Archive for: December, 2009

My Own Damn Harlequin Bundle*

Dec 19 2009 Published by under Blogs and blogging

If you are like me, when you heard about Harlequin contacting bloggers to issue e-bundles of Harlequin titles not available in electronic format, you gnashed your teeth and railed at the fates for unfairly excluding you were so pleased for them and immediately unsubscribed from their blog feeds and blocked them on twitter sent congratulatory emails. You may even have sent Harlequin a note, reminding them of your email address, because surely they had overlooked you in error, thanking them for being so creative and blogger friendly.

But after all that’s done, what next? Instead of starting a whisper campaign against those annoying bloggers, and then burning all of your Harlequins in your backyard of waiting for others to ask, simply go to your local pre-read bookstore and make your own bundle!

Other bloggers have chosen certain authors to bundle, but I in my infinitely superior wisdom which Harlequin is too ignorant to detect decided to pick a theme. And I am ready with my first bundle!

The theme is: these are the books my fingers touched when I closed my eyes and reached out to the stack of Harlequins

Look, I’m very pleased to be doing this. Here’s proof of my joy:

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So, my lucky readers … what does this bundle include?

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Of course, since it’s my bundle, I get to reimagine their titles, like so…

1. “Gee, I Wonder if That Hero is Really Smart? I see the Glasses, Beaker, Computer and Big Brain, but I’m Still Not Convinced.”

2. “Beware of Men Crushing Silk Scarves in Close Proximity to Your Jugular. Especially When they Sport Porn Staches”**

3. “Sheena Easton Takes a Pool Boy”

4. “What? The Pool Boy Traveled Back in Time and Became a Laird!”

** alt. title for #2: “See That Santa with the Head Beard and Eyebrows of Rage? I’m Pretty Sure He is Trying to Kill You.”

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Happy Weekend!

*with apologies to Carolyn Crane, whose summer post on her absence at RWA 2009 inspired this one

20 responses so far

Who Speaks For Romance Readers? And what do they say about us?

Dec 18 2009 Published by under Genre musings

I decided to look at the New York Times’ coverage of romance for some answers. (FWIW, I did the same search on USA today and found basically the same coverage). I have no big thesis, just a lot of quotes and random observations.

I enjoyed this little trip through time. I hope you do too.

A 1982 article on the genre’s growth, and on the Romantic Times and RWA conferences, is very respectful and neutral on readers. (OT: This article raises questions about the commonly accepted notion that romance coverage is improving all the time.)

In this article, the journalist speaks for readers, for example:

Now there’s something for every kind of reader, from the teen-ager to the woman who uses a walker, from the high-school dropout to the Ph.D. Both Harlequin and Silhouette are starting lines to provide longer reads and a more sophisticated treatment of sexual encounters.

In a 1987 review of the documentary on the romance industry Where the Heart Roams, Vincent Canby refers to romance novels as “paperback junk”. To our great misfortune, and his, Mr. Canby speaks if not for, at least about, us:

Mr. Cicsery doesn’t make fun of the women – he doesn’t have to. That’s the sad part. It’s ineffable because the sight of so many people devoting themselves so earnestly to such easily parodied wish-fulfillment leaves one nearly speechless.

This review hands down the nastiest thing I have ever read about the genre. Don’t click on the link unless you want to get annoyed.

A 1996 article in the NYT (in the NY Region section, not in books) entitled “Swooning Women, Bare Chested Men: A Magazine for Romance Novels and the Women Who Love Them“. It profiles Romantic Times founder (and Fabio discoverer) Kathryn Falk.

Others who speak for readers in this article are an Avon editor (who says romance readers are “voracious”, a word used in nearly every article  I read for this blog entry. I’m thinking there’s some unconscious association there with “sexually insatiable”), the CEO of Kensington, two RWA communications directors (one former and one then current):

”One faction would like romance to be respected as women’s fiction,” said Maria Ferrer, former communications director for Romance Writers of America, an organization of 8,000 writers and aspiring writers.

The other faction?

”Well, they have the bodice-ripping covers, the Fabio covers, the pageants for cover models.”

In other words, they have Ms. Falk: a discoverer of the model Fabio, founder of male cover-model beauty pageants, in which muscular men pose in abbreviated Viking or pirate or cowboy costumes in front of hundreds of hooting women. ”I hate to use the word degrading, but it’s all I can think of right now,” said Catherine Carpenter, communications director for the writers’ group.

[OT, but Harlequin CEO Donna Hayes make the exact same "2 camps" comment in a 2009 article in USA today on the Princeton Romance Conference]

Here’s another interesting quote:

”The writing in some will knock your socks off,” said Helen Holzer, who reviews romances for The Atlanta Constitution, one of several mainstream publications now reviewing romance fiction.

[Note: It doesn't appear to me that they ever reviewed much romance. And the AJC fired its book review editor in 2007.]

Edited to add: That was wrong. I’ve had an email from Ms. Holzer which clarifies that she wrote a regular romance review column for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. I very much appreciate that she took the time to correct the record, and share a bit about her own fascinating career:

I have been a journalist since 1972 and began reading romance novels when I lived in Paris in 1989-90.

You mentioned my interview with the New York Times. I had started my monthly romance review column for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that ran for 3-1/2 years in print (1996-2000) and six months online in 2002 before I left the paper.

[Here is a review snippet from a 1998 review of Elizabeth Thornton's You Only Love Twice.]

I also was a mainstream book reviewer and have reviewed most all genres over the years, but romance is my passion. I now write book covers and press releases for a worldwide book publisher, Strategic Book Group, among my many other freelance jobs.

Just so your blog is correct, there was indeed a romance column in the AJC for many years and I wrote it. It was called Heartbeat in print and Love Bytes on the paper’s Web site.

In a 1999 article covering that year’s RWA entitles “Romance Novelists: Profits without Honor“, readers are not represented except through authors and editors, but it is another example of a respectful article (with the exception of the use of the word “cattiness” to describe the air of desperation among aspiring authors at RWA.)

There was even one seminar called ”Defending the Genre,” in which the novelist Valerie Taylor listed the most frequently heard insults of the genre: it’s anti-feminist, it presents too many woman as needing to escape abusive relationships, all the books are the same, it’s just pornography for women, it’s unrealistic, it’s fluff, and it can’t be serious if half the population doesn’t care about it. She offered advice on how to respond. For instance, for insulters who read literary fiction, she advised her listeners, ”Give them well-written books that deal with slightly darker things.”

The overall point was that the romance genre is large and various, its pulpiness and sugar-coating offered in a range of doses, its plots and settings vastly differentiable, its sentences not necessarily execrable. Not unlike, say, science fiction, horror fiction or mysteries, all of which have well-known practitioners whose work is often treated with seriousness by readers and reviewers

A bit OT, but I found Jennifer Crusie’s remarks so interesting I had to include them:

Genre fiction, she said, is defined by reader expectations.

”In literary fiction, the expectation is for the language,” she said, ”but if you are a genre reader you will put up with a lot of bad writing if you are interested in the plot and the characters. The primary thing I have to accomplish on the page is character, and I will sacrifice language for it.”

Another difference is that ”literary fiction looks ahead” and ”genre fiction tells us what everyone was thinking five minutes ago. We’re reactive. We don’t challenge as much. In my last book, I challenged the assumption that a woman should lead her life for the expectations of other people. Well, that’s kind of a ‘duh.’ ”

Ms. Crusie does despair that commerce drives romance writers to minimize their artistic impulses. What, after all, to make of a seminar that urges writers to deepen their characterizations by learning more about the eight female archetypes? (For the uninformed, they are: the nurturer, the crusader, the librarian, the waif, the free spirit, the spunky kid, the survivor and the boss.)

In an August 2001 article called, “Forecasts of an E-Book Era Were, It Seems, Premature“, romance is again linked to the ebook revolution:

Janice Goodfellow, a 47-year-old former office manager who lives in rural Michigan, usually devours about a half-dozen paperback thrillers and romance novels a week. But her home is about 15 miles from the nearest bookstore, in Novi, Mich. She heard about electronic books from a romance readers Web site. So on a snowy winter’s night a year ago she tried downloading a novel from a site, and she liked it.

“I’m lazy and sometimes I don’t want to drive,” Ms. Goodfellow said. In the last year, she has read about 20 electronic books sitting at her desktop computer. “I’d buy all my books this way if they were available from major publishers and they weren’t expensive.”

But Ms. Goodfellow has not yet bought any from the major publishers because they usually charge more than $15 ? generally asking more for the electronic book than the paperback.

Instead, she buys her electronic novels from a tiny start-up called Hard Shell Word Factory for about $3 to $6 each. She buys them for the same reasons she usually buys paperbacks instead of hardcovers: they are cheap, she can buy several at once, and she can throw them away when she is done. “Even if you buy a novel you are not loving, it is just three bucks,” she said.

In yet another RWA article, this one from 2003, several readers are quoted. Some examples:

”[Suzanne Brockmann] is a wonderful author,” said Danielle Hessel, a keeper at the Bronx Zoo who lives in Westchester. ”She does a lot of research, and it shows.”

Jill Land, who lives in Manhattan, pronounced Ms. Brockmann ”awesome” and blushed when asked about the sex scenes in her novels. ”She had a really outrageous one in her second book,” Ms. Land whispered. ”It had to do with chocolate and handcuffs.”

Tatia Totorica, a calculus teacher and mother of three from Boise, Idaho, bought 12 books to add to her collection, already over 1,000. ”My husband doesn’t like them,” Ms. Totorica said, ”but he’s supportive.”

”Harvard’s Education,” which follows the lives of an African-American couple, helped earn Ms. Brockmann a loyal black following. ”I couldn’t believe she wasn’t black,” said Lynette Holder, an African-American lab technologist from Brooklyn, who stood in line for nearly an hour to meet Ms. Brockmann.

In a 2004 article that predicts a “slow death” for Harlequin and romance in general (ROTFLMAO!), “‘Sorry, Harlequin,’ She Sighed Tenderly, ‘I’m Reading Something Else‘”.

Many readers say they are seldom wed to a single genre or publisher. Anne Curtis, a Manhattan resident who said she had been reading romance fiction for more than 20 years, looks for a new book not on the Harlequin racks but throughout the romance shelves.

”Sometimes it can be a mystery, others a straight romance,” she said, but the story is always more important than the publisher. When she chooses an author, she said, it is often a former Harlequin author, like Janet Dailey or Nora Roberts.

Here’s an article on ebooks in the technology/books section from the ancient days of 2004, which highlights the importance of romance readers to the then emerging technology:

Both Cargill and Compson represent another surprising shift in the e-book market. Retailers say that the market, which used to be dominated by computer-savvy male readers of science fiction, has expanded in the past year or two to include a growing number of female readers. And while science fiction remains a top seller, female romance readers now compose one of the fastest-growing markets for digital books, perhaps because many are voracious readers who race through all the sequels in a series.

One such reader is Rebecca Kroll of Scotch Plains, N.J., a live-in caretaker for an autistic teenager, who says she burns through three or four books a day and purchases 50 to 100 a week, an expensive habit that she says costs her up to $400 weekly. ”Storage is a big issue with me,” Kroll says. Before she discovered e-books a little over a year ago, 12,000 books crammed her apartment from floor to ceiling, leaving her desperate for more shelf space. Although Kroll says she was initially ill at ease with computers, she now does most of her reading on a laptop and stores thousands of romance and science fiction fantasy novels on two computer disks. Another advantage of the laptop, she says, is that it permits her to listen to e-books that are formatted with a text-to-speech option while she’s cooking or knitting.

Kroll also likes the relative anonymity of purchasing e-books from Web sites that specialize in female-oriented erotica, some of them available only in electronic form. ”It’s a lot nicer, especially if you’re embarrassed to go into a bookstore,” she says.

In a 2004 article in the Circuits section, a librarian is quoted on the subject of digitizing the collection.

E-books’ short history has already begun to yield some lessons. At the Cleveland Public Library, Patricia Lowrey, head of technical services, thought technical manuals and business guides would be in greatest demand.

“We were dead wrong on that,” Ms. Lowrey said. “There are a lot of closet romance readers in cyberspace.”

A 2004 article on ebooks called An Idea Whose Time Has Come Back:

When heading for the doctor’s office, Janet Cargill, a 75-year-old retiree in Westbrook, Me., loads several romance novels into her hand-held Garmin G.P.S., or global positioning system, which she also relies on to give her voice-activated driving directions.

In her 2005 Op-Ed with which I am sure most readers are familiar, Mary Bly (Eloisa James) speaks for readers, both criticizing them for eschewing literary fiction, and defending their reading tastes via defending the genre.

In a 2007 story on the Harleqin/NASCAR teamup in the Books section (imagine that!) , reps from Borders, Harlequin, and Kensington, as well as a PR guy from NASCAR, speak for readers. (Perhaps not shockingly, Kate Duffy from Kensington — who passed away this year — was skeptical of the venture, while the HQN and NASCAR folks were very optimistic).

This 2007 article in the Your Money section on how to make a bestseller is the first time I see bloggers mentioned:

The hunt for the key has been much more extensive in other industries, which have made a point of using new technology to gain a better understanding of their customers. Television stations have created online forums for viewers and may use the information there to make programming decisions. Game developers solicit input from users through virtual communities over the Internet. Airlines and hotels have developed increasingly sophisticated databases of customers.

Publishers, by contrast, put up Web sites where, in some cases, readers can sign up for announcements of new titles. But information rarely flows the other way — from readers back to the editors.

“We need much more of a direct relationship with our readers,” said Susan Rabiner, an agent and a former editorial director. Bloggers have a much more interactive relationship with their readers than publishers do, she said. “Before Amazon, we didn’t even know what people thought of the books,” she said.

Although the romance industry is often criticized for not paying better attention to readers on issues such as cover art and diversity, apparently we’d be even worse off with other publishers, who do even less market research:

An exception is the consumer research gathered by the Romance Writers of America, a writers’ association that publishes a regular market study of romance readers. It reports survey information on, for example, demographics, what respondents are reading, where they are getting the books and how often, and what kind of covers attract them. Romance authors and publicists use the information to create promotional campaigns.

Bloggers and academics are the two big additions to the group of those who speak for readers in the past 3 years, although bloggers tend to speak more authoritatively and directly for readers than academics. So, for example, on the slew of articles over the past 18 months on romance novels as recession proof, you have comments like this one:

“Given the general dismay and gloominess,” said … an avid romance reader who runs a book blog under the pseudonym Jane Litte at dearauthor.com, “reading something like a romance with a happy ending is really kind of a relief.”

Litte’s comment is alongside the usual crew: book buyers, publishers, librarians, etc.

And, what’s this? Someone actually passed by an opportunity to use the word “voracious”??? Yup, this is from the article author: “Romance readers have always tended to buy in much higher volumes than people who read other genres like literary fiction.”

[OT, I felt very conflicted about the spate of articles on romance being "recession proof." They often included claims to the effect that people read more romances when times are bad. I never felt I was given any evidence for that claim, and it fed into the idea that people only read romance for escape -- like, if your life was going well, you wouldn't be reading this shit.]

There are two broad categories of academic participation in romance news articles: (1) the social scientist trying to figure out why women read them, and, (2) a newer phenomenon, the literature professor talking about romance novels as … wait for it … literature. Coverage of the Princeton Romance Conference earlier this year featured the latter group, whereas the this week’s LA Times article on m/m romance featured the former.

This bit is typical for the LA Times piece:

Why are straight women turned on by watching two men having sex?

“Why not?” counters UC Santa Barbara’s Professor Constance Penley. “That’s really the question. Would you ask men why are they so turned on by two women together? We take it for granted that guys love their girl-on-girl. Why shouldn’t women have an appreciation for guy-on-guy? It is as deep-seated a fantasy as the male fantasy of putting two women together.”

Here’s a New York Post article with another blogger, Sarah Wendell, who did a lot of press promoting her book (co-authored with Candy Tan), Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches Guide to Romance novels

It’s not your Aunt Suzie who can’t miss “her stories.” These are smart – and often feminist – women. Like superfan Wendell, who is emceeing the next Lady Jane’s Salon on April 6 at Madame X.

“There’s always a rock-hard chest,” she concedes. “These men are manly. And there are times when the heroine might throb. And, you know, heat will flood. Things like that.”

Here’s Alison Kelley, Executive Director of RWA:

According to Allison Kelley, executive director of Romance Writers of America, “If you ask readers of romance why they read it, they all say the happy ending.”

Thanks probably to a number of things — the popularity of their blogs, Litte’s special knowledge of epublishing, Wendell and Tan’s book coming out in 2009 — they have done the lion’s share of readers speaking for readers in the past year or so. There are a few really good things about this. The first is that the major news outlets are writing about romance at other times of the year than when a big romance conference is held. Conference attendees provided the bulk of reader perspective prior to the late 1990s The second is that, like any true fan, they know what they are talking about. The third is that they are unlike the stereotypical image of the romance reader.

Just recently, a CNN.com story on vampire romance included a quote from Sandy Coleman of AAR:

Coleman said there is no longer a stigma about being a romance fan. Her site has been online for 11 years and has about 360,000 visitors a month, she said.

The site is often a place where intelligent women come to discuss their favorite romance novels, Coleman said.

“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about when it comes to reading romance anymore,” Coleman said.

I was glad to see Coleman quoted, and would like to see even more bloggers in the mix, as well as different readers, not just the gals at the RT convention, and not just the bloggers, but all kinds. I don’t agree with Coleman 100% (I still think there is a stigma, although it is lessening), or Wendell (her recent Huff Post article defending the genre, while terrific in other respects, included a line “Books that rest the conflict of the relationship upon sexual congress are not romance” with which I disagree, and I already gave an example of a Litte quote about romance and recession I don’t endorse. But it’s our differences that give lie to the stereotypes and I’m glad for them, because they give us so much to talk about here in Romanceland.

I looked to see who was speaking for other genres, such as sci fi and mystery, and I found basically nothing, which reflects, I think the different kind of coverage those genres get, and the sense that romance is the most market driven and least “literature-like” of the genres. In some ways, I think even asking one person for a quote about “what romance readers want” is slightly problematic as it reflects the idea, on some level, that we are all alike, and it also tends to feed into the notion that NOT reading romance is the default normal position, such that reading it needs “explanation”. The readers quoted above from the conventions were speaking for themselves only (although the journalists probably meant them to represent other readers, so maybe there’s no getting around the problem). I would just love it if a journalist would quote an opposing reader viewpoint — to get that diversity within the article itself.

More and more, I see recognition that the genre itself is diverse, and, although a bit more slowly, the same recognition that its readership is similarly diverse.

Whew this is a long post. I’d better stop now. Hope you’ve enjoyed this little tour!

89 responses so far

Review: Tigers and Devils, by Sean Kennedy

Dec 16 2009 Published by under Reviews

*Note: this review contains material not suitable for minors.

Sean+Kennedy+-+Tigers+and+Devils

This contemporary romance set in Australia is Sean Kennedy’s first book. It was published in spring 2009. Tigers and Devils is the story of Simon Murray, a film festival director in Melbourne, and Declan Tyler, a star Australian rules football (or footy) player for the Tassie Devils. It is one of the most romantic books I have read all year. It is funny, sexy, heartbreaking, and joyful. For about 2/3 of this book, I absolutely loved it, I mean over the moon loved it. After that point, I still enjoyed it a lot, but I was ready to move on before Kennedy ran out of story.

When I downloaded this book to my Kindle, I noticed it has 13,500 “Kindle locations”. I thought this must be a mistake. To compare, Judith Ivory’s Black Silk has 6678. Kelley Armstong’s Bitten is 6312. Meljean Brooks’ Demon Forged is 7761.  Meredith Duran’s Written on Your Skin is 4760. And a Harlequin Blaze is about 3200. So, Tigers and Devils is four times as long as a category and 2-3 times as long as most single title romances I read. The story covers about 18 months or more. It begins with Simon and Declan meeting, their courtship, their move into a settled relationship, and their weathering various obstacles together. The main conflict in the relationship is the fact that Declan is closeted and Simon is out. That is resolved a little after the halfway point, and although the fallout and change in their relationship was interesting and important, I felt it dragged.

For the first time in reading an m/m romance I was totally and completely swept away by the romance. Tigers and Devils is written in the first person from Simon’s point of view. He’s a self described “arty wanker”, who dresses in black, and keeps himself at a bit of a cynical distance. He’s self-esteem challenged, and doesn’t know when to shut up. He has a biting sense of humor, and sharp edges that work to protect him from hurt. Luckily, Simon has dear friends in Fran and Roger, a married couple who bring out the more lovable aspects of Simon’s personality.

When Fran and Roger drag Simon to a party, the last thing he expects is to meet one of the most famous footy players in Australia, who happens to be standing behind him when he is at once defending him — Declan, an expensive acquisition for the Devils, has been injured all season — and insulting him — as a highly paid and admire athlete, he comes off as a bit arrogant. When Declan later finds Simon outside and kisses him, Simon is shocked, turned on, and thrilled. This book does a wonderful job of capturing the joy Simon and Declan take in finding each other. As a reader, you are on that high with them, thrilled they have found each other and terrified something will go wrong. This book is not at all explicit like other m/m I have read. It was just incredibly romantic.

It was also incredibly funny. I was reminded very much of Jennifer Crusie in top form, especially her dialogue,  as I read this book. Declan comes out eventually, and the second half of the book transitions into dealing with the aftermath. Here’s a typical discussion:

[Simon] “You just have to be more careful, that’s all. You’re still… adjusting. There are rules to public conduct.”

“Oh.” Declan clicked his fingers sarcastically. “I didn’t know, because I wasn’t given the queer handbook when I came out. Is there a number I can call to get one sent to me?”

“It’s like cats and hunting. It’s intuitive.”

“So you’re saying I’m a lousy cat?”

I tried not to smile on this woeful analogy I had started. “Yeah, you’re missing some kind of generational chromosome.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, Simon, it’s like I have an invisible sign over my head announcing my sexuality to everybody. I don’t feel like I have to hide it anymore. Why the fuck can’t I kiss my boyfriend goodbye, like any other guy would with his girlfriend?”

“Because it’s not safe! You have to choose your moments.”

“You didn’t feel safe in the Napier?”

I sighed. “Not when I’m walking out into the dark street immediately afterward with only Nyssa to protect me.

You know, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle may be one of her favourite movies, but I really don’t think she can fight like Drew Barrymore if it came down to it.”

“That may be the gayest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“No, the gayest thing you’ve probably heard me say is ooh Declan yes yes.”

And another:

I could tell Dec was awake and had been for a few minutes longer than me as I struggled against the last vestiges of sleep and opened my eyes.

“Morning,” he murmured.

“Hey,” I grunted. “Were you watching me?”

“Maybe.”

“Stalker.”

“I can’t help it; you’re so pretty.”

I moaned and buried my head back into the pillow.

“Especially when you drool.”

Another way in which Tigers and Devils reminded me of Crusie was the large cast of characters. Not only did Simon’s best friends have key supporting roles, but so did Declan’s, as well as both men’s families, and both men’s coworkers. As I was reading it, I was thinking, “Huh. If there is such a thing as ‘men’s fiction’ this is it.”

This was an extremely detailed and, to me, realistic portrait of modern gay men falling in love and figuring it out. I loved the different complex models of masculinity presented by Simon and Declan. This is a short review (for me!) and I hope I don’t mislead anyone into thinking this is a “sensitive artist and dumb jock” story. In fact, these characters are so well drawn they fairly leap off the page. I also loved the many realistic conflicts they faced, not just the big ones but the garden variety ones. Simon’s being out is important to him, but so is Declan. Declan loves Simon, but he loves his career, and as an Australian rules football player, he may just have one of the least gay friendly careers on the planet. In addition, there is the celebrity angle, and not just paparazzi, but more interesting stuff. For example, Simon thinks he is the expert on coming out, that he will guide Declan through it. But, as a superstar, Declan’s public reception takes a very different trajectory — not easier, but unexpected — from Simon’s low key experience.  Simon has a bit of a hard time dealing with that. And finally, these are just two people in love, with communication issues, misunderstandings, and insecurities. Simon fears commitment, and Declan had been cheated on in the past.

I am so excited about this writer. It’s hard to believe this is Kennedy’s first book: I felt the writing was absolutely on a par with the best I have read in contemporary romance. He tells the stories I didn’t know I was thirsting to read. If you love contemporary romance, I strongly recommend Tigers and Devils.

20 responses so far

Selling your ARCs — ok or not?

Dec 16 2009 Published by under Blogs and blogging

On Twitter today, Katiebabs brought up an Amazon kerfuffle, in which among many other things, one commenter criticized reviewer Harriet Klausner for selling her ARCs. Let’s assume (which I think is the truth) that reviewers’ ARCs are owned by the reviewer, and that legally, a reviewer may do what she likes with her ARC. So, to put it bluntly: this is not a legal issue.

Is there anything ethically questionable about the practice?

Well, one obvious issue would be selling uncorrected proofs. I think putting such a thing into circulation is not ok. Why? Hmmm… maybe because it could harm the author, if the work is judged by an unfinished product. Also, I am guessing reviewers who take an uncorrected proof get a letter or some indication that they are not supposed to let others read it.

How about selling a final product prior to the release date? Each of my husband’s books ended up at Powell’s and EBay prior to their availability to the general public. I know he was a bit put out by that. Is it wrong? Maybe, again, it harms the author in some way. I am not sure exactly how.

How about selling a finished copy on or after the release date? It’s hard to see what might be wrong about this, and yet a part of me feels that even doing this is … not quite the best choice. One argument might be that it harms the author who is not making royalties. But that argument would turn all used bookstores into dens of thieves, so it can’t be right.

Is there perhaps an agreement, implicit or otherwise, between the reviewer and publisher that the reviewer will not sell the book? If yes, then selling it would be breaking an agreement. People have lots of agreements with each other. The vast majority of these are not legal agreements. I agree to pick up the dogs at 5:00 if my husband agrees to drop them off. Being a party to an agreement gives you a prima facie obligation to discharge your duties relative to that agreement. But if it turns out that I can’t pick up the dogs because one of my children is ill and needs my immediate attention, I think everyone would allow that a stronger duty has overridden the duty generated by the agreement about the dogs.

I don’t take ARCs so I cannot answer the empirical question of whether there is any agreement, explicit or implied, between reviewers and publishers, such that the reviewer agrees not to profit from the sale of the free book. Anyone care to clue me in?

And, following from the dog example, even if such an agreement exists, there may be cases where the reviewer has a stronger duty that requires breaking the agreement (for example, selling the ARC to put food on the table).

How about this: Is there something ethically questionable about profiting from something you got for free? I doubt it. My friends won a car they didn’t want or need, and they sold it for the cash. It seemed very sensible and ethically ok to everyone.

Maybe it’s that you already got your “freebie” in the form of a free book, usually in advance. To sell it is perhaps like getting a double scoop, somehow … not deserved and a bit graspy. You could donate the book to a library, a women’s shelter, a nursing home.

So I am finding it hard to put my finger on why people think it is ethically questionable to sell ARCS. And yet, I do have a niggle about it. Roger Sutton, editor of Horn Books Inc., in a 2007 blog post, opined that the reviewer owns the book and can do whatever she likes with it. In another 2007 post from a group blog of children’s book authors, many commenters share the view that they feel there is “just something not right” about selling ARCs. but nobody says what is wrong with it.

One last question:

I’m tempted to say that the reviewer who asks for the ARC with the intention of selling it is closer to being in the wrong than a reviewer whose primary intention is to read and review the book, but who sells it as an afterthought. But why? As long as both reviewers read and review the book (i.e. fulfilling the agreement they have — if they have one — with the publisher) does it matter which motive is dominant?

Any thoughts?

55 responses so far

Monday Morning Stepback: Vlogs, holiday tipping and travel blogging

Dec 14 2009 Published by under Monday Morning Stepback

The weekly links, opinion and inanity post. Extra inane version.

1. Links of Interest

I have been writing posts so furiously lately that I have not had a chance to do much more than skim my Google reader. It looks like the holiday season has hit blogland full force, with most posts entitled “contest”, “contest winner announced”, “author interview and contest”, etc. There really are some great contests out there, but the best was the softness duel between Carolyn Crane’s kitty and her friend’s kitty. Alas, you couldn’t actually win one of the cats.

For those of you reading this in a feed reader, exciting blog layout news!!! (As per usual in blogland, the more exclamation points, the less exciting). I went to a 3 column layout and added a list of blogs to the second sidebar. I also added my feed count (the number of people who subscribe to this blog). I’m kind of hoping to hit 400 by the end of the year, but I also know that I’ve sort of hit my niche size and that’s not likely to change.

There’s this “in My Mailbox” meme going around the YA and general fiction bloggers. You basically talk about what books came in the mail that week. It seems a nice idea, but won’t work so well for those of us who take our books in e-form. Some folks actually do a video of themselves talking about the books, holding them up to the camera. I was a bit astounded by this … not the idea that someone might think others would want to watch them opening their mail, but the idea that people actually DO enjoy watching other people open their mail online.

In general, I have tended to be critical of amateur online video in bookland. I posted once that I didn’t like the Author Talk videos, which played like an in-joke I didn’t get. I also criticized Sue Grimshaw videos and was not exactly fascinated by the “Jane and Sarah Borders True Romance videos” (but I seem to be in no further danger from those as Jane and Sarah are apparently no longer involved with Borders True Romance. Somebody correct me if I am wrong.).

And then it hit me: I think it’s a generational thing. At 40 years old, I did not grow up with You Tube. Home camcorders were expensive and somewhat rare in my youth. Video was special (weddings, birthdays, graduations), and it was private. If you were going to show your video to strangers, well, it had to be good.

The world has clearly changed, and I being the dino that I am, have not changed with it. I am not sure I will ever get to the place where the sight of someone stroking their hands over a book cover excites me, but I think I need to start viewing vlogs differently in order to enjoy them.

2. Advice Needed

A. I am going to be traveling for a couple of weeks in January. My internet access is likely to be spotty, and my free time for blogging minimal. What do you do when you are away from home? Do you write extra posts ahead of time and schedule them? If yes, how do you feel about the idea that you can’t keep an eye on the conversation? Do you try to blog on the road? Or do you let your blog lie fallow for a while?

B. Holiday tipping. This is more out of curiosity than anything: what non-loved ones do you gift this time of year? I am not talking about charity, which is a separate category, but those people who help you or your family in a regular way you want to recognize at the end of the year. I have a list that includes paper boy, kids’ bus drivers, kids’ teachers, hair stylist, administrative assistants, housekeeper. We have an incredibly surly mailcarrier with whom we play power games. I can’t bring myself to do anything for him. Since I am not remotely crafty, I buy cards and put gift certificates to Borders or Starbucks in them. Some just get double payment or extra cash. Just curious about others’ practices. Care to share??

3. On the blog this week

I am not sure I will be able to finish my Tigers and Devils review for tonight, but I hope to. I am also working on two posts: “Who Speaks for the Romance Reader?”, about media coverage of romance since the 1980s, and “Neuroethics for Romance Readers”, about the neuroenhancements that we would demand if we had a say in the research. Also, more m/m reviews.

4. Personal

A. I decided to go to the PCA (Popular Culture Association) conference again in St. Louis in March. The lure of Sarah Frantz, Eric Selinger, An Goris, Crystal Jordan, Angela Toscano and the gang is far too powerful for any mere mortal to resist. In addition to a presentation on ethical criticism of genre fiction for the romance section, I’ll be on a roundtable on vampire romance for the vamp section (assuming it all goes as planned).

This is exam week for me, which is actually one of my favorite times of the year. Lots of grading, but I can do it in front of the wood stove with a kitty on my lap and a pup at my feet. My husband is usually grading within earshot and we can grumble and crow to each other when so moved.

Also of course, Hanukkah. We live in rural Christian America, so we find ourselves in a position of educating our non Jewish friends this time of year. We have lots of friends over for latkes and menorah lighting and dreidel play. It’s a way to help the kids feel less like l they are missing out than that they have something special and different going on, and, most importantly, it’s fun.

Happy week!

22 responses so far

Review: Newly Fallen, by Megan Hart (Spice Brief)

Dec 13 2009 Published by under Reviews

Note: this review contains material not suitable for minors.

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(I know I am supposed to be doing m/m all week, but I couldn’t resist giving this Hanukkah short a try.)

Lilly is home alone on the first night of Hanukkah, wondering why she has not had a successful romantic relationship. As she lights her first candle, Zachariah, an angel, falls naked into her backyard. They have loads of perfect sex, make latkes, and dance for each other. They fall in love. The end.

Hart works very hard to convince the reader this could happen. Very very hard. So hard that I think Lilly’s brain snaps with the vicarious effort:

“Together they made something a mere four days ago she never would’ve said could be true and now couldn’t imagine in any other way.”

“I know this is all some sort of fantastic, crazy thing. I know it, Zach. But why shouldn’t it be? Why should something that feels this good and right be anything less than fantasy?”

“What is it about you,” she murmured against his lips, “that makes me feel like I’m in an early eighties high-concept music video?”

If you had told me two days ago that I was going to read an even more strained attempt to work Hanukkah into sex than Bad Brad, I would not have believed you, and if you told me my favorite erotic romance writer, Megan Hart, would write it, I might have thrown you out of my house. And yet, and yet …

“This body”, he said. “What a great miracle to make life.”

Lilly, languid and sated, pulled him by the shoulder to bring him close enough to kiss. “I’ve met a lot of men who thought what came out of their pricks was magic, but never one who thought it was a miracle.”

He laughed. “But is is.”

He took her hand and ran it across the sticky wetness. With anyone else, Lilly would’ve squirmed, wrinkled her nose, pulled away. With Zach, she let him make her feel it, already drying on his skin.

“Nes Gadol Haya Sham.” he murmured into her mouth. “A great miracle happened there, yes?”

To her credit, Lilly giggled at this.

So did I.

5 responses so far

Review: On Wings Rising, by Ann Somerville

Dec 13 2009 Published by under Reviews

*Note: this review contains material not suitable for minors.

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On the planet Quarn, Dinun is a young man who makes his living foraging outside of his settlement for things he can bring back to his village and barter or use, such as doem skin, rejer hides, talin wood, and his fossaker’s specialty, gemstones. The story opens with a domestic scene, and it appears that Dinun has a wife and three children. We learn soon enough that Dinun is the only openly gay man (“invert”) in his settlement of Getake (he knows first hand –literally — that several of the local men prefer invert sex), but that his government makes the idea of having little “tax reliefs” so enticing that he has an arrangement with their mother.

As he forages, Dinun comes upon a wounded Angel, whom he calls Moon.

Angels have no speech, but communicate via telepathy. This makes the reading slightly awkward, as Somerville uses italics surrounded by double colons to communicate emotions and italics with quotation marks to communicate words:

“Yes. You. Mind. Take. Slow.” ::Tired. Pain.::

Angels are a silvery, furred, winged, very tall and very lightweight species whose existence on Quarn predates Dinun’s people, who colonized Quarn after things went badly on Earth. The first colonizers had been a bit obsessed with Angels, and geneticists had mixed the two species using technology since banned and knowledge long since lost. (there seems to have been a second kind of apocalypse on Quarn, since Dinun makes reference to a space station which has been dormant for 200 years). Dinun and his people are descendants of these experiments. But in general, Angles keep to themselves, preferring to avoid encounters with other species. Dinun had never seen one before meeting Moon.

Angels have a reputation for perfection and for bewitching nonAngels, and Moon is immediately besotted.

Dinun learns that full-blooded humans have attacked Moon and his people, killing a few and stealing several of their young. This presents a mystery, as there are not supposed to be any full-blooded humans on the planet.

As Dinun helps Moon heal and escorts him back to his people, he begins to fall in love with him. Angels are quite free with their affections and their bodies, and view sex as a natural and joyful part of life. Moon and Dinun have maybe three fairly brief but explicit sexual encounters, which tend to do less to move the relationship forward, given the matter of factness with which Moon approaches them, than to serve to give Dinun his first open and positive sexual experiences.

On Wings, Rising is definitely a romance, so things end up ok for the Angels, and the couple ends up together. This is not a high conflict book, as Dinun and Moon are very good people who care for each other. The drama is created mainly by the external threat and disagreements as to how to handle it, and also by their cultural differences.

For example, at one point Moon begins to slice flesh from the face of a dead human to eat. The argument Moon and Dinun have about this raises hard questions about what makes the difference between prey and a victim. Why shouldn’t the Angels eat a dead human, when he has tried to kill them, and when their own supply of food is so unpredictable? Dinun’s people need less of an excuse than that to eat other species.

I liked it that the Angels were so different from humans. While I really enjoy other series, like Meljean Brook’s Guardians, in which some characters have wings, they are basically humans with wings that appear when needed. In contrast, Somerville creates a totally alien being in Moon, not just in physical appearance, but in language, culture, and even gender:

With his belly exposed, Moon used his hand to separate folds of skin Dinun hadn’t noticed before in his panic to stop the Angel bleeding to death. The folds covered bare. pink skin, forming a pouch. The pouch had small protuberances that might be nipples on the inner surface.

…

Angel fathers spent a whole year secluded with their infants, the first three months or so fasting and in mental communion with their baby.

Baby Angels would bond after their first year with their mothers, although I am not in general sure how important women are to the Angels’ culture.

I was very intrigued by the worldbuilding, which I felt was done with amazing thoroughness and speed in this short book. Somerville paints a very compelling picture of a complex history across multiple species and planets, and of two very different cultures. I wanted spend more time there, and am happy to know there is another book in the Encounters series, Reaching Higher.

The Angels are a kind of primitive people. They live in leather tents, they don’t even have wheels, never mind weapons or other sophisticated tools. Although they are called by words for things in nature with positive connotations such as “Flower” or “Cloud” (no “Fungus” or “Turd”), Somerville doesn’t make them noble savages (they get irritated, for example). But the innocent vibe was definitely there, helped along by the fact that they were angels. Angels may refer merely to another species in the world of Quarn, but the word has unmistakable connotations of goodness, indeed purity, for most readers.

Perhaps for this reason, or perhaps my own personal inability to find the idea of sex with furred creatures hot (shit. I am anti-wing.), I found myself drawn to this book more as Dinun’s story than as a romance. I loved this character, who is tested and grows so much in the pages of this book, as the Angels place him in a quasi-leadership role. Dinun’s sexual preferences may have made him an outcast, but he eventually has to admit that his solitary career as a forager and his distant relations with others also partly reflect his own reluctance to commit fully to his own life.

7 responses so far

Review: Bad Brad, by Cheryl Dragon and Eight Nights, by Keira Andrews

Dec 12 2009 Published by under Reviews

*Note: This review contains material not suitable for minors.

Bad Brad, Cheryl Dragon

This 2007 erotic m/m short from Loose-Id begins with Matt barging in to a Hanukkah party and dragging out his lover, Brad, who had cheated on him. They fought and have not spoken in weeks: “Matt reminded himself that Brad has cheated and deserved to be punished. Matt bore some responsibility, though. If he had been a stronger Dom, Brad wouldn’t have cheated.”

The rest of the “story” involves a long scene of BDSM. Although we are told that this sex has all kinds of significance to these men and their relationship, I can’t say I was particularly invested in Matt and Brad as people. But that doesn’t seem to be the point of writing like this.

The writing in this book reminded me of a National Geographic Special. You know how there’s a guy on a jeep, with a telephoto lens, and he’s whispering to the camera, describing what he sees? Like, “There’s the lion. He sees the gazelle. The gazelle doesn’t notice a thing.” Some examples:

“A Dom truly in love had to use extra caution and control.”

“Matt had to test his Sub’s limits.”

“His Dom wanted to fuck him!”

When I read a sentence like :”The sub licked and smeared the reward over himself as best he could while cuffed” I can’t help but hear a neutral male voice intoning: “the California mule deer constantly moves its ears, checking for predators…”

If any word screams sexy to me, it’s “causing”, as in this sentence:

“Then Matt shed his pants and briefs, causing Brad’s cock to throb for any satisfaction.”

Sometimes Bad Brad was a brain teaser. Just try to figure out whose POV this is:

“He unexpectedly slapped Brad’s ass hard.”

If context is any indication, it’s supposed to be Matt’s. Amazing, the ability a Dom has to to surprise his own self!

Sometimes, words were used in unexpected ways:

“Brad felt an intense release of trust wrack his body.”

The Hanukkah connections were touching. Matt, clearly a religious Jew, situates the action in the context of the rededication of the Temple: “They both need to rededicate themselves for the relationship to work.” Later, he muses that his mother would not condone the creative uses to which he puts the candle wax. And when Brad reasons that a little rug burn on his knees is worth it, I can just hear the ghosts of the victorious Maccabees murmuring in approval: their sacrifices were, too.

This story was $2.49. I happened to be seeking out m/m Hanukkah stories for my blog, but I honestly don’t know why someone wouldn’t just read literotica.com for free.

Here’s the blurb for this short:

Lucas McKenzie figures spending the holidays with his annoying roommate’s family is better than being alone on campus. The last thing he expects is to lust over Sam’s brother — or for Nate to actually want him back.

They hide their attraction during Hanukkah celebrations, but behind closed doors, Lucas and Nate can’t keep their hands (or mouths) off each other. Nate’s only looking for a bit of holiday fun, and amazing sex with a hot virgin definitely fits the bill.

Yet as the candles burn, Nate and Lucas begin to realize eight nights will never be enough.

This one was better than Bad Brad, but I much preferred the similar story told by Astrid Amara in Holiday Outing.

There’s a lot of explicit sex. The writing was fine –certainly better than Bad Brad – but the story was very uninspired, with a real paint by numbers feel to me.

I’m putting my foot in it with this comment but here goes: You know how people say romance is porn for women? I am reminded of that when I read something like this, or Bad Brad. I can’t see how anyone would be connected to the “characters”, and I ask myself how all of the talk of love and emotional connection functions if it does not succeed aesthetically. Does it serve a justificatory need for the reader?

15 responses so far

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