The initial struggles to carve a niche for myself in the Australian literary or author circles made me wary of impostors or literary agents who threatened to steal my intellectual property either with falsified marketing campaigns or through hackers whose interference could not ignored by me. I joined Australian Society of Authors and Australian Writer’s Guild with the intention of belonging to the right circle and of learning how to protect my work and rights. My lengthy email to ASA about the levels of harassment I faced as a beginning author fetched me the suggestion of making a National e Deposit in response.
In an effort to make an e Deposit, I researched about the benefits of making a legal deposit of e publications. I was enlightened to learn that if a work once made available to the readers for a price in Australia, then legal deposit becomes a mandatory requirement for Australian publications no matter what type of published work it is. In other words, it could be a website, book, journal, sheet music, maps, magazines or newspapers and it could also be an offline or online publication. My investigations brought to light the three reasons why an author or composer should make an e Deposit – Audience reach, access control and preservation.
Just the thing I had been looking for. I wouldn’t mind being able to reach a wide variety and range of audience and if my work is reused by others or quoted by others without changing or modifying the content significantly I wouldn’t complain. Once the work is deposited via National e Deposit after creating an account and activating it, it becomes available in the reading rooms at the National Library in Canberra and in other state or territory libraries for onsite reading. I was excited to know that my intellectual property and commercial interests would be protected if I went ahead with the deposit. The National e Deposit guaranteed publishers that their deposit would be, “digitally preserved for the community and future generations to become an important part of Australia’s memory”. Since I am an author and self-publisher, I uploaded my second and third eBooks (the first was published by Balboa Press AU) without any hassles and my joy knew no bounds when I received my deposit numbers for both the e publications via email.
Call it hilarious or not, the thought that I am immortal and that I would continue to live in the memory of a few readers and posterity even after I die is intoxicating!
A Writer's Exposé 