The Harvest Moon Consortium

[Winterhawk99]

Hello everyone,

Today I learned that all three of my Children of Hell novels were uploaded to a site called Scribd without my permission. I had never used Scribd and didn’t even know my work was on there until someone pointed it out.

After looking into it, I discovered that Scribd allows users to upload documents — including fan fiction — and then charges subscribers to download them. In other words, they were profiting from my work while giving me nothing and never asking for permission.

The uploader used the name Zoelynne. I don’t know who they are or what their intentions were, but the result is the same: my work was taken and put behind a paywall. Fan fiction authors don’t get paid for their work, and we accept that — but that doesn’t give anyone the right to take our writing and let a third‑party company profit from it.

Fan fiction should be free. It’s written for enjoyment, practice, and community. It’s not meant to be monetized by a subscription service that contributes nothing to the authors who actually did the work.

I’ve filed the necessary reports and had all Children of Hell novels removed from Scribd. I will not be using their service, and I encourage other writers to check whether their work has been taken as well.

And for the record — I’ll be watching Scribd’s ass from now on.

[Winterhawk99]

I have a little more information on this.


I found my books showing up again through Google. My work computer wouldn't let me access the Scribd pages because of a security/certificate problem, so I pulled the site up on my phone.

A couple of hours later, I couldn't find my books on Scribd anymore.

Good. I hope they stay gone.

I also did some digging into Zoelynne, the account I previously found associated with my books. The account showed 4,504 uploads, and I could identify material in at least English, Russian, Spanish, French, and Arabic.

I obviously can't prove what is behind that account, but personally, seeing that volume and that range of languages makes me suspect some kind of automated or bulk-scraping operation rather than somebody sitting there uploading books one at a time.

In nine days I'll be home, and I'll check again to make sure my books stay gone.

And I'll repeat something because this is the part that genuinely makes me angry: I don't care if people share my fan fiction for free. If somebody finds one of my books and passes it around so other fans can read it, I'm not going to lose sleep over that.

What bothers me is seeing my work placed on a commercial service behind a paywall without my permission. The people who actually wrote the fan fiction don't benefit from that arrangement.

I was considerably more diplomatic about my opinion of that in my last post.

I'm not feeling particularly diplomatic anymore.