Hi all, just a warning about sharing work. I am in a writers group at my local library, and as my novel is in the final stages of "our" editing, before letting an editor near it, I let anyone in the group who wanted to, take a look through dropbox. The week before last the young woman who runs our group, pushed a self published book over the desk for me to look at. later she said I think you need to take a look at the story. Then said I don't think she has done it deliberately. She was being kind. My story had been woven into a quite sexualy explicit story which she had told us someone had told her to make it less explicit. Not only making it less explicit she has woven into it a large part of my plot which is so clear that when I spoke with the young woman who passed me the book to read said, I know I'm sorry she has stolen your work. So people, don't trust anyone with your work, I have no idea what to do. Regards Paul.
That's terrible and I'm sorry that happened to you. If it helps, any word processor app like Word and Google Docs has a time stamp record built into the metadata. So you can claim copyright just by the fact the work exists with your name on it and metadat that has dates hardwired into it. But it shouldn't have happened in the first place.
Hi, thank you for your concern, and it does make you think. but just to make things clear, it wasn't the young woman who said she was sorry, that stole my work, she was saying she was sorry it had happened, it was she who had discovered it and pointed it out to me. hope that makes it a bit clearer.
Regards Paul
That's just awful. Writers groups should be trying to help one another. She should be excluded from the group, sorry or not! Thank you for the warning.