Friday, February 16, 2007

BookEnds, e-Publishing and MySpace.com

I love it when serendipity works in my favor.

Two days ago, I recommended that writers who are thinking of going the self-published route should consider instead going the electronic publishing route.

Well--lo and behold--yesterday, my very own literary agency addressed e-publishing.

For those of you who don't know, my agent is one of the founders of BookEnds Literary Agency. Today, Jessica Faust, the other founder, wrote a blog on e-publishing that is worth a read here.

And, before I forget, BookEnds was also named the #3 best writers' resource by Preditors and Editors here. Miss Snark was named #1, another vote I heartily endorse. Four of the top ten can be found in the right column of my blog.

There was another development yesterday in a story I first reported about on January 21st. At that time, I explained that families in New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Texas have filed civil suits against MySpace.com and News Corporation. All these families claim that their daughters were sexually assaulted by adults that the girls met through the negligence of MySpace.com.

The first of those cases came to trial this week. MediaPost Publications reported that MySpace "scored its first major victory in a civil lawsuit, when a federal judge in Texas tossed a case brought by the family of a teen, 'Julie Doe,' who alleged she was sexually abused by someone she met on the site."

The judge said that MySpace was not responsible for the crimes committed by a member and indicated that the parents should have exercised greater control of their underage daughter's online activities.

Of course, this is not the end of MySpace's legal woes. They still face lawsuits in other states where judges might not view these cases in the same way.

1 comment:

Linde Lean Romance Author said...

Technology is progressing at such a rapid pace that before we can asertain the impact the next new technology is out. People still believe that actors on TV/Film are are real within that genre, and especially on TV where a Program has been running for 30/40 years people so 'live' in this world, that it is scary. We as parents should ensure that we know what the dangers are so that we can protect our children, and not leave it to a company/corporation to do. If we have the technology and we are using it is our responsiblity. But not so easy as our kids have access in other homes/internet Cafe's and of course for the most of us, our kids know more about the Internett/technology than we do. lol
For me, give me a published book anytime, but if you are a traveller then e-books wow how convenient.
ciao
Linde Lean