General Dickimaw Books FAQ
General FAQ about Dickimaw Books.
- General
- Dickimaw Books Website
- Does the Dickimaw Books website track visitors?
- What kind of public posts can be made on this site?
- What do you do with my email address if I enter it on the Dickimaw Books site?
- How do I contact Dickimaw Books?
- I haven't received my account verification email
- I’ve received an email from
dickimaw-books.comdomain. How do I know if it’s genuine?
- (La)TeX
General
No. Dickimaw Books is a sole-trader business.
2018-04-27 05:00:56
No. Dickimaw Books is currently not VAT registered as the annual turnover is below the threshold.
2018-04-27 05:02:34
This site is solely reliant on book sales, so the best way to support it is to buy one of my books (or ask your library) 😊. The ebooks are cheapest (available on SmashWords, Kobo, Overdrive and other ebook retailers) and they also provide me with the most return (since there’s no print cost to deduct and the ebook distributors take a smaller cut). Please also consider rating or reviewing my books to help boost revenue to keep this site going.
2023-04-13 15:15:21
Dickimaw Books Website
This website does not have any targeting or marketing cookies or web beacons or any code that performs fingerprinting. There are no embedded third party ads. Revenue from this site comes solely from book sales.
This site has an “opt-in” policy for optional cookies. That is, optional cookies are only created if you specifically opt-in for them, either by setting your site preferences or by enabling the “trust” setting when using 2FA. See the Cookies Page for a list of all site cookies.
The server logs include IP addresses (which is usual for web server logs). The logs for this site aren’t used to track visitors, except for reporting purposes where there is evidence of criminal activity, such as denial of service attacks, parameter hacking attempts (for example, SQL injection or cross-site scripting), or brute-force attempts to gain access. This site programmatically implements IP blocking for fixed durations when it detects suspicious activity. Email addresses associated with phishing attempts and obviously false domains are added to a deny list.
Related blog articles: Tag / Cookies and Category / Site.
2025-04-10 15:09:21
You can post bug reports, feature requests, typo reports, or comment on bug posts or feature requests. These can be posted either as a guest (no authentication) or whilst logged into the site account. By default, these are all manually reviewed before they show up on the site.
It’s possible to by-pass the reviewing stage if all of the following apply:
- You are logged in to your site account when you post.
- You have been identified as a trusted user (which means you have previously posted content whilst logged in that has been accepted).
- You have two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled on your account.
If you have an account, you can post a book review. These are also checked for spam before showing up on the site.
2025-04-10 15:20:13
If you use the contact form, the site will automatically send an email to me (Nicola Talbot) with your message and the email address you supplied. This will be used to answer your message. If your query is about the book Into the Lion’s Den by my brother Stephen Talbot, your message will be forwarded to Stephen with your email address so that he can reply directly. If an error occurs while the site attempts to send your message then your message and email address will be written to an error log file along with debugging information to enable me to fix the problem and respond to your query.
If your message trips a bot trap or spam filter the message and email address will be saved but not sent. I periodically check these for false positives. At the time of writing, these have all been spam or hacking attempts.
If you created an account on the Dickimaw Books Store using the osCommerce web application then your email address was your username, which you needed to log in. These old accounts are now being migrated to the main site account.
If you create an account on the main Dickimaw Books site, then the email address you supply will be used to send you important information about your account, such as password change notifications. It will also be used to send you notifications that you have subscribed to, such as bug report updates or book information or newsletters. You may additionally provide a secondary email address which will also be used for important messages, such as notifications of any changes to your security settings. You can alter your notification settings via your account page. You can also delete your account via that page, which will remove your email address from the main site database.
It was formerly possible to subscribe to notifications or site competitions without having an authenticated account. This required saving your email address in a database without an accompanying password. These legacy entries are considered “guest accounts”. These are now being phased out and should all be deleted as from 1st July 2023.
See also the site Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
2023-06-26 11:09:58
- Use the contact form for queries;
- use the bug report page to submit a bug report;
- use the feature request page to request a new feature;
- use the typo report page to report a spelling mistake or other typographic error;
- if the above pages aren’t working, use the standard webmaster email address;
- if you want to send a message securely, use the security email address.
2023-01-05 12:40:16
Check your spam folder and make sure that the dickimaw-books.com domain is in your safe sender list. Emails that are automatically sent by this site have the username account so also try adding that address to your contact list. You can request a new account verification link.
2023-01-08 12:41:32
dickimaw-books.com domain. How do I know if it’s genuine? 🔗All emails from dickimaw-books.com have DMARC, SPF and DKIM (with selector "hostingermail-a" as from 22 May 2023). Before 22 May 2023, any emails sent automatically by the site had DKIM with the selector "phpmailer". This selector is no longer used.
2023-05-22 10:16:46
(La)TeX
I’m sorry, I’m currently not taking on any new consultancy work.
2022-02-28 15:08:33
Sometimes a bug looks like it can be quickly fixed by just adding or modifying one line of code. However, there can be a delay in fixing the issue for one or more reasons.
Any change made needs to be evaluated to determine whether or not it will have unwanted side-effects. Whenever I update a package, I run a suite of tests to make sure none of my test documents break following the change. Once the package is ready, there are further tasks, such as ensuring the version number and date is updated for every file in the distribution as well as updating the CHANGES file. The package then needs to be bundled up for distribution and double-checked before uploading to CTAN.
For a simple one-line edit, the entire process can take around 15 minutes in total. The problem is, this issue may not be the only issue that needs fixing and this package may not be the only package that has a little issue that needs fixing.
The bug report may have come in after I had started working on a new version of the package. The bug may well be quick to fix, but the package can’t be uploaded until the updates that have been started have been completed, otherwise the new version of the package will be broken.
The bug report may have come in while I’m away, ill, busy with higher-priority tasks, or otherwise too tired to have the concentration to ensure I don’t break things while making modifications.
If you’re working on a mission-critical document, consider hiring a consultant rather than relying on a hobbyist.
2022-02-28 15:33:05