The Perils of Virtual Publishing

This is reprinted from the December issue of RezLibris Magazine

Hopefully, by the time this issue is uploaded, my first novel, "Cloudy Rainbow" will be on its way to be published. It is a romance that features a virtual world. And while it refers to Second Life briefly, the virtual world that is described is one purely of my creation. I am writing this to share some of my experiences as a first-time author and some of the challenges I faced with real life and virtual world issues related to my book's publication because I know there are others out there who may want to pursue either non-fiction or ficiton writing about Second Life or other virtual worlds and may not realize that the hardest part of publishing isn't the writing or the editing, even though they are definitely both time consuming and intensive.

Let me start by giving some background about myself. I am not a stranger to writing or publishing. In Second Life, some of you may know me as Dulcie Mills, a staff writer for the Metaverse Messenger newspaper and, more recently, the Associate Publisher of RezLibris Magazine for librarians. In real life, I am Debbie De Louise, a reference librarian at a public library on Long Island. All my life, I’ve been very involved in writing. In college, I was Features Editor of my student newspaper and also published the library school newsletter. After college, I combined my love of writing and cats to begin writing articles for cat magazines. My dream was still to write a novel. When one of the major magazines that I wrote for went out of business, I began to grow disillusioned with article writing. I submitted a short story to a mystery anthology, and it was accepted. However, it did not sell well, and as my full-time job and home responsibilities increased, I began to devote less time to writing.

In the spring of 2007, I joined Second Life and, because I had no interest in or talent for building and didn’t want to use my own money to play, I applied for a job with the Metaverse Messenger as a staff writer. I also became involved with the Alliance Virtual Library group, then known as Second Life Library 2.0. Both the newspaper and the library community gave me the support I needed to get through those first tough months of SL’s learning curve. I also found that, through my work for Katt Kongo, the publisher of the Metaverse Messenger, I had gotten back some of my enthusiasm for writing. When my beloved 15-year old cat, Floppy, passed away in October 2007, I was inspired to start writing a novel that he would be a part of, but as people usually write best about their own experiences, I also decided to include a virtual world in this book as well as my college experiences on a student newspaper. I took all of these elements and wrote for a short time each night after work. By the following spring, I had a 90,000 word manuscript that was fictional but also incredibly personal and heartfelt, something I wanted to share with others who have lost someone they really loved whether it was a relative, friend, or pet.

I spent several months editing the manuscript and then began the process of submitting it to agents, as I knew that first-time novelists have a slim chance of being published without one. Most replies I received were form rejections. I tried not to take these to heart, as I knew many famous authors received dozens or more rejections for their first books. Yet I felt frustrated that no one would even ask to read the book. Then I began to consider self publishing. I’d read about the big explosion in POD (Print on Demand ) books. I knew there were pluses and minuses of going this route. The main minus, of course, was that I would have to pay for the publishing and might not even recoup the expense. But, to me, the time and effort of soliciting agents while my manuscript grew old, was a big factor in my decision. I did not have dreams of fame and fortune. Most first novelists are more realistic than that. What I wanted to do was simply print the book.

I investigated several POD publishers. Initially, I had signed up with one of the big ones when they’d offered a good price deal. But after some research, I felt my needs would be better served with a smaller but more customer-oriented company called Booklocker.com. I had also received recommendations about this company from some colleagues in a writer’s group to which I belonged. So I emailed my manuscript to Booklocker, and they replied in just a few days that they would accept it. That was another thing that I liked about them. While many POD companies print anything accompanied by a check or credit card number, Booklocker screens all the manuscripts they receive and only selects about 35 per cent of their submissions.
After signing up with Booklocker, I was offered the opportunity to work with a cover designer to create a cover for my book. I was very pleased with the first design he created based on the elements I wanted to illustrate – surrealism, a virtual world, mystery. However, the keyboard overlay he used did not seem quite right, and after seeking some opinions from a few friends in Second Life, I decided to ask if my avatar could be used on the cover. The designer had no objection to this, but I wasn’t sure if I needed any special permission from Linden Lab. That’s where the situation got sticky.

Although I’d seen avatars on other book covers, I decided to play it safe and read the Terms of Service for Second Life to see if it addressed this issue. Like most legalese, it was hard to understand. I was aware, and my publisher brought to my attention, that a trademark designation needed to be made in the book for the first time I used the term, “Second Life.” This was accomplished easily. But since there were no clear guidelines about avatar photo use, I contacted a Linden to ask. I was then referred to an employee of Linden Lab who I emailed. She sent me back information regarding the copyright policies and procedures for both text and photography. Although the trademark designation had been done properly, she indicated that a footnote needed to be added. My publisher complied with this, even though it is not a usual thing to use for fiction. But this was not enough. Linden Lab also requested to see the final PDF file of the novel to make sure that I had not described Second Life in any way that might be seen as negative. Although I had only mentioned Second Life twice in the whole book, I felt a “search and find” wasn’t sufficient, so I went back and read through all 360 pages to make sure. Of course, as I did so, I found additional errors to correct, so I wasn’t truly upset at this point.

Regarding the avatar photo, Linden Lab also needed to see the cover. That wasn’t a big deal. I just emailed it to them. To their credit, I received a prompt reply. But while they okayed the cover, they added a caveat that they could not give permission for any of the Second Life residents who may have created any of the clothing or attachments that the avatar was wearing. When I presented this information to my publisher and the cover designer, they requested I contact each person for email permissions. Now, I ask you hypothetically, how far was I supposed to go for this? I was wearing an outfit with shoes and hair from different designers. Contacting them proved to be more of a trial than I imagined. The very nature of Second Life is that people are from different time zones, spend varying amounts of time in-world, and most are protective of their privacy. Also keep in mind that I was trying to meet my own deadline of having my book available to give as gifts to some of my friends and relatives for the holidays. This added to the frustration of the situation, and there were times when I was angry with myself for having opened a can of virtual worms by contacting Linden Lab to begin with.

But I couldn’t give up. The book meant too much to me. It was a memorial to my cat but, even more than that, I knew it would give a message to others, beyond any religious beliefs, that might console them after a loved one’s loss. So I went about sending IM’s and dropping notecards on the designers and creators of the clothes and attachments I wore in the photo. I had one quick reply, but my publisher wasn’t happy with it. While the person who sent it provided both her real and SL name and gave me permission to use the photo of the shoes she made, my publisher requested that she also needed to include a line that it was okay for me to make a profit off the photo. I emailed the shoemaker, and was relieved when she sent me her revised permission. I started feeling better about things but not for long. With one permission to go and the days approaching Thanksgiving coming quickly, I ran into another virtual snag. The hair maker sent me a permission, but it was on a note card. The publisher and cover designer needed an email permission. I tried to explain that note cards in SL are time and date stamped with the names of the creators embedded into them, but they weren’t taking any chances. I had a promise from the hair maker that she was sending an email, but when two days went by without one, I began to wonder if she was having reservations about her permission or if she didn’t want to share her personal email. When I explained the situation to my publisher, she insisted that I needed the permission email before any further work could be done toward publishing my book. I didn’t blame her. She had a reputation to uphold and couldn’t afford a lawsuit, as slim as that possibility was.

Feeling very frustrated and more than a bit upset with the whole situation, I spoke with a SL friend who tried to help but couldn’t really figure out a way to do so. He suggested, rather than redoing the entire cover or just taking my avatar off of it, that I might consider signing an agreement with the publisher and cover designer absolving them from any liability in case of a lawsuit, no matter how unlikely that might be. I was tossing this idea around in my head all night while I couldn’t sleep, but the next morning the permission email was in my inbox.
I learned two lessons from all of this – 1. Writing and publishing require more persistence and patience than anyone can imagine. 2. Sometimes it’s better just to keep your mouth shut.
For those who might be interested in reading my book to see if it was all worth the trouble I went through, it is now available as an ebook and trade paper from Booklocker.com or as a trade paper only from Amazon and other booksellers.