Fig 1. Piñata in Roman times was much more stabby than today....
Well, if you ever need a quick way to clear your bank account, this is the ticket. It's also good for those moments you wish you were in a sweat-lodge. Talking to copyright lawyers about a Cease & Desist letter after your copyrighted book has been stolen by unscrupulous people (who pretend to be scrupulous, per 'Some people can't afford it'), is both tough and can be shocking. They're sure to tell you a starting cost for the letter which is close to a grand USD. Get ready for your stomach to drop, and your palms to turn into little pools of liquid 'GET THE SALT'. Thankfully, the copyright lawyer I spoke to was a fellow painter/artist, and very kind. I was lucky in that sense. The quoted price, however, falls far out of my budget for a Cease & Desist. Sadly, I find most firms price themselves out of the reach of the artists and writers who really need them, cutting into their utility, and their income, I'm pretty certain. It falls on me and my business to draft this Cease & Desist as a result, unless I take the advice of some of my more powerful writer friends and ignore it. I'm not willing to be that blasé about the outcome, though! If you don't defend your copyright, you can, after all, weaken it. But drafting the Cease & Desist letter on your own?
Possible. Doable. And that's the best and least expensive path I've found so far. With more seasoned writers telling me not to freak out about this, and to avoid devoting a lot of my attention, I've kept a mercifully even keel.
So! The most I'll do here is dispatch a letter. Nothing to ruffle the feathers over. I hope!
Fig 2: I probably should have done this ---v. It's much more accurate! Me = rainbow pony.
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