The idea of Claire writing a book intrigued much of the board since up until then she hadn't displayed the ability to make a coherent post, much less write a book and get it published. The commonly held opinion was that Claire was making the whole thing up. Every time that she was asked about the book she'd say that she was "working with different publishers" and "making final arrangements with her soliciter", or "discussing the cover art with the artist" or any number of excuses.
Then one day she announced that her book, SQWARK!, was available for sale.
SQWARK! was eventually printed by Trafford, a vanity press company that charged O'Brien over a thousand dollars to print the book and get an ISBN numberso that it could be listed on Amazon.com. Apparently no one bothered to explain to her that publishers pay authors to write, not the other way around.
Since everyone already knew that Claire couldn't write, and the book was selling for around $50.00 for a two-volume copy, none of the board users
It turned out that Claire had copied all of the posts from the old afternic.com message boards - without permission from the board owners or the users whose posts she stole - then dumped them into a word document and deemed it the best "righting since Shakeespeare", as she put it. Traditionally, the rights to the posts on messageboards belong to the person making the post. While it's perfectly legal in the US to quote posts under the fair use laws, it is not okay to take literally every post from a messageboard and sell it as a book for profit. Claire had plagarized the entire board to create her book.
None of that made any difference, of course. Like most everything else that Claire has done in her life, the book was a tremendous flop. According to one of the few people that she could convince to review the book, Patrick O'Keefe at sitepoint.com, O'Brien made some severe mistakes.
Sqwark! The Book is a print version of hundreds of posts from the old AN Community Forums. This is all that’s included in the book. There’s no commentary, no real introduction -- nothing else at all.
The posts published here are not organized into any specific categories. It appears that the posts are ordered by date, but not by thread. As a result, frequently, the reader doesn’t know which replies are linked, or where any given reply fits in. I found this to be annoying as I spent a good deal of time trying to piece posts together.
This book is billed as part humor, part useful information. I can’t understand why. It isn’t that funny and the information contained within isn’t valuable. To top it off, Sqwark! The Book costs $49.95. I know it comes in two volumes, but it is still definitely overpriced, and not really worth your money or your time.
Other reviewers at amazon.com were less kind.
I'm going to print up and bind the archives of my system logs from 2003 and sell them for $25. More interesting, better price.
This book was back in its box on the way for a refund in less than 5 minutes. It must be a joke. Stay away from this. It would have been better if all the pages were blank.
One might wonder what Claire had to say about all of this.
Whatever, dork. You can't even recognise nonAmerican spellings. What would you know?
"nonAmerican"?
Then she wonders why she can't sell any books.
