The KBoards Debacle: A Tale of Greed and Paranoia

I don't use KBoards very often, but in the last week I heard on Facebook and Critique Circle all these people freaking out because the site was sold to new owners.  The new owners have a Terms of Service that basically says everything you post is their property to use however they want for all eternity throughout the universe or some damned thing like that.

My first thought was:  so what?  It's not like people are posting stories on there.  But someone mentioned it applies to covers and links people might post.  So that would mean that this random site could use my cover in their promotions if they want.

People are panicking in droves but really they should just chill the fuck out.  On Writers.net there would occasionally be newbies saying they weren't comfortable posting because someone could steal it!  My usual response was:  no one wants your shitty story.  Not in those exact words, but that's the gist.  Stealing some newb's story on a writing critique site is about as valuable as stealing my collection of action figures:  they have value to me because I bought them, but they have no value to anyone else.

Unless you become the next Stephen King or JK Rowling, it's unlikely any pirate or skeevy site owner if going to want to use your cover or links or whatever else.  There's no profit in it for them.  So just calm the fuck down people.  The odds that your stuff will be violated is about the same as winning the lottery.

At the same time, the root of the problem here is greed--on both sides.  The people who used to own the site sold it because it was too time-consuming and expensive for them to keep maintaining it.  There are firms like the one that bought KBoards or CrowdGather, the people who own writers.net and Writer's Circle, who buy these things basically so they can put ads all over and make some money.  From experience I can say CrowdGather is the virtual equivalent of a slum lord:  they buy the site, make only the bare minimum of improvements to keep it running, and collect the money.  They don't worry about growing the site.  Some people say "you have to spend money to make money" but companies like CrowdGather don't really buy into that.  I don't think the group that bought KBoards is going to be any better about that.

But you can't really let users entirely off the hook either.  What I've learned in selling books is people loooove free shit.  Paying for stuff?  Not so much.  It was kind of funny when someone quit my newsletter because "the free book wasn't free."  Well, OK, but the newsletter is to sell my books; it's not about giving away free books.  So if the only reason you signed up was for free books, you're doing it wrong.  Still, it was refreshing honesty.

Writers love using sites like Kboards, writers.net, Writer's Circle, Absolute Write, Writer Buddy, or whatever, but what if you ask them to pay a membership fee?  People would flee in droves because they don't want to pay for it.  So what happens is owners of those sites eventually have to sell out to some shitty slum lord because they can't afford to operate it on their own.  I don't use KBoards enough to know, but if the original owners had asked people to pay a monthly fee to keep the site operating, how many would have done it?  Or how many would do as they're doing now:  fleeing to some other free site?

I don't like paying for stuff like that either, but the reality is that these sites can't operate for free.  Critique Circle raises revenue with ads and "premium" memberships that let you do stuff like submit more often or skipping the line to get critiques.  I of course don't have one of those.

I'm just saying that while you might want to consider these new owners monsters, just remember that they're just trying to make a buck.  And that they're probably not going to steal your shit unless it has value.  So don't panic!