novelist/vendor/geekoid obs & questions

[jsundman]

I had a table in the vendor area defcon18 from which I sold 100's of my geekoid/hacker novels. I had a grand time, made some $$, made some new friends, learned a bunch of stuff and felt more at home than I have felt at home anyplace in a long time. Thanks to all of y'all, especially Roamer, Evil, Alex, Dodger & the vendor/security goons. And of course thanks to y'all who bought copies of my books. I think Defcon is a gas & wish I had started coming years ago. Thank you all.

My books are all available as ebooks DRM-free from various torrent sites & have been for years. So check 'em out if you feel like it.

I like it better when you buy the (e or paper)books rather than just download them, but if you're reading this note you can figure out how to get a free (& legal) copy of any of my books. So please don't nuke this post as a spam comment, because I'm only telling you how to get stuff for free.

Observation: I wish I could have gone to Black Hat & more (any) of the Defcon sessions & happenings. But one needs to pay the rent, one does, so there you go: I was chained to my vendor table because I need the money.

I was very gratified that Mr. El Dark Tangent himself put down cold cash for my books. Felt like I was meeting a Beatle or something.

Even though I seldom left the vendor area, I do think I picked up some hacking knowledge by osmosis.

Sunday afternoon, there I was with more than 100 copies of my books still unsold-- probably closer to 200 copies. I could have mailed them home to me, but that prospect was just too depressing so instead I donated them to Defcon. Many of them got handed out as swag at the closing; the rest went, I hope to the goons, to do with as they please.

I would very much appreciate any feedback public or private, on my books, from any as may have read them.

Also, anybody willing to be a consultant on my work in progress about computer/systems hacking and DNA hacking, I would be happy to hear from you.

jrs

[TheCotMan]

Re: novelist/vendor/geekoid obs & questions

You really should have asked one of the mods before posting this, as it is kind of spammy. This is your warning; don't self-promote your products on the forums. If you have a question about something being spam or not, you should not post it, or talk to a mod (or even email defconforums@gmail.com) and you can pass your idea there.

Many ideas are given a green-light but others are turned down. I've /dev/null-ed threads from people selling their books in a thread dedicated to just selling their books. However, there is this fine line where something can be mentioned in passing as part of an existing topic, such as answers to questions. It is difficult to evaluate. Getting an OK before you post your advertisement of sorts protects you from being banned, but posting and ad without some sort of OK puts you at risk for being banned.

You are lucky that this is not spammy enough for me to take harsh action, but instead just warn you, not /dev/null it, and put it in the post-defcon 18 forum.

Please get mod ok before posting ads or just don't post them or risk the consequences.

Now that my duties of a moderator in response to this post are complete I can turn to reply to the content of your post...

Good to hear you did well in the vendor room, and it is nice to hear you enjoyed your first year at Defcon. It was really nice of you to donate your hard work as swag to be thrown out to the crowd and to goons.

Good luck with your writing career and books.

[jsundman]

Re: novelist/vendor/geekoid obs & questions

Ok, I appreciate the consideration.

I didn't think I was being too spammy as I'm mostly reaching out and asking if anybody wants to play in my next project.

Of course I'm not the right person to judge spamminess; that's a matter of community norms, etc.

I didn't understand the process about asking mods for an opinion. That's a procedure that I haven't knowingly encountered before, so I didn't understand it.

In future, I'll do that.

I hope it's OK to post this response with asking for mod reaction to a reply. That's not meant to be a snotty comment. I really am trying to find my way around and conform to local norms. Bear with me a little longer and I'll be a model citizen of this den before you know it.

jrs

You really should have asked one of the mods before posting this, as it is kind of spammy.

[. . .]
Good to hear you did well in the vendor room, and it is nice to hear you enjoyed your first year at Defcon. It was really nice of you to donate your hard work as swag to be thrown out to the crowd and to goons.

Good luck with your writing career and books.

[TheCotMan]

Re: novelist/vendor/geekoid obs & questions

I hope it's OK to post this response with asking for mod reaction to a reply. That's not meant to be a snotty comment. I really am trying to find my way around and conform to local norms. Bear with me a little longer and I'll be a model citizen of this den before you know it.

Yep. It is perfectly fine to reply about this in public. I really like making a great deal of the forum work transparent so people can see mistakes, warnings, corrections, and see encouragement to do better in the future. Some people learn by watching other people make mistakes, and by making these things public, they gain the benefit. It also helps to show that we pretty much treat everyone the same way with things like this, so that we don't just single out one person for spamming.

This is something to consider if you should ever want to use the "report this post" option in the forums. Though we have a warning on the page where users say why they think a post should be reported, not everyone reads the warning. It pretty much says that all reported posts are posted in /dev/null in public for everyone to read. In this way, we show transparently that someone has complained, we answer in public with our response, and users better understand the issue and why it was or was not a problem. Lurkers learn about their environments before they post and everyone else can see how things work here.

Thanks for understanding, and good luck with your plans for future sales in the vendor area.