Absolute Write

I’m in the AW Discord. From what I’ve seen there was a crash but also a cyber attack on the site.

Wow, they must have really pissed someone off. Be rude and condescending to the wrong person and something like that is bound to happen eventually. I'm almost impressed.

There's quite a few possibilities.
It's possible that it was someone with a grudge against them or one of the site leaders. They didn't go out of their way to avoid upsetting people.
But it's not the most likely explanation.

The site may have had a vulnerability that was detected by hackers randomly scanning the internet for vulnerable sites. Usually caused by site software not being kept updated. 
If the site was on their own server, then the server software may have been vulnerable. Their fault if they maintained it; the host's fault (or the server management company's) if that was their responsibility.
If it was on a shared server, then the vulnerability might have been down to another site which allowed the hackers to control the server and any other sites on it.

DDOS attacks are common. Irritating, but usually not damaging. Target might have been the site, another site on the server or the host. Would usually come to an end after a few weeks. Typically defended by using cloudflare or equivalent.

I assume that they've explained the situation somewhere (facebook ?)

Yep, it definitely seems like someone has targeted them. Mac posted this publicly on the Facebook AW site:

“Okay, #AWers #AbsoluteWrite, update time: we are currently experiencing a sustained Ddos attack. They've left footprints, however, and we're collecting data for the appropriate law enforcement agencies. Hang in there!”

She also posted this today:

AbsoluteWrite.com has been online -- with the exception of some scheduled server-maintenance time, one memorable host-holding-the-database-hostage incident, and a few random server crashes -- more-or-less continuously since 1999.



We plan to continue merrily right on into the 2020s.



This is the first time we've encountered such a concerted and prolonged deliberate effort to force us offline, but we want to reassure everyone that, while it's certainly obnoxious, it's absolutely not going to succeed.



For obvious reasons I don't want to go into specific details regarding the security upgrades we're implementing. Just please know that we're here. We'll be back online. We're not going anywhere.



--Mac

After all those years of pissing people off looks like they pissed off the wrong person.

I don't know.
Her quotes simply suggest to me that she doesn't know what she's talking about.
"DDOS footprints" - really? Law enforcement agencies?

Unless they're very incompetent, DDOS attacks are virtually impossible to trace.
And they're not really fixable because there's nothing necessarily insecure about the site or the host, but they can be mitigated. That takes some money but not a huge amount. Expertise helps. Some hosts are much better able to cope than others, and switching to one of them might again knock up the monthly cost.

DDOS attacks usually stop because of money. Big, sustained attacks are expensive because of the cost of hiring the botnets - and they produce no income (unless they try for a ransom). It has been known for some businesses to hire attacks on their rivals. Of course, if no mitigations are in place then the cost might be small.
Assuming it was a vulnerable site, without mitigation but with a degree of visibility, it's not impossible that a new botnet owner would target them as a form of advertising.

Hmm I admit to also being clueless about hacking. If I was admin of AW I’d be reaching out to as many posters as I could asking for help, sharing screenshots and stuff. But I would never pay ransom money. Even if I had it.

I have to say, it's not breaking my heart. The site and or general population of its users seem exclusionary and bigoted against indies in general. It's hard to get too upset when bad things happen to people who are deliberately rude and dislikable. One always wonders if there isn't an element of karma or poetic justice at work.

Most likely the cliques all have their own private Facebook groups, and the casuals have all dispersed elsewhere. Tis the way of things. They had a good long run, but like their precious, traditional publishing, their time in the sun has finally burnt itself out.

They're baaaaaaaccccccck!

Wonder if they have protections in place to stop this from happening again though I doubt you can actually stop this stuff no matter what you do. 

I was hoping to delete my account from AW because they are just disgusting over there. They are still snotty and treating authors like children. Mods barking at writers. Who do they think they are? They are a joke. I pop in once in a while to see the self-publishing forum because those newbie indies over there have almost no help so I would pop in sometimes to give guidance if I could but they are showing their true colors. Some loser popped in and started downing self-publishing and I called them out on it and of course the mods come at ME and talk to me like a child yet said NOTHING to the other poster? Yeah, same old BS and this is why they got hacked and probably will again. I didn't feel sorry for them then and I don't know. AW is a joke and no self-respecting self-published author needs to go near that place. The information is out of date, the mods and members stuck in the 90's and outside of their little, misguided world, they know nothing.

I'm done and won't be going back. I said it before but I mean it now. I was only trying to help newbies but they need to join a REAL forum for self-publishing authors. AW knows nothing about anything. Just got a bunch of nasty, ego-tripping mods over there. They can have that loser board. I just wish they let folks delete accounts but they can kiss my butt instead.

It's easy to see why no one felt sorry for them when they got knocked off the web and the owner had to beg for money from members to get back on. Idiots.

You think they'd have learned their lesson of how to treat folks better after being hacked.

Absolute Write and Goodreads, two sites any author with sense should stay away from. 

The breadcrumb analogy explains it perfectly. I thought of going back and deleting all my posts but I will leave them there to help others. I don't intend to ever go back to AW now. I should've steered cleared like the other indies but as I said, wanted to be helpful since there is so much misinformation there involving self-publishing.

AW's attitude has really hurt them though. It's so empty over there now as it is. What they don't seem to realize is writers don't need them anymore. Years ago, AW was the only writing forum there was or at least the most popular. So you had to go there if you wanted to interact with writers. Those days are over. There are tons of places writers can go now, especially for indies. You can go to FB and find any writing group you need. So no one has to put up with AW's crap anymore.

It's obvious they will never change and it's sad. Also, how can you have a bunch of admins over there who have never even published a book? I don't think any of them have written anything yet run a writing site? Please. 

The sad thing is that some writers would rather be unpublished or waiting around forever than to to indie. I used to be trade published but when I started, you had to be. There was no KDP and if you self-published you had to sell print copies out of your car. The stigma was awful back then too. If I was a newbie today, no way would I waste time on an agent or publisher. Life is too short and you don't have to wait around these days.

Those folks on AW can keep wasting away and waiting, meanwhile I'll keep publishing and depositing royalty checks. LOL!

Some have been over there over 10 years and still not getting anywhere. It's fine to be persistent but at some point you need to get real and realize that getting trade published might not be your destiny.

Meanwhile you're being left behind because instead of chasing agents and pubs for years, you could've been publishing your own books, building your brand and making money. It's better than having a ton of manuscripts tucked away in a drawer because some agent or pub didn't want them.

Another thing about AW is I don't care for the self-published authors that frequent the board because they are pansies. They sit there and let people spread misinformation and say disrespecting things about self-publishing but don't say anything. I was the only one calling people out on their BS and of course the mods didn't like that but I couldn't give a crap. They can choke on their opinions.

You know what, K? I actually think the fact that I used to be trade is why I would get some snarkiness here and there from admins. They seemed to always have an issue with what I said sometimes. I think they didn't like that I used to be trade and now I'm indie. Also, not to mention how I always said how much happier I am indie and that I make more money indie than I ever did in trade publishing. LOL! I'm pretty sure that didn't sit well for them. AW doesn't want anyone around who threatens their myth that trade publishing is great. Probably the reason why so many who have switched from trade to indie who used to be on AW are gone from there now. Probably were treated wrong or realized AW is useless when you are indie. Most of the indies over there are dumb. Sorry to say it but they are. They have a few vets there like Emily Veinglory but many of them are trying to self-publish and don't know what they are doing and they sit back and let the admins disrespect indies. That wasn't happening on my watch and that's why the mod PMed me, because I wasn't gonna let someone pop up and say rude things about self-publishing. The other indies were just answering the thread like saps. Pathetic. They act like AW is the mob and they are afraid to stand up for themselves. The mods can't do anything to you! They're just some women sitting behind a computer screen, powertripping. 

As I said, I should've stayed gone. I left for years even when I was still in trade because I never liked how heavy-handed and rude their mods are. Then I started popping back and wanted to help indies. It seemed like AW had changed but then you stay long enough and you see that snobbishness and hatred for indies bubbling under the surface.

Yeah, I heard that too about Mercedes. Many of these trade authors are afraid of indie publishing because it threatens their livelihood. They hate Amazon too (but I understand why, LOL. Amazon hasn't exactly always been fair to indies.) You can always see a trade author, especially successful ones like Lackey blaming Amazon and "cheap" ebooks for their sales dwindling. I can't tell you how many trade authors I used to know who downed self-publishing and now they are doing it! Go figure.

And yet, it's their own publishers that screwed their authors and themselves by trying to keep ebook prices high and protect the print pipeline, while faster, cheaper, more convenient and in many cases better products are available. 

Back in the 70s the Japanese started making cheap good compact cars that started competing successfully against the big American and German cars. People wanted smaller, more efficient, cheaper cars. 

The Germans always had smaller cars for their own market because of high gas prices and cramped roads in Europe, so they did fine. They introduced things like the VW Rabbit/Golf to compete in the small car market. In fact, Daimler (Mercedes) eventually bought Chrysler. But for a long time, the US car companies tried to keep pushing their big gas hogs and they tried to get tarriffs and quotas put on foreign cars, and the small American cars they did make were crap--the Pinto, the Nova, the Chevette. It took them decades and a huge bailout to change with the times, instead of trying to use the government or monopoly action to try to protect their market. All the quotas and tarriffs did was cause foreign car companies to open plants so Toyotas and BMWs were now "American Made". Only cheap gas and the North American penchant for pickup trucks and SUVs saved the American car companies--that and actual improvement in product quality. 

But the overall market is usually right, and the price pressure is inexorable. And with the current pandemic issues, print is dying even faster as people don't buy from closed bookstores, and some don't want to buy used books off Amazon even, for fear of contagion. I believe KKR and DWS recently predicted the imminent demise of at least one more "big five" house, either by bankruptcy or merger. I think it will happen, and trad profits will never be the same. The internet is even more important in this crisis, and we indies are better at internet than the trads. The trad dinosaurs will die off or evolve into something smaller, while we indie mammals adapt faster and eventually take over the world.