and tour features Elize Ryd doing vocals that would normally be done by Simone Simons of Epica. She also filled in on vocals for Nightwish. All this was telling me I had to check out all the projects she was involved with because all the bands I liked were fans, so that meant I needed to be as well. Amaranthe has to be the only three lead vocalists band I know of, but it works very well for their pop-metal stylings.
Five Finger Death Punch
So far all the music I’ve listed have one thing in common: positive and fun music. All right, most of it is pretty heavy, although not by metal standards, but none could be mistaken for angry music. Yet I write action packed stories in which bad things happen to bad people. That means I need the occasional piece of angry music to get me in the mood to take aim at some of the crap people in the world and write a scene where they get shown how to resemble swiss cheese. Enter Five Finger Death Punch. I only have their American Capitalist album, which I was put onto by my friend. He’d put together a training video, prior to him winning his IFBB physique pro card, which included the above track – because weightlifters and bodybuilders can’t lift heavy stuff to pop music.
Have you ever suffered from this? I often have this problem with names, especially those from a Dravidian or Sino-Tibetan base. The earliest word I can remember reading but not knowing how to pronounce was acknowledge and its derivatives. It was a favourite verb of WE Johns in his Biggles books, using it instead of said in dialogue. I know, acknowledge is phonetic so there shouldn’t have been a problem, but I was young and my dictionary was very small.
It isn’t just reality TV, it is quite a bit of TV programming that is killing books and, thus, us.
Think about the worst book you’ve ever read. Now remember that, with few exceptions, the movie is always worse than the book. Now think about the best programming on TV being movies and high calibre drama shows. So what I’m insinuating is that the best programs on TV are inferior to just about any book.
For every half-hour wasted watching bad TV, that is 5-10% of a decent novel that you’ll never get to read. Scary, isn’t it!
NB: If people are interested I might write about my favourite TV shows, because not all TV sucks.
Plenty of what’s popular isn’t good, and plenty of what’s good isn’t popular.
There is a school of thought and snobbery that says anything good is not popular and anything popular is not good. I regard this as a myth. I can’t remember any good stuff that wasn’t popular, because who is going to remember stuff that wasn’t popular and good? Well, it is a little more complicated than that.
Back when I was in high school the music scene changed. No longer were pop bands like New Kids On The Block acceptable on the radio, now it was Grunge and heavier, alternate styles of rock that ruled the airwaves. In 1991 Â Nirvana released the seminal Nevermind, Pearl Jam released Ten, Soundgarden released Badmotorfinger, and thus the reign of Seattle and Grunge music began. Add to that the release of Guns ‘n’ Roses last decent album, Use Your Illusion (1 and 2), and the cross-over metal album that forced the Grammys to include a new Hard Rock/Metal category, Metallica’s black album, and you can see that it was a good year to be a pimply teen music fan.
At the time you couldn’t talk about music without talking about Nirvana or Grunge. With the release of Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream, the follow-up albums from Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and the influx of punk bands like Greenday and The Offspring, alternative music like Grunge was KING. Unless you looked at the charts.
Okay, so some easy listening pop music snuck through with some sales, but Nevermind and the single Smells Like Teen Spirit must have been top 10, right? Nope. Nirvana’s single didn’t make a dent in the charts until 1992, and even then it only cracked the top 50 in Australia (#46) and was #32 in the USA. Of course, rock and metal have never sold singles as much as albums, but Nevermind still only got to #17 in Australia and was beaten by frikin Garth Brooks and Michael Jackson in the USA.
Alright, maybe this is just a once off. The Beatles were huge, right? They combined good music with popularity. Well, in the UK, yes, but in the rest of the world, not so much.*
Before I end up beating you over the eyeballs with this example further, I’ll come to my point: popular has nothing to do with good. Sure, there are examples of good art also becoming popular. The examples I used were still very popular music acts whose influence will continue long after we’ve forgotten what a Bieber is. Â But people were still more likely to own an album by Garth Brooks or Vanilla Ice than Smashing Pumpkins.
This is why I think that good art is often remembered more fondly after the fact than at the time. Good art stands the test of time, influences others and finds new audiences. Popular art is often shallow, or is transient, which means the audience has forgotten it when the next popular thing comes along.
To quote Neil Gaiman, make good art. Make good art and popularity will be someone remembering your work long after you’re gone.
NB: This article is referring to Survivorship Bias, which is a form of sampling bias, and can be a form of logical fallacy.
* I wasn’t aware when I wrote this article of the actions of the US record label Capitol Records. It appears they did their best to make sure The Beatles weren’t popular in the US. I’d like to say I’m surprised by the things done by The Beatles’ own US record company, but tales of this sort seem to be all too common.
I was saddened to hear of Elmore Leonard’s passing at age 87. He leaves behind a legacy of fantastic writing and his influence will continue. As a tribute I’m posting his ten rules of writing, but I also recommend picking up one of his many works to see how he could impart more in a few sentences than others could in an entire chapter.
I’m not a fan of The Daily Fail. They really do seem to swim in the shallow end of the wading pool of intelligence. That said, today they featured an article from a very good novelist, someone with whom I’ve had some interesting conversations: David Thomas / Tom Cain. So like any good blogger, I’ve stolen the article and reposted it here. Enjoy!
All over the world, on countless flights, heading to an infinite number of sun-loungers people are burying their heads in stories about secret agents, serial killers, ace detectives, evil villains and sexy heroines.
Thrillers are a huge business. They make up about a third of all books sold, and 60 per cent of them are bought by women.
For the very top writers, the rewards are astonishing. In 2009, James Patterson signed a four-year, 17-book deal worth almost £100 million. At the peak of Da Vinci Code mania, Dan Brown was making more than £50 million a year.
For every one of those megastars, of course, there are hundreds of professional thriller writers who just about make it pay – even a best-selling paperback in the UK, shifting 100,000 copies won’t earn much above £50,000 in royalties – and thousands of wannabes. I’m lucky enough to come in the ‘make it pay’ category. So I know what the job entails. And trust me, it isn’t easy.
One Monday morning in June 2006 my literary agent sent out a book proposal to publishers: the first 150 pages of a thriller called The Accident Man that I’d written under the pseudonym Tom Cain. The book had a very simple, high-concept premise. Its hero, Sam Carver, was the man who killed Princess Diana. Her name appeared nowhere in the book. But on the night of August 31, 1997, Carver makes a black Mercedes saloon crash in Paris.
He’s been told the Merc’s passenger is a terrorist. But of course it’s actually a woman – the most famous woman in the world.
By lunchtime on Wednesday, I’d received a six-figure offer for the UK rights to the book and a sequel and Hollywood bought an option on the film rights.
Before you even try to write a thriller, take a good look at how other people have done it. It looked like an overnight success, but I’d spent two years producing one useless draft after another. My agent made it perfectly clear to me that I’d made a bundle of rookie mistakes. My plot didn’t hold together. My writing was hopelessly cluttered with unnecessary descriptions of Parisian streets and buildings as I tried to stuff all my endless research down on to the page.
The characters weren’t believable and the one the agency boss liked best – Carver’s love-interest, a Russian girl called Alix – was killed in the second act. The only crumb of comfort the agency boss could offer me was: ‘I never quite hated it enough to stop reading.’
In the end, we managed to fix all the problems. But in 25 years as a journalist and author, during which I’d written countless articles, edited three magazines and published half-a-dozen non-fiction books, nothing had been as difficult as writing a half-decent thriller.
But what if you want to write a thriller of your own? Here are ten tips that I would give to anyone who dreams of seeing their book piled up in airport bookstores . . .
1) Study the masters…
Before you even try to write a thriller, take a good look at how other people have done it. Read every book you can get your hands on, but watch great TV series and movies, too. The Accident Man was hugely influenced by the way the writers of 24 kept multiple storylines running simultaneously, each with its own cliffhanger, so there was always someone, somewhere, in desperate trouble. 24 was relentless, it never for one moment let you relax. And you always wanted more.
2) …but don’t overdose on them
I devoured Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books. I tried to imitate his terse, punchy, bone-dry style. The result was garbage. Then I realised that Lee writes the way he does because that’s how he naturally expresses himself. So I went back to the way I write naturally, and it made a huge difference. Your book will work best if it’s told in your voice.
3) Structure, structure, structure…
Property is all about location, thrillers are all about structure. Everything has to fit together with the precision of a Swiss watch, powered by a coiled spring. Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of The Jackal is a masterpiece of construction. I once drew a chart on a couple of sheets of A2 paper that consisted of a scene-by-scene analysis of Jackal, showing which characters appeared when, and how Forsyth balanced character development, plot and action over the course of the book. It really helped me understand the structural skeleton beneath the flesh and blood of the words.
4) Show, don’t tell
Always make your point through action and dialogue, rather than exposition. At the beginning of The Accident Man I had a few paragraphs explaining that Sam Carver was an assassin who created fatal ‘accidents’. An American publisher said: ‘Nice idea, but it would be much better if we could see him do it.’ So I wrote a new opening scene in which he killed a people trafficker by sabotaging his helicopter using a miniature spanner, a hacksaw and two blobs of Blu-Tack. So we saw Carver at work. Better.
Some thrillers are whodunits: the hero arrests the bad guy. Some are action thrillers: the hero kills the bad guy. Either way, you’re going to be thinking of new ways to kill people and cool weapons to kill them with
5) It’s the people, stupid
Stieg Larsson thought his Millennium Trilogy was all about the sexism and corruption at the rotten heart of Swedish society. But the millions who devoured The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo couldn’t care less about that. They just fell in love with an emaciated, autistic computer genius called Lisbeth Salander. It’s the characters in a book – and that means the villains, lovers and supporting cast, too – that make it work. So if you ever think, ‘I’ve got a great idea for a thriller,’ make sure you’ve got great characters for it too.
6) Grab them by the throat and their minds will follow
If you don’t grab your readers’ attention in the opening chapter, they’ll find another book. Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity has one of the all-time great opening sequences: a man, fished from the Mediterranean, unaware of who or what he really is, unknowingly possessed of all the deadly skills of a CIA assassin. The men from Hollywood threw away 90 per cent of what Ludlum wrote in the Bourne trilogy. But they kept that opening and it gave them a billion-dollar franchise.
7) Think like a killer
Some thrillers are whodunits: the hero arrests the bad guy. Some are action thrillers: the hero kills the bad guy. Either way, you’re going to be thinking of new ways to kill people and cool weapons to kill them with. So clip grisly news stories. Read books about real killers. Go on the gun-nut channels on YouTube. And read books by Patricia Cornwell and Jonathan Hayes. They’re professional forensic pathologists. Dead bodies are, quite literally, their business.
8) Count the bullets in the gun
If you want your readers to believe your story, get the details right. Either write about what you know, or do your research properly. Don’t have your hero firing 15 bullets from a Walther PPK if it can only hold nine. And speaking of James Bond’s favourite gun, Ian Fleming pulled off a brilliant trick when he created 007. The idea of a cool, sophisticated, lady-killing assassin, touring the world On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, bumping off bad guys who wanted to rule the world was as much a fantasy as Harry Potter playing Quidditch. But because the details were so brilliantly observed – Bond’s cars, his Sea Island cotton shirts, the exotic locations – it all felt completely real.
9) Always think of Option C
The fun part of thriller writing is getting your characters into dangerous situations and then getting them out again. An editor once gave me a great tip: put your protagonist in a situation where they have to choose between two options, A and B. Then write option C. In one of my books, Carver is on holiday in the Greek islands with a girl. They’re having lunch. The restaurant is attacked by gunmen. The girl is shot. Carver just escapes, after a frantic chase. He stops for a second to think. Should he go after the gunmen, or should he get the hell off the island? That’s options A and B. Then the phone rings. He takes the call. It’s the girl – the one who’s just been shot dead. And that’s Option C.
10) If you’re a man, ditch the dumb blondes and tough girls
Forget the rules . . . except one. The first four, clunkingly tabloid words of The Da Vinci Code, ‘Renowned curator Jacques Saunier’ tell you that Dan Brown can’t write for toffee. There’s not a character in the book that’s close to being interesting and the ‘facts’ on which the whole thing depends have been debunked. Yet somehow it’s is completely unputdownable. So in the end, the only rule that really counts is: keep the reader reading.
‘Revenger’, Tom Cain’s latest Sam Carver novel is published in paperback by Corgi, £6.99. ‘Ostland’, by David Thomas, is published by Quercus, £16.99
I don’t like to claim a lot of expertise in formatting, layout and graphic design. That isn’t to say I can’t do it, nor that I haven’t produced a couple of my own publications and newsletters. But I found myself in an argument recently defending using both serif and sans-serif fonts, which is like arguing over what colour black you want to wear to a metal concert (that’s a no-brainer: the darker one).
Anyway, there are plenty of anal retentive science nerds like me who have gone and done research into what fonts work best for which applications. There are actually a surprising number of research studies on fonts and readability.
First, let’s define what is meant by serif and sans-serif fonts. (From Scribe Consulting) Consider the following characters. The first is set in Georgia, a lovely serif font. The second is set in Verdana, an easy-to-read sans-serif font.
  serif
  sans serif
Notice the small decorative flourishes at the ends of the strokes in the left character. These are called serif. The right character does not have these strokes and is said to be a sans-serif font. Sans is the French word for without. So I could be currently sans-pants.
The most common examples of these two font types are Times New Roman (serif) and Arial (sans-serif). Bleeding Cowboys would be an example of an overused serif font that is for try-hards, whilst Comic Sans is an overused sans-serif that shows a lack of taste.
Now there are some simple rules of thumb when it comes to using serif and sans-serif fonts, which are backed up by science. The first rule is that thumbs only hit the space bar once. The second rule is:
This is because the serif make the individual letters more distinctive and easier for our brains to recognise quickly. Without the serif, the brain has to spend longer identifying the letter because the shape is less distinctive.
The commonly used convention for printed work is to use a serif font for the body of the work. A sans-serif font is often used for headings, table text, captions, and ransom notes.
The third rule is:
Use sans-serif for online work
An important exception must be made for the web. Printed works generally have a resolution of at least 1,000 dots per inch; whereas, computer monitors are typically around 100 dots per inch. Even Apple’s much vaunted retina display is only around 300 dots per inch — much lower than print.
This lower resolution can make small serif characters harder to read than the equivalent sans-serif characters because of their more complex shapes. Yes this does give you an excuse to buy a 4K monitor for your computer. Go nuts.
It follows that small on-screen text is better in a sans-serif font like Verdana or Arial.
I still think that the best bookends are other books. Our bookshelves are actually two layers deep, and that isn’t accounting for the two boxes of young adult books that are sitting in a cupboard because they don’t fit on any shelves.
The average writer is normally not someone prone to being a gun or knife nut. Sure, they might have a gun or two, they may have a kitchen drawer full of knives, but that doesn’t mean they know which one needs to be used in the scene where the zombies have just broken through the barrier erected by the pirates who were lucky to survive the assault of the purple ninjas. That means extra research. And ninjas.
Below is a handy graphic that covers a few of the basic blade types of knives. Obviously there are variations on these types and, of course, the difference between a serrated and plain edged blade.
Also check out this handy video:
Update: The knife aficionado from the above video has just produced a new information video that I felt was worth including. He goes into the blade types and what they are best used for and why. Very informative if you want to brush up on knives.
Update: adding another graphic that covers a few more blade types.
Yeah, you know that whenever a title/headline asks a question you can almost guarantee the answer is no. In this case the question is also an interesting way of asking about having the blocked up innards of a red faced, bowl gripping, battleship bomber. The most talked about probiotic is Yakult and its patented strain of “good” bacteria. I wonder if “bad” bacteria have a three day growth and shifty eyes?
In terms of the probiotic Yakult, which has “6.5 billion healthy bacteria in every serve,” there was a 2010 review conducted by the European Food Safety Authority. This was a separate study called to support those made on intestinal health claims (which have been covered by Johan already).
The EFSA panel concluded that a cause and effect relationship had not been established between the consumption of the Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota and maintenance of the upper respiratory tract defence against pathogens by maintaining immune defences. This shouldn’t be that surprising considering that 6.5 billion bacteria is 0.0065% of the 100 trillion or so bacteria in the intestines.
The food constituent, Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota, which is the subject of the health claim, is sufficiently characterised. The Panel considers that maintenance of the upper respiratory tract defence against pathogens by maintaining immune defences is a beneficial physiological effect. The applicant identified a total of 12 references as being pertinent to the health claim. These included nine human intervention trials and three animal studies. In weighing the evidence, the Panel took into account that there was no human study from which conclusions could be drawn for an effect of Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota consumption on upper respiratory tract infections, that one human study did not support an effect of Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota consumption on the immune response to influenza vaccination, and that there was a lack of evidence for an effect of Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota consumption on the immune system that could relate to the defence of the upper respiratory tract against pathogens.
Yakult is supposedly backed by a signficant body of science. The number of scientific papers is certainly large, however, most of them are related to in vitro and in vivo experiments, with some human clinical trials done on cohorts (e.g. 1, 2, 3). The trials also tended to use much larger daily consumptions of bacteria, in the order of 40–100 billions of probiotic L. casei Shirota (sorry, links are now behind a paywall in the UK), far above the single bottle concentration of approximately 6.5 billion.
An example of the studies performed shows that the claims are borderline, with both placebo and Yakult treated constipation groups showing improvements (improved constipation 56% vs. 89%, p=0.003) in the second week, or the claims are based on small sample sizes (n=20). This shows why the EFSA concluded as they did.
So, save your money and wait until there is either some conclusive science or you run out of vegetables. In the meantime, this article is of interest on this topic.
Update: The Lancet recently published a paper on antibiotic-associated diarrhoea and Clostridium difficile diarrhoea which showed that multistrain preparations of lactobacilli and bifidobacteria did nothing. This is another example of how the previous smaller studies that have shown benefits are being overturned by more conclusive studies. I could go into the statistical and methodological reasons for this, or you could all thank me for not doing so. Thanks to Ross from Skeptically Challenged for the paper.
Word limits are a funny thing. I’ve never had a problem being succinct, in fact I can be too brief in my writing. Yet other writers are known for sitting down with editors to cull half their manuscript. There are other writers still that should have sat down with an editor and culled half their manuscript and saved the readers all that page skipping.
This is one of the reasons to like Twitter. It forces you to practice creating a thought or sentence in a manner that may be foreign. For example, the complex phrase:
I disagree with your supposition as it is currently unsupported by any evidence, either presented by yourself or in the scientific literature, thus there is no way you can sway my position.
Can be replaced with:
Lol, moron!
This says everything that is needed and doesn’t dance around the topic. Conversely the reply to this can be shortened from:
Whilst you are allowed to disagree with me, my opinion still stands. I cannot provide a summary of the relevant scientific literature at this time, but this is information that is readily understood and referenced in the literature. Thus I will endevour to provide a few examples when I am able to, but in the meantime I’d invite you to read further on the topic, as I suspect that you will agree with me once you have.
Can be replaced with:
Well screw you and the horse you road up on.
The trick is to start with what your key points are and not overuse exposition to explain those points. The 140 character limit can help with this a lot.
In the meantime, if you aren’t a fan of See Mike Draw, I suggest you become one now.
Walk in a crooked line
Let’s face it, walking in a straight line is something people now practice. Make the line crooked and you’ll quickly have people staggering like drunken zombies, regardless of the number of drinks they’ve had.
Not buy a kebab
Somewhere between the pub and home there is always a kebab store. If someone can walk past it and not buy a kebab, then they are sober.
Discuss politics without yelling
Although this may just mean the person yelling is a politician. Either way, just lock them up to be on the safe side.
Not heckle a comedian
Unless they are on this list, in which case don’t stop at heckling, molotov invented a drink that needs to be served to them.
Check that they don’t use the phrase “I’m not drunk.”
May be combined with the phrases “I’ve only had one/couple of drinks” or “Just a wine with dinner.”
Refuse to sing karaoke
Much like the kebab, there is no way a drunk person can refrain from busting out a classic tune in all its warbling, tone deaf, shouted glory.
Look for Picasso abstract facial features.
You may have to wipe away the drool from their face to properly assess this.
Look them directly in the eye and then glance sideways to see if they have another head.
Not to be mistaken with conjoined twins or a couple with separation anxiety.
Do you have to shake their hand or just hold it?
Could they also mix some paint or a good martini for you?
Check for matching leg lengths.
Some inbreeding mountain people have one leg longer than the other to aid with circumnavigation of mountainous terrain.
Problems answering questions in clear English.
Although this could just mean they work for Fox News and don’t have the teleprompter on.
Okay, just to be serious for a moment: Do you see a difference between these two cartoons?
Some of you may have seen the awesomeness displayed on The Oatmeal in response to people stealing his cartoons and taking his authorship off of the picture. Well, here is another example. The second cartoon was the one I was going to post, but I realised that it didn’t have the creator’s signature on it and it would be good to make sure that they were able to be tracked down. Ideally, I’d link to the original, but that isn’t always possible, especially when someone has decided to edit out the part that would help us all identify the author. It is clear that the author isn’t even asking for money, the cartoon is freely published on the web, yet someone has decided to remove the content creator as though they aren’t important.
Free content is great, so many people with great ideas are creating stuff to entertain others just because they enjoy it. I’m going to try and make sure the authors (content creators) are acknowledged when possible, I hope everyone else does too.
This is a cool infographic from Laura E. Kelly. I definitely fall into the Book Cherisher genus, but I’m not sure if I’m of the species Hoarder or Compulsive Buyer.
Tyson Adams 