Katie.com: My Story

Last updated

Katie.com: My Story (later renamed A Girl's Life Online after a domain name dispute) is a memoir by American author Katherine Tarbox. The book was published by Dutton in April 2000. [1]

Contents

Synopsis

The book chronicles a life changing event in the author's life while growing up in New Canaan, Connecticut. At the age of 13, Tarbox met an older man in an internet chat room, which led to a secret online relationship and, several months later, a meeting in a Texas motel where she was molested. [2] The incident was interrupted by her mother and hotel security who were informed of the secret meeting by a friend of Tarbox. [3] Her attacker, Francis Kufrovich, was sentenced to 18 months in prison but the ordeal left Tarbox feeling emotionally abandoned. [2]

Reception

The title of the book was originally intended to be Girl.com but was changed to Katie.com despite that domain name already belonging to a British chat room operator, Katie Jones, who was using it for her personal website. [4] The book's title created the false perception that Jones was in some way associated with the book and its story. [1] According to Jones, she was contacted by an attorney for the publisher, Parry Aftab, who tried to coerce her into releasing control of the domain name. Jones refused and wrote about the incident in her blog, causing Aftab to back down. [5] When the paperback version was issued by Plume, part of the Penguin Group, in 2001, the copyright page of the book disavowed any connection with the real-life website. In 2004, Tarbox issued a press release apologizing to Jones and announcing the book's new title: A Girl's Life Online. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tera Patrick</span> American pornographic actress

Tera Patrick is an American former pornographic actress who was the Penthouse Pet of the Month for February 2000 and is an inductee of the NightMoves, AVN and XRCO Halls of Fame. She is a recipient of the Hot d'Or Award, NightMoves Award, AVN Award, XRCO Award, Venus Award, Adam Film World Guide Award, Eroticline Award, FOXE Award, FAME Award, Fanny Award, XBIZ Award, and ASACP Service Recognition Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Danica McKellar</span> American actress, mathematics writer, and education advocate (born 1975)

Danica Mae McKellar is an American actress, mathematics writer, and education advocate. She is best known for playing Winnie Cooper in the television series The Wonder Years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katie Price</span> English television personality, model, and singer (born 1978)

Katrina Amy Alexandra Alexis "Katie" Price is an English media personality, model, and author. She gained recognition in the late 1990s for her glamour modelling work on Page 3 of the British tabloid The Sun, billed under the pseudonym Jordan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine Cookson</span> British novelist

Dame Catherine Ann Cookson, DBE, was a British writer. She is in the top 20 of the most widely read British novelists, with sales topping 100 million, while she retained a relatively low profile in the world of celebrity writers. Her books were inspired by her deprived youth in South Shields, North East England, the setting for her novels. With 104 titles written in her own name or two other pen names, she is one of the most prolific British novelists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joyce Johnson (author)</span> American novelist

Joyce Johnson is an American author of fiction and nonfiction. She was born Joyce Glassman in 1935 to a Jewish family in New York City and raised in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, a few blocks from the apartment of Joan Vollmer Adams where William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac lived from 1944 to 1946. She was a child actress and appeared in the Broadway production of I Remember Mama, which she writes about in her 2004 memoir Missing Men.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kate Grenville</span> Australian author

Catherine Elizabeth Grenville is an Australian author. She has published fifteen books, including fiction, non-fiction, biography, and books about the writing process. In 2001, she won the Orange Prize for The Idea of Perfection, and in 2006 she won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for The Secret River. The Secret River was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeffrey Toobin</span> American lawyer and author

Jeffrey Ross Toobin is an American lawyer, author, blogger, and former legal analyst for CNN.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parry Aftab</span> American lawyer

Parry Aftab is an Internet privacy and security lawyer, considered one of the founders of cyberlaw and founder of the world's largest and oldest cybersafety charity. Named by The Boston Herald as "the leading expert in cybercrime in the world," Aftab wrote the first cybersafety book in the world for parents and has received a long list of honors and has been appointed to the boards of directors and advisory boards of several companies, including TRUSTe, Facebook, MTV and Sesame Street Online. She is a longtime Internet safety expert who founded the Internet safety organization WiredSafety, StopCyberbullying and the consulting firm, WiredTrust. She was "the Privacy Lawyer" columnist for Information Week Magazine for many years. In 2016 Parry Aftab founded Cybersafety India and the StopCyberbullying and sextortion and morphing prevention initiatives for India. She resides in both the US and Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anshe Chung</span> Virtual avatar

Anshe Chung is an avatar of Ailin Graef in the online world Second Life. Referred to as the "Rockefeller of Second Life" by CNN, Graef has built an online business that engages in development, brokerage, and arbitrage of virtual land, items, and currencies. Her work has been discussed in Business Week, Fortune and Red Herring.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michele Norris</span> American journalist (born 1961)

Michele L. Norris is an American journalist. Since 2019, Norris has been an opinion columnist with The Washington Post. She co-hosted National Public Radio's evening news program All Things Considered from 2002 to 2011 and was the first African-American female host for NPR. Before that Norris was a correspondent for ABC News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times. Norris is a member of the Peabody Awards board of directors.;

Hillary Carlip is an American author and visual artist, whose work has been featured in a museum show alongside Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst. Her latest release, Find Me I’m Yours, is an interactive, multi-platform entertainment experience conceived, designed and written by Carlip, and co-created, directed, and produced by Maxine Lapiduss.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicole Lapin</span> American television news anchor, author and businesswoman

Nicole Lapin is an American television news anchor, author and businesswoman. She is known for being an American news anchor on CNBC, CNN and Bloomberg. Lapin also served as a finance correspondent for Morning Joe on MSNBC and The Today Show on NBC. She is The New York Times bestselling author of Rich Bitch, Boss Bitch and Becoming Super Woman. Her debut title, Rich Bitch was featured in The New York Times Best Seller list under the “Advice, How-To” section.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lloyd Jones (New Zealand author)</span> New Zealand writer

Lloyd David Jones is a New Zealand author. His novel Mister Pip (2006) won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katie Piper</span> English philanthropist, television presenter and former model

Kate Elizabeth Sutton is an English writer, activist, television presenter and model from Andover, Hampshire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meredith Maran</span> American author, book critic, and journalist

Meredith Maran is an American author, book critic, and journalist. She has published twelve nonfiction books, several of them San Francisco Chronicle best-sellers, and a successful first novel. She writes features, essays, and reviews for People, More, Good Housekeeping, Salon.com, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Boston Globe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jillian Lauren</span> American writer, performer and former escort

Jillian Lauren is an American writer, performer, adoption advocate, and former call girl for Jefri Bolkiah, Prince of Brunei; about whom she wrote her first memoir, Some Girls: My Life in a Harem.

James Desborough is a show business writer, media commentator and PR consultant who works in Los Angeles, New York and London.

<i>Girl Online</i> 2015 novel by Zoe Sugg

Girl Online is the debut novel by English author and internet celebrity Zoe Sugg. The romance and drama novel, released on 25 November 2014 through Penguin Books, is aimed at a teen audience and focuses on a fifteen-year-old anonymous blogger and what happens when her blog goes viral. The novel is a New York Times Best Seller in the Young Adult category. The book was the fastest-selling book of 2014 and it broke the record for highest first-week sales for a debut author since records began.

Lyndsey Parker is an American entertainment journalist and author. The managing editor of Yahoo! Music, she focuses on music and pop culture. She is the author of Reality Rocks, a column that covers television shows such as The Voice and American Idol and the co-host of the vlog, The Day After.

<i>Know My Name: A Memoir</i> 2019 memoir by Chanel Miller

Know My Name: A Memoir is a 2019 memoir by American author Chanel Miller. In it, Miller writes about her experience being sexually assaulted by the rapist Brock Turner in January 2015, as well as the aftermath and subsequent court case People v. Turner.

References

  1. 1 2 McCarthy, Kieren (Aug 4, 2004) Penguin and the great katie.com hijack, The Register
  2. 1 2 Burke, Lynn (April 26, 2000). "Memoir of a Pedophile's Victim". Wired. Retrieved October 10, 2014.
  3. Staff writer (June 8, 2000). "Children, Sex & The Web". CBS News. Retrieved October 10, 2014.
  4. Interview at Grep Law
  5. Sherriff, Lucy (Jan 19, 2005). "Katie.com lawyer to host cyber-bullying conference". The Register. Retrieved December 3, 2015.
  6. Tarbox, Katie. "Plume Re-titles Book by Katie Tarbox A Girl's Life Online" (PDF) (Press release). Penguin. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 10, 2014. Retrieved October 10, 2014.