Autopublicar es un poco como darse de cabezazos contra la pared.
Desde hace más de dos años, he tenido a la venta mi libro Terra Incognita en Lulu.com. No he vendido apenas nada, pero la posibilidad de que alguien lo comprara era suficiente como mantener un poquito de ilusión. De vez en cuando daba problemas porque el enlace no funcionaba, y a veces el libro aparecía y desaparecía de los catálogos de Amazon y Ebay libros, pero no me costaba nada y merecía la pena.
El otro día, sin embargo, recibí un mensaje de un lector que me decía que iba a haber comprado mi libro, pero que como había visto que se podía descargar de forma gratuita, lo había hecho, y que muchas gracias, pringao.
Pensé que se lo habría descargado de algún sitio piratilla (quizá subido por alguien que lo hubiera comprado como ebook en Amazon), pero después de buscar en Google, me encuentro con que el libro en formato PDF (impecablemente maquetado por mi hermana) se puede descargar directamente desde... ¡los servidores de Lulu.com!.
En la certidumbre de que se trata de un error, me acerco a ver si he dejado activa sin querer alguna opción de «regalar como PDF» en el formulario de publicación del libro, y no. Así que les escribo lo siguiente:
From: Angel Ortega <angel@triptico.com> To: Lulu support Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 16:01:09 +0000 (GMT) Hi. I have accidentally found that my book with the ID above can be downloaded (for free!) from the URL above. How can this be possible? I don't remember enabling it to be freely downloadable. Also, I don't see any option on the project entry to disable this. Being downloadable from your site, I don't see why would ever buy a copy of my book. Thanks, Angel Ortega
Al poco me responde un robot diciendo que gracias, y que entre 2 y 4 días laborables me responderán con algo.
El día siguiente (¡no está mal!, me digo), me llega un mensaje de Lulu. Lo miro y es esto:
From: Lulu Support <existing_ticket@lulu.com> To: "angel@triptico.com" <angel@triptico.com> Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2011 17:29:33 +0000 (GMT) Lulu values your feedback on how our support agent serviced your question or issue. We are committed to the satisfaction of the Lulu Community and strive to continually improve our service. Please click on the link below (or copy/paste into your web browser) to fill out a short survey. We thank you for your participation. Lulu Support
Me dicen que les importa mucho mi opinión sobre cómo se ha llevado mi pregunta o asunto, y que por favor les rellene un formulario al efecto.
Doce horas después me llega este otro mensaje:
From: Lulu Support <existing_ticket@lulu.com> To: "angel@triptico.com" <angel@triptico.com> Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2011 17:29:19 +0000 (GMT) Dear Angel, Thank you for contacting Lulu Support. I hope you are doing well today. I am glad you contacted us about your project. I reviewed your account and it does look like you were able to retire or delete the eBook you mentioned. However, I would like to provide you a bit of information regarding what occurred. Because of necessary infrastructure changes, we have removed the ability to create a Downloadable PDF version of your book in the Book Publishing Wizard. If you have a book that has an associated Downloadable PDF, we are moving it to a separate eBook project starting today. [...] bla bla bla
Quizá este mensaje se quedó enganchado en algún sitio y tardó casi medio día en salir. Vale. Pero, ¿qué me cuentan? Que han comprobado que ya he sido capaz de borrar el eBook que he mencionado (?). Por supuesto, yo no he hecho nada. Miro en Google por si lo han arreglado, pero ahí está, el cuarto enlace, por encima de esta mi humilde página web, como antes.
Así que vuelvo al ataque:
From: Angel Ortega <angel@triptico.com> To: Lulu Support <existing_ticket@lulu.com> Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2011 10:19:59 +0200 Thanks for your quick reply. I think I didn't explain myself correctly. My project is not meant to be an eBook; I just want it to be a physical, printed one. Not downloadable, neither freely nor with a fee. Best regards, Angel Ortega
Educadamente les digo que quizá no me he explicado bien, y que el problema es que mi libro se puede descargar gratis y yo no quiero. La respuesta no tarda mucho:
From: Lulu Support <existing_ticket@lulu.com> To: "angel@triptico.com" <angel@triptico.com> Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2011 15:44:43 +0000 (GMT) I reviewed your projects and it looks like you were able to remove the eBook project. I only see Terra Incognita available as a print book now. I hope I was able to answer all of your questions. Should anything else come up, or you have questions in the future, please don't hesitate to contact Lulu Support again at www.lulu.com/support/. Thanks!Cuando consigo tiempo libre, vuelvo a mirar por si lo han solucionado, pero el enlace sigue ahí. Así que insisto:
From: Angel Ortega <angel@triptico.com> To: Lulu Support <existing_ticket@lulu.com> Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2011 07:35:32 +0200 On Tue, Oct 04, 2011 at 03:44:43PM +0000, Lulu Support wrote: > Dear Angel, > > I reviewed your projects and it looks like you were able to remove the > eBook project. I only see Terra Incognita available as a print book now. I > hope I was able to answer all of your questions. Should anything else come > up, or you have questions in the future, please don't hesitate to contact > Lulu Support again at http://www.lulu.com/support/. I'm afraid the problem remains. My book is still freely downloadable from this URL: [URL] I found it just by searching "angel ortega" "terra incognita" on Google, so it's very easy for anyone to avoid buying my book just by downloading it for free (from your own servers!). Please, fix this as soon as possible. Best regards, Angel Ortega
La respuesta tarda un poco más esta vez:
From: Lulu Support <existing_ticket@lulu.com> To: "angel@triptico.com" <angel@triptico.com> Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 13:59:12 +0000 (GMT) Thank you for your response. Your eBook is no longer available on our website for download. I tried searching in Google and did not yield any Lulu related results. The link which you gave me does generate a PDF, however that's just the volume storage of it. Nobody should have access to that link, and we do not advertise your product as a download on you the print product page. It does take between 24-48 hours for your product to be uncatalogued from the site after it is removed, so this may account for what you were able to find. I hope this clears things up. Please let me know if you have any other questions! I will be happy to help. Best,
Ahora dicen que ya no está disponible para descarga; aunque siguen empeñados en llamarlo «mi eBook». Han buscado en Google, y no sale. Punto pelota.
No le doy más vueltas durante unos días. El domingo vuelvo a hacer una búsqueda en Google, y ¡zas! No solo sigue ahí, sino que ahora es el primer enlace. Por encima de mi propia página web y del enlace de Lulu para comprar el libro (esto al menos no es por su culpa; son las cosas de Skynet).
Así que vuelta la burra al trigo:
From: Angel Ortega <angel@triptico.com> To: Lulu Support <existing_ticket@lulu.com> Date: Sun, 9 Oct 2011 20:52:31 +0200 On Thu, Oct 06, 2011 at 01:59:12PM +0000, Lulu Support wrote: > Thank you for your response. Your eBook is no longer available on our > website for download. I tried searching in Google and did not yield any > Lulu related results. Please, try "angel ortega" "terra incognita" (with the quotes) and you'll find it. Now it's even worse than before: something has changed and now it is THE FIRST link that appears on Google. The link in question is: [URL] This is getting tedious and worrying. Please, delete that file, or change the redirection, or whatever the problem is. People is downloading my book freely from your own servers and I'm losing money. Angel Ortega
Y les digo que no, que el enlace sigue ahí, que esto empieza a ser tedioso y preocupante y que estoy palmando pasta (reconozco que lo de «palmar pasta» es un poco hiperbólico).
Su respuesta:
From: Lulu Support <existing_ticket@lulu.com> To: "angel@triptico.com" <angel@triptico.com> Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 19:40:48 +0000 (GMT) Dear Angel, Thank you for your response. I apologize, but I do not see anything in Google Listings which has your book for free. Please see the attached screenshot. Those Amazon listings are still showing up in Google, but the links are all dead. Can you please take a screen shot and show me the Google page which you are seeing free listings on? The link you sent was a Lulu direct link to your project data on our server and should not be available for public use. As I mentioned earlier, once you retire or delete a project, it can take some time for it to be uncatalogued for directories, including Amazon and Google. How to make a screenshot: [...]
Así que a ellos, en su Google, no les aparece. Y me explican cómo hacer un pantallazo para mandárselo. Sin embargo, en mi Google, sí aparece, y el primero; pero ese no es el puto problema, es que mi libro se puede descargar desde su servidor sin pagar un duro.
La gente que me conoce dice que no tengo paciencia. Pero estoy hasta los cojones. Esta mañana he sacado un pantallazo y se lo he mandado con el siguiente mensaje:
From: Angel Ortega <angel@triptico.com> To: Lulu Support <existing_ticket@lulu.com> Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2011 08:24:15 +0200 10/10/2011 21:40, Lulu Support: > Thank you for your response. I apologize, but I do not see anything > in Google Listings which has your book for free. Please see the > attached screenshot. Those Amazon listings are still showing up in > Google, but the links are all dead. Can you please take a screen shot > and show me the Google page which you are seeing free listings on? The > link you sent was a Lulu direct link to your project data on our > server and should not be available for public use. As I mentioned > earlier, once you retire or delete a project, it can take some time > for it to be uncatalogued for directories, including Amazon and > Google. Please find attached a screenshot to this email. As you can see, it's the first link (as I live in Spain, typing google.com on the web browser redirects automatically to google.es, I don't know nor care why the results are different from yours). It even shows you a fragment of the body of the book (with Terra Incognita in bold). If you click on it, the full PDF is downloaded. The book is written in Spanish, so most people interested on it will surely end up searching on google.es instead of google.com. Anyway, Google is not the root of the problem: it's that the link that I provided to you has public access. This is what I'm trying to tell you all the time. I'm really getting tired of this. That book took me time to write and I inverted money announcing it on spanish media with the expectations of selling it (on paper) from you, but any reader interested on it that searched on google will probably already downloaded it as a PDF for free from your servers. I give up. I'll probably delete the damn book or make it private or whatever. Thanks for your time. Ángel Ortega
No sé si es que no me expreso bien, o es que he estado hablando con un robot todo el rato, o es que soy tipo con muy malas pulgas.
¿Me merece la pena pasar por todo esto? A TOMAR POR CULO.