Now I know how real authors feel.

Every so often, I do a search for "Ephemerala" to see on what other sites my store name is popping up. I recently found several website owners who have taken the information from my Stone Fun Facts page and reprinted it on their own sites and/or eBay listings, with no acknowledgement to me.

Now, some of you may recall my rant about cutting and pasting information. In a nutshell, I intensely dislike the practice of creating "information" pages where all that the site owner has done is copy and paste information he or she found on another site. I find this all the time while looking up info on the gems for the Stone Fun Facts pages. Now I have found I am a victim of this sort of mindless theft. Several people have copied my copyrighted information and pasted it onto their sites and listings. And to make things worse, several didn't bother to proofread, as some pages contain lines like "Learn more about agate here..." just plain with no link to show you where "here" is, or, "You can only find these stones here at Ephemerala," when the site is NOT Ephemerala and there is no information as to what Ephemerala might be! Can you imagine someone coming to these sites and getting frustrated by these teasers?

I wrote to the owners of a couple of the sites, saying that I was fine with their reprinting the info, but to please provide acknowledgement and a link to my site. One eventually gave me acknowledgement, but failed to provide a link. Another one agreed to do it, but after three weeks still has not.

It seems like such a small issue, but I can't express how disappointed I am about this. It's bad enough to find this sort of nonsense all over the web when you are trying to find information, but to actually be a part of it against my will is very dispiriting. I spend a good amount of time researching the stones, collecting information, compiling it, and putting it down in logical and easy to understand paragraphs, because I care about giving people fresh information, and to see that work so blatantly stolen from my site really irks me.

As always, I assure everyone here that the info you will find on the Stone Fun Facts page is 100% my own writing. If you ever find anyone else talking about how you can get this stone "here at Ephemerala," or find phrases that ring strangely familiar, just remember who did the legwork.