The weekly news, opinion and personal updates post
Links of Interest
Sunita, who occasionally writes book reviews for Dear Author and has been reading romance and following Romanceland for a long time, has taken the blog plunge. Check out her latest, Accuracy, Authenticity and World-building in Historical Romance:
[O]nce again hope has triumphed over experience, and I have come up with a spectrum of historical accuracy/authenticity/conviction. It draws on the various smart things people said on twitter yesterday.
Category 1: Wallpaper historicals. These are books where the characters are basically modern, but they wear period clothing, live in period houses, and refer to period events.There is no real pretense, by authors or readers who like the books, that these books represent serious attempts to depict a particular historical era. Think of it as going to a historical theme party: everyone dresses up in the theme, but they talk in their normal accents and use contemporary vocabulary and wear Spanx under their costumes.
Check out the post for the other three categories.
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The Nebula Awards finalists were announced, and book bloggers everywhere rejoiced to see so many women finalists. The Book Smugglers are hosting a Nebula Readathon. Click the link for the schedule.
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An open letter to Mills&Boon by Kat of Book Thingo, Waiter, There’s a Vampire in My Book.
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Author KT Grant/blogger Katiebabs is asking Does there come a time when the author who still reviews should be muzzled? prompted in part by Hush, Hush author Becca Fitzpatrick’s “be nice” advice post at Goodreads. On a related note, Teddypig posted on a Goodreads author responding to a bad review.
The Goodreads thing is turning out to be pretty interesting. Unlike a reader blog, where an author may show up only to comment on a review of her book, never to return, Goodreads is very much an author community as well as a reader community. The fact that it is shared space probably makes it harder to resist responding to a negative review.
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Beginning tomorrow, as described by Fiction Vixen, the 1st Annual March Madness Blog Party, hosted by author Ashley March. Prizes for readers and aspiring historical romance authors, author interviews, and more.
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Ever wondered why UF heroines have missing families? At Ex Libris, author Carolyn Crane explains it all for you.
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As reported by Library Journal and blogged about in many places elsewhere,
HarperCollins has announced that new titles licensed from library ebook vendors will be able to circulate only 26 times before the license expires.
For librarians—many of whom are already frustrated with ebooks lending policies and user interface issues—further license restrictions seem to come at a particularly bad time, given strained budgets nationwide. It may also disproportionately affect libraries that set shorter loan periods for ebook circulation.
While HarperCollins is the first major publisher to amend the terms of loan for its titles, two other members of the publishing “big six”—Macmillan and Simon & Schuster—still do not allow ebooks to be circulated in libraries, much to the consternation of librarians.
Two librarians are calling for a boycott of HarperCollins. Click the link for a form letter you can send to protest their library e-loan policy.
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Former owner of All About Romance Laurie Gold has announced on her blog that she is returning to the internets by taking a “part time paid” blogging position.
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Bad Publicity boosts Book Sales according to new research by a couple of business professors (via the Literary Saloon):
According to GSB professor Baba Shiv, familiarity with a product plays a crucial role when a consumer makes decision.
“The more familiar something is, the bigger a chance it will be incorporated into the [customer’s] decision,” Shiv said.
The familiarity has an impact on all brands and products. Bad publicity, while damaging to well-known products, provides lesser-known products with more consumer exposure.
Of course, their study looked at the effect of reviews in the New York Times. I wonder if it’s applicable at all to blog reviews?
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From the Awl, 10 Neflix Instant play British costume dramas for folks jonesing for the next season of Downton Abbey. Now that Amazon Prime members get free download play, perhaps they’ll post an Amazon list
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Although the site itself is a bit too busy for me, making it not always easy to figure out where to put my eyeballs for new content, I continue to be impressed with the quality of the blog posts at Heroes&Heartbreakers. They are now hosting a contest to win an ereader of your choice.
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The most amusing post I read last week: Sarkosi Admits French language a hoax after Wikileaks expose.
(via Language Log):
During a speech given in received pronunciation, the French President came clean, stating that it all started off as a joke during William the Conquerer’s invasion to make the aggressors seem a bit more exotic.
Personal
My two week spring break begins today. I still have plenty of work to do, but it’s way less stressful without the actual teaching.
I know you have all been waiting with bated breath for this announcement, but I have finally decided what book to have my English professor friend read. You would think I was choosing my last meal! I veered completely away from Gothic romance (although I am grateful for that thread since I learned a lot of about the place of Gothic in the history of the romance genre, and got some great recs) and instead will lend her: Judith Ivory’s The Proposition. Also, When we chatted last week, I realized she had no idea what the difference is between single titles and category romance, nor that there are so many different category lines, so I think I will give her Sarah Mayberry’s Anything For You, just in case she has time to read two.
We are reading Janice Radway this week, so expect a post on that.
Otherwise, I have no idea what I will do on the blog this week.
HAPPY WEEK!
Related posts:
I also found it odd on Goodreads, writers are also posting excerpts from their unpublished books and family pictures. WTF? I thought Goodreads was for book reviews and discussion on books, not Facebooks of Tumbrl. Goodreads is my new obsession along with Twitter.
Re: Ivory & Mayberry
Those are two great picks for a romance novice. Both titles have emotional depth but still fun.
Interesting, the posts about accuracy in historical romance and the spectrum of acceptable error. I came across a small research mistake I couldn’t correct in a final galley (something probably just a few people really familiar with the period would catch) and I’ve been fretting about it ever since, because I so intensely hate to be inaccurate.
I’ve not yet figured out the appeal of wallpaper historicals, though I keep hoping for enlightenment. I don’t understand why a writer would want to write historical romance if they don’t care about the details of the period. The primary appeal of historical romance for me is falling fully into the period and living it as vividly as can be done. If you’re going to write with a mostly modern feel, why not just go ahead and write a contemporary?
Katie, I haven’t thought of goodreads as being an author vehicle. It’s still so exciting (for me) when a total stranger weighs in with a comment on a review I wrote eons ago. I suppose I follow and am followed by so few people that I’ve escaped what you’ve described.
As for the reviewer/published-author/friendship nexus, if someone turned out not to be a friend after you published a less than 5 star review, it sort of begs the question: was that person a friend? I’m puzzled by the continued discussion of should authors review — it’s up to them, surely. In academic/professional circles, peer review is the name of the game and I suppose folks just deal with it. Seems like an intensely personal decision, especially in the field you write in.
Tamara, I’m really coming round to the idea of historical novelists not needing to toe any kind of line. Even writing that is an insult to their right to write whatever they damn please. As a reader, I have the same rights. If they want to write a book that’s entirely modern in its sensibilities except for the (examples mine) clothes and venues, what of it? It could be a fun romp and I don’t see how for the author, writing a contemporary, would give them the same sort of writing experience.
@Janet W: You know, Janet, I just assumed Goodreads was an author and reader site like Facebook. For no good reason! I honestly know so little about it, being a relatively new member and logging in infrequently. I would be interested to hear what other’s views are of Goodreads.
I disagree with historical accuracy having anything to do with how well a book works as a Romance or as Erotica. I think James Lear ~ The Back Passage blows big old holes out of any argument like that.
Sales are more dependent on the reader getting what they bought the book for in the first place a good Romance or some hot sexy Erotica not because the characters are accurately portrayed or the era is detailed properly with all the Is dotted and the Ts crossed.
I never read Agatha Christie for historical purposes maybe someone has but I don’t believe that is supposed to be the main function of reading. I read her because she writes a good story.
“their study looked at the effect of reviews in the New York Times”
There’s research showing that the number of reviews on Amazon (and other bookstore sites) is more correlated with sales than is the positivity of the reviews.
It’s hard to go wrong with Judith Ivory!
Agree w/you Victoria but I would have picked Untie My Heart. But The Proposition is on my keeper shelf — for me, tho, it doesn’t have the “surround-sound” of a Stuart hero.
@Janet W: lol. I was going for a nonconventional hero. Am trying to show that not all romance heroes are of one ilk.
Look, asking libraries to boycott Harpercollins is patently unrealistic. As of right now, digital makes up a small percentage of total circulation for most libraries. Frankly, we’ve been building our print collections a helluva lot longer than digital (for example: my Day Job? Collecting print for 90 years, digital for one year. Do the math). I would love to be a fly on the wall when these boycotting librarians explain to some irate patron (let’s use genre fiction as an example) that the reason they can’t get the latest Kim Harrison, Julia Quinn or Eloisa James at the library, in any format, is because HC has a bass-ackwards digital lending policy. Good luck with that.
What I think publishers want is for digital to be like audiobooks or Large Print. That is, only select titles. Even if funds were unlimited, libraries (and consumers) cannot buy every title in audio or Large Print….because not all of them are available in those formats. My guess is that if this policy does come to pass, libraries will be stuck making hard and fast decisions on what formats to purchase (moreso than we are already). And my guess? A whole bunch of us will buy HC titles in print, but not digital. In the end, this means fewer choices for consumers, and libraries will appear that more “out of touch” to the general public.
Thanks for steering me towards Sunita’s new blog! Had no idea about it.
And uh, paranormals have been a part of Blaze for a while now. I know there are earlier examples, but for instance Crystal Green wrote a couple – one in 07 and one in 08. There are also historical Blazes now – which admittedly, when that first launched I thought, “WTF? Why have the Harlequin Historical line then?” The answer? “Sexy and fun.” That’s what I think of when I think Blaze and as much as I love HHs….uh, sexy and fun aren’t always the first adjectives that leap to mind. If I were to hazard a guess – Harlequin is shooting for more of a “mood” or “feeling” with the Blaze line. Not to imply that the line is all fluff – but frankly, if I want dark, brooding angst – I’m not going Blaze. But sexy and fun? Yeah, sign me up.
I loved the last link you posted, the one by Teddypig, because it is precisely how I feel about goodreads. BTW I use it very much.
The way goodreads works is that the social part is costumizable for each reader – I can not speak for all readers, but I feel that goodreads is a space for readers to connect with each other. You can add the friends you want and follow their updates – and for each book, the reviews and ratings which show up first are those by your own friends. For me it compiles opinions by my friends, whenever they were written, without having to go search blog archives, or keeping any mental track that this blog read this 2 months ago, and this other 18 months ago. It is also much easier to comment on any review, or like a review. It is much more un-hierarchic that any blog or site.
Also you can not dislike or find a review unhelpful – I think that is pretty important for the dynamics, while people can respond negatively to (negative) reviews, it is much harder to do that anonymously. It feels much more like a reader´s place than amazon.
Of course goodreads has lots of potential for authors to promote themselves, but they might find that harder to control apart from keeping updates and so on.
I remember you said something on Twitter a while back about having reached your limits for wank about reviewing? I feel that way about the author reviewing issue – although I am getting pretty cranky about all these ‘helpful’ warnings being issued to authors not to cross the line because it’s designed to have a chilling effect.
I’ve said many times I started a m/m review site – the very first one dedicated to the genre – because I loved the genre and wanted to promote it. At the time, there were almost no professional writers in the genre, and no one got bent out of shape about amateurs reviewing (other than the usual tantrums about negative reviews.) Looking back, I see I’ve paid a heavy price for reviewing in terms of my own career but that’s only because other authors are fuckwits. There is nothing wrong, immoral or odd about authors reviewing other authors (Notice this ‘problem’ is only a problem when we’re talking about less than glowing reviews, so authors aren’t just fuckwits but hypocrites too.) Authors are readers, and they are sometimes well placed to nail exactly why a book doesn’t work – the technical reason, if you will. Aside from that, they are no more or less qualified to review than anyone else (hear that, Sylvia Massara?) I review because I love good writing, and I want to share that love. I have never, ever – despite the accusations hurled at me – reviewed for a grudge, or to fluff a book for a friend or a publisher. My reviews are seen as honest and valuable because I say what I really mean and how I really feel. And if authors are too fucking stupid and chauvinistic to appreciate that, too fucking bad.
Kat is absolutely right. I had a similar experience with a K A Mitchell book where one of the protags suddenly develops extra-normal sensory perception and I was like, WTF just happened? It wasn’t a good feeling either.
One of your links to a certain author-reviewer brings this quote to mind to me.
Considering that most of what I know about daily life in the various historical periods depicted in romance I…learned from reading romance, I can’t take a lot of the nitpicking over historical accuracy all that seriously. I suspect that a good percentage of those flying the historical accuracy flag learned their “facts” the same way I did. Wasn’t there a discussion on one of the blogs just a few months ago (forgive me, my memory is crap right now) about a book getting a negative review because of a major inaccuracy that was central to the plot, and the author quickly pointed out that, actually, she did her research and the book wasn’t inaccurate at all? I found the whole thing funny, because I’ve found myself believing I knew a lot more about certain eras than I did because of my reading of fiction, and when I actually did a tiny bit of research I discovered how far off I was.
The only time I’m bothered is when the inaccuracy in question is about an actual historical figure or event, but the details about what kind of petticoat was worn when and so on just don’t matter to me. I mean, if I really let myself think about how things really were back then, I’d never read historicals. I’m a woman of color…life before 1980 would have probably seriously sucked for me.
@Scorpio M.: I hope she likes them.
@Wendy:
LOL! I think you are right that pubs want us to think of e-books as specialty items, a la audio, but to me it seems so obvious they are not even as “special” as MMPB given our restrictions on use, lending etc. Isn;t it bizarre that such a disconnect exists?
@Teddypig:
I agree with you here. I think there has to be consistency and compellingness in the worldbuilding, but that’s no different than any genre (SFF, etc.)
@T: Thank you for sharing your use of Goodreads. Clearly, my minimal use is making me lose out on the community aspect.
@Ann Somerville:
To me, this seems pretty damning to any attempt to claim the high road. The advice is never “don’t review.” It’s “don’t negatively review.” That said, to me there is no obligation to review. It’s in the realm of morally permissible but not morally required.
@Janet W:
Ah, but I’m not asking them to toe any kind of line. I’m not asking why they don’t strive for accuracy in order to please and satisfy readers. I’m wondering why they don’t strive for accuracy in order to please and satisfy themselves.
Jessica, thanks so much for the link! I did one of those understated, slow rollouts, not because I’m particularly modest, but because it’s good to keep expectations low.
@Las:
For some readers that might be true, but those of us who have spent months or years in archives, or reading primary sources, or writing articles and books using primary sources, would not fit your category. There are more readers with that background in the “flying the historical accuracy flag” category than you might realize.
@Tamara: Because it’s the atmosphere, not the actual lived experience, which attracts them? And their idea of what comprises the atmosphere is not ours?