Where Politics Meets Self-Publishing ...

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[h=3]How to promote your book like an intelligent human being and not an SEO Dweeb[/h]
You might also like to check the legality of what you're doing, with people who have the appropriate legal qualifications to give you good advice (that is, lawyers, not random people on the internet). Trump is notoriously litigious, and has money to throw at such things.

You really wouldn't love it if Trump sued you. His legal team would almost certainly make you take your book down until the case was resolved; the case could grumble on for years; you would incur tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal fees which you would not get back even if you won your case, and which your eventual book sales would be unlikely to even make a dent in.

All it needs is for Trump to find out about it which, given his twitter-habit, is easily achieved. But you're playing with fire if you go ahead with this, and will almost certainly live to regret it in many ways.

If you have to do it, make it completely fictional. Still may not protect you, since TheDonald is notoriously litigious and vengeful.

Tweeting it to Trump would be a very foolish move. Really. Don't do it. Don't publish the book before taking legal advice, either.

MiloMilo said:

Oh, it's completely fictionalized ... though it's transparently about Trump. Even uses his quotes verbatim. His name doesn't appear in it, though.

And Old Hack ... I plan on tweeting it _to_ him! (Though maybe I should divorce my beloved spouse for a year or two, so there's no property in my name to lose ...)

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If you use his quoted verbatim you're inviting all kinds of expensive legal bills even if you win.

Bluntly put, it's a stupid idea given the fact that Trump has attorneys on retainer. It doesn't cost him a dime to sue—he's got c. 75 pending lawsuits, and his history includes c. 3,500.

You won't make a dime, and you will lose time, money and sleep.

Good luck. It's your funeral.

MiloMilo said:

Oh, it's completely fictionalized ... though it's transparently about Trump. Even uses his quotes verbatim. His name doesn't appear in it, though.

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Dude --

"Completely fictionalized" =/= "verbatim" Like, at all. These are polar opposites, meaning it can be one or it can be the other, but it cannot be both.

Also, INAL, but even I know that a person's words are that person's intellectual property. You don't get to profit off someone else's property. Reporters can quote them with proper attribution, but you don't get to lift passages verbatim and use them like you wrote them. And if you're lifting from actual speeches, then you're getting into the copyrights of whoever wrote those speeches.

If you go ahead with this and tweet about it to Trump, you might want to steel yourself for incoming trash. Some of those pro-Trump tweeters are...not nice.

Cyia said:

Dude --

"Completely fictionalized" =/= "verbatim" Like, at all. These are polar opposites, meaning it can be one or it can be the other, but it cannot be both.

Also, INAL, but even I know that a person's words are that person's intellectual property. You don't get to profit off someone else's property. Reporters can quote them with proper attribution, but you don't get to lift passages verbatim and use them like you wrote them. And if you're lifting from actual speeches, then you're getting into the copyrights of whoever wrote those speeches.

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Helix said:

If you go ahead with this and tweet about it to Trump, you might want to steel yourself for incoming trash. Some of those pro-Trump tweeters are...not nice.

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Agreed. So if the OP goes ahead with this plan, he or she could face abuse from Trump's many supporters, some of which think nothing of sending threats and intimidating people; and legal action from Trump, and from the copyright holders of the speeches the OP is going to plagiarise in his book. The OP could easily end up bankrupt because of those legal cases, with no income from the book, and with no hope of getting a contract from a reputable publisher for anything because of the plagiarism issue.

This does not sound to me like a carefully thought out plan.

A lot of the Trump supporter network on Twitter is actually somewhat clever bots, and a lot of it is hired Russian propaganda experts.

I don't like discouraging people from speaking out against Trump, it's important and needs doing. Satire matters right now. But the cold fact of it is that you are a person with no social media following going up against a powerful force of social media influencers. They will find your book, boost it out to their networks, and bombard you with negative messages and negative reviews all designed to sink your product. You will probably be doxxed, and your personal websites will likely be DDOSed.

This is not a case of "any publicity is good publicity". Being dogpiled by bots will not likely have a side-effect of boosting sales, it will be very difficult and tiring. Be prepared for a severe emotional drain.

(I'm not touching the potential financial impact of a lawsuit, but the posts by others in this thread sound terrifying and well worth considering.)

"Fair use" isn't a legal defense, and nothing - literally nothing - is "clearly" fair use.

Before you even attempt a satire, you need to first do some research into what it really is because what you're describing here isn't satire. It's also firmly in the category of actionable material, and as such, you're not going to get anyone here to tell you how to better produce it. It's the same reason fanfic isn't allowed on the board. You don't have the rights to the material you're wanting to "publish."

MiloMilo said:

I'm thinking of using DailyKos or one of the other big liberal community-blogs as my 'personal website'. I'm expecting little-to-no sales. I'll be publishing under a pseudonym. I don't expect anyone to bother figuring out who I really am unless the book does well enough to garner real attention. Which strikes me as extremely unlikely. If it does do well enough that someone digs up my real name ... well, then I'm possibly screwed. I am certainly dog-pileable.

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All you need is for Trump, or one of his many supporters, family members, or team members, to hear about your book and you're stuffed. It's so easy to find out someone's real name: publishing under a pseudonym offers you next to no protection. You are going to be visible, and if you're spotted--which you probably will be if you tweet about your book to Trump, which I think you've said you're going to do--then you're going to be extremely vulnerable to legal action.

On the other hand, there are three million more of us than of them! And frankly, being afraid to speak up in my tiny, peeping little voice is even scarier than doing so. (Plagiarism isn't an issue; the book is clearly fair use; all will become clear shortly, if the cover is ever finished!)

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From what you've said in this thread I disagree that your plagiarism of the speeches written for Trump won't be an issue, and I disagree that your book is "clearly" fair use. I've been involved in several plagiarism cases, directly and indirectly: in each case, a publisher was involved, and the publisher won. Publishers aren't hugely wealthy businesses: they have limited means and a narrow profit margin, and are almost always keen to avoid legal clashes. Trump has huge amounts of money and is notoriously litigious. Further, "fair use" is not a properly defined legal concept. It's a guideline only. And from what I've seen here, your uses of those quotes in your book does not follow the guidelines it provides. If you think this is going to save you, you are sorely mistaken.

If I just stipulate that this is a terrible idea ... any suggestions regarding how best to enact it, in terms of marketing? AMS versus Twitter versus FaceBook?

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Yep, I have a suggestion. DON'T DO IT.

It's a pretty sad say when you have to worry about being sued by the American president.

MiloMilo said:

Ha. I saw that, too. The man's a horror. (The whole thing's a horror.)

I sent excerpts to a few online magazines that are already posting pretty hard-hitting criticism. Maybe I'm naive (okay, there's no 'maybe') but there are thousands of people criticizing Trump already. And dammit, there are three million more of us! (Granted, we're outnumbered in terms of 'unhinged maniacs' ...)

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Dear lord. You've sent it out? A book which is jam-packed full of plagiarised quotes, and is designed to irk one of the most moneyed and litigious figures in America?

That's not being naive, that's being wilfully foolish.

I'm currently learning how bad I am at interior layout. I thought that what I'd done was passable, but ... well, I didn't know it was different for the e-version, though _of course_ is it. Just hired someone to fix it for me. So I've still got a few days to come to my senses before the final product's ready. The cover is awesome, though!

(And thanks for looking out for me.)

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So you don't realise the legal implications of what you've done, you don't understand the difference between print and digital editions, and yet you're publishing this.

Don't. Just don't.

There are not three million more people who believe you have a right to profit off plagiarism than people who do not.

MiloMilo said:

I'm not sure if you quite understand what plagiarism is. You'll note that Borowitz uses an actual Trump quote here: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-picks-el-chapo-to-run-d-e-a He uses them often. It's one thing to argue that I'm foolish because I might be sued, and I haven't the resources to defend myself. That's fair enough. But claiming that I'm plagiarizing because I'm using the quotes of a public figure in a parody of said figure is silly--especially for writers.

Or like my mother* once said, "You're not looking for bad in the forums. You're a very rational person. You're a very sane person. You're not looking for bad. But the level of misunderstanding is so incredible, I actually wonder, why are you doing this? Why are you here?"

*Not really my mother.

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Actually, no, you're the one who's being silly. And we're done here.