Google Drive: Who Owns Your Stories?

Writers are constantly on the look out for ways to make writing more convenient. We have all experienced the pain of having a great idea for the story we're working on but been unable to access it because our saga has been left left at home, or on the office computer, or ...

Dropbox is a great way to keep your story a click away no matter what device you happen to be toting around. Up until recently Dropbox was the solution that stood head and shoulders above the rest but now there is a new gunslinger in town by the name of Google Drive. * Cue cheesy western music *

Google Drive does everything Dropbox does, but costs less. Of course, since it's Google (or as I think of it nowadays: Benign Overload In Training), folks are going to have security concerns, but Nilay Patel of The Verge says that, this time at least, Google is shooting straight with users. (Sorry, I should kill that metaphor.) He writes: 

[A]ll web services should be subject to harsh scrutiny of their privacy policies — but a close and careful reading reveals that Google's terms are pretty much the same as anyone else's, and slightly better in some cases. Let's take a look.

. . . .

Here's the section from Google's terms of service that's causing all the controversy today, with my emphasis in bold:

Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.
When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.

That's a lot of rights to give Google, on the face of it — in fact, it's basically every right you can give to Google as a copyright holder. But think about how limited Google's services would be if it didn't have permission to use, host, store, modify, communicate, publish, or distribute your content — it couldn't move files around on its servers, cache your data, or make image thumbnails, since those would be unauthorized copies. It couldn't run Google Translate or Google Image Search. It would be illegal to play YouTube clips in public. In short, Google is giving itself all the permissions it could possibly need to run all of Google services, with the specific limitations that it doesn't own anything you upload and it can't use your data beyond running its services.

Google actually responded to Nilay Patel's request for comment and clarification. Gotta say, point for Benign Overlord Google. Not many huge corporations have the PR savvy to do something like that. Here is Google's response:

As our Terms of Service make clear, "what belongs to you stays yours." You own your files and control their sharing, plain and simple. Our Terms of Service enable us to give you the services you want — so if you decide to share a document with someone, or open it on a different device, you can.

To read more of N. Patel's article click here: Is Google Drive worse for privacy than iCloud, Skydrive, and Dropbox?

I've taken the plunge and installed Google Drive on my devices. If you're considering doing likewise--or even if you're not--here is a comparison chart of the different store-it-in-the-cloud solutions such as Dropbox and Google Drive:

This graphic is from the article, Google Drive vs. Dropbox, SkyDrive, SugarSync, and others: a cloud sync storage face-off. It was published April 24th 2012 so it's a wee bit dated now, for instance, Google Drive has an iOS app out, but the article is still a great resource for anyone researching the different cloud solutions for storing and sharing data.

By the way, for mobile device users, CloudOn is a great tool for editing the text documents you store in programs such as Dropbox or Google Drive. CloudOn allows you to open such documents up and edit them seamlessly.

Before I used CloudOn I would open up a Dropbox document, save it in Pages, do my edits, mail it back to myself, and then manually update the document in Dropbox. So, yes, the document was available wherever I was, but the experience wasn't what I would call seamless. With CloudOn I just open up my document, make whatever changes I want, and they are automatically saved back to the underlying document. Much less work.


Related articles:
- Why Dropbox Is A Writer's Best Friend
- Evernote: the everything app

5 Book Review Blogs

When my book, Until Death, first came out I went on a hunt for book blogs. I'd read about Amanda Hocking's incredible success and knew that she attributed much of the early popularity of her books to the many book bloggers who reviewed her work.

Funny thing, when I searched for book review blogs a few months ago I couldn't find more than a dozen and, of those, only two or three would accept self published work.

Ack!

As luck would have it, I recently came across a few book review blogs and thought I'd tell you folks about them. (This also gives me a nice convenient list for when I need it next!)

You'll notice that most of the book review sites I mention below don't have a stated policy on whether they accept self-published work. Since many book review sites do explicitly (and emphatically!) state they do not accept self-published work, I'd say that those without a policy are willing to treat a self-published book as a book like any other and you're free to query them like the author/publisher you are.

I've found each site has different policies regarding whether to send a query first, what form the query should be in, and so forth, so I've provided a link to the site's review policy in the title.

1. JJ Ireads: Book reviews and more from an e-book lover

Kind of books: Young Adult, Contemporary Fiction, Mysteries, Nonfiction memoirs (humor)

Book formats: Ebooks (mobi, epub, PDF). Electronic formats preferred but will also accept paperback or hardcover.


Self-published work: This reviewer did not state whether they accept self-published work.

Notes: May also do author interviews and giveaways. Contact the site fore details.

2. Reading Teen

Kind of books: Anything teen or young adult.

Book formats: Hardback or paperback please.

Self-published work: This reviewer did not state whether they accept self-published work.

3. Mundie Moms

Kind of books: Only young adult books, please.

Book formats: "At this time we only accept paperback or hardcopies of books, ARCs and manuscripts. We only accept books that follow our blog's genres."

Self-published work: I found no explicit mention of whether Mundie Moms accepts self-published work.

Notes: Mundie Moms also does author interviews and giveaways.

4. Novel Thoughts

Kind of books: "I usually am drawn to read Young Adult novels, but I read the occasional Adult or Middle Grade books. I do not accept ebook requests. If you think I would be interested in reviewing your books, please contact me at: contact [at] novelthoughtsblog [dot] com."

Book formats: No ebooks.

Self-published work: No stated policy.

Notes: "I would love to read and review your books, host giveaways, or hold interviews here on my blog, Novel Thoughts."

5. The Book Smugglers

ARCs: "Ana Grilo and Thea James, The Book Smugglers, are currently open to receiving solicited Advance Reading Copies and Review Copies of books."

Kind of books: "Our preferred genres are Speculative Fiction (Horror, Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Science Fiction), Young Adult (Speculative Fiction/Paranormal and Contemporary), with the occasional Romance novel (Paranormal, Historical, Contemporary). This does not, however, mean that we will not consider books from other genres! We love graphic novels, manga, mysteries, historical fiction, and will consider any book with a great synopsis."

Book formats: "Our review copy preference is for ebooks, followed by print copies. As such, digital ARCs/review copies will be given precedence over print copies. Our preferred format is EPUB."

 Self-published work: Yes! They write:

While the bulk of the books that we review are from large publishing houses in the United States and the United Kingdom, we also love to hear from small press and independently published authors (i.e. Joel A. Sutherland’s Frozen Blood or Michael Hicks’s In Her Name).

Notes: Contact The Book Smuggers here: http://thebooksmugglers.com/contact-us

I'm going to start keeping a list of book review blogs, especially those that accept self published work. This is something of an experiment, but if you review books, please use the contact page (see the top of this blog) or email me at karen [at] karenwoodward [dot] org and send me your site address as well as your review policy and I'll be sure to include you.

Keep writing!

One Star Reviews And What To Do About Them

Sometimes great discussions get going in the comments section of a post. This often happens on Dean Wesley Smith's blog and I'd like to share one short exchange with you because, even though I haven't yet received a one star review, it resonated with me.

Blarkonon 15 Jul 2011 at 1:25 am

If you’ve got a couple of novels up and you write one that is, not to put to fine a point on it, reviewed like a turd, should you pull that one because it’s damaging your “brand”? (you’ve mentioned that writers can’t really tell how good their work is, which is how this hypothetical book gets up their in the first place – how do you crap filter your own stuff if all writers are bad judges of their own work?)

I’m guessing the strategy of working to get a large number of novels published is an effort to “cast a bigger net” and establish a “Brand” of sorts – catch a reader with one and you might get them to read others. If you have a book that seems to be attracting horrible reviews, is it worth it to keep it up there? (as it might scare curious readers away from reading your other works, even if they’ve liked some of them)

Dean's reply:

dwsmithon 15 Jul 2011 at 1:31 am

Blarkon, wow, the day I start reacting to any review by a failed writer is the day I hang up my computer keys and run away. Reviewers are failed writers. Who cares what they say. Leave the book alone and keep writing is my suggestion because you give those idiots power, you are lost in your own head.

Sorry to be so blunt, but I’m a long-term writers. I have had fantastic reviews and ugly, nasty reviews and couldn’t care about either to be honest. I just keep writing and that’s what I do.

Link:
The New World of Publishing: The Death of an Indie Writer’s Career