Barely Copeing

I am surprised that Wendy Cope . com and .co .uk are both free. Might buy them and post up the very worst of my own doggerel or perhaps pictures of me naked... that'll get her filing a libel case before you can say copyright zealot! jude "Cacoethes scribendi" http://www.judesworld.net

The article was a pretty dumb move by Wendy, I thought.

hmm... forwarding my own work to all my friends... that'll empty my inbox. I'm off to do it now.

www.lorrainemace.com Not the smartest of moves for her to make. I would have thought more people would buy her books if they were sent one of her poems and really liked it, rather than getting fewer sales as a result.

Doesn't Wendy Cope quite often have poems printed in the Saturday Guardian, in their weekly slot? I assume she gets paid for it, but then lots of people will read it without actually paying for the poem itself. They might even cut it out and show it to people who never even bought the paper. I presume she does it for the same reason anyone else would - to publicise her work. Apparently she doesn't understand the Internet works in the same way - only with a much wider audience.

www.lorrainemace.com To illustrate my point above - I received an email from someone who has just bought my book saying a friend of theirs had scanned a couple of pages and sent it to them. She'd asked her friend (also a writer) if she knew how to do something and the friend sent the scanned pages as an answer. Now which would I rather have, the original purchaser sued for copyright infringement (which it was) or be thankful that her actions resulted in a sale I might otherwise not have had? Sorry, I'm going for the extra sale every time. I have small sections from the ABC posted on another writers' website for the same reason. Writers find the advice useful and decide to buy the book - it's called promotion and, every time someone reads one of Wendy's poems and likes it, the chances of her having a new purchaser rise.