Just Thoughts
Credit where it is due and then some
Pitfalls of being a contributing author
My whole life I have given credit where it is due because that was part of the core values my parents taught me. Unfortunately not everybody thinks the same. It is common to see people in their workplaces taken credit for other people’s work without shame.
I can give a few examples of that. When my mother worked for the government, she was put in charge of a department without getting the salary that accompanied the position. That was because she was not a member of the ruling party. During her tenancy, she wrote a document from the ministry for an international organization; her work became sort of a guideline that was used for years to come. Years later she learned that someone plagiarized her work to use it as a graduation thesis at the local university. My wife has also had a similar experience with work she has pioneered.
Today I have my own story to tell. Back in the turn of the millennium I quit my work and did my 2nd transatlantic emigration. It was my 1st attempt at returning to the roots. Later I would emigrate again to Europe.
So, during my year in Latin America at the turn of the millennium, I came with a lot of pioneering ideas. Unfortunately, Panama was still in the middle-ages compared to what I already knew. At the time, a publishing company in the US contacted me for a freelance writing gig. It was for writing a chapter for a technical book called Apache Server Unleashed. I accepted the challenge and wrote Chapter 22. Then the person in charge also offered me for editing the chapter written by another freelancer (Chapter 21 I think it was).
I wrote one of the chapters of Apache Server Unleashed back in the year 2000.
I got paid for my work as writer. When the 656-page book got published in the US, the publisher sent me a box with 6 books to my address in Panama. I still have them.
If you look at the book cover, it has the name of two authors at the top. But on the inside cover credit was given to all the other freelancers that contributed to the book by writing a chapter and we were several. That was a great experience; although it was already the 2nd time my name was in print. I had previously published an article for the Linux Journal, at the time I was a hard core Unix/Linux user, developer and administrator.
Do not confuse it with Ghost Writing. The book was published in 2000 and as I indicated, credit (by name) was given to the rest of us even though the book cover lead to believe those two guys had done all the work.
I haven’t looked at the contract but I see the book has been published several times since then. Should I get royalties for my writing? Well, I don’t know. I think I should, but since at the end of that year I emigrated to Silicon Valley, I lost track of things.
However, now that I scour the Internet, I am under the impression that in the editions following the first, the names of the rest of us appear to have been removed even though our written content is there. I don’t have a copy of the latest version of the book, but most of the websites now appear to have removed our names. Shouldn’t they give credit for the work in future editions?
Anyway, I am happy I participated in that technical writing project and that my name appeared in print. At the time I had done a lot of Apache web server installations s well as a lot of PHP-based websites, thus the expertise. I guess that is one of the reasons why I have never been interested in ghost writing.
Oh No! Domain Hijackers!
During my search for all sources naming that book, I came across the unsettling fact of domain hijackers and how they systematically do their work for no good reason.
As it is common when a book comes out, publishing companies acquire the Internet domain to publicize the book. Our book had its own website. But I won’t show the link here because the publisher relinquished that domain name. What is disturbing about it, is that someone out there on the Internet (a domain hijacker) acquired that domain related to a technical book, to publish X-Rated content that is in no way related to the book, its authors or its subject.
