Domain Owners and Privacy – 1/10/2022
The U.S. Department of Commerce determined some years ago that certain domain names could no longer be registered anonymously using proxy services. While this move doesn’t impact most common domain name owners and users, it’s important for you to know how it could impact your business when you decide to have a website to market your book.
If you have a .com or .net domain ending for your website, then this won’t affect you; however, with all the new domain names and the constant struggle to find names that aren’t already owned by someone else, businesses (including your small business) may have to find unique domain name endings, such as .online, .book, or .us. So, what does this mean for you? It means, if you choose to register a domain that is considered a “Top Level Domain” (see list at the end of this post), then anyone can look up the contact information you provided (required by law) to register that domain. This can then open you up to scammers, marketing, and other unsolicited phone calls, emails, text messages, or mailers.
Some of these scammers are very tricky and will tell you that you need to pay them in order to list your domain in Google or Bing searches to drive more traffic to your website. A good practice is to have a unique address and phone number just for your domain names and other misc. business related items. This could be a small cost of owning a UPS mail box and listing that address and implementing a Google Voice phone number that you don’t frequently use, but can still call from once in a while to keep it active.
If your website ends in one of the following letters, then you might be exposed to scammers and marketers looking to make a buck off of your ignorance.
- .ac
- .am
- .asia
- .at
- .be
- .ca
- .ch
- .co.uk*
- .cx
- .cz
- .de
- .eu
- .es
- .film
- .fm
- .fr
- .gs
- .gy
- .im
- .in
- .it
- .jobs
- .jp
- .li
- .mn
- .mx
- .ngo/.ong
- .nl
- .nyc
- .pl
- .pm
- .pro
- .re
- .rich
- .ru
- .se
- .sh
- .so
- .tel*
- .tf
- .tl
- .top
- .travel
- .uk
- .us
- .vc
- .vote
- .wf
- .ws
- .yt
- ar.com
- .br.com
- .cn.com
- .co.in
- .com.mx
- .co.nz
- .eu.com
- .firm.in
- .gen.in
- .ind.in
- .net.in
- .org.in
- .org.uk
- .sa.com
- .uk.com
- .us.com
NaNoWriMo 2021 – 12/2/2021
National Write a Novel Month just wrapped up and the month of November flew by. We hope you were able to meet your word count and finish your 50,000 words.
What does 50,000 words mean? We thought you’d never ask.
It means an average of 1,666.67 words per day. If you write an average of 40 words per minute, that’s 41 minutes of writing each day and 1,250 minutes for the month of November. That equates to 20.83 hours of writing if you could somehow do it without stopping.
It means time away from family or friends. It means letting your characters or themes run rampant through your mind all day long while you try and fill 50,000 plot holes. It’s countless hours spent trying to come up with a great idea. It’s 5 pounds of candy (if you’re lucky it’s only 5 pounds) that you munch on while thinking of your next sentence.
According to the NaNoWriMo website, it also means 798,162 active novelists and 367,913 novels completed. That’s over 18 million words written. This means an average of 23,000 words per participant.
What does the end of NaNoWriMo 2021 signify? It signifies new novels, ideas, and concepts written down in a format others can read. Will you share your story with us? Head over to our blog and leave a comment about how NaNoWriMo went for you and what your next goals are. Maybe we can help! Find the blog called – NaNoWriMo 2021 and drop a comment.
Also, go and check out their website if you want. They’re a great nonprofit organization that provides amazing tools and encouragement to help writers follow their dreams.
www.nanowrimo.org
Register your copyright – 11/30/2021
In years past, owners of written work that had been stolen or used without their permission believed they could file a suit in court without having registered a copyright for that written work. This was because under the Copyright Act of 1976, an author would gain exclusive rights for that work immediately upon its creation (17 U.S.C. § 106). Many authors only read this act to that point and left it alone, thinking their work would never be copied or that it wouldn’t matter to them if someone wanted to use their work without asking. Many of these authors turned out to be wrong.
Because of this false assumption that their work was protected via threat of lawsuit, many authors simply chose not to pay the small fee to copyright protect their creations. The part they forgot to read in the act was that section 411(a) states “no civil action for infringement of the copyright in any United States work shall be instituted until … registration of the copyright claim has been made in accordance with this title.” This means an official copyright registration needed to occur.
However…
Even after the United States Appellate Courts read the Copyright Act of 1976, they too found themselves in disagreement with what constitutes “registration” under section 411(a). Long story short, on March 4, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court settled the disagreement and held that copyright registration is required before a claimant can commence an infringement suit; and, registration doesn’t occur until the Copyright Office issues the registration.
This ruling didn’t remove the possibility of recovering damages done prior to the registration, however. Nevertheless, it is highly recommended to copyright at minimum your published works. This will prevent headaches and unnecessary stress should a copyright infringement ever occur.
For more information, visit www.copyright.gov/registration.