The Internet: A Writer's Guide

Jane Dorner’s previous book, Writing on Disk, offered guidance on the use of electronic methods in writing for authors and publishers. Now she provides sound and detailed advice on internet uses, advantages, and resources for writers, covering email and its extended uses, the worldwide web, virtual communities, electronic imprints, new writing opportunities and forms, and publishing practicalities, and addressing the issues of copyright, censorship and health hazards. There is a 35-page classified list of 800 websites for writers (also available online – the password is given in the book).
While the viewpoint throughout is that of the writer (‘a concept that needs reexamination, because words are no longer the only “units” with show more which a modern author can work’; Dorner ‘use[ s] the word “author” to describe those who write for book and journal publishing and “writer” for screen, TV and broadcasting’), there is much here too of interest to publishers. For example, consideration of whether what has been put up on the web has been ‘published’: ‘If the book is published on the web, can you then offer it as unpublished work to a traditional print publisher?’ There is caution against full electronic submission of work to publishers, with paper-reading compared to screenreading.
There are sections on multimedia, the design of websites, hyperlinks, search engines. The index has entries for e-books, e-cine, e-commerce, e-ink, e-journals, enewspapers, e-paper, e-readers, and e-zines.
Dorner suggests a new term, ‘©yberRight’. ‘As copyright gives to authors the exclusive right to print, publish and sell their material, so ©yberRight would give the exclusive right to control electronic distribution. We could have a symbol for it – a “c” within curly brackets, { c} , because computers are currently locked into ASCII as the lingua franca and can’t cope with circles. Besides, the curls of the brackets hint at the transitory nature of the medium itself, the lack of fixity in those “lines of light”.’ The copyright section also considers plagiarism and manipulation, and points out that earlier copying out of others’ works by hand or typewriter ‘suggests a consciousness of copying which is no longer applicable as electronic copy–paste seeps its way across literature’.

Valuable, up-to-date guidance from one who has been closely involved with the techniques and problems of electronic publishing as author, editor, reviewer, and member of Licensing committees. show less