{"id":563,"date":"2006-05-24T17:11:02","date_gmt":"2006-05-24T17:11:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=563"},"modified":"2006-05-24T17:11:02","modified_gmt":"2006-05-24T17:11:02","slug":"doing_my_part","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2006\/05\/24\/doing_my_part\/","title":{"rendered":"Doing My Part"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hmm. This is interesting. It seems there’s a bit of a kerfuffle brewing among the on-line writing community (i.e., folks involved in or aspiring to professional writing and the publishing industry, and who also have blogs) because a shady literary agent named Barbara Bauer<\/a> — who is number three on SFWA’s list of the 20 worst agencies<\/a> — threw a tantrum and got a Website called Absolute Write shut down. Teresa Nielsen Hayden has the details<\/a>.<\/p>\n


\nIf you’re scratching your head, wondering what in the hell I’m talking about, here’s the background: Absolute Write is, or was, in Hayden’s words, “one of the leading sites for information on writing and publishing, especially the scam versions thereof”; Hayden is an editor with Tor<\/a>, one of the bigger publishers of science fiction; SFWA is the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America<\/a>, a professional organization for such folks; and Barbara Bauer<\/a> is apparently one of those types who responds to having their scams revealed by turning aggressive. Now, to be fair, I have no idea why Barbara Bauer<\/a>‘s name is on that list. However, I trust that it is there for a good reason; I have faith in both SFWA and Teresa Nielsen Hayden to call a spade a spade. I also have little patience for those who would prey on people’s dreams — I’ve had some minor experience with this sort of thing myself — or for those who would silence an entire Web community to assuage a wounded ego. That’s like dropping an atom bomb on Minnesota to get revenge for a mosquito-bite on your butt. In short, it’s overkill, and it’s the revelatory of a poor character.<\/p>\n

And so I’ve decided to chip in with the community’s effort to smack Ms. High-and-Mighty Barbara Bauer<\/a> upside her metaphorical head. I’m doing this by linking her name to the 20 Worst List as many times as practicable in order to sway the associations Google makes when someone searches for her name (as suggested by a guy named Jim C. Hines<\/a> in this entry<\/a> on his LJ.)<\/p>\n

I don’t know if it will accomplish anything — Absolute Write will probably be back on the air in a day or two regardless, and Bauer may or may not feel any bite from a bunch of no-name bloggers complaining about her — but it feels good to strike back against those who think they can get what they want by being assholes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hmm. This is interesting. It seems there’s a bit of a kerfuffle brewing among the on-line writing community (i.e., folks involved in or aspiring to professional writing and the publishing industry, and who also have blogs) because a shady literary agent named Barbara Bauer — who is number three on SFWA’s list of the 20 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-bookshelf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}