A Belarussian court started on Friday a closed trial of a blogger – known for his fierce criticism of Russia – who is accused of inciting hatred and distributing pornography in a case activist say is politically motivated.
Edward Palchis, the creator of a Belarussian nationalist website, was arrested earlier this year in Russia and extradited to Belarus, where he could face up to four years in prison.
Human rights campaigners say he is being targeted for criticizing Russian foreign policy, its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, and its role in the east Ukrainian separatist conflict. “We believe the case is politically motivated. We think its main motive is to clamp down on the political activities of Palchis,” Belarussian activist Valentin Stefanovich told Reuters.
As the trial started, some activists were outside the courthouse, guarded by several dozen police. The charges against Palchis relate to an online article he wrote in April 2015. He reposted xenophobic, lewd, and violent memes about Belarus from a Russian social media website to illustrate his argument against the Russian internet policy.
Russia and Belarus are long-term allies, but Palchis’s prosecution is at odds with authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko’s recent softer policy towards political activists in Belarus.
Seeking to improve ties with the West, Lukashenko last year pardoned several political prisoners, prompting the European Union to lift five years of sanctions against the country once called ‘Europe’s last dictatorship’ by the United States.
Belarus, seeking up to $3.4 billion in loans from the International Monetary Fund and EU investment, has also tried to stick to the neutral ground over the Ukraine crisis. It has not recognized the annexation of Crimea and regularly hosts peace talks.
For most people struggling to lose weight, dropping 100 pounds would be a major feat. But Brazilian blogger Raina Trindade still feels mentally “obese.”
The 29-year-old battled her weight for years after being bullied at school. She often took dangerous measures in an attempt to shed pounds, experimenting with diet pills. It wasn’t until doctors told her she was at risk for a heart attack that she decided to try bariatric (or gastric bypass) surgery.
The surgery was a success, and Trindade was able to drop the equivalent of about 103 pounds, completely transforming her body. But in her mind, she still feels like her old self.
“The bariatric is not a miracle cure,” she told the Daily Mail. “I realized that it is down to me to make sure the surgery actually worked. This is like a fight for me. I am at war with my body because even though I’ve had the operation on my stomach, I haven’t had the operation on my mind.”
Trinidad’s reaction is not uncommon and is sometimes referred to as feeling like you’re lugging around “phantom fat” — a reference to the internal perception people still carry with them. A recent Reddit post tackled the topic, with someone posting this question: “People who have lost a fair bit of weight, when did you stop seeing yourself as fat or even when you were happy with how you looked? I’ve lost 40 odd pounds over the past year but still feel like I look the same, even though people tell me I look completely different.”
Many people agreed, with one noting, “I’ve lost over 100 pounds down from 300lbs to 180ish in less than a year. I look in the mirror and see the same fat guy looking back.” Another, after noting she had lost 100 pounds, said, “I still instinctively suck in my gut whenever I’m passing through anywhere, like between parked cars or getting into a restaurant booth.”
So while Trindade is happy to show off her new figure, she admits that she still has a long way to change her mental outlook.
“I still think that I am fat and still think every day about eating the rubbish I used to love. I look slim, and I look healthy and fit, but in my mind, I am still fat and still greedy for all the bad food that will kill me,” she said. “I still have the mind of a fat person.”
Devin Faraci’s name may not be a household one, but the mere mention of it is enough to send Damon Lindelof into a full-blown anxiety attack. Lindelof, one of Hollywood’s most successful film and television writer-producers, admitted in a 2015 podcast that Faraci, a 42-year-old film blogger, “has been trolling me incessantly for the majority of my career. This guy owes me, like $40,000 in therapy bills.”
Lindelof was not exaggerating. In fact, it was Faraci’s relentless criticism of the Lost creator (“Devin. I get it. Please stop,” Lindelof once pleaded on Twitter) that eventually pushed the once-enthusiastic tweeter off of the social media platform.
But now it’s Faraci’s turn to step away from the keyboard.
The influential blogger — whose highly opinionated essays on fanboy culture frequently go viral and whose pugilistic relationship to other film writers and filmmakers is so extreme, director Joe Swanberg once literally challenged him to a boxing match (which Faraci soundly lost) — announced on Tuesday that he is resigning immediately as editor-in-chief of Birth.Movies.Death.
The film site is owned by Alamo Drafthouse, the influential movie chain behind major fanboy gatherings like Fantastic Fest and Drafthouse Films, a growing distribution label specializing in the niche genre fare. The move comes amid startling claims of sexual assault leveled Sunday against Faraci by Twitter user space crane.
After Faraci tweeted about a leaked video in which Donald Trump brags of being able to “grab” women “by the pussy” — “[Trump] wasn’t talking with his best friends. He was boasting to a TV host,” he noted — space crane responded with a devastating accusation.
“Quick question,” she wrote. “Do you remember grabbing me by the pussy and bragging to our friends about it, telling them to smell your fingers?” (The tweet was eventually deleted, not because “it didn’t happen” but because “it’s become a focal point for some really vile stuff,” she later explained.)
Faraci did not deny the incident had occurred, tweeting back, “I do not remember this. I can only believe you and beg forgiveness for having been so vile.” He has not tweeted since.
News of Faraci’s resignation broke Tuesday morning with this statement to his readers: “This weekend, allegations were made about my past behavior. Because I take these types of claims seriously, I feel my only honorable course of action is to step down from my position as Editor-in-Chief of Birth.Movies.Death.”
He continues, “I will use the coming weeks and months to work on becoming a better person who is, I hope, worthy of the trust and loyalty of my friends and readers.”
For space crane — whose real name is Caroline (she asked that The Hollywood Reporter not reveals her last name) — the move is a step in the right direction. Alamo Drafthouse owner Tim League called her personally to discuss the company’s response.
“We had an excellent conversation about it that left me feeling like he understood the situation and was interested in helping Devin,” says Caroline, 33, a non-profit worker living in New York City.
“I’m thrilled that Tim League took this seriously and that Devin is interested in getting treatment. I’ve let them know that I’m available for any accountability processing that might be part of his rehabilitation,” she adds.
The incident dates back to 2004, when Caroline and Faraci, who grew up in New York, were part of the same group of friends living and socializing in the East Village.
They met on a music message board (“I can’t remember which. There were so many in the early aughts,” she says), a group of about a dozen men and women in their 20s and 30s who shared similar pop-culture tastes.
Friday night was when they would get together at a dive bar to dance to a jukebox and let off some steam. On the night in question, it was an early-evening gathering for happy-hour drinks. Faraci was tipsy, Caroline says, but far from obliterated. “I liked him and thought he was funny,” she recalls, adding that he was well aware that she was a lesbian and was “not interested” sexually in men.
“We were dancing, and he stuck his hands down my pants, very blatantly on the dance floor. I said stop. He did it again. I didn’t know what to do. I stopped him again and pushed him away,” she says. “There was no penetration. He just kept sticking his hands down my pants and into my crotch. Then he came in to do it again.”
“I think I moved away from the dance floor at that point,” she continues. “I had to get away from him. I was just so shocked that it had happened and grossed out. I felt mortified for him. That was the palpable memory I had. I felt sad for him.”
While Faraci never apologized or even acknowledged the alleged incident, the group dynamic was forever altered that night. Caroline, who never spoke of the incident to the others, began to withdraw from the group. Faraci, meanwhile, “would get in fights and have fallings-out” with the other friends, she says. Two years later, in 2006, Caroline confronted Faraci about the assault on an internet message board. Just as in this week’s Twitter exchange, Faraci claimed not to recall the incident. “He disappeared after that,” she says.
But one of the friends at the bar that night saw the message-board exchange and later confided in Caroline that it was doubtful that Faraci would have had no memory of what happened, as he had bragged to her about the incident at the time, encouraging the group to “smell his fingers.” “That was not something I knew about at the time,” Caroline says. “And it made me really angry.” Caroline did her best to avoid Faraci in the ensuing years — but as his profile and audience grew, that became increasingly difficult.
“There was the Jodorowsky’s Dune documentary that I was really excited about seeing — and then I saw the [appears in it as an expert], and I was like, ‘Well, f—, I can’t see it.’ Or he’d be in a trailer giving a blurb for some horror movie. I would get so angry every time. It kept coming back that he’s an influential person in leftist film criticism or whatever.”
Caroline characterizes herself as a woman who is “good at letting things go,” but amid the current cultural climate and political rise of Donald Trump — culminating in the leak of the Access Hollywood video and Sunday night’s ugly presidential debate — she could not remain silent. The reactions have been mostly supportive. “I’ve largely had people thanking me, DMing me, saying in their own lives they’ve encountered similar things in different industries,” she says.
But Faraci’s peers in the film criticism world, meanwhile, have suddenly found themselves in an awkward position. According to sources familiar with the situation, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, of which Faraci is a member, has reached out to him and is currently considering what action to take.
Then there is the question of the fate of his weekly podcast, The Canon, which Faraci co-hosts with film critic Amy Nicholson of MTV News. Owned by the Earwolf podcast network, the show is regularly one of the top-rated film podcasts on iTunes charts. Nicholson did not respond to a request for comment.
Caroline says several friends and acquaintances of Faraci’s have reached out to her, saying they feel conflicted about the situation and looking for guidance. She finds herself at a loss. “I’m not going to tell anybody that they should not be friends with him,” she says. “I want people to use this opportunity as a time maybe to explore why women feel this way and feel like they can’t talk about it.
“What happens when we give people a certain amount of control or a label that allows them to be above reproach or have their behavior dismissed? Why does that happen?” Both Faraci and League declined to comment for this story.
HONG KONG — The authorities in Vietnam said on Tuesday that they had arrested a popular blogger who has criticized the country’s one-party government over politically delicate topics, including a dump of toxic chemicals that devastated fishing communities and set off protests.
The blogger, Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, 37, was detained on Monday in Khanh Hoa, a south-central province. According to the Vietnamese news media, she was accused of distorting the truth and spreading propaganda against the state. The charges carry a maximum prison term of 12 years. No trial date was given.
Ms. Quynh, who writes under the pen name Mother Mushroom, is a co-founder of the Network of Vietnamese Bloggers, one of the few independent writers’ associations in Vietnam. The governing Communist Party heavily controls the country’s news media and publishing industry. Writers who stray outside the system and challenge the party are frequently imprisoned under vague national security laws.
Pham Doan Trang, a dissident writer in Hanoi and a member of the Network of Vietnamese Bloggers, said that the authorities might have arrested Ms. Quynh to intimidate younger bloggers who have been inspired by her online crusades — via Facebook and independent blogs — against corruption, social injustice, and police brutality. But Ms. Trang predicted that the tactic would fail.
“She has a lot of supporters,” Ms. Trang said of Ms. Quynh in an interview via Facebook Messenger on Tuesday. “Many of them will replace her or follow her path.”
Citing a news broadcast, Ms. Trang added that investigators had found materials in Ms. Quynh’s home that criticized the government’s handling of a chemical dump in April at a Taiwanese-owned steel plant in central Vietnam that caused mass fish deaths. It is believed to be among the worst environmental disasters in Vietnam’s modern history.
Although Formosa Steel has agreed to pay $500 million in damages, many Vietnamese have criticized the government for initially remaining silent about the cause of the spill and then refusing to release full details on the likely health or environmental impacts. Outrage over the scandal has festered for months and continues to set off protests in central Vietnam.
In 2009, Ms. Quynh was detained for more than a week after writing about a bauxite mining project in Vietnam’s restive Central Highlands, in which investors included a state-owned Chinese company. Chinese economic influence is a politically delicate topic that the government has tried to play down. She was not charged with a crime at that time.
“It was ugly what was happening in our society,” Ms. Quynh said in a 2014 interview with the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based advocacy group. “My blog asked: Why must we agree with the government on everything? Why can’t we have different opinions?”
In 2015, Ms. Quynh was named civil rights defender of the year by Civil Rights Defenders, an advocacy group based in Stockholm. The group’s executive director, Robert Hardh, said on Tuesday that her arrest saddened him.
“People very often have a picture of Vietnam as one of the ‘tiger economies’ and a tourist country,” Mr. Hardh said in a telephone interview. “But in reality, the situation is really dire for human rights defenders.”
Like a Broadway critic deciding to write a play, a blogger complained about fund fees decided to start an exchange-traded fund. He discovered that keeping expenses low isn’t as easy as it seems.
Eddy Elfenbein decided last year to launch a fund based on the stock picks from his more than decade-old Crossing Wall Street blog, written from Washington, D.C. Mr. Elfenbein recommends 20 stocks on his buy list and then sticks with them through the next 12 months. Each year, he changes just five of the holdings for the next year.
Because of the success of his choices—he posts returns on his blog—he built up a Twitter following of around 25,000, many of whom asked over the years if he managed money.
His fund, AdvisorShares Focused Equity ETF, launched Sept. 21, 2016, under the ticker CWS, for Crossing Wall Street.
It isn’t just the Twitter-led impetus that makes the fund unusual; the fee structure is also. Mr. Elfenbein has to beat the benchmark index or else give back part of his fee. If he exceeds it, he gets more.
He spoke with The Wall Street Journal about his experience setting up the fund. Edited excerpts of the conversation follow:
WSJ: When and why did you decide to do this?
MR. ELFENBEIN: I built a following based on what I recommended. If Twitter wasn’t around, I don’t know if this could have happened. As the years passed, I had more people asking if I managed money, which I didn’t. Late last year, I met with AdvisorShares [an actively managed ETF sponsor] to see if it was possible to develop a product that tracked the buy list.
WSJ: What surprised you about the process of starting an ETF?
MR. ELFENBEIN: I always complain about the fees for ETFs and mutual funds. But when you are on the other end of the process creating a fund—with so many fees, lawyer fees, exchange fees, etc.—the question is how can we get them so low. [Currently, the fund has annual expenses of 0.75%. , that compares with an average expense ratio of 0.86% for actively managed U.S. stock ETFs.]
I was also surprised by how little capital the fund needs to be viable. Advisor Shares points out that the patient is alive on the table if you have $20 million in the fund. Ideally, you would want to have more. With $50 million under management, then you’d have something that is chugging along.
WSJ: Will having an ETF get in the way of the blog?
MR. ELFENBEIN: No. I can write about the stocks I recommend, but I have to steer clear of anything that smacks the fund’s marketing.
The ETF will track the buy list as closely as possible, with the picks equally weighted as much as SEC regulations allow. The positions will be rebalanced once a year. We have to keep a small cash position due to the mechanics of the fund; we’ll start with 2%.
WSJ: You’ve done something different in terms of the way you are going to be paid. Please explain.
MR. ELFENBEIN: There will be a fulcrum fee for me. My pay will be based on performance relative to the S&P 500. If the fund beats the benchmark, I get a bonus; if not, I get a penalty. The size of the penalty is based on a sliding scale and would result from a reduction in the fund’s expenses.
The hedge funds get bonuses. If they miss their benchmark, they don’t get penalized.
MR. ELFENBEIN: It just seems that investors are voting with their dollars. We are moving from the world of mutual funds to ETFs. There are tax benefits with the ETFs. [They are less subject to capital gains taxes than mutual funds, for example.] I also like you to track the value during the day, whereas you can’t help with a mutual fund.
Plus, a lot of funds are very secretive about what they own. I’m the opposite. My buy list is completely free. So you get the complete transparency that you get with ETFs.
Here’s an odd comparison: Years ago, bands were trying to clamp down on bootleg tapes of concerts. The one group that was the opposite was the Grateful Dead, who reserved spaces for the people taping.
Nabi was arrested in Dhaka’s Sayedabad on Sunday night and produced before a court on Monday. The court has granted the police three days to grill him.
The law enforcers claim that Nabi, a militant outfit Ansar Al Islam, directly took part in Nazim’s murder on Apr 6 last year in Old Dhaka’s Sutrapur.
Police’s counter-terrorism unit chief Monirul Islam on Monday told a press briefing, “Nabi and four others had taken part in that murder. All five were wielding machetes, but only one of them had a firearm.”
He claimed Nabi had served as the ‘coordinator’ of different attacks carried out by the militant group.
Apart from his role in Nazim’s killing, during preliminary questioning after his arrest, Monirul said, Nabi has also ‘admitted to his involvement in the murders of Xulhaz and his theater activist friend Mahbub Rabbi Tony’s.
“Police also have found information on his ties to the murder attempt on publisher Ahmed Rashid Tutul.” Three other suspects have already given confessional statements to the court in the case over the attempt on Tutul. Nabi has divulged the ‘organizational names’ of the four others who killed Nazim, Monirul said.
“We hope to get information regarding the two other incidents out of him when we take him on remand.” Xulhaz and Tony were killed in a machete attack by a gang of assailants, is posing as delivery men entering Xulhaz’s apartment building in Dhaka’s Kalabagan on Apr 25, 19 days after Nazim’s murder.
Xulhaz was a USAID official and the editor of Bangladesh’s first LGBT magazine, ‘Roopbaan.’ Also, the murder attempt on Tutul was made at the office of Suddhaswar, the publishing house he owns, at Lalmatia on Oct 31 last year.
On the same day, publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan was found dead in a pool of blood, hacked to death in his Jagriti Prokashony office at Shahbagh’s Aziz Super Market.
Several writers, bloggers, and online activists were murdered in similar attacks last year. Following those, the biggest militant attack occurred at Gulshan’s Holey Artisan Bakery and O’ Kitchen on July 1 this year. The militants had killed 22 people, including 17 foreigners. But since then, after several successful raids by the security forces, no attacks have taken place in the country.
‘Militants tracked Nazim’ The militants had singled out Nazimuddin Samad and planned to kill him after observing his posts on Facebook; detective officer Monirul Islam said on Monday, quoting Ansar Al Islam’s Nabi. And then, he said, they rented a house adjacent to the street the online activist had frequented in Old Dhaka. Nazim lived with a friend at a house on Rajani Chowdhury Road at Gendaria. He was attacked in public and killed on Hrishikesh Das Road at Dhaka’s Sutrapur on Apr 6 when he was on his way home with a friend.
Monirul said, “The killers had conducted a recce of the area. They also rented a home behind Jagannath University to observe Nazim’s movement. The killers observed where Nazim lived and who he met with.” They followed Nazim for three months before killing him in April, he said.
Asked why Nazim was murdered, Monirul said that Ansar Al Islam had identified the youth as an atheist for his writings. “Then information on him was gathered and handed to the militant group’s leaders.”
Nazim, 27, a Jagannath University law department’s evening course student, was the information and research secretary of the Bangabandhu Juba Parishad’s Sylhet branch and an active participant in the Ganajagaran Mancha’s movement.
He often wrote in favor of the 1971 Liberation War and critically about religious extremism, the government, and contemporary politics on Facebook. Nazim was also on the list of ‘atheist bloggers’ sent to the media during the Hifazat-e Islam movement.
In an unprecedented development, a member of banned militant outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team has apologized to the nation for his involvement in the murder of Gonojagoron Moncho activist and secularist Nazimuddin Samad six months ago.
Rashidun Nabi Bhuiyan alias Rayhan, 26, arrested by detectives from the Sayedabad bus stand area on Sunday night, was produced before the court of Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Md Maruf Hossain yesterday afternoon with a 10-day remand prayer. The judge granted the police three days to interrogate him. No lawyer represented Nabi during the remand hearing.
At one point, when the judge asked him about the murder, Nabi told the court: “I admit that we killed him [Nazim]. Please forgive us. We regret it and apologize to the nation. Please pardon me. We were misguided…” Nabi was arrested by a team of the Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit and the Detective Branch of police.
Jagannath University master’s student Nazimuddin was hacked to death at Paramour intersection in Old Dhaka’s Sutrapur area on April 6. In January, he came to Dhaka, got admitted to the university in February, and started living in Gendaria. Nazimuddin was the information and research secretary of Sylhet district unit of Bangabandhu Jatiya Jumbo Parishad. He used to write against religious extremism and radicalism on Facebook.
DB police in August claimed that a sleeper cell of the outfit from Sylhet targeted 28-year-old Nazimuddin for his writings on Facebook, followed him, and carried out the killing. The detectives also found that Ansarullah leader Saiful Islam masterminded the attack.
DMP Additional Commissioner and CTTC chief Monirul Islam yesterday said that the militants linked to Ansarullah (now Ansar Al Islam) had planned to kill Nazimuddin three months back. “A few days before the attack, the militants had rented a house near Jagannath University. They followed Nazimuddin’s movement and finally conducted the attack on April 6,” Monirul said at a press briefing.
“Since Nazimuddin used to live in a messy house at Sutrapur of Old Dhaka, the militants thought that it would not be possible to kill him there. So, five militants led by Nabi attacked and killed him on the street.” Monirul claimed that Nabi had also confessed his involvement in killing LGBT rights activists XUL has Mannan and Mahbub Tony and the attempted murder of publisher Ahmed Rashid Tutul.
Hailing from Comilla, Nabi joined Ansarullah Bangla Team last year and inspired many youths to join the group. Since 2013, military members have killed 11 secularists, war crimes trial campaigners, and teachers.
Nabi has disclosed some names of the outfit’s members. “We are verifying the information and will launch drives to arrest his associates,” Monirul said.
DHAKA: Bangladesh police have arrested the main suspect in the murder case of a law student and secular blogger who terrorists killed after posting comments against radical Islamists on Facebook.
A joint team of Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit and Detective Branch of Police held Rashidun Nabi from Sayedabad in the capital last night in connection with the murder of blogger Nazimuddin Samad, who machete-wielding militants hacked before being shot dead in April, Deputy Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Masudur Rahman said today.
Counter-terrorism officers said Nabi was held at a bus station in the capital Dhaka, alleging he was the ringleader in the Nazimuddin killing, local media reported.
Nabi was today sent on three-day remand by Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Md Maruf Hossain after police produced him in court with a 10-day remand prayer.
Nazimuddin, 28, a master’s student of the state-run Jagannath University’s law department, had been on a hit list of 84 atheist bloggers that a group of radical Islamists prepared and sent to Bangladesh’s interior ministry.
A day before the murder, Nazimuddin had expressed concerns over the country’s law and order in a Facebook post.
He was known to have been critical of state religion in the Bangladeshi constitution.
Nazimuddin was the information and research secretary of Sylhet district unit of Bangabandhu Jatiya Jumbo Parishad. He was also an activist of Gonojagoron Moncho’s Sylhet wing.
Bangladesh has seen a spate of gruesome attacks on secular activists, religious minorities, bloggers, and foreigners, many of whom have been hacked to death with machetes.
This is the primary feature about thrilling facet gigs or pastimes that nurses do outside of their complete-time jobs. By day, Lauren Mochizuki, RN, BSN, has been an ER nurse for extra than a decade. But at night time and at some point of unfastened time, she’s a successful financial blogger. About eight years ago, Mochizuki started blogging about price range because she and her husband had been tired of being in debt. She commenced writing her first weblog, NurseFrugal.Com, to file and share their adventure, approximately turning into debt-free. They paid off $266,000.
You examine that efficaciously — $266,000 of debt.
After Mochizuki has become debt unfastened, she took a ruin from running a blog because she and her husband had started their circle of relatives. Last year, she commenced rerunning a blog at CasaMochi.Com so that she may want to encourage others to live an incredible life on a budget. What I love most about blogging is similar to nursing. With both professions, I actually have the chance to connect with others and make an advantageous difference,” says Mochizuki, approximately her aspect gig.
Mochizuki says that consistent with the Federal Reserve Board, 40% of Americans can’t cowl a $400 emergency price. Much less than 40% of working Americans sense that they are on the right track for retirement. Because of this, she says that her goal “is to help others change the way they together consider money, how to spend their money, and store — with a purpose to revel in existence, and concurrently be desirable stewards of their money.” About each different week, Mochizuki publishes a new article on finances.
“I feel like my nursing activity and blogging supplement every different. With nursing, I actually have learned how to be personable and use interventions to assist my sufferers in sensing higher. My nursing career has at once affected my blog because it has fashioned me right into a worrying and problem-solving man or woman that I am nowadays,” says Mochizuki.
“The finest praise of running a blog is receiving responses from people that I have made an effect on their lives. I sense particularly fulfilled after I encourage a person to grow to be debt unfastened, and introduce them to a step-through-step manual on how to achieve this aim,” says Mochizuki. “Creating a network of like-minded people has also been every other reward of blogging. I commenced the #debtfreecollective hashtag, and it’s been such a laugh to peer all of the accomplishments and actual-lifestyles troubles that arise at some stage in one’s debt-unfastened adventure.”
“I am a firm believer that all people can reap monetary freedom if you are willing to paintings for it,” says Mochizuki. “There were often when I doubted if my husband and I should repay $266,000 of debt, however after continually enforcing the whole thing we discovered about cash, we did it!”
As the proprietor of a company that gives book opinions and operates a book contest, I’ve long been conscious that numerous bogus contests and reviewers are available. I’ve also promoted blog excursions for authors. I firmly agree that having your very own blog and being a guest on someone else’s weblog is an amazing way to get the word out about your book. But not all blogs and bloggers are created the same, and worse, some aren’t very sincere.
Recently, I have become aware of a brand new fashion amongst bloggers to provide giveaways to their readers. Sadly, lots of these purported giveaways are scams, or at least, they are no longer completely honest or imparting what they claim they may provide for the book’s author. Following are a few examples and recommendations to observe earlier than providing your e-book to bloggers who’re presenting giveaways.
First, permit’s examine the e-book giveaway system and inspire bloggers to provide an ordinary e-book giveaway. The blogger requests authors and often other owners of various products to ship them the goods to overview them. Next, they study the ebook or use the product and write an assessment of the product, posting the product facts on their weblog. They then ask humans to submit their names through a few digital forms or e-mail for a random drawing for a giveaway of the product. The product is then mailed to the winner. Sounds simple sufficient.
But it is actually extra complicated than that. The blogger is not going to undergo all these paintings without getting something it goes back. Often, the blogger will post an image of the product with a link to in which it can be purchased, which includes a web bookshop that no longer handiest sells the product but also has a referral software wherein the blogger gets a commission on all merchandise bought whilst people click via from the blogger’s website to the vendor’s website and purchase the product.
That is even reasonable, and there may be nothing wrong with human beings being paid for their paintings. The possibility of unethical and scamming behavior comes, but in diverse, sometimes small, but extreme ways. Before you publish your e-book to a blogger, here are some things to look at out for:
1. FTC Disclosure-It is the law now that everybody who gets a profit when she or he endorses a product has to reveal that in advance. A legitimate website can have an FTC disclosure statement that the proprietor is receiving a commission (whether via click-through or the direct fee by using the author or product owner) for selling the work. That does now not imply the blogger is dishonest in imparting a great assessment of the product. In reality, if the FTC disclosure is there, it’s a great sign the blogger believes in being sincere about the product. If the FTC disclosure isn’t there, don’t participate.
2. Product Reviews-Before you send your ebook to someone to review it, have a look at the past evaluations on the website. A lot of bloggers (and ebook reviewers) claim that they overview books when, in reality, they genuinely copy the product description because it seems at the writer’s or an internet book shop’s internet site, or they copy the back cover description and put up that as a evaluate. That is not a valid book evaluation because it does not reflect the blogger’s private opinion of the book, and it’s an amazing signal the blogger failed even to bother to read the ebook to find out whether it merits being recommended. The blogger is, without a doubt looking to get as much merchandise featured on the blog as possible so more commission can be earned.
3. Multiple Copies-If bloggers request greater than copies of the e-book, it is not going they need the books for overview or giveaway. Understandably, the blogger would possibly want an e-book to study, after which another to ship to the giveaway winner. However, it is a lot greater sensible for the blogger to request the most effective replica. After the giveaway’s winner is known, the writer personally sends the winner an autographed replica. If a blogger requests extra than two copies, it is in all likelihood the blogger is amassing inventory to resell-perhaps to a local used bookshop, or perhaps at an internet shop, thereby making an income off copies of books he didn’t pay for and that the writer concept could be given away.
4. Drawing Results-An sincere blogger walking an ebook giveaway will reveal the winners’ names. However, it’d simply say Amanda W., Syracuse, NY or George T, Salt Lake City, UT for privacy’s sake. What is suspicious is not giving any indication that there are winners.
If you’re nonetheless uncertain whether or not to publish your book to a blogger’s ebook giveaway, contact the authors of a number of the previous giveaways and ask them whether it helped them or they ever heard from any of the readers. If the blogger is going for walks a legitimate contest and offers the author the e-mail and mailing cope with of the giveaway winner, you can touch the individual and rest confident that your ebook is going wherein it must. If the blogger is mailing out the copies himself, you do not have proof the books are being mailed out. In fact, I’ve heard from a few authors who have participated in such giveaways multiple times that they’re in no way obtained thanks or any comments from the individuals who supposedly acquired their books. While not receiving feedback isn’t necessarily a sign of dishonesty, while you do acquire comments, it’s a sign that the whole thing is functioning as it must.
Will an ebook giveaway help promote your book and provide you with publicity? It may want to if the blog receives several traffic, and if the blogger surely is giving the books freely, you could, as a minimum, discover one new fan. The blogger of the path might also let you know how the blog gets tens of thousands of perspectives. If that’s genuine, it is tremendous because then plenty of human beings will pay attention approximately your e-book. If they may be interested and no longer win it in the giveaway, they will purchase it with any luck.
If you do get scammed, you may most effective lose out on the fees of the few books you provide away; however that said, no person wants to be scammed, so do some studies earlier than you decide to provide away your books and you may relaxation confident that the readers whom you need your books to attain could be those taking advantage of the e-book giveaway instead of solely a blogger who’s out to make money without ethics.
