Liability and Book Blogging - The End Game

It would help to read the beginning and the middle before you try to comprehend the end.

I'm not pretending to be an expert. I don't even write media liability policies. I'm only trying to help spread some information that might not be out there or might just be overlooked. It can't hurt, right?

I'm not trying to urge you to do something you don't want to do. I don't have a secret agenda and am really funded by a big name carrier. I'm just trying to open your eyes.

Us opening our mouths and opining about books the way we do can slip our asses right into a sling. And it's not about proof. It never was. In this heinous litigious society we live in anyone can be sued for anything at any time. It's all about those defense costs. WTF will not keep you out of court. Nor will just turning off your computer. So it's better to have some information to go by than nothing at all.

So go and buy a media policy, or form a mutual or do nothing at all. It's entirely up to you. You have some more information and now the onus is on you to act on it. Or not. I'd like to think all sunshine and farts about how nothing will come of our liability exposures. That we will remain in the shadows and no one will really pay us much mind. But I know, deep in my recesses somewhere, that that's not the truth. We are exposed and a lawyer's sting can hurt.

When you're doing your blogging thing just remember how far your words travel and what they have the power to do. That's all I'm asking. It goes far beyond owning what we say and not hiding from it. Just be aware. Crazy can make people do some, well, crazy things.

Liability and Book Blogging - The Shit and the Shingles

First why not take a look at the introduction to see WHY I'm rambling on about this.

We are bloggers. We do this for free. Some of us choose to host advertising on our sites as a means of at least breaking even on a domain name. But for the most part we put far more into our sites than we get out of them, monetarily speaking. Between shipping costs, internet space, domain names, buying books, traveling and whatever else our blogs end up requiring (or strongly encouraging), buying insurance is probably not very high on that list. Why would it be? Why do our blogs need insurance?

I will tell you right now my blog is uninsured and quite frankly it'll probably stay that way. Read on for the why behind that.

As book bloggers our biggest worries are probably accusations of libel and defamation of character. Remember those negative reviews? Oh yeah. Forget about actually PROVING libel. You don't have to be found guilty of libel to have your bank account ass raped.

All those"blacklisting" Goodreads shelves (can you actually HEAR me roll my eyes here?)? Yeah, that's lumped in there.

What about giveaways? I'm not talking about failure to supply. I'm talking about COPPA, the law that makes it illegal to request personal information of anyone under the age of 13. As a book blogger running giveaways, how do you verify this? Do you request copies of birth certificates? Parents' written consent? Or are you like me and just work on good faith? The honor code. Pray to whatever god exists that you're not sending something that could be deemed pornographic to a minor. You see where I'm going with this? What will you do if you end up with an irate parent whose child just received your Ellen Hopkins books (under 13 address + "illicit material" + batshitty parent = shenanigans)? Crap.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend I can spit out every single claims scenario that could happen. That's impossible. But the shit up there? It's probably the most obvious. So what can you do to put some shingles on your roof to keep it from leaking on you?

Buy a media liability policy.

Axis (of which I am not affiliated in any way, I actually found them via The Author's Guild) is one of the bigger media guys and they have a pretty good breakdown of just what such a policy will cover. Again, with something like a blog, where we're out there opining constantly, it's not about paying out claims; it's about defense. I was able to get some numbers and your standard media policy will cost you anywhere from $1,000 to $3,500 minimum annually. Anyone else go fuck that? *raises hand* My car insurance doesn't even cost that. It's an option but unless you have all that extra fundage to spend, as people that don't actually net a profit, it's not a very viable one.

Form a sort of mutual.

It's not the true definition of a mutual but to cut down on cost, because those policies are subject to minimum premiums (meaning no matter what that amount is what you're going to pay), you could get a few of you together onto one policy and split the bill. I'm not too knowledgeable on something like this to I'm going to go ahead and refer you to your local insurance agent for more information.

Go bare.

Hello! And this does not mean run around naked. At least in public. It basically means do nothing and hope for the best. It's what I'm doing and I'm sure it's what pretty much everyone else is doing. Our risks are low and high at the same time. We effectively have nothing to lose. We have no affiliations and anyone coming after us would quite frankly be wasting their time. But welcome to a heinously litigious society where you can be sued for anything at any time. Unfortunately it's not impossible. Just highly improbable.

Another option was thrown around on the underwriting side of adding book bloggers to publisher media policies. I laughed in my co-worker's face because, really, what are the chances? But I did ask. And I got a good sampling of no's. One of my publishing contacts brought up an exceptionally good point about the FTC, book bloggers and extending coverage: adding a book blogger to an insurance policy is effectively an extension of money to the blogger. In other words the publisher would be allowing the blogger access to their money. Sponsorship, anyone? I didn't think of this until it was mentioned and man, was it eye-opening. It is something that's done when there's an actual monetary investment in the person being added (authors, for instance) but book bloggers essentially need to stay as independent as possible in order to not have to pick a huge FTC wedgie out of our asses. This is not the way to avoid said wedgies.

Again, I'm not saying any of this to scare anyone, nor am I pretending to be an expert. Knowledge is power and I'm just trying to smear it around. In the final post I wrap it all up, all this liability shit. Sometimes I don't like being a big kid. It's a total buzz kill.

Liability and Book Blogging: An Introduction into the Scary

When I'm not book blogging I underwrite insurance in order to feed my face, feed my dog's face and feed my book habit. When I say I underwrite insurance, are you wondering what the hell I mean? Are bridges involved? Don't worry. When I started this job I couldn't even define it. I was poached from accounting.

To underwrite insurance means to evaluate a particular risk (let's use a driver looking for car insurance since most people are familiar with that) in order to determine whether it fits the guidelines to write with a particular carrier (like Progressive, Allstate or Geico). If it fits, in the case of auto insurance a driver's motor vehicle history (accidents and their severity, moving violations, etc.), age, sex, type of car and a bunch of other factors get weighed together and priced based on that information. Someone that's been in 6 accidents is going to have a much higher premium than someone that hasn't been in any. A 16 year old's premiums are going to be through the roof compared to a 35 year old's. It is I that sets your premium. I'm the one that takes a look at your life and puts a price on it. I'm usually the one people hate because those price increases? Oh hey! This is, of course, assuming I underwrite personal auto insurance. I don't. But it's an example people are most familiar with.

What the hell does this have to do with anything, especially book blogging? Well as an underwriter I have a tendency of looking at the world in terms of insurance, whether I want to or not. It just comes with the territory. When people talk about buying houses in Florida, instead of commenting on beach location and proximity to Disney World, I'm all like, "Dude you're totally not going to get wind, you're fucked on flood and the NFIP isn't writing policies." To which they go, O_o. My brain just automatically goes there. As an underwriter you're taught to look at the world differently and it bleeds.

So when I see all of the shenanigannery going on regarding negative reviews, my brain starts going, "oh shitballs . . ." Why, you say? People are just being assholes. Authors are just losing their shit. It just makes THEM look bad. Well yeah but when accusations like libel and career sabotage start floating around, however frivolously, them sirens start whooping in my brain. Because that's insurance.

All we do is give opinions on books. We are not professionals and we don't pretend to be. But we have HUGE voices and people know that. Otherwise why would they go insane about a less-than-stellar review or what kind of shelves people are using on Goodreads? Words like blacklisting get thrown around. Slander for those of you that vlog. Ruining someone's career. Sure they may look like your standard internet douchery but to these eyes they're a lawsuit waiting to happen.

We live in an insanely litigious society and while I hate it, and while I believe it has created a hypochondriac society for insurance, the courts enable this kind of sue-happy behavior and the reality is we should all really be wearing internet condoms to protect ourselves. You never know when that one bad review will hit that one author in just the wrong way at just the wrong time that'll send them into a frenzy that involves legalese and a monetary value.

This is more than just owning your words. As we all know the internet is forever so no matter how many times we hit delete, like herpes, it'll never completely go away. We are LEGALLY liable for our words and that's scary. First it was the FTC. Seriously, we're just book bloggers! No. We need to declare our books or face potential fines. Did you really think it was going to stop there? We work with professionals: publishers, publicists, authors, in some cases agents. They're protected out the nose. Yet here we are running our mouths off about books to THOUSANDS of people. We can literally hold the success or failure of a book in our hands. We rightly can amp up or crush an author. That is an insane amount of power and we're not even wearing oven mitts in this fire.

I'm still in the information-gathering phase of this excursion but I wanted to get the ball rolling on the few posts that I'm going to spend discussing liability in book blogging and what we can do to protect ourselves. I am by no means an expert and I'm not pretending to be. I'm just using the knowledge I've garnered as an underwriter, along with the resources at my disposal, to better educate the book bloggers out there about the real power of their words and the serious repercussions they could have.

So stay tuned. I didn't intend to have this be a "something is killing your children, find out what tonight at 11" type of post. This is just a bookmark, a discussion-starter. Just what are you liable for in this book blogging world?