This is to notify all members that we have made some minor amendments to our Terms of Service. This is to facilitate the addition of a new Authors Forum. Clause 4.4 has been slightly amended, and clause 4.10 has been added.

Continued use of this site constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms of Service.

We would like to apologise for having to shut down the site for a few days. This was made necessary by a technical fault that was beyond our control.

We have been working hard to fix the problem, and everything currently seems to be working OK. However, if anyone sees anything that appears to be odd, please let us know.

Apologies once again for the need to close the site.

Please note that our server will be down for something like 45 minutes between midnight and 4AM MDT (GMT-6). While the server is down the site will be unavailable. This is for essential maintenance and is beyond our control.

Apologies again to anyone who tried to access the site during parts of yesterday (March 19th 2010) and found it unavailable. This was caused by technical changes made by our hosts. As you can see, the site is back up and running as normal again now.

Simon

Our apologies to those who attempted to log in to this site during the course of today (26th November 2008), only to find it unavailable.

The technical fault that caused the shutdown has now been fixed and there should be no further problems.

Simon

It has come to my attention that part of our site home page have led to misunderstandings. It previously read, "This is the new home of John Norman, and I'm delighted to say that John will be here from time to time. Every once in a while you will be able to read a message from him."

The second sentence there was meant to indicate the nature of John's presence here but it seems that this is not sufficiently clear. Our apologies for any misunderstandings that have arisen as a result, and I've now edited it.

To be quite clear, John Norman does not visit the site in person, but he has contributed to it and answered some questions from members that were passed to him, and he will be contributing further in the future.

Simon

I won't discuss a particular case publicly, but I will make some general comments about how the system works.

When an ID is banned, that ID can only be reactivated by a member of Staff. There is no automatic reactivation. Whether or not a ban is temporary or permanent will depend on many factors, and we will make such decisions case by case.

Simon

Hi folks,

I'd like to remind everyone that all material on this site is copyrighted unless specifically stated otherwise. In particular, John Norman retains copyright to all his letters published on this site. It is both a breach of our <a href="http://gorchronicles.com/modules/wfch ... ?pagenum=2">Terms of Service</a>, and also illegal, to copy them to any other site, even if a link back to this site is provided, without permission to do so. Without that permission it's fine to post links to the letters, and to post quotes from them, but that's all. I would ask anyone who has copied any letter from this site to either remove it or to ensure that they obtain copyright permission. I found a copy of one letter posted on another site earlier on and I may well be contacting them to specifically request they remove the article in question.

Here at CoG we operate a very strict policy where copyright is concerned, and we never publish anything without permission. Over the past year I've contacted a number of people to request permission to publish their material and so far nobody has refused. Amongst that material are articles by David Alexander Smith, Jeffrey M. Elliott and most recently Steven Saylor (who even added a link on his own site to his article on this site). Having to get permission to post material written by others may seem like a pain, but usually all that is required is a simple email. It may also seem like a risk, as there's a chance the copyright holder might say no, but in my experience that's a risk well worth taking.

I've found that copyright holders very much appreciate it when people respect their rights, and hence they tend to grant the permission requested. On the other hand they can get rather annoyed if they find their articles copied illegally. As an example of what can happen if copyright is not properly respected it may be worth reading <a href="http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Note-OpenLetter.html">an open letter by Ursula K. Le Guin</a> regarding the illegal posting of an article she had written. As the infringer involved there found, copyright infringement can damange your reputation, but in some respects he escaped quite lightly. Had Ms Le Guin issued a formal Notice of Infringement to his web hosts the infringement might have cost him his site.

The moral of all this is that asking permission will only enhance your reputation and you will usually find permission is granted, whereas posting something by someone else without permission will only damage your reputation, if you're lucky, and may cost you your site if you're not.

Simon

I've now added an eBay search box for those looking to find Gor books (or anything else for that matter) on eBay.

Tal Richard,

We're in no danger of failing to break even.

As has been said we do not want this site to become a commercial operation, with all the overheads and pressures that entails. Simon explained well why we do not want to become dependent on sales income.

Running this site does involve some inevitable expenses, such as web hosting and domain registration fees, but we try to keep those essential costs to a minimum in order to help ensure that we will not be forced to close if we cannot meet those costs. In reality the commissions we're earning at the moment comfortably cover those costs, but even if they didn't, our essential running costs are small enough for us to cover ourselves if we need to.

As I have said we try to keep running costs to a mimimum, but that does not mean there aren't other ways in which we could use our income. It simply means those ways are not essential to the running of the site. Rest assured that we'll use any extra income we get for the good of the site.

We're here for the long term. In every decision we have taken we have tried to ensure that the site would survive no matter what happens, even if we never earnt another penny from any commissions. The site is not here to earn money, it's here to provide news and information to Gor fans, and a whole host of other resources related to the Gor books. The Online Store is simply one of those resources and we would have added something like it even if we did not earn any money by doing so. Although it isn't there to earn us money, I think it's a wise move on our part to use the opportunity provided to us to earn a little in commission, as that will not only help to ensure the long term survival of the site but it will provide us the means to make this an even better site than it is now.

Simon

A few members might have noticed that the recently banned member managed to make another brief post after we had supposedly banned her. We've identified the technical problem that prevented her banning from taking proper effect and rectified that, so she can no longer access the site. We very rarely have reason to ban people here, and the precise circumstances that caused the ban not to work on this occassion had never occurred before. We are now working on a permanent fix to that problem so that it will not happen again.

Hi all,

Strictly speaking this is the wrong forum for this post, but I wanted to make sure it's read by as many as possible. We'll move it to the appropriate forum at a later date.

You will have spotted that we have just expelled a member after it came to our attention that she was under 18. I'd like to remind everyone that the members only areas of this site are strictly for those over 18. Every member of this site has agreed to our Terms of Service, which expressly state that members must be over 18. Should we become aware, or if we have sufficiently strong grounds to believe, that any member is under 18 then that member will be immediately expelled, without exception. If we are proved wrong then we will of course resinstate that member with an apology.

There are many reasons for taking such a strict line on that, some of them legal reasons, and others moral and ethical reasons. I won't go into all of them, but I will try to summarise them. To put it simply we have a responsibility to help ensure that minors are protected from harm. We owe that to their parents, to other members, but most importantly to the minors themselves. We take that responsibility very, very seriously, as you have now seen.

Please help us in this by letting us know of any evidence or suspicions you have, and of course by not inviting anyone you know to be under 18 to join this site, and instead urging them not to do so. Members found to be ignoring our age rules and actively inviting minors to join this site may also, at our discretion, be expelled from the site.

Simon

Greetings purpod,

You're welcome, and just between you and I the real reason I've been a little quiet recently is much more mundane than has been suggested. I've just been darn busy, it's as simple as that. If you happen to find a way of injecting a few hours of extra time into each day please let me know - that would be an enormous help.

Simon

As we have said we recognise that some of our members are on a limited budget, and also that for various reasons members will not always want to purchase copies of books, especially reference books. For that reason we have added various links and search boxes which you will find <a href="http://gorchronicles.com/modules/tiny ... 1">here</a>.

For those wanting to find books in your local library we have added links to both the WorldCat library search page, and LibWeb from which you will hopefully be able to find the home page for your local library.

For those wanting used books we have added search boxes for AbeBooks in both the US and UK. We also have search boxes for Amazon for those who want to find other new and used books not in our Store.

Finally, for anyone looking for ebooks we have a search box for Fictionwise.

Please feel free to make use of all these links. Over time we may well add more links or improve what we already have.

Please note that we may also receive referral fees for items purchased using the search boxes we've provided.

No, there was no funding for this site from the publishers. They are supporting us as much as they can, but they were not in a position to make a financial commitment to the site. We therefore took the decision to fund it ourselves, at least initially. Right at the start we discussed ways of funding the site in the long term, and the best way seemed to be through sales commissions. As a result, all the links to retailers that we have given have been special links that enable us to earn referral fees, either from Amazon or Fictionwise. We had no real idea how much income that would generate, though it was never likely to bring in vast amounts of money. We therefore tried to keep expenditure to a minimum and build as good a site as possible on a limited budget, a site we could then improve if we found we had sufficient funds to do so. We therefore very much appreciate those who use the links to books that we've provided, either through the Online Store or the various other links throughout the site.

Thank you holly and Mintar for your comments - I'm glad you like the new Online Store.

There was a technical problem that involved Witness, and as a result it has had to be withdrawn and re-issued with a new ISBN. The problem did not affect the actual book itself in any way though so those who already have copies need not worry. The links to Amazon in the Books section for Witness all point to the re-issued edition, though they won't work until it shows in the Amazon catalogue, as is the case with the links for books 1-3. Where I've added graphical links, including the link to Witness in the Online Store, they still point to the old ISBN, though they will be updated just as soon as the re-issued version shows on Amazon. I'm hoping that will be in the next few days, as Amazon seems to update its catalogue over the weekend.

Lemuel has already responded to the question about sales commissions. I should stress that this site will never be a money making enterprise, even though we now have a small income. That income, as Lemuel said, will enable the site to run, and develop, without the need for myself and others to fund it as we did initially, though we will of course continue to put time and effort into the site entirely voluntarily, with no expectation of financial reward. Even if we wanted it to, our income is never likely to come remotely close to enough to properly cover all the time that has been and is being spent on this site. You can rest assured that none of us are in this for the money!

Simon

Quote:

E-Reads are the publishers. I think you're getting that mixed with the word ebook. E-Reads publish the revised edition in ebook and paperback form.

To make it easy for you, our members, to purchase the Gor books, we've added our very own <a href="http://gorchronicles.com/modules/tiny ... php?id=53">Online Store</a>! Visit the store, set up in association with Amazon, for all your Gor books, as well as a selection of other related books (yes, that's why I asked for recommendations). No more searching through lists of old editions on Amazon trying to find the current edition - simply use our store!

You can view details from Amazon about all the books featured, and even add items to your shopping cart, all without leaving Chronicles of Gor. When you're ready to checkout, the site will transfer you and your shopping cart to Amazon itself, for you to complete your order. We at Chronicles of Gor never get to see delivery addresses, credit card details or any other confidential data so you can rest assured that you can use our store in complete safety.

Some users may have experienced problems accessing this site over the past few days. The problems were only occasional and lasted just a few minutes, but we do apologise for any inconvenience caused by the problems.

The reason for the problems was apparently a server fault, which necessitated an upgrade, and they were therefore completely out of our control.

Over the past couple of weeks or so our web hosts have been upgrading their systems.

Some of you may have noticed short periods where the site has been unavailable, particularly during the last week. These periods of unavailability generally only last a few minutes. The reason for these problems appears to be connected with the various upgrades. This is part of a response from the support team:

"....a kernal upgrade (operating system upgrade) was just done on April 20th. Sometimes in the upgrade process it take a few days to get all the bugs worked out of the new upgrade."

They tell me that things should be settling down now, and hopefully, once the upgrades are complete, and everything has fully settled down, the site should be both faster and more reliable.

Our apologies for any inconvenience that has been caused by the occasional site availability issues.

Simon