Forum: Author Hangout

I suspect that it was once longer, but as others discovered the theft they got removed one by one.

But Queen Bee Sora is also an old one taken from ASSTR. I bet that is all they did, go through there and grab as much as they could and simply started to sell them.

And I saw it is the same one as last time. So I can only imagine B&N did not honor my request to remove it, or they added it back again.

Next time, submit the publishing dates of your stories, along with the outlets (so they can document it)

Which I have done. Thankfully, I was able to go back to 2001 when I had reposted it on ASSM Usenet group. But I could not trace back to my original postings, as the ASSTR site has become pretty much useless in searching anymore.

To search for - as an example - Trouble with Tribbles on AssTr, use the following search string:

The problem is, that barely works on ASSTR anymore. This is because that site is pretty much dead, and the archives are largely gone for one reason or another.

I know for a fact the first stories I posted in the ASSM Usenet group was in 1996. And I used to use those earliest postings when throwing out DCMA complaints in the past. But now, the oldest result is from 2001. Everything from around 1995-2000 seems to be gone.

Heck, my own author's section (from 1997-2000) is no longer in the search, I had to go back and look at the directory usage reports I used to get years ago to even find my page there.

https://www.asstr.org/files/Authors/Mushroom/index.html

Yes, I know about using qualifiers like site:. But when the site itself is largely broken and huge parts of the archive appear to be gone that is worthless.

Out of curiosity, what prompted you to look at Barnes & Noble?

I was not.

Here is the thing, a lot of thieves are amazingly lazy. And they will throw up several paragraphs of a story as a teaser or hook to get people interested in buying the story.

I simply went into google and entered the first lines of my story in quotes.

"It was late Saturday evening. I was walking in Okinawa City, Japan. I had been here for just over a year, and loved being here. My normal routine was to get into my car (a piece of shit '82 Toyota) and drive down here."

And the number 1 result was Barnes and Noble. Also Kristen, and a few clones of the Kristen site. Followed by some that have thrown this into hidden text as a way to get people to load the page. I have been seeing that for over 20 years now.