Can I Borrow the Book You Wrote from the Library, Please?

~ JezzieG

Inspired by and written for Sadje’s Sunday Poser – thank you, Sadje

Okay, cat among the pidgies with this one. If someone shares my work via a link-up or reblog I am chuffed to beans that someone thinks it is good enough to share. Do they need my permission to do that – hell the fire, no. It is easy enough to remove the reblog feature in the settings for one’s blog if it is that bothersome. If you leave the reblog feature active, then you are actively asking readers to share your work – if they deem it worthy of sharing.

When we blog, we are putting our work out there for people to see. How huge a compliment is it that someone reads your blog and thinks it is worth promoting to a wider audience. That is massive, and a thank you is in order. My blog isn’t private, it would be if I didn’t want people reading it – and really what is the point of that.

Writing isn’t just about hitting keys and pulling an article, story, or poem out of the hat. It is also using the various means available to promote our work to a wider audience. In modern times, that includes social media as well as book signings, readings, and meet-the-author workshops.

A reblog isn’t stealing someone’s work as it is a direct link to the original post. It is part of building up a following. As writers putting our work out there, we don’t get to choose who reads it, the reader chooses us. Like many bloggers, I have various sharing buttons on my blog posts, and I know they get used, probably by my mother as she thinks everything I do is fantabulosa.

This really feels like asking an author if you can borrow a copy of their book, their intellectual property, from the library in case they don’t want just anyone to read it. The courtesy in reblogging is saying thank you when someone thinks our work is good enough that their readers would also enjoy it.

Sorry if that is the wrong answer but it is my thoughts

Published by JezzieG

I am a freelance writer and poet and started writing after raising my two boys as a way of discovering just who Jez is. That is still very much an ongoing project but the journey so far has introduced me to many wonderful friends and fellow writers through an ever-growing love of poetry.

7 thoughts on “Can I Borrow the Book You Wrote from the Library, Please?”

  1. No, there’s nothing wrong with re-blogging, as you say, if someone takes the time then the author should be happy. I think the problems arise when someone blatantly copies a story then repackages it under their own blog as one of their original stories. You do see it going on. 🙂

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    1. Plagarism has been going on since Man started scratching runes on stone with a twig. Reblogging however is a direct link for other readers to follow to read a post, it may have a excerpt or picture. It is simply saying I read this, you may like it.

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  2. I agree 100%. Why would anyone would post something online, and then object when someone who sees it deems it worth sharing with a wider audience? And yet some people do object — strenuously — as I learned when I commented on the subject elsewhere. They consider it tantamount to theft or plagiarism. I’m baffled.

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