Why you can't post my entire book on WattPad: For Dummies

I just spent what was probably the most difficult four and a half months in my recent memory writing a book that we sold to Scholastic on a very short proposal less than a week before my mother died suddenly and unexpectedly of a deep vein thrombosis.

After turning in the book to my wonderful editor Jody Corbett last Friday, I set off with my daughter, sister, and two young nephews to visit my cousins at their house up in Maine for a much needed break.

I was so determined to relax that I didn't take my computer with me. But I did have my phone, and when I was on wifi, I got this email:

So I recently read your book, Backlash. I love it. It is an amazing book and I'm in the proccess of reading it for a third time. I would like your permission to post your book on a website/app called Wattpad. It would give thousands to millions of people to read the book and enjoy it as much as I have. It would be written just as it is in the book and all credit will be towards you. It would be published within the next few months. Please get me back to me as soon as possible.

Seeing as I had just had to notify my publisher about someone publishing chapters of Backlash wholesale on WattPad so they could get their legal department to issue a takedown notice, and I'd sent them a list of about 15 websites claiming to offer "free PDFs" of my books, this was not good for my blood pressure and relaxation.

I forwarded the email to my agent, the wonderful Jennifer Laughran, with a brief message: "OMG WTF?!"

Her response was equally succinct: "LOL WTF?!"

I decided to wait till I was back in front of a computer to write a response, because, my lovelies, Auntie Sarah is going to need all ten fingers for this rant.

We authors LOVE that you LOVE our books. We LOVE that you read our books more than once. People wonder why I still have books from my childhood on the overcrowded bookshelves in my house. Why I still have books from my mother's childhood, and the copy of Noel Streitfield's Ballet Shoes that my Aunt Marilyn read in her childhood.

It's because these books are like old friends to me. I cannot bear to part with them and I love to walk into a room where I am surrounded by my old friends. It gives me joy to think that a book that I have written might someday be old and worn on someone else's shelf, and similarly handed down as an old friend.

BUT - and here is the big but...everyone in my family PAID FOR BOOKS, even if we bought them second hand. Now not everyone can afford to pay for books, and at the rate I read, I would have read my parents out of house and home. So my parents would take me to the library every week and I'd come home with a stack of books to keep me sated until the following week.

"Oh, but Auntie Sarah," I hear you whinge, "It's such a HASSLE to go to the library....and I'm TIRED and it's HOT or RAINING or it's COLD and SNOWING" or _______________(fill in excuse here).

Guess what?! There's this great thing called OVERDRIVE that many libraries offer so you can borrow ebooks onto your e-reader or phone or laptop without your butt even leaving the comfortable surface upon which you have placed it!

I use this myself and it is both fabulous and convenient. You can even put books on hold and they will automatically download to your bookshelf when they become available. It couldn't be easier!

What's that I hear?   "But Auntie Sarah...what about me posting your entire book on Wattpad, where  it would give thousands to millions of people to read the book and enjoy it as much as I have. It would be written just as it is in the book and all credit will be towards you" ???

Oh yes. That.

HERE IS MY CLEAR, NON-NEGOTIABLE, UNEQUIVOCAL ANSWER:

NO YOU MAY NOT  POST MY BOOK ON WATTPAD, OR ANY OTHER SITE. THIS IS CALLED COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT, AND IF YOU DO THIS YOU WILL BE HEARING FROM MY PUBLISHER'S LEGAL DEPARTMENT.

Why am I being so mean about this, you ask?

Let me explain a few financial facts of life for you, Dear Reader.

If you mean what you say about loving my books, you should know that I write these books you love from a home upon which I must make mortgage payments. I am a single mother with two children, who is self-employed, and therefore does not have health insurance as a benefit of employment. Such health insurance doesn't come cheap, but it is very, very necessary with the medical conditions I have in my family.

I'm not complaining about working hard. It's what I do and it's how I was brought up. I work many different jobs in order to be able to pay my bills.

 But nothing makes me more depressed and demoralized than looking at the search terms that are used to get to my website. My name is the 1st, but the 2nd through 10th terms are "free PDF" and permutations of my various book titles.

If you say you "love" my book, but then have the chutzpah to ask me to publish it on WattPad, it's exactly the same as saying, "Hey Auntie Sarah, I love what you do," at the same time you're picking the wallet out of my purse.

 Then when I call you on how wrong it was to do that,  telling me that losing all my money and credit cards because you want to give the money I've spent years working for and am counting on to pay my mortgage and health insurance (not to mention keeping THIS GUY in dog food and Lambchop toys) to 'thousands and millions' of random people because.....???? I'm not really sure why. "Exposure?" Honey, let me tell you a fact about banks that hold your mortgage and health insurers (see also, electric company, gas company, car mechanics, gas stations and grocery stores): THEY DO NOT ACCEPT "EXPOSURE" AS VALID CURRENCY FOR PAYMENT.

Here's the thing, dear readers. If you keep posting and downloading my books illegally and my publishers don't make money and therefore I don't make money, then why am I going to bust my butt to write a book when I'm intensely grieving my mother, who modeled a strong work ethic as well as respecting others and not stealing?

I write because I love it and it's what I've always wanted to do, even when I was getting my MBA in Finance and being told I'd never make a living that way by my late father. Do me a favor: don't make my father right by illegally downloading my books. Or any writer's books.

If none of the above is enough to convince you to cease and desist, know this: it would kill my very soul to have to go back to working on Wall Street because you've made it impossible for me to make a living doing what I love.

Why The Hunger Games is a trilogy for our times

I have two Twitter feeds, one for my author life @sarahdarerlitt and one for my life as a political columnist @realsaramerica. This morning as I was scanning my political feed I came across this article in the International Business Times.

While hundreds of black celebrities have happily doused themselves in freezing water for the Ice Bucket Challenge, news outlets like Hip Hop DX, Ebony and Buzzfeed, as well as social media users, have accused prominent African-Americans of being too quiet about the shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, two weeks ago.



“I think there is definitely a lack of articulation in public forums,” Mark Anthony Neal, a professor in African and African-American studies at Duke University in North Carolina, told International Business Times.“The weird irony behind getting black celebrities to weigh in on Ferguson is that every five minutes you see another one of them doing an Ice Bucket Challenge.”

I don't feel it's my place to comment on that. The quote that I'm here to talk about is from Neal Lester, an African-American literary and cultural studies professor at Arizona State University:

“At end of the day what preoccupies people’s minds is what’s happening on TMZ, not what’s happening on CNN.”

When I read that, all I could think of, once again, was how Suzanne Collins' THE HUNGER GAMES is the trilogy for our times.

I've written about my admiration for the Hunger Games before - I have an essay, The Politics of Mockingjay in the SmartPop anthology The Girl Who Was on Fire, and an additional essay, "Occupy Panem" that comes as extra digital content with the movie edition of the book.

I've seen some great discussions lately about books to use to talk about Ferguson. School library Journal had a piece focusing on "Resources on Protest, Nonviolent Resistance, and Civil Rights". But the reason I think The Hunger Games is also a great discussion resource is this: inequality and distraction. Panem and Circenses.

I don't want to take anything away from the very real issue of race that is at the core of what happened in Ferguson. I have friends who have been stopped for "driving while black." My boyfriend got lost while driving in the exclusive private area of Greenwich known as Belle Haven the other day, and the security guard just waved at him because he was white and driving a nice car. We both imagined how things would have gone if neither of those factors had been true. Somehow I doubt the security guard would have just waved.

But there's another important issue at playing out simultaneously worldwide that we cannot and must not ignore - inequality.

Collins' trilogy is a wonderful way to start kids thinking about these ideas - leading to discussions of the political strategy of "bread and circuses", reality TV and media literacy.

The problems in our country stem from complex sources and it's important to have our kids understand that we need to attack them from all fronts if we're going to make headway.

Thoughts on being a 2011 Scholastic Arts and Writing Juror

This year, for the second time, I was privileged to be a National Judge for the 2011 Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards. I was particularly excited to be a judge in a category that resonated so much with me in both my author and political columnist lives, the new Creativity and Citizenship: Art for Social Change Award.

Here's what the award is about:

From the women's suffrage movement to the civil rights movement to saving the environment, Americans have used the arts to create an awareness of history and promote social change. Teens in grades 7 – 12 are encouraged to submit their works of art and writing that address contemporary social issues important to them. Three winners will be selected to receive $1,000 scholarships and select works will be included in the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Teen Exhibition in June 2011. This special award is presented in collaboration with the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

It was such an honor to be a judge for these awards because of the feeling of hope I felt reading these works. They were as diverse in style and subject as the composition of our nation itself. These were not the voices of teens who are only obsessed with celebrity and Jersey Shore and who is going to win American Idol. These writers were keen observers of what is going on in not just in the US but in countries across the globe. Whether they chose poetry, script writing, persuasive essay, personal memoir or fiction, the teenagers in this category were concerned with deep issues of social justice,losing a valued cultural heritage, the mistreatment of women, feeling displaced in one's own neighborhood by gentrification. Their writing made me cry, made me angry, made me want to reach through my computer screen to hug them and tell them "Don't give up! Your words give you a voice, and having a voice gives you power!"

I wanted to tell them that as a columnist, I've learned that when you write about social and political injustice, you will not always be popular. In fact, sometimes you will receive hate mail, letters and emails that make assumptions about you as a person that have absolutely nothing to do with the subject you have tackled in your column. No matter how thick a skin you think you've developed, there are times when it can be pierced - deeply. But remember: these letters mean your words were powerful enough to provoke a reaction. I've learned that the people who agree with you don't always write - but when you bump into them in the supermarket, or at the library, or at school open house night, or on the street, they will thank you for giving them a voice. So don't ever give up. Keep observing, and keep writing. There is so much injustice in the world yet there are unsung heroes in every day life, who work day in and day out without fanfare to try and make the world a better place - you have the gift to put the spotlight on both.

My sincere thanks to the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers for inviting me to be a judge this year.

Today at 12 noon, you're invited to join me and several other national writing Jurors including two of my favorite writing peopleOlugbemisola Rhuday Perkovich and Courtney Sheinmel. Tune in to: http://tweetchat.com/room/JurorChat