The weekly links, opinion and personal updates post
The winner of the blogversary contest is Vi. Send me an email with your choice of two books I have reviewed, and your snail mail address. Congratulations!
1. Links of Interest
Quote of the week:
Moral disapproval is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians.
–Vaughn R. Walker, United States District Chief Judge
Dorchester Publishing announced that it is abandoning mass market paperbacks, effective today. Dorchester titles will be available only in digital format and print-on-demand. Or, maybe ebooks first with the trade paperbacks 6-8 months later? I guess it is still unfolding.
I’ve long felt proud of romance readers for embracing digital reading technology. Here’s how the Wall Street Journal (Registration required) sees it in their reporting on Dorchester:
Dorchester, which has been publishing mass market paperbacks since 1971, publishes 25 to 30 new titles a month, approximately 65% of which are romance works. The company launched its first mass paperback titles in 1971.
Romance fans in particular have already embraced e-books, in part because customers can read them in public without having to display the covers. In addition, type size is easily adjusted on e-readers, making titles published in the mass paperback format easier to read for older customers.
As a reader, I gained a better understanding of what the Dorchester changes mean for me from Wendy the Superlibrarian.
As for the business side of things, I found Dorchester romantic suspense author Anna DeStefano’s My Publisher Went Direct-to-Digital the most helpful.
In the meantime, via Author Scoop, Slate is saying that digital publishing has leveled the playing field for small presses. I found the comments on social media and small presses particularly interesting:
Small presses are almost like offline communities, which allows them to move more seamlessly into the digital realm than bigger houses that don’t engage audiences on an intimate level. Independent publishers literally live and die by their networks. Featherproof Books, which publishes two books per year and borrowed its 50-50 profit-sharing author model from a small record label, posts requests to buy books on Twitter and Facebook if it is having trouble making ends meet on a given month—and the audience responds. “They know where we are and we know where they are,” says co-publisher Zach Dodson of his audience.
These little entities, like many small businesses, have exchanges with readers that transcend the commercial. Like much of what transpires in the digital space, it’s personal.
This article in Business Week talks about romance and social media, in terms of micro-trends, like Amish romance and knitting romance:
Therein may lie the secret to the rise of the romantic subgenre. Twitter feeds, author blogs, and other forms of social media are providing limitless opportunities for virtual Ya-Ya Sisterhoods of like-minded readers to develop. “These authors are all masters of social networking,” says Pam Jaffee, the publicist in charge of Avon, HarperCollins’ romance imprint. Macomber boasts an e-mail list of 130,000. (By comparison, Jaffee says, most successful authors have “between 3,000 and 9,000 friends” on Facebook.) Bostwick’s fans have even formed an online quilting club. This fall, readers from 13 different states will tour her favorite places to quilt.
Devoted fans of Robyn Carr—who hit the jackpot in the military romance niche with her Virgin River series—find each other at the Jack’s Bar chat room on her site. “There are so many people out there who have a relative or a loved one who’s serving. Those people want to celebrate and honor these men and women. And they want military characters in the books they read,” says Carr, a former military wife whose son is serving in Iraq.
Speaking of Amish romance … here’s a story on it in USA today. (via @shannonstacey) Quoted are romance scholar Pam Regis, and bloggers Sarah Wendell and Jane Litte, among others.
Has there ever been a social phenomenon more anticipated and less actualized than Steampunk? I’ll do my part by linking to The Guardian’s Steampunk: an introduction.
Julie Garwood is one of those old school authors I have never been able to read. but — unless Amazon changes its mind — you can get Kindle versions of some of her books for 99 cents (Books on the Knob)
Prospect considers Self-Serving White Guilt. This is a review by Eric Kaufmann of The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism by Pascal Bruckner, trans Steven Rendall. Bruckner is a novelist whose Bitter Moon was made by Roman Polanski into one of the dumbest, most unintentionally funny movies I have ever seen. As Kaufmann sees it:
Beneath Bruckner’s eloquence is a serious message: we remain prisoners of a white guilt whose victim is its supposed beneficiary. Our guilt, he writes, is actually a means for us to retain our superiority over the non-white world, our masochism a form of sadism. After all, if everything is the fault of the west then the power to change the world lies squarely in the hands of westerners.
(via Arts and Letters Daily)
From GalleyCat, Kindle now has games. Actually, I’ve already downloaded and played one. Then again, I was on a 14 hour car trip with a dead iTouch battery.
Should women attorneys wear peep toe shoes in court? Feministe weighs in on the fashion controversy.
From Jacket Copy, Twenty Classic Works of Gay Literature. Read it for the comments. Great suggestions.
Did the NYT’s article on plagiarism in school piss anyone else off?
the idea of an author whose singular effort creates an original work is rooted in Enlightenment ideas of the individual. It is buttressed by the Western concept of intellectual property rights as secured by copyright law. But both traditions are being challenged.
I liked this bit at the end, though:
At the University of California, Davis, of the 196 plagiarism cases referred to the disciplinary office last year, a majority did not involve students ignorant of the need to credit the writing of others.
Many times, said Donald J. Dudley, who oversees the discipline office on the campus of 32,000, it was students who intentionally copied — knowing it was wrong — who were “unwilling to engage the writing process.”
“Writing is difficult, and doing it well takes time and practice,” he said.
Great discussion over at ClitLit by Jodi — a critical romance reader, and we need those — and Laura Vivanco and Victoria Janssen on the subsumed heroine.
From Feministe, a discussion of the “Afghan girl”, a National Geographic cover photo from 1985 that adorned so many of my male friends’ bedroom and dorm walls, and the more recent photo of Aisha, a disabled Afghan woman on the cover of a recent Time Magazine.
Lady Gaga proves what romance readers have known all along: the hoo ha really IS magical. Via Vanity Fair:
Lady Gaga tells Vanity Fair contributing editor Lisa Robinson that she tries to avoid having sex because she is afraid of depleting her creative energy—“I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone they’re going to take my creativity from me through my vagina.”
Speaking of the glittery hoo ha, I am sad that Jenny Crusie’s new book — her first solo outing in 6 years — will be $11.99 for the Kindle. Then again, my love affair with Crusie is closer to a two night stand. I am trying to listen to Agnes and the Hitman on audio and having a hard time getting through it.
2. Remember how I did a post back in April on True Vows, the new “memoir meets romance” venture of HCI books, the Chicken Soup series publishers? And I was skeptical? Well, I picked up an ARC of Judith Arnold’s Meet Me In Manhattan at RomCon back in July. And I regret to say my suspicions were justified. I DNFd the book. It read like a long version of those impersonal stories in women’s magazines. I was rarely lost in the story, which was written in a way that felt — perhaps necessarily — somewhat distant, and when I was engaged, it felt voyeuristic. Not for me. I’ll be amazed if these things sell.
3. On the blog this week:
Tomorrow: a long post on “what does the romance genre say about the good life?”
Some reviews. One very negative.
Probably — a joint post with my spouse on Dracula.
HAPPY WEEK!
Ha! Of all the things you posted today, the only comment I have is about Agnes and the Hitman. I had a hard time reading the book, but the audiobook is one of my comfort “listens.” I thought the narrator did a great job, even though my toddler did go around saying “goddammit” for a while afterward.
@Laura: ok, then I will persevere! I am only about an hour in.
And in case anyone is curious, Vi picked both Julie James books. I know you will love them, Vi!
Thank you Jessica. I’m a grown adult who is addicted to games, your link didn’t work for the info about free games on the kindle.
Regarding steampunk, I just read Meljean Brook’s novella introducing her steampunk series and I am addicted. I have sworn off books on a series, but I now have to add her to my list.
Thanks for letting me know — the link is now fixed.
Everyone is raving about that novella! But we all know Meljean could scribble on a napkin and give us several hours of reading pleasure.
I got into a big Facebook conversation about that plagiarism article. I thought the discussion of changing culture was very interesting–my students are often confused by the myriad of different online texts they encounter, which leads to errors in citing. And we’ve got a lot of international students who often have very different assumptions/training about sharing ideas than North American students do. That said, full-on plagiarism (i.e. extensive copying vs. a few sentences inadequately paraphrased) still comes from the same old stew of fear, shame and laziness it always did, with culture sometimes offered as a cover-story. What annoyed me about the article is that no-one quoted, except maybe a student, suggested that the response to a culture of internet downloads, sampling, and looser ideas about intellectual property might be more thorough teaching about academic honesty and proper citation. I spend a lot more time on this than I used to. Because it is harder to get right than it used to be. (Sorry, ranting).
Also, I followed that Heidegger link in your Twitter sidebar. Did not know whether to laugh or cry. I do not miss that grad school feeling of “to understand Z, you must read Y, which you must read X to get, and not in translation.” A domino line of texts, all waiting to topple on my head. Happier with a giant romance TBR and more or less able to live comfortably beside the yawning gulf of my ignorance.
Hey, thanks for the linkage!
They had all three launch titles of the True Vows line in the Librarian Goodie Room at RWA and snagged all three. That said, the Judith Arnold is one I’m unlikely to read. I love the reunited trope as much as the next girl – but the hero is engaged to another chick at the start of the story and flashbacks, we haz them.
Of the three titles, I’m most intrigued by the Julie Leto one – which features a hero with Tourette’s Syndrome. I’ll probably start with that one….uh assuming I find my reading mojo sometime soon.
@Liz:
But it’s a good rant, and so true. We can’t leave it to divisions of student affairs to fix the mess after it happens. We need to be proactive in our classrooms. “Turn It In” is way too late.
And I agree it is harder to get right today, especially in terms of knowing what internet sources are ok to use. Ten years ago, no internet source was acceptable in my classroom. Now our leading journals are not only also in e, but some are e only — and they are good ones. It is a quickyl changing landscape, but the desire to get the rewards without the work is as old as time, and no postmodern deconstruction of the knowing subject will convince me it’s ok.
@Wendy: I am having a real run of books in which there is a fiance or other woman/man — Kristan Higgins’s Too Good to Be True, Kate Noble’s Compromised, and now the Judith Arnold.
To me, the Arnold really lacked that fantasy element I get from romance reading. I felt like I was reading about people I knew, and it was not a good feeling. Let us know what you think when you read one.