From Flickr account ĐāżŦ {mostly absent)

Copyrights, particularly lengthy ones, benefit the corporations that license and/or those copyrights.  The Copyright Extension Act of 1998 isn’t called the Mickey Mouse protection act because it is designed to protect individual creators.  It is designated as such because it benefits one of the largest owners of intellectual property, Disney.  As of 1998, the term of copyright extends from 50 years for an individual and 75 years for a corporation to life of an author plus 70 years and 120 years for a corporation or 95 years after publication, whichever occurs earlier.

The reason that this is problematic is that when authors sell or license their works to a publisher, it is ordinarily for the term of copyright.  When a new author or an author with little following enters into negotiation with a publisher, she rarely holds a position of power.  This has changed given the new options available to authors such as digital first or self publishing but the fact remains that an individual’s ability to negotiate differing terms from the boilerplate is challenging.

Even the Supreme Court acknowledged this in Fisher Music Co. v. Witmark, 318 U.S. 643, 656 (1943).  The Court said  “authors are congenitally irresponsible, [and] that frequently they are so sorely pressed for funds that they are willing to sell their work for a mere pittance.” Id.

As a result, authors are allowed to reclaim their copyright after 35 years.  I wrote an extensive article about this in 2009 (which I am reposting today).  A longer term of copyright protection helps because value from the  author’s creative works can pass to his or her heirs.  The longer copyright hurts authors because it does not allow for a period of renegotiation.  We have seen the backlist of authors become valuable but not exploitable by authors.

Marsha Canham noted on her blog that  the backlist titles are bound by old contracts wherein the royalty rates were 6-8% of “net”.

What does the author get out of that, you ask?  Well…remember that these are backlist books, so the author probably has an old contract that, in some cases, gives the same royalty rate for ebooks (which were just a glimmer on the horizon ten years ago, and twenty years ago not even a glimmer) as for print books, which would be between 6-8%  of the *net* price.

..

But I digress again. NOT counting any net mumbo jumbo, we now have $52,300 for those books. Out of that, the author *should* get 25% which would work out to $13,075. But using Publisher Math, they only get $6537. And if the contract is older, and we’re working off the 8% royalties…that number zooms  down to $4184, which, using Publisher Math, can become finostigated down to around $2K.  Even if it’s left at the 8%, the publisher still gets the lion’s share of $48,116. And if it’s left at 25%, they keep $39,225.

$39,225 for the publisher, $13,075 for the author, and that’s using rose colored glasses for the 25% royalty rate on 10,000 downloads of a $7.99 ebook without any finostigating. Take off the glasses, use the 8% and the numbers change to $48,116 for the publisher and $4184. for the author.

The current standard royalty rate for digital books are 20-25% of net.

A shorter term of copyright, such as 14 years with several renewal periods of 14 years a piece would allow an author to renegotiate a contract every 14 years, taking advantage of the changing landscape in publishing.   It may be to the author’s benefit to sell every renewal period up front or she could preserve her renewal periods and take a lower offer initially.  However, a shorter copyright period with subsequent renewal periods would endow the author with additional bullets in her negotiating weapon.

The time period for reclaiming one’s copyright has passed for some books published in 1978. 2013, for example, will be the last year for some authors to exercise their termination rights.  The termination right is a valuable option for authors, but one that requires affirmative action.  A shorter copyright term would automatically limit the length of the grant of copyright and allow for renegotiation which would better reflect the rapidly changing market.

No related posts.

In the wake of ubiquitous popularity for The Book That Shall Not Be Named, the reality that women do experience – and even enjoy! – sexual fantasy has collided with far more than 50 shades of judgment about who, what, where, when, why, how, and whether that’s okay. Last week, Leigh at AAR wrote a blog post detailing her concerns about the real life relationship messages conveyed in Romance novels’ treatment of sexual force scenarios. Sandy Coleman went even further, invoking the “slippery slope,” Stockholm Syndrome, and insisting that “It’s dangerous for readers to be comfortable with forced seduction. Or date rape.”  As debate ensued over whether such sentiments blame women for rape and shame them for their sexual fantasies, Ridley summarized her opposition to Leigh’s and Sandy’s concerns by arguing that “Women still can’t be overtly sexual beings without being judged for it. Rape themes in romance continue to be a way to work with and around this.”

After the haze of red cleared from my vision, I started thinking about how frustrating these discussions often are for me, in large part because I don’t find the framing all that helpful or illuminating. Some version of the following arguments appears in almost all of these discussions (and I have certainly been guilty digging these holes, myself):

• Adult readers can tell the difference between fantasy and reality;
• Books both reflect and instruct, and because they instruct, we need to be conscious about the messages they send and we imbibe;
• Because women are writing these books, and women are primarily victims of violent sexual crimes and domestic violence, we have a higher level of responsibility for conveying the “right” messages, especially to impressionable girls & young women

So for the sake of argument, I want to start by accepting a version of each of these arguments to be true:

• In the overwhelming majority of cases, adults know the difference between fantasy and reality;
• Words are powerful, stories are powerful; therefore, books are powerful. They affect us in our real lives. As cultural artifacts, they are identifiable within the cultural paradigm shared by authors and reader, which means that they can both perpetuate and challenge dominant ideologies’
• As women raised in primarily patriarchal societies, we absolutely help to socialize each other to survive and thrive within the patriarchal paradigm. We are almost always operating from inside the paradigm, and because paradigm shifts of this magnitude take a long time to occur, at some point we’re all complicit in sustaining the dominant paradigm.

So with all that on the table, let me propose we re-frame the discussion for a moment. Let’s start from the idea that books can powerfully affect readers and that real life rape and battering are horrific experiences that no psychologically sound person desires.

From there, let’s take a quick look at the concept of the submission fantasy, of which the rape fantasy is part. Although I’m not the biggest fan of Psychology Today, this brief article by Michael Castleman points out that in 35 years of research, only 9 major studies had been conducted. To those, I would add the work of Nancy Friday, who, though not a social scientist herself, has written numerous books and amassed an impressive archive of erotic fantasy archives, of which submission fantasies remain the most numerous. As she notes in her most recent book, Beyond My Control, when she first wrote My Secret Garden back in 1973, there was widespread backlash to the idea that women even had sexual fantasies. And yet, as Friday has shown in her almost 40 years of research on the subject, there is something primal about sexual fantasy, something that is so real that it seems to exist coherently only on an experiential level.

Clinical research seems to back this up. As the 2009 study, “The nature of women’s rape fantasies: an analysis of prevalence, frequency, and content,” concludes, we know far less about the purpose and meaning of these fantasies than their ubiquity (researchers have measured between 31% and 57% of women, with speculation that the number could be higher, with some women reluctant to disclose) and their diversity (recorded on an “erotic-aversive continuum”). We know that women who have been raped experience submission fantasies, and while some research (namely Bivona and Crinelli’s study) indicates that women who experienced rape might be more inclined toward aversive fantasies (i.e. fantasies that are less arousing or involve more pain), others continue to experience the fantasy as erotic and enjoyable.

In Beyond My Control, Friday relates the story of one woman for whom erotic submission fantasy has been “therapeutic.” The woman, identified in the book as “Melly,” goes so far as to say, “I suggest fantasy for any women who has been raped.” Consequently, the persistent belief that women who enjoy rape fantasy are not the same women who are raped is just not sustained by either the qualitative or quantitative research. Which, again, supports the absolute lack of understanding we have about the source of these fantasies or any systematic conclusions about the work they do – psychologically, physically, culturally, etc. Friday has long argued that the sexually “forbidden” is always most arousing, and that submission fantasies are about “[r]elinquishing power in a world that offers so much.” She stresses that while the fantasies themselves may be beyond the woman’s conscious control, at some very fundamental level, the fantasizer exercises absolute control over the terms of the experience.

That paradox is evident in numerous textual expressions of the fantasy, as well, especially in Romance where the author is literally exercising absolute control over the construction and execution of the “fantasy” scene. In this sense, the fantasy is deliberately created, so it differs from the primal erotic fantasies chronicled by Friday and others. However, textual representations can trigger a fantasy response in the reader, which is where much of the controversy surrounding forced sex in the genre hovers. Even if submission fantasies are spontaneous and, at the very least, value neutral in their seeming naturalness (that is, as natural as anything can be within our cultural paradigm), textual representations are deliberative and artificial. In other words, fantasies themselves may be uncontrolled responses, but the writing process is not.

This is the point at which I think a huge leap is often made, namely, that if texts are deliberately constructed, and they are also socially and culturally coded, that the reader is similarly being encoded during the process of reading. For example, books that reward a heroine for staying with a hero who rapes her could be telling the reader that they should tolerate male violence. And the more we read these kinds of scenarios, the more desensitized we become to the idea of violence against women, and the more likely we are to let violence against women go unaddressed. The problem is that this conclusion assumes facts not in evidence.

Extending the pseudo-legal analogy for a second, think about legal and cultural attitudes toward real life rape and domestic violence over the past 30 or so years. Rape laws have become stronger and less dependent on the physical resistance of women for conviction. Sexual harassment laws have become much more inclusive and far-reaching. And in the field of domestic violence, research has finally shifted from the victims – about whom virtually no consistent pattern or list of common characteristics could be discerned – to the perpetrators. For those of us who were raised with the idea that you could make yourself look or act like a victim, these shifts are substantial, if not complete, and they do not suggest a “softer” attitude toward violence against women. And in regard to The Book That Shall Not Be Named, we are seeing women talk publicly and in mainstream media about their fantasies in unprecedented ways, declaring that they refuse to be shamed for something they find pleasurable.

This is not to say that we should not question portrayals of violence against women, that we should not be individually and collectively be discussing, debating, disagreeing, and generally digging deep into the complex dynamics of the stories we tell ourselves. However, prescribing uniform readings and interpretations is another matter. Consider the US Supreme Court justices, who represent, ideally speaking, the pinnacle of understanding in regard to legal history, jurisprudence, and case law. Even among these few highly educated and trained lawyers, there is extreme disagreement in regard to the intention, meaning, and purposeful implementation of the Constitution. How could it be any different when we’re talking about reading fiction?

For all of those who went through college sometime during the past 30 years, reader response theories have informed our literary education. Simply speaking, reader response is a categorical term for theories of reading that focus on the interaction between reader and text. There are many theories that can be classified under this umbrella, and they cross multiple disciplines. Researchers at the University of Alberta have been conducting empirical research on reader response theories, and they have posted numerous online resources on their work and results to date. But one of their premises is particularly applicable to this discussion, namely,

We think literary reading may involve some distinctive psychological processes not found in other kinds of reading. If we contrast reading a newspaper article or a textbook with the reading of a novel, we believe that readers’ feelings are not only more important in the context of a novel, but that feelings play a critical role in the constructive processes that enable a reader to sustain her reading and make it meaningful as a whole. Our theory of reading is thus based on trying to understand feeling rather than cognitive processes. Although cognitive components such as imagery or memory are clearly essential, these are controlled and shaped by the reader’s feelings. Feelings are important because they engage the reader’s sense of self. Reading a literary text involves exploring and perhaps questioning the self, although readers may generally be unaware of this underlying process while reading.

Their focus on emotions and on “the reader’s sense of self” is important, I think, because it brings the focus back to the individual process of reading and interpretation of meaning and significance. In Romance fiction, particularly, the emotional aspect of the experience is forefronted in the structure of the stories themselves, personalizing the experience even more. There is a degree to which we share experiences, perceptions, and constructions of meaning; however, there is a level of experience in reading that exceeds our ability to explain or even articulate the way any of us responds to a particular book. So taking the leap from the personal experience of a book to a universal truth is always problematic, because it assumes a universal way of reading and an undifferentiated sense of self among readers.

This is not to say that textual representations are not – to any of us at a given time – problematic. Nor does it mean we should refuse to problematize them and subject them to the scrutiny of analysis. Shared analysis can be even more illuminating, because individual readers not only measure their own responses to a text, but those of other readers who may have extracted meaning in an entirely different way. For example, women writing, reading, and discussing Romance fiction within a patriarchal cultural context can affect our conscious thought processes. How does it affect our unconscious processes? Can a book force a seduction on its reader? If anything is “dangerous,” perhaps it might be making universally shaming prescriptions (and proscriptions) about how fictional narratives speak to any of us.

Why dangerous? Because it conflates reading as a shared activity and reading as a personal activity. Because it folds reality into the experience of the book in a way that might not be accurate, certainly not for the totality of readers. For example, I did not read Anna Campbell’s book Claiming the Courtesan in the context of Stockholm Syndrome. For one thing, I think the term is overused and often misused. It is a very specific phenomenon, and one of its characteristics is the lack of awareness and/or understanding the captive has about his/her feelings toward the captor. And yet Verity wonders extensively about her feelings for Justin, as do many Romance heroines who are engaged with heroes who make them suffer in one way or another. My “reality” of that text is much different. The text is necessarily an incomplete map of objective reality, because it cannot anticipate every interaction between itself and its readers. Moreover, the reader not only has the ultimate power to consent (or not) for the heroine, but she also has the ability to analyze and respond to the textual representation, creating yet another layer of symbolic distance from “real life.”  And in the case of sexual fantasy, what the reader experiences at that level is not necessarily a literal translation of what occurs in the text, as readers of The Book That Shall Not Be Named have demonstrated in conversations about the differences between the (faux) BDSM in the book and their own submission fantasies.

Even the context in which we read makes a difference. As a student of 19^th C sentimental and sensational fiction, I have read numerous books in which the “virtuous” heroine who is attracted to the rake suffers sexual degradation, social ostracism, disease, and often ignominious death. By contrast, the Romance heroine who falls in love with the rake gains happiness, often wealth, social acceptance, and, often, a loyal and faithful romantic partner. Two different faces of patriarchy, but are they equivalent? Could the Romance version be viewed – under particular circumstances – as more sex, love, and power positive for the heroine?

So yes, I believe that texts have power, that they convey and reflect socially and culturally conditioned messages. So does everything with which we engage emotionally and intellectually. I do not personally know one woman, for example, who has been untouched by male violence, even indirectly. We learn that men are capable of danger and violence, and, as women, we know we can be vulnerable to that in a way that makes it difficult to distinguish violence and sex. So is it any surprise that in a world made unsafe for women by men that women might find ways to rewrite that story? Is the textual recreation of that story problematic? Perhaps, but I would argue that it’s a problem that will never have only one solver, nor one solution. Which, like the submission fantasy itself, is what makes it so potent with possibilities, and so fundamentally and stubbornly resistant to literalization.

Related posts:

1. Read Enough Romances and Rape Is No Longer Rape
2. Of Rape and Rape Fantasies
3. You Are What You Read

When I started reading erotic romance back in the early to mid-2000s, erotic romance meant “bedroom door wide open”, the author would use graphic terminology that most mainstream romances wouldn’t. The act of love making between the hero and heroine was captured in all its glory, so to speak, instead of closing the door until the couple were in the cuddling after-glow stage. There were some books where the hero was dominant (not with a capital D), and some where there was a certain kink factor. Especially when the paranormal was involved — the ones that immediately spring to mind is Lora Leigh’s Elizabeth’s Wolf or Kate Douglas’ Wolf Tales series.

I’ve been told that a true erotic romance should be about the sexual journey of the characters more than an outside plot. A great example of this is Anne Calhoun’s Liberating Lacey. When Jane reviewed it here at Dear Author, she said “the eroticism comes primarily from the graphic nature of the sex scenes. There is little to no kink.”

But over the years has the envelope has been pushed to include more kink? It’s pretty much a given nowadays that anal sex will be included. The ménage a trois has become passé to have only three partners and not more. Bondage is a given. Spanking and flogging also. Ellora’s Cave is now allowing golden showers in their novels, something most other publishers, and many review sites, refuse to consider. Then of course, there’s the ubiquitous BDSM novels to the point where I’m wondering if the tide has shifted so anything labelled erotic romance must include BDSM.

Is an excursion into the realm of BDSM the only journey left to explore these days? Is everything else too “vanilla”? Are erotic romances without BDSM elements no longer considered erotic romances but mainstream?

The industry is already changing its definitions of erotic romance. The Romance Studio doesn’t even have an erotic romance category in their CAPA awards anymore, now there’s only a BDSM category. In previous years, the Electronic Publishers Industry Coalition (EPIC) awards separated the erotic romance books to their various genres so there was both a contemporary erotic romance category, along with a contemporary romance category, same for paranormal, etc. This past year, they changed their definition of romance to: “Romance…must conform to the romance genre convention, that is, your bunnies find true love; they may be chaste (spiritual/inspirational), boff behind closed doors (sweet), boff energetically (more spicy), or boff themselves silly in interesting ways (erotic). Some erotic romances involve multiple lovers…but as long as they find true love, it’s a romance.”

The Romance Writers of America RITA awards have never had an erotic romance category, so its single title judges receive all heat levels in their bundle of books to be judged within the individual categories.

As a judge in various contests, I’ll happily read any heat level, and any pairing, but I know there are others who are uncomfortable reading door-wide-open graphic terms or multiple partner encounters. (Judges can and should return books that make them feel uncomfortable so they can be sent to someone else for an unbiased appraisal, but it doesn’t always happen.)

My local brick-and-mortar bookstore recently dismantled its erotic romance section and now shelves all romance books alphabetically, regardless of heat level. I like that I can find my favorite authors such as Maya Banks or Jaci Burton or Lauren Dane’s books all together on one shelf instead of having to search two separate aisles, but it bothers a bookclub friend who preferred to head straight to the erotic romance section, knowing the book she’d pick up would be hot enough for her personal tastes. (I think it’s a little easier buying books online, as you can check the tags associated with the books, or the category it’s placed in.) What about the reader who wants that door left partially closed but picks up a book that used to be shelved in the erotic romance section?

Yes, it’s all about how the story is written, but if you like reading erotic romance, do you consider a story with graphic sexual terms and little kink still an erotic romance, or are you looking for that kink factor? What about those of you who prefer the bedroom door partially closed, are you finding more and more graphic sex creeping into your regular romances?

Related posts:

1. The Changing Face of Romance . . .Or not?
2. Definition of Erotic Romance Poll
3. Erotic Romance is author drive…

Kickstarter works by artists posting about a project and setting different levels of donations. The pledgers agree to pay one of those different levels. If the project reaches its goal, the money is delivered to the artist. If not, the project is cancelled and the money returned to the pledgers.

The Kickstarter pledger gains two things.  First they gain some kind of momento. Sometimes it is a mention in the acknowledgments and sometimes it is the product itself.  In the case of Scheherazade’s Facade – Fantasy Anthology with big name contributors like Tanith Lee and Sarah Rees Brennan, the base level pledge of $5 gets you a bookmark. To get a copy of the book itself, you must pledge $10 or greater. The second is bragging rights, a sense of ownership and investment in the product.  Says the owner of kickstarter:

He also points out that backing a project gives you bragging rights. “You’re not just buying the thing, you’re creating it. You’re in on the ground floor. Getting a bird’s-eye view of how it’s made is exciting.” Good point — one that explains why random, otherwise unaffiliated people are pitching tech journalists on their pet Kickstarter projects these days.

Kickstarter projects lay out the terms, but there is no contractual relationship.  The money pledged is a gift and there is no recourse if the Kickstarter project does not deliver.  As the terms of service states:

Kickstarter shall not be liable for your interactions with any organizations and/or individuals found on or through the Kickstarter service. This includes, but is not limited to, delivery of goods and services, and any other terms, conditions, warranties or representations associated with listings on Kickstarter. Kickstarter does not oversee the performance or punctuality of projects. Kickstarter is not responsible for any damage or loss incurred as a result of any such dealings.

The backers of a project have no control over the project itself. If it takes 3 years for the project to come to fruition that is part of the process. Should the author decide to give away the product itself, the backer has no recourse. For instance in the case of Tim Pratt, he received $11,241 to fund his next novel in the Grim Tides series. A digital book was given to each backer at the $20 or more level. Pratt then serialized the novel online for free. None of the backers appeared to have commented on this move negatively.

A fan’s generosity is a glorious thing. Cassandra Clare and her flatmates received money from their fans after Clare’s laptop was stolen. The donations were so generous that the amount exceeded the cost of the laptops and an unspecified amount was purportedly sent to charity. In 2008, Vera Nazarian of Norilana books raised over $30,000 to save her house from foreclosure. Vera ostensibly needed only a little over $11,000. A year later, however, Vera was back with news that she was metaphorically under water again. She doesn’t ask for money, but she asks for help selling her book.

Let’s be clear here. No one is forcing people to give money. No one is forcing people to be backers. We presume that everyone is of sound mind and donating funds because they are financially capable of doing so. But at what point does the backer’s money move from charitable giving to an actual investment with an expected return?

In today’s Kickstarter world, what should readers and authors expect in a small number patronage system? I asked around. One reader shared with me that she would never participate in a Kickstarter program because it was simply too close to internet panhandling. An author expressed fears about becoming beholden to the reader in terms of the direction and production of a piece. Another reader shared she had invested in a few kickstarter programs but that she received a product in return.

Sometimes people are irresponsible with the money. As an investor, you might be entitled to an accounting of how your investment is spent and you also get a portion of the profit. The profit is actually what makes investing losses okay because your investments are spread out over a number of projects and the hope is that one succeeds even if ten fail. Some portion, however, of the Kickstarter projects are mere charity. Or gifts, not investments.

When artists start asking for charitable giving from readers and fans, does the “George RR Martin is not your bitch” philosophy apply? Do the rules change?

Related posts:

1. Dear Authors: Can We Put Some Mystery Back Into Our Relationship?
2. Terry Pratchett Donates $1 Million to Alzhiemer’s Research. Fans Strive to Match It.
3. Tuesday Midday Links: Crowd Based Patronage

Short Answer: It depends.

Longer Answer:

The courts have constructed a two part test to determine if characters enjoy copyright.  This test has been unevenly applied across the circuit courts (the courts just below the US Supreme Court).  The first test is to determine whether the character is capable of copyright.  In other words, a vague, undeveloped character may not even be capable of copyright.    This test is known as the “distinct delineation” threshold.

Distinct Delineation Threshold

Judge Learned Hand (greatest name of a judge ever) developed the “distinctly delineated” threshold in the landmark 1930 case Nichols v. Universal Pictures,  45 F.2d 119 (2d Cir. 1930) A playwright wrote a play titled “Abie’s Irish Rose” about a wealthy Jewish family with a widowed father who runs a business with his only child, a son. The son was a philanderer who mostly engages in relationships with Gentiles.  The son secretly marries an Irish Catholic but lies to his father that the secret wife is Jewish.  The girl’s father is from California and has a great distaste for Jews and hopes his daughter marries a good Irishman.  The two are disowned by their respective fathers, but the grandchildren bring the families together again.

Universal Pictures produced a movie called “The Cohens and The Kellys” featuring two poor families living next door to each other, one Irish and one Jewish.  The Jewish father owns a business and the Irish father is a policeman.  The wives are alive.  The Jewish family inherits a fortune and moves away.  The Jewish girl and the Irish boy marry secretly.  The daughter is disowned and then ultimately the two families are brought together by the grandchildren.

In regards to the characters themselves, Judge Hand wrote:

Nor need we hold that the same may not be true as to the characters, quite in- dependently of the “plot” proper, though, as far as we know, such a case has never arisen. If Twelfth Night were copyrighted, it is quite possible that a second comer might so closely imitate Sir Toby Belch or Malvolio as to infringe, but it would not be enough that for one of his characters he cast a riotous knight who kept wassail to the discomfort of the household, or a vain and foppish steward who became amorous of his mistress. These would be no more than Shakespeare’s “ideas” in the play, as little capable of monopoly as Einstein’s Doctrine of Relativity, or Darwin’s theory of the Origin of Species. It follows that the less developed the characters, the less they can be copy- righted; that is the penalty an author must bear for marking them too indistinctly.

….

It is indeed scarcely credible that she should not have been aware of those stock figures, the low comedy Jew and Irishman. The defendant has not taken from her more than their prototypes have contained for many decades. If so, obviously so to generalize her copyright, would allow her to cover what was not original with her.

Id.  Thus, because the characters were “stock” and lacked distinct features and characteristics, the Universal Pictures movie did not infringe.

In Detective Comics, Inc. v. Bruns Publications, 111 F.2d 432 (2^nd Cir. 1940) the Second Circuit was asked to determine whether a comic called Wonderman infringed on the Superman copyright.  Wonderman argued that “various attributes of “Superman” find prototypes or analogues among the heroes of literature and mythology”  Id. at 433.  The Second Circuit disagreed, finding that the “pictorial representations and verbal descriptions of ‘Superman’ are not a mere delineation of a benevolent Hercules, but embody an arrangement of incidents and literary expressions original with the author, they are proper subjects of copyright and susceptible to infringement.” Id. at 434

The Superman issue was revisited several times but to contrary results in the Warner Bros, Inc. v. ABC, 720 F.2d 231 (2^nd Cir. 1983)  ABC produced a television show called Hero which depicted an ordinary and timid high school teacher, divorced and struggling with his son, turning into a super hero, complete with super hero abilities, and a lycra costume.

If a defendant copies substantial portions of a plaintiff’s sequence of events, he does not escape infringement by adding original episodes somewhere along the line. A graphic or three-dimensional work is created to be perceived as an entirety. Significant dissimilarities between two works of this sort inevitably lessen the similarity that would otherwise exist between the total perceptions of the two works. The graphic rendering of a character has aspects of both the linear, literary mode and the multi-dimensional total perception. What the character thinks, feels, says, and does and the descriptions conveyed by the author through the comments of other characters in the work episodically fill out a viewer’s 242*242 understanding of the character. At the same time, the visual perception of the character tends to create a dominant impression against which the similarity of a defendant’s character may be readily compared, and significant differences readily noted.

…

Ultimately, care must be taken to draw the elusive distinction between a substantially similar character that infringes a copyrighted character despite slight differences in appearance, behavior, or traits, and a somewhat similar though non-infringing character whose appearance, behavior, or traits, and especially their combination, significantly differ from those of a copyrighted character, even though the second character is reminiscent of the first one. Stirring one’s memory of a copyrighted character is not the same as appearing to be substantially similar to that character, and only the latter is infringement.

…

A character is an aggregation of the particular talents and traits his creator selected for him. That each one may be an idea does not diminish the expressive aspect of the combination. But just as similarity cannot be rejected by isolating as an idea each characteristic the characters have in common, it cannot be found when the total perception of all the ideas as expressed in each character is fundamentally different.

Id. at 241-42.  The Court determined that the “overall perception” of the main character in Hero was substantionally different and it is not infringing when the character shares “some of the superhuman traits popularized by the Superman character and now widely shared within the superhero genre.”  Id. at 243.

The Southern District of New York used the distinctly delineated test in finding that Tarzan and the characters in the Tarzan works of Edgar Rice Burroughs were “well-delineated” and entitled to protection:

Thus, in the case at bar, characters that are well-delineated in the Tarzan works of Edgar Rice Burroughs are protected from infringement by the copyright in the work itself. Since appropriation of a well-delineated character contained in copyrighted works without the copyright proprietor’s authorization would constitute infringement, it must be concluded that the grant by which one acquires the right to use that character constitutes a right arising under copyright within the meaning of § 304(c).

The only issue remaining is whether any of the characters MGM was entitled to use under its license were sufficiently delineated by the author to be copyrightable. It is beyond cavil that the character “Tarzan” is delineated in a sufficiently distinctive fashion to be copyrightable. See Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. v. Mann Theatres, 195 U.S.P.Q. 159 (C.D.Cal.1976); Brylawski, Protection of Characters — Sam Spade Revisited, 22 Bull. Copyright Soc’y 77, 83-84 (1974). Tarzan is the ape-man. He is an individual closely in tune with his jungle environment, able to communicate with animals yet able to experience human emotions. He is athletic, innocent, youthful, gentle and strong. He is Tarzan.

Id. at 391.  The ultimate ruling was upheld by the Second Circuit but did not address the copyrightability of characters directly.

The Story Being Told

In Warner Brothers v. Columbia Broadcasting Systems, 216 F.2d 945 (9^th Cir. 1954) , the court took a different, more liberal approach with a new standard called “The Story Being Told.”

Dashiell Hammett and his publisher Knopf granted exclusive rights to Warner Brothers to use The Maltese Falcon “writings” in moving pictures, radio and television.  (For all of $8,500)  Later Hammett assigned the rights to the characters to CBS including Detective Sam Space.  Warner sued CBS asserting that Warner only had the right to the characters The Maltese Falcon.

It is our conception of the area covered by the copyright statute that when a study of the two writings is made and it is plain from the study that one of them is not in fact the creation of the putative author, but instead has been copied in substantial part exactly or in transparent re-phrasing to produce essentially the story of the other writing, it infringes.

It is conceivable that the character really constitutes the story being told, but if the character is only the chessman in the game of telling the story he is not within the area of the protection afforded by the copyright.

Id. at 950.  The Ninth Circuit determined that the characters such as Sam Spade were not the story but rather merely a vehicle for the story being told. What an obscure and confusing standard, right?

The Ninth Circuit revisited the “story being told” test in Walt Disney Productions v. Air Pirates, 581 F.2d 751 (1978).  Air Pirates produced a comic that “centered around ‘a rather bawdy depiction of the Disney characters as active members of a free thinking, promiscuous, drug ingesting counterculture.’”  Id. at 753.  (Think Disney porn) In this case, the Ninth Circuit basically said that the story being told doesn’t apply to characters that are graphically represented.

In reasoning that characters “are always limited and always fall into limited patterns,” Judge Stephens recognized that it is difficult to delineate distinctively a literary character. Cf. Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corp., 45 F.2d 119 (2d Cir. 1930), certiorari denied, 282 U.S. 902, 51 S.Ct. 216, 75 L.Ed. 795. When the author can add a visual image, however, the difficulty is reduced. See generally 1 Nimmer on Copyright § 30. Put another way, while many literary characters may embody little more than an unprotected idea (see Sid & Marty Krofft Television v. McDonald’s Corp., 562 F.2d 1157 (9th Cir. 1977)), a comic book character, which has physical as well as conceptual qualities, is more likely to contain some unique elements of expression. Because comic book characters therefore are distinguishable from literary characters, the Warner Brothers language does not preclude protection of Disney’s characters.[11]

Id. at 755.  Based on the language in the Air Pirates case, it could be safe to conclude that there is no copyright protection for characters in literary fiction.  But wait, there’s more.

Judge Posner from the Seventh Circuit declared that Warner Brothers case and “the story being told” test dead (or rather he says the Air Pirate case killed it).  In Gaiman v. McFarlane, 306 F.3d 644 (7^th Cir. 2004), Neil Gaiman brought an infringement suit against another comic book writer and illustrator, McFarlane.  McFarlane began publishing a comic book series called “Spawn”.  The leading character in “Spawn” was Al Simmons.  Gaiman argued that he had co ownership in the characters in Spawn, particularly Angela, Count Nicholas Cogliostro and Medieval Spawn (a name given by McFarlane) which Gaiman argued made the Spawn series successful.  Interestingly McFarlane was the person who drew the characters whereas Gaiman was the one who suggested character traits and helped to craft the overall storyline.  But the court viewed the two as co contributors and thus co owners of the copyrightable elements of the comic, including the characters.

McFarlane argued, without success, that the fictional characters are not copyrightable.

 A stock character is a stock example of the operation of the doctrine, e.g., Cavalier  v. Random House, Inc., 297 F.3d 815, 824-25 (9th Cir.2002); Williams v. Crichton, supra, 84 F.3d at 588-89, and a drunken old bum is a stock character. Walker v. Time Life Films, Inc., 784 F.2d 44, 50 (2d Cir.1986). If a drunken old bum were a copyrightable character, so would be a drunken suburban housewife, a gesticulating Frenchman, a fire-breathing dragon, a talking cat, a Prussian officer who wears a monocle and clicks his heels, a masked magician, Rice v. Fox Broadcasting Co., 330 F.3d 1170, 1175-76 (9th Cir.2003), and, in Learned Hand’s memorable paraphrase of Twelfth Night, “a riotous knight who kept wassail to the discomfort of the household, or a vain and foppish steward who became amorous of his mistress.” Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corp., 45 F.2d 119, 121 (2d Cir.1930). It would be difficult to write successful works of fiction without negotiating for dozens or hundreds of copyright licenses, even though such stereotyped characters are the products not of the creative imagination but of simple observation of the human comedy.

McFarlane argues that even as dolled up by the penciler, the inker, and the colorist, Cogliostro is too commonplace to be copyrightable. Gaiman could not copyright a character described merely as an unexpectedly knowledgeable old wino, that is true; but that is not his claim. He claims to be the joint owner of the copyright on a character that has a specific name and a specific appearance. Cogliostro’s age, obviously phony title (“Count”), what he knows and says, his name, and his faintly Mosaic facial features combine to create a distinctive character. No more is required for a character copyright. DC Comics Inc. v. Reel Fantasy, Inc., 696 F.2d 24, 25, 28 (2d Cir.1982) (Batman, though assumed rather than actually determined to be copyrightable); Walt Disney Productions v. Air Pirates, 581 F.2d 751, 753-55 (9th Cir.1978) (Mickey Mouse et al.); Detective Comics v. Bruns Publications, 111 F.2d 432, 433-34 (2d Cir.1940) (Superman); Fleischer Studios, Inc. v. Ralph A. Freundlich, Inc., supra, 73 F.2d at 278 (Betty Boop). As long as the character is distinctive, other authors can use the stock character out of which it may have been built without fear (well, without too much fear) of being accused as infringers.

Id. at 660.

Summary 

The summary?  The law is quite unsettled about whether characters in literary fiction are copyrightable.  Judge Hand wrote in Nichols in regard to the substantial similarity test that “[n]obody has ever been able to fix that boundary, and nobody ever can.” Id.  That’s a maxim that every person wondering about infringement will have to take to heart, whether that person is the original creator or the “second comer” as Hand would call her.

Final Note:

Courtney Milan reminded me of the Wendt v. Host International case in which the Ninth Circuit found that actors controlled a right of publicity for their fictional characters.  Paramount Pictures owned the copyright to “Cheers” and granted a license to Host Interntional to create a series of bars with animatronic robots of Norm and Cliff.   The actors, George Wendt and John Ratzenberger sued Host for using their likenesses in a way that Wendt and Rtazenberger had not authorized.   The Wendt case went up and down from trial court to appellate court three times and ended up with the actors settling with the restauranteurs. The 1999 denial of rehearing is accompanied by a dissent from Alex Kozinski that begins, famously, with the line “Robots again.”  Kozinski was referring to a Vanna White case that arose out of a robot wearing a blonde wig and looking nothing like Vanna. (The jury awarded 400,000 in damages).  The Ninth Circuit, perhaps because it is the circuit in which California rests, has a broad right of publicity doctrine which is intended to protect famous people from things beyond using their face, voice, or name, but also the likeness of that famous person, measured in three dimensions.

The district court compared photographs of plaintiffs Wendt and Ratzenberger with photographs of the animatronic figures and took “judicial notice” of the fact that the figures were not identical to plaintiffs. This conclusion appears to have been the basis of the district court’s summary judgment on the section 3344 claims. We need not determine whether the district court’s purported taking of judicial notice was correct. Assuming that the facts judicially noticed are true, the case is not at an end. The question here is whether the three dimensional animatronic figures are sufficiently similar to plaintiffs to constitute their likenesses. Based on the limited record before us, it cannot be said as a matter of law that the figures are so dissimilar from plaintiffs that no reasonable trier of fact could find that them to be “likenesses.” That question must be determined by a comparison of the actual, three-dimensional entities.

Wendt v Host Int’l, 50 F.3d 18 (9th Cir. 1995)

Finally, my standard disclaimer: get thee to a lawyer if you have a specific question.  This is an intellectual exercise, insofar as anything including “robots again” can be considered such. If you take any action based on what has been written here, we aren’t responsible for any damages you incur.

Related posts:

1. University of Michigan Weighs in on Fair Use, Copyright and Google Bookscanning
2. Could Compulsory Licensing Work for Fiction?
3. 2nd Circuit Opinion Says No Damages from Copyright Infringement Unless Work Is Registered

The issues of plagiarism and copyright overlap in fan fiction (and fiction in general) causing a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding.  Wholesale copying without attribution (giving credit to the source) is plagiarism but not always copyright infringement.  Copyright infringement can happen even when credit is being given.  This piece attempts to talk about the two in a broad sense. None of the following should be considered legal advice.  If you have a specific legal question, consult with an intellectual property attorney.  This blog and the authors of the blog will not be responsible for any harm or damages suffered by one who takes action because of the contents of this post.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is an ethical issue. Ethics are defined by the community. For instance, lawyers are bound by a code of ethics and while there is a “Model Code”, each state bar association sets out the rules of appropriate behavior for lawyers who are members in that state. Those rules can be completely different. I live in Iowa and we have very restrictive advertising rules. Nebraska and Illinois advertising rules are much more lenient. There has been a lot of campaigning by the attorneys in Iowa who live on the borders between the states to loosen the advertising rules.

Thus, what is considered ethical in the community of lawyers in Nebraska and Illinois is different than what is considered ethical in the community of lawyers in Iowa.

What the community of readers at fanfiction.net might believe is ethical behavior might be different than what binds students at Harvard University. Because ethics can depend upon the community, the definition of plagiarism can vary from person to person.

Most people can agree that verbatim copying is plagiarism but at universities, there is other examples of plagiarism. The Modern Language Association has adopted this definition:

 ”Using another person’s ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source constitutes plagiarism…. [T]o plagiarize is to give the impression that you wrote or thought something that you in fact borrowed from someone, and to do so is a violation of professional ethics…. Forms of plagiarism include the failure to give appropriate acknowledgment when repeating another’s wording or particularly apt phrase, paraphrasing another’s argument, and presenting another’s line of thinking” (6.1; see also Gibaldi, MLA Handbook, ch. 2).

Thus plagiarism is not dependent upon exact or verbatim copying nor is it dependent on the size of the source reference used.  Plagiarism depends, in large part, on what amount of borrowing one does without attribution.  Fan fiction is almost always referencing the source work of their material and thus is less prone to be plagiarizing the original work.  Fan fics that copy other works including other fan works or other published works and passing it off as one’s own is also plagiarism.  Cassandra Clare is accused to have passed off someone else’s fan fiction as her own work, for example.

Copyright

Copyright isn’t well understood by fans or creators.  Essentially copyright is a bundle of rights that accompanies the fixed expression of an idea.  It’s the fixed expression that is protected, not the idea.  When an author writes a book or a television show is created and produced, there are a number of rights that develop known as intellectual property rights. These are not true property rights, like ownership of land (known as real property) or your car (known as personal property) but certain rights to distribution, reproduction, and derivative works belong exclusively to the original copyright holder.

In fan fiction and youtube, you often see disclaimers like “no copyright infringement intended”, but copyright infringement is not based on intent. The derivative work is either infringing or not, regardless of the intent of the creator of the derivative work

According to the Copyright Act, derivative works are described as follows:

A “derivative work” is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications, which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a “derivative work”.

Copyright intersects with plagiarism when the original creator works are used regardless of attribution. In other words, in the Harry Potter case the lower court determined that the non fiction encyclopedia included too much of the original Harry Potter work.

Examples differentiating the two

Not every instance of plagiarism is infringement and vice versa. If I published Pride & Prejudice under my own name, I would be committing plagiarism, but because the work is in the “public domain”, I would not be infringing on copyright. Works in the public domain (mostly works published prior to 1923) are not entitled to copyright protection any longer.

If I published a work under my own name that contained a paragraph from 10,000 different novels and didn’t give any attribution, I would be committing plagiarism but probably not copyright infringement.  In the case of Craft v. Kobler, 667 F. Supp 120, the derivative work was found to be infringement when the passages were taken from 15 books written by the same copyright holder. In New Era Publications Int’l v. Carol Publishing Group, 904 F.2d 152 (2nd Cir. 1990) a biography which used passages from 48 different works but only a small percentage of the works were used was found to be permissible.

If I published Nora Roberts “The Next Always” under her name but without her permission, I wouldn’t be committing plagiarism, but I would be infringing on her copyright.

What I have always found fascinating about fan fiction and copyright is the conflict between fans wanting the fan fiction to hew close to the original source and the issue of copyright infringement.

More on Derivative/Transformative Works

In most cases, the closer the derivative work is to the original, the more likely it is copyright infringement. Many fan fiction and youtube creations contain a disclaimer that infringement is not intended. However, copyright infringement does not depend upon intent. George Harrison was sued for his 1969 song “My Sweet Lord.” In 1971, Bright Tunes filed a copyright infringement lawsuit alleging that it had been a copy of “He’s So Fine.” During testimony in the trial, Harrison said that he wasn’t thinking of “He’s So Fine” when he wrote the song. During the trial, the songs were compared, word for word, note for note, and the jury found Harrison guilty of infringement and was ordered for over $1.6 million in damages.

In the 1994 case of Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569 (1994), 2 Live Crew was sued for a parody of the Roy Orbison sung song “Pretty Woman.” The Acuff Rose case turns solely on a finding that 2 Live Crew’s song was a parody but it’s instructive because it sets out some of the elements in measuring fair use protection of derivative works. In evaluating whether derivative works are infringing, the methodology employed should be as follows:

Look to the nature and objects of the selections made, the quantity and value of the materials sued, and the degree in which the use may prejudice the sale, or diminish the profits or supersede the objects, of the original work.

Id. at 576.

If the work fulfills the test set forth, it is no longer derivative. Instead it is transformative or has become an original new work itself.  “The more transformative the new work, the less will be the significance of other factors, like commercialism, that may weigh against a finding of fair use.” Id. at 579.  Parody is considered transformative. “Like less ostensibly humorous forms of criticism, it can provide social benefit, by shedding light on an earlier work, and, in the process, creating a new one. “ Id. at 580.

The first element of the methodology is looking at whether the work is looking at the nature and objects that were utilized in the secondary work.   When the secondary work does not critically examine the original work, the other factors become more important. “If, on the contrary, the commentary has no critical bearing on the substance or styel of the original compisition, which the alleged infringer merely uses to get attention or to avoid the drudgery in working up something fresh, the claim to fairness in borrowing from another’s work dimisnishes accordingly (if it I does not vasnih), and other factors, like the extent of its commerciality, loom longer.” Id. at 581-82.

The value of the materials used is less important when comparing works of fiction against each other. Althought, if comparing a short work of fiction against a longer work of fiction, this can mitigate against infringement.

The third factor refers to the quantity and value of the material uses. In other words, how much of the source material and of what important is the source material before it is infringing. In looking at 50 Shades, the characters of the Twilight series are very important whereas I would argue that the settings are less important. I.e., the Twilight series takes place primarily in Forks, Washington and the 50 Shades is also set in Washington. What makes it curiouser, however, is that Bella and Edward honeymoon in a remote paradise island and, alas, so do Ana and Christian. In Twilight, the paranormal aspects of the story are quite important and in 50 Shades, those elements are replaced with dark sexual desires. Possibly replacing a core element of the Twilight series is sufficiently different.

Finally, is the issue of commercialism. The court acknowledges that a good parody can essentially kill the market for the original however “the role of the courts is to disginuish between biting criticism [that merely] suppresses demand [and] copyright infringement,[, which] usurps it.” Id. at 592.

The aforementioned methodology, however, is a fair use defense for a derivative work.  James et al could argue that her work is not derivative but original (although given MOTUs existence this is an incredibly difficult argument to make). If the work is not derivative, then the measurement is whether the other work is infringing based on the substantial similarity standard (which is tested by a number of different concepts such as abstractions test, total concept and feel, pattern, subtractive, ”extrinsic/intrinsic”, among others).

Post Acuff Rose Cases

Two post Acuff cases of interest deal with non fiction works:

Castle Rock Entertainment Inc v. Carol Publishing Group

Castle Rock, the copyright owner of Seinfeld, sued Carol Publishing over a non fiction trivia book published about the events and characters in Seinfeld. Castle Rock Entertainment Inc v. Carol Publishing Group, 150 F.3d 132 (2nd Cir. 1998)  There was no parody defense here. Instead, the non fiction trivia book was said to inappropriately copy creative expression rather than facts.  In other words, the Senfield characters and their words were creative expression unlike the number of at bats a baseball player may have or the number of times it has rained in September in California for the past twenty years.

Harry Potter Lexicon case (Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. v. RDR Books)

J.K. Rowling sued to prevent the publication of the Harry Potter Lexicon.  This was a work based on a website that was run by the Lexicon author with the stated approval of JK Rowling herself.  Rowling argued in her complaint, however, that  “[T]here is a big difference between the innumerable Harry Potter fan sites’ latitude to discuss the Harry Potter Works in the context of free, ephemeral websites and unilaterally repackaging those sites for sale in an effort to cash in monetarily on Ms. Rowling’s creative works in contravention of her wishes and rights.” Complaint, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. v. RDR Books, (No. 07 Civ 9667), ¶ 4.  In issuing the injunction in support of Rowling, the court found that the work was not derivative, but contained too much copying of Rowling’s material to be considered fair use.  In employing the methodology in the Acuff Rose case, the judge determined that the balance of factors weighed in Rowling’s favor.  In December 2008, a rewritten version was published by RDR Books.

Fanfiction and Commercialism

Professor Rebecca Tushnet who will be on hand to answer questions later this week, argues that fan fiction is not infringement because there is no commercial aspect to fan fiction. It is written and distributed freely without renumeration. In Let Everyone Play: An Educational Perspective on Why Fan Fiction Is, or Should Be, Legal, the authors argue that a footnote in Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin (268 F.3d 1257 (11th Cir. 2001)), suggests that not for profit writing mitigates against finding fan fiction infringing:

Of great importance with respect to fan fiction is footnote 24 attached to that statement: “Randall did not choose to publish her work of fiction on the internet free to all the world to read; rather, she chose a method of publication designed to generate economic profit” (Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin, 268 F.3d 1257, 1269 (2001)).

Disclaimers v. Cease and Desist Letters

Like the ineffectiveness of copyright disclaimers by fan fiction writers so to are many of the cease and desist letters/emails/blog posts written by authors lacking in legal support.  Merely because the original creator doesn’t like slash fiction or AU fiction that is loosely based on their work doesn’t mean that the fan fiction work is infringing. In other words, the author of the original work does not decide what is infringing. C&D letters are not legal determinations of wrongdoing either. Often C&D letters are used simply to scare someone into taking an action that the author of the C&D letter desires.  A C&D letter should not be ignored, but whether a work is copyright infringement depends on the actual text of the secondary work.

Conclusion

From a purely intellectual standpoint, a case involving 50 Shades and Twilight would be fascinating. 50 Shades was fan fiction. It was written by an author who gives her direct source of inspiration to a copyrighted work. It has dozens of similarities with the original, particularly the emotional arcs of the characters and the characters’ traits, but it also deviates in major ways. It speaks to the issue of copyright of characters, rights of publicity of the actors like Pattison and Stewart, and the scope of transformative works. While the case would likely go to trial where a jury would decide it, the mere fact that a case like this makes it past the motion point would provide good precedent. It could clarify the legal bounds of fan fiction and identify more clearly the issue of derivative works.

(Of interest and not covered  here is to what extent James has protection over her unregistered work, Masters of the Universe.  While copyright exists for any fixed expression of an idea, it is not entitled to statutory damages until the work is registered even though under Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, 130 S. Ct. 1237 (2010), the Supreme Court ruled that registration is not a jurisdictional prerequisite to filing an infringement suit, but it does prevent the damages to which an unregistered work may be entitled.  It might not even be possible for James to register her work because it lacks originality without the unchanged names, locations, and the like. It might also limit the claims of piracy she could make against the freely shared MOTU).

Related posts:

1. ALERT: Major Plagiarism of Reviews Occurring on eBay Seller Site
2. RWA Panel on Plagiarism
3. The Proper Application of Fair Use

I asked Molly O’Keefe and Caitlin Crews if they would share some thoughts on shame and the romance heroine.  The two were obvious choices for me because Crews and O’Keefe both write about the topics in their books.  In the Disgraced Playboy, the heroine’s entire life is shaped by some modeling photos she had done as a teen.  She was made to feel that these photographs were shameful rather than a beautiful exhibition of her body.  Later in the book, the heroine learns to embrace her past and reclaim her self esteem.  In Molly O’Keefe’s upcoming Can’t Buy Me Love, the heroine had a rather disgraceful past and she attempted to earn her redemption through hard work and loyalty.   In Can’t Buy Me Love, the concept of a woman’s worthiness is played out in three women at different stages of self acceptance.  

From the desk of Molly O’Keefe:

I cut my romance reading teeth in the early 1990′ when the seductions were forced, the misunderstandings lasted the whole book and the heroines carried deep-seated sexual shame

In the historicals I loved, the shame manifested itself in the shameful past or secret. This usually involved terrible physical or sexual abuse, or rape (sometimes by the hero) which resulted in our heroine obviously being terrified of men and intimacy, but often she lost her virginity before it’s proper use as a commodity.  (Catherine Coulter, Katherine Sutcliffe, early Jude Devereaux.)  A twist on this, the hero would think that the heroine wasn’t a virgin, thanks to her shameful past, only to realize his error when they finally had sex. (Judith McNaught, Elizabeth Lowell).

In the contemporaries,  the heroine was shamed by her lack of sexuality. Having been convinced by some former lover that she was frigid, or “not woman enough” to satisfy a man. Again, Elizabeth Lowell was the master of this. The heroines in these books were just waiting for the right man to show her what a woman she was.

This device worked on several levels. First, the sex in these books was conflicted. It was epic. The plot advanced through sex and it was all emotionally-charged and angsty.  Those love scenes had plot lines of their own, and dialogue. Hot, heady stuff.

Second, the heroine had to work her way past the shame. She had to deal with it. It gave the heroine something to “do.” The heroines in these books never had jobs, or work. I can’t remember them having children. They were basically foils to the alpha heroes who needed to be redeemed.  And what better way to redeem a hero then having him fix the heroine? He wasn’t just the catalyst for her to get over her past, or forgive herself (for things that were clearly not her fault) he erased her shame with his touch.

He healed her past. Completed her. Oh! The power of fourteen page love scenes and expert cunnilingus.

With all this exciting growth and change romance authors couldn’t give heroines sexual shame anymore and romance readers no longer bought that form of conflict (for the most part—they’re still out there), it didn’t work.

But authors and readers still want her to feel shame. The emotional arc is just too powerful – from guilt to forgiveness, from self-loathing to self-acceptance. We’re seeing more and more heroines make some bad choices, suffer the consequences and drive the plot.

While heroes could do terrible things in the past and feel great remorse and shame, they handled it by being darker, more anti-hero. The worse his shame, the worse he behaved, but then the more powerful his redemption  (JR Ward’s Lover Awakened).

But our heroines with shame (Sugar Beth from Ain’t She Sweet) they’re plucky. They’re earnest. They do their best, running constantly into the glass ceiling of their own sense of self-worth. They know they don’t deserve happiness or love or to let all their skeletons out of their closets (Victoria Dahl’s impressive Lead Me On), they don’t get to be the people they really want to be because of what they’ve done.

For me and many romance readers, this is utterly endearing. It’s sympathetic and heart-breaking. The hero, who can no longer save her with oral sex, now has figure out how to get past all the land mines of her self-hatred and secret keeping, and then has to figure out how to make the heroine see the woman he sees. Our hero has to enable the heroine to break through that glass ceiling – and when this happens it’s magic.

We want our heroine to suffer for love, to be lifted free of something by love. Shame happens to fit the bill perfectly when it’s done right. That’s why we read romance. Well, that and expert cunnilingus.

From the desk of Caitlin Crews:

I don’t know that my own thoughts are as linear as Molly’s, sadly.  I’m going to throw them out here and hope for some clarity…

I’m interested in the ways in which shame informs and shapes women (and thus my heroines), and while it seems there is always a link to something sexual in there (a sad commentary on our society, I’d say, and the experiences that too many girls have on their way to womanhood and then through it) I wonder if what I’m most interested in has more to do with my heroines’ sense of their own essential worthlessness.

I think the women I write about have forged their identities in response to, or in revolt against, various feelings of powerlessness (and subjugation, and an often imposed-upon-them or self-imposed notion of some kind of “dirtiness,” and whatever else lurks in that dark little cocktail they carry around inside) and those that made them feel that way.  Often, they have turned on themselves, beating themselves up with their own sense of shame.  Often the hero is specially crafted to really push the boundaries of that shame, forcing the heroine to examine it and eventually move through it.

But shame is so versatile, and so hardy, and sneaks into so many aspects of their lives.  Dark pasts, desperate secrets, consuming horror at old choices or others’ responses to them.  Suspecting that deep down they are, in fact, worthless, and that if the hero (or anyone) knew “the truth” about them, he (they) would agree and be forced to act accordingly.  When things blow up, there is usually some sick sense on the heroine’s part that she should have expected this—that it was always going to come to this and it was, in the end, inevitable.  It’s always my hope that what she does next is move forward anyway, that much stronger for facing her deepest fear.

Many of the women I know are incredibly strong, and yet are also involved in complicated daily vigils, keeping watch for the other shoe, which, they are certain, is going to drop because it always does.  It always will, sooner or later.  There’s a fatalism in this (and perhaps a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy?), but there’s also that feeling of inevitability.  We don’t deserve [insert good thing].  It will be taken from us.  It’s only a question of when.

It’s that worthlessness, isn’t it?  That suspicion the truth will come out and everyone will see the ugly, shameful truth.  And we’ll be left alone.

I set out to write Larissa, the heroine of my book Heiress Behind the Headlines, by accident.  I’d originally intended to kill her off in the book where she first appeared as more of a plot device, but saved her at the last minute because I thought it might be a lot of fun to write a “bad girl” heroine en route to her own redemption.  Larissa is filled with shame over the things she’s done, but she also realizes that there’s no possible way to apologize for them; she can only live, survive, change, and pay the price for her earlier choices.  The price is pretty steep.  I’m fascinated by the way our press (our culture) demonizes celebrities, forcing them into harsh narratives and roles in the media that have very little to do with the real people behind the famous names.

I’m also fascinated by how much harder we are on the women we believe have toppled from great heights.  Charlie Sheen, for example, received a national tour and the most amount of Twitter followers in the least amount of time while Lindsay Lohan, who appears to share similar substance abuse and addiction issues, is crucified.  Why is that?  What about pretty girls with problems brings out the mob mentality in us?  And why, to bring it back to romance novels and to echo a point Molly made, do we forgive a Dark and Shameful Past in a hero so much more readily?

I wonder, are we all complicit in that sense of shame, of worthlessness, so many women feel—even if they don’t happen to be scandalous heiresses chased hither and yon by the devouring, vicious press, like my Larissa?

In books, we use love to light up those dark places, to chase away worthlessness, to bring heroines the kind of joy they never previously imagined they could ever feel, much less be worthy of feeling.  This is what romance novels do, as Molly said.  What heroes do for their heroines (and vice versa).  This is what love does, or should do, in my opinion.  And what romances do so well.  Take away the shame.  Make us new.  Make it all okay.  Or so we hope.

Related posts:

1. Guest Opinion from Reader DM: The Defeated Heroine
2. REVIEW: The Disgraced Playboy by Caitlin Crews
3. Why I Buy Books from Mills & Boon UK, Part 1: Katrakis’ Last Mistress by Caitlin Crews

Remember in the movie Say Anything when Lloyd Dobbler, broken-hearted that Diane Court had ended their relationship, stood outside her window while she was napping blasting Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes? Rather than thinking of this as creepy, stalkerish behavior, my teenage heart swooned. Imagine, a boy who will do anything to win your love. When I look back on the scene now, I still see the teenage romance of it, but also think if I’d been Diane’s parent, I’d have run him off. But my point is Lloyd standing there with the boom box is what began my lifelong love affair with the Big Romantic Gesture.

Many of my favorite romances have them: gestures so grandiose, so big that they make the reader certain that the love between the hero and heroine will last forever. After all, if they’re willing to give up everything, dare anything for love, it must be the love of a lifetime. When I started thinking about the Big Romantic Gestures that stand out most to me in my years of reading romance, there were three that came to mind.

First, in Judith McNaught’s A Kingdom of Dreams, Jennifer Merrick, a plucky young heroine is abducted from a convent and forced to marry her family’s lifelong enemy, Royce Westmoreland, Duke of Claymore. Claymore is the champion of the king, his finest weapon, and a man who lives his life on the battlefield. He certainly knows nothing of love or tenderness. And yet Jenny challenges him constantly, and bewitches him with her intelligence and her willingness to do anything to uphold her family’s honor. Soon the two find themselves falling in love until Royce kills Jenny’s brother who he thought was drawing a knife to kill him, despite giving Jenny his word that he’d not harm her family. The king convenes a tournament, and commands Royce to participate.  Royce is determined to honor his promise to not draw another drop of Merrick blood which allows Jenny’s family, also participating in the tournament, to do their best to kill him. That is until…

Through the haze of sweat and blood and pain that blurred his vision and fogged his mind, Royce thought for a moment he saw the figure of a woman running – running toward him, her uncovered hair tossing about her, glinting in the sun with red and gold. Jennifer! In disbelief, he squinted, staring, while the earsplitting thunder of the crowd rose higher and higher.

Royce groaned inwardly, trying to push himself to his feet with his unbroken right arm. Jennifer had come back – now, to witness his defeat. Or his death. Even so, he didn’t want her to see him die groveling, and with the last ounce of strength he possessed, he managed to stagger to his feet. Reaching up, he wiped the back of his hand across his eyes, his vision cleared, and he realized he was not imagining it. Jennifer was moving toward him, and an eerie silence was descending over the crowd.

Jenny stifled a scream when she was close enough to see his arm dangling brokenly at his side. She stopped in front of him, and her father’s bellow from the sidelines made her head jerk toward the lance lying at Royce’s feet. “Use it!” he thundered. “Use the lance, Jennifer.”

Royce understood then why she had come; she had come to finish the task her relatives had begun; to do to him what he had done to her brother. Unmoving, he watched her, noting that tears were pouring down her beautiful face as she slowly bent down. But instead of reaching for his lance or her dagger, she took his hand between both of hers and pressed her lips to it. Through his daze of pain and confusion, Royce finally understood that she was kneeling to him, and a groan tore from his chest: “Darling” he said brokenly, tightening his hand, trying to make her stand, “don’t do this…”

But his wife wouldn’t listen. In front of seven thousand onlookers, Jennifer Merrick Westmoreland, countess of Rockbourn, knelt before her husband in a public act of humble obeisance, her face pressed to his hand, her shoulders wrenched with violent sobs.

A Kingdom of Dreams, Judith McNaught (pp 420-421)

The second example comes from The Warlords of the Plains series by Elizabeth Vaughan. In Warprize, Xylara is the daughter of the warrior king, Xyron. When her father dies, her insane half-brother inherits the throne. The kingdom’s fiercest enemies, the Firelanders, have come to overthrow the kingdom. Xylara, a trained healer, begins healing the Firelander prisoners, and gets to know them. She learns their language and some of their customs and her respect for their way of life grows. Lara never expects that Keir of the Cat, the leader of the Firelanders, would sneak into the encampment to check on his warriors, nor did she expect that he would demand her in exchange for peace. Her brother agrees, telling Lara that she will be a slave, a Warprize, in order to ensure peace for her people. Lara, being a loyal servant of the crown goes, assuming that she’ll be treated as a slave and concubine to Keir. But in the Firelander encampment, Lara finds peace and love with the fierce leader of her country’s enemy. In the end, Keir decides he must leave Lara in Xy as the newly ascended leader of the kingdom, while he and his people return to Xy.

The sky was a vibrant orange when I finally heard the thunder of hooves behind me. I didn’t turn, just continued to walk at a steady pace. For a brief moment, I feared that Simus or Other had sent troops after me. But instead, as Simus had predicted, the first of the rear scouts moved past me at a gallop, their horses veering around me. One looked back, and let out a yelp of surprise. He pulled on the reins so hard his horse reared, legs splayed in its effort to stop. The other scout, hearing the noise, pulled his sword, and turned off the road, arcing back to me.

I ignored them and kept walking.

The first scout came up on horseback. “Warprize?” he asked, looking horrified. I looked up to see Tant, the warrior that had been whipped for falling asleep on watch.

The other scout came up, scanning for danger. He glanced at his partner. “That’s the Warprize?” […]

It seemed like hours before there was a commotion ahead of us. A cloud of dust betrayed the horsemen coming hard and fast up the road. My self-appointed guard faded back as Keir came thundering into view, galloping his horse, his scarlet cloak flaring behind him. There were a few more men behind him. I stopped and stood where I was, waiting.

Keir reared his horse to a stop in front of me. The animal towered over me, and I could hear its harsh breathing. I kept my eyes down, on the road.

“What in the name of all the elements do you think you are doing?” Keir thundered.

“Following my Warlord.” I kept my voice steady.

Warprize, Elizabeth Vaughan [pp. 311-312]

In both cases the heroine gives up everything she’s known for love of her hero – the Big Romantic Gesture. The gestures, so enormous that the reader is assured of the enduring love between the couple.

So how about the heroes? I struggled thinking of a hero who made the Big Romantic Gesture.  Then I took to Twitter and was reminded of the actions of Raphael, Archangel of New York in Nalini Singh’s Angel’s Blood. When Uram, an archangel and a member of the Cadre of Ten archangels who rule the world, goes rogue, falling into bloodlust,  the archangels must turn to Hunter Born Elena Devereaux to hunt down the threat to humans, vampires and angels alike. Having lived millennia, he’s lost almost all of his humanity, but when he meets Elena he is captivated. Elena is both terrified and undeniably attracted to Raphael, and due to the extreme danger of her hunt, she is very close proximity to him almost constantly.  But as they get closer, Raphael realizes that he is losing just a bit of his immortality through his attraction to Elena. This loss could jeopardize his rule, but Raphael can’t help himself. He’s never had anyone treat him with anything other than deference, and Elena is anything but deferential.  As Elena and Raphael track the rogue archangel, they fall deeper and deeper in love.

During the final confrontation with Uram, Elena sustains life-threatening wounds.

One of Uram’s last, desperate bolts had hit the building. Raphael knew Elena had to have been on the very edge of the eight-story structure when she’d shot up at Uram. That edge was now gone, but he could feel Elena’s life, feel her dying flame. Elena, answer me.

Quiet, peaceful, a hush of sounds. Then, Stay a little human, won’t you Raphael?

A request that was almost not a sound at all. But it was enough. He followed the mental thread to discover her broken body on the narrow ledge provided by a precariously hanging neon sign. Her back was shattered, her legs twisted in a way that was nothing natural. But she smiled when she saw him. And her hand still held the gun that had saved more lives than anyone would ever know.

He dared not touch her, afraid he’d cause her to slip over the ledge. “You are not to die.”

A slow blink. “Bossy.” It was a sound bubbled through with blood. The voice isn’t working so good. […]

His canines elongated, and a strange, beautiful, golden taste filled his mouth as he felt a tear slide down his face. He was an archangel. He had not cried in over a thousand years.  […]

His heart stopped beating when her voice faded, and he leaned forward, his mouth overwhelmed by the taste of beauty, of life. “I won’t let you die. I had your blood tested. You’re compatible.”

Her lashes struggled to open, failed. But her mental voice, though weak, was adamant. I don’t want to be a vampire. Bloodsucking’s not my thing.

“You must live.” And then he kissed her, feeding that golden taste, that intoxicating blend into her mouth. You must live.

That was when the sign gave away, tearing loose from the building and plunging to the ground in a shattering crash. Elena didn’t fall alone, gathered as she was in Raphael’s arms, his mouth fused with hers. They fell together, his wings close to destroyed, his soul melded to that of a mortal.

If this is death, Guild Hunter, he thought to his mortal as angelfire scored through his boned and touched his heart, then I will see you on the other side.

Angel’s Blood, Nalini Singh [Kindle  location: 4442-4470]

Raphael’s sacrifice, giving up his life as one of the most powerful beings in the world, his rule in the Cadre of Ten, his very immortality, is the very essence of the Big Romantic Gesture. He gives up everything for love.

The Big Romantic Gesture is not a necessary element of a successful romance, in fact, it’s somewhat rare. But when an author successfully writes it, it causes what I call the “big sigh” of a reading experience. For it to be effective the author must build the foundation – both conflict and romance.  The stakes must be raised in order for the gesture to carry the weight of the “ultimate sacrifice”. If the author fails to establish the foundation, they risk the gesture being tell, not show.  When it is successful, it confirms for the reader that the couple’s Happily Ever After is a foregone conclusion.

Related posts:

1. Romantic Times Responds
2. Why Romantic Times Reviews Are Not Credible
3. Romantic Times Update: Still Waiting

Last week, IPG had all of the buy buttons pulled on the ebooks it sold through Amazon. The two could not come to agreement on terms. IPG wanted to have the same terms and Amazon wanted better terms. IPG took to the internet and sent out an email aka press release denouncing Amazon, encouraging its client publishers to stand firm, and asking that all future retail traffic be diverted from Amazon to other retailers.

Essentially IPG wants the 10 million plus Kindle owners to stop using their Kindles just to read IPG’s books. Do we think that is likely to happen? Oh sure, there is going to be some who will peel away, but not in major numbers. And yes, Amazon might relent.

The problem that I see is this. IPG is asking readers to make a moral decision with their wallet without providing a plausible alternative. Why not go DRM free and offer Mobi books to Kindle owners? This really strikes at the heart of Amazon because at the device prices, Amazon isn’t making money off device sales.

Why not sell direct to the consumer? Clearly the distribution arm is in place. It’s easier than ever to set up a marketplace on the internet. I doubt IPG would have the paypal problems of other distributors. We in the romance industry have seen internet retailers spring up virtually overnight.

Publishers have called on readers to be okay with their high priced ebooks, forego discounts, struggle with DRM, limit sharing, turned their backs on libraries, reject the money of our reading brethren outside of North America, but they want our help in shunning Amazon? What have you done for me lately?

Major print publishers have done what they could to slow down the adoption of ebooks. In adopting agency pricing, the major print publishers have helped to eliminate discounts and reader reward programs for digital books. Most print publishers have adopted a DRM policy, locking customers into one device or one retailer. DRM also impairs preservation of digital libraries, implementing a lease v. ownership system which instantly devalues the product for many readers. Many print publishers do not allow lending of digital books from reader to reader, not even Harlequin, even though the lending of digital books run by retailers works exactly the same way as a print book. Once that digital book is lent, the lender has no access until the book is returned by the recipient. Of the big six publishers, few will allow their books to be lent via library usage. Many, many books are not available outside the U.S. and Canada or are outrageously priced.

In sum, publishers are jacking readers over in regards to digital books but now we are supposed to act against our own financial interest or our own convenience to help publishers fight against Amazon?

We recognize that an Amazon as the exclusive vendor of books would be bad for us but what are publishers doing about it? Why is it the reader, the only party who does not make money in this equation, have to be the one to take the financial hit in the fight against Amazon? Why aren’t publishers making it easier for readers to move away from Amazon? Why aren’t they trying to appeal to our wallets instead of our morality? And what if we want to stay with Amazon for moral reasons such as that someone needs to compete with Apple and Amazon is the only one that is making an inroads there.

Here are some recommendations to win over readers. Eliminate DRM. Sell direct to Kindle owners using a mobi format. Remove agency pricing. Allow the return of readership rewards programs, loyalty programs, discounts as print readers are allowed. Wholeheartedly embrace the idea of lending and sharing of digital books. Allow discovery of books via libraries. Eliminate geographical restrictions. Encourage the concept of ownership to increase value of the digital books to the readers.

IPG could have taken the opportunity to announce sweeping changes that would enable the millions of Kindle owners leave Amazon behind. Instead, it made a moral call to action without any accompanying reciprocal action.

Related posts:

1. If You Could Talk to Publishers, What Would You Say?
2. More Business Ventures for Publishers
3. Publishers Get Wise, Undercut Amazon prices

A couple of months ago at a news site for mixed race readers, one commenter self-identified as an “Asian Cajun”, which got me remembering my journey of assumptions and corrections years ago as a romance reader.

At the time a few years ago, a huge number of “Cajun romances” – contemporary and historical – pretty much dominated the genre. In spite of this, I still didn’t understand exactly what ‘Cajun’ was.

Believe me, I tried when I investigated. I only had vague impressions. Such as “It was something to do with French and African heritages, maybe?” and “the majority of Cajuns speak French and the best-known Cajun community lives in Louisiana, U.S.”

I somehow came to believe that Cajuns had black heritage. At the time, I understood that Cajuns were historically seen on the same level of ‘Indian savages’, ‘coloureds’, ‘rednecks’ or ‘hillbillies’. I think this was why I believed that Cajuns were basically a group of mixed race Louisiana residents, with mixed Canadian Caucasian, French Caucasian and African black heritages.

I didn’t realise I was wrong until a discussion about interracial relationships in the romance genre cropped up at AAR. The reader, who asked for book recommendations, was particularly interested in those with black men as heroes. So, I suggested books by Linda Howard, Sandra Hill, Samantha Winston and some other authors. Quite a few readers quickly corrected me, explaining that not all Cajun families have black heritage. A couple thought I may have confused ‘cajun’ with ‘creole’. One suggested my mix-up was understandable because the Creole history and the Cajun history overlapped so times that some aspects are deeply entwined and some influences from each other can be found in each other.

Their correction and explanations had completely altered my mental picture of Cajun characters from romance novels, particularly Linda Howard’s legendary contemporary romances. Until then, when I read those romance novels, I had this imagery of mixed race people with black heritage. Most authors and readers treated ethnicity so differently at the time.
Particularly in contemporary romances. Such as restricting race-related issues to POC characters only, and restricting social mobility and social issues – such as class differences (rarely explicitly stated, though), universal social issues and wealth – to white characters only. As for mixed race characters? Authors tended to restrict the heavy use of physical descriptions and ‘exotic sensuality’ to mixed race people. Such as “elegantly almond-shaped eyes”, “milky mocha skin”, “a touch of exotic in smile”, “her oval face, the skin of white porcelain doll, framed by ebony straight hair”, and so on. It was almost all about sex where mixed race characters were concerned. Authors did used this to their Cajun characters as well. Such as describing Cajun characters – especially heroes – as tall, dark, exotic, and black-haired. Oh, and let’s not
forget sensuality.

They however went further than with the usual mixed race crowd. While they occasionally referenced a history of discrimination and bigotry against Cajun people, they treated Cajun characters as everyday people with ordinary problems and needs. It had the kind of balance I liked. An acknowledgement of what those characters had to deal with while still leading ordinary lives.

That was how I came to believe Cajun people had black and white heritage. The moment I understood my understanding of ‘Cajun’ was wrong, my mind was so blown. It had also completely destroyed my almost only line of defence.

Some people had repeatedly scorned the mainstream Romance genre for being “so white”, but I frequently pointed out – while acknowledging it did have its moments of fetishising and otherising – there were many popular Cajun romances, particularly in category romances. Those were extremely popular at the time, mind.

I did avoid mentioning ‘savage Indian romances’ because… Heh, come on. Cajun romances seemed better in comparison as most Cajun characters were pretty much everyday people. A refreshing change from those where authors who routinely introduced “racial issues” to justify the existence of POC heroes or heroines in their stories.

I mean in a ‘Savage Indian’ romance, a warrior would have an issue with white people so he took it out on the “lily-white” heroine. In a Cajun romance, the hero would have an issue with greedy landowners, so he took it out on the heroine for being the daughter of a greedy landowner. The latter seemed better than the former, I felt.

It didn’t even occur to me to wonder why Cajun characters were treated so differently from other POC characters in the Romance genre. I just assumed it was their French white side – and I later realised, lack of references to actual racism – that made them more acceptable to readers. (Heh, I almost wrote “less scary”.)

I should point out that I wasn’t that aware of the old “one-drop rule” issue at the time. So to me, a Cajun person was a person of mixed race ancestry. It didn’t even occur to me that a Cajun person would be seen as African American if my understanding of ‘Cajun’ was indeed right.

Once I understood that I misunderstood, I went off Cajun romances. Mostly out of embarrassment and mortification.

So that’s one of many reasons why I don’t think it’s a good idea to learn anything from fiction. Not just because I was dumb enough to misunderstand ‘Cajun’, I didn’t have enough American cultural knowledge to understand all those little nuances. Thank goodness that I’m not alone. There is a friend who once admitted he nursed a misunderstanding about the Cold War for years because of those Cold-War spy novels he loved reading.

Have you had a similar misunderstanding about – say – a culture, profession, technique or such as the result of reading a staple of specific novels?

Related posts:

1. All m/m fiction is not created equal
2. Great Sex Shouldn’t Last All Night
3. Wherein Jane Offends Authors Against Fan Fiction

Some conversations in romancelandia never go away: accuracy and authenticity in historical romance, whether Jamie Fraser of Outlander is a great hero or the greatest, and whether series books are wonderful or maddening or both. Coincidentally, I was about to finish the last book of an eight-book series when I saw a column lamenting the lack of stand-alone books in romance. I was nodding my head in agreement when I suddenly stopped and thought, wait a minute. I’ve been reading series and linked books in the romance genre as long as I’ve been reading romance, and these include some that were written before I was born. Are there really more series books and less stand-alone novels? Is it that we notice series more because we talk about them as a community? Are they publicized more, by authors and publishers? Or is it just something we have mixed feelings about so the conversation never really goes away?

There are a number of ways books can be linked to each other in a series.

(1) They can feature the same characters over a number of novels, like Eve and Roarke in J.D. Robb’s In Death series, and the relationship develops over the installments. Among non-genre books, the development of Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane’s romance by Dorothy Sayers is one of my favorites.

(2) They can feature a shared world, with different main characters in each books; previous characters make quick or more extended appearances, the way strangers and friends do in real life. Meljean Brooks’ Guardian and Iron Seas series are contemporary examples of these; Mary Burchell’s Warrender Saga books and Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire novels are blasts from the past.

(3) They can revolve around a family or set of friends, with each member of the group starring in his or her own book. They can be single-authored or multiple-authored. The Bridgertons, the Cynsters, the Mallorens, the Bedwyns and the Black Dagger Brotherhood come to mind immediately when I think family/friends series, and I don’t even read Laurens or Ward.

When I stop and think about it, romance is the only genre among the ones I read regularly where readers complain about too many series. The SFF and mystery genres are dominated by series, and the debate usually rages around issues of quality (Wheel of Time) or time between books (I know, George RR Martin is not my bitch), rather than whether they should exist at all. Characters can grow and change (Rebus, Dalziel, Spenser), or they can remain almost cartoonishly static (James Bond, Mickey Spillane, Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys).

As a young and voracious reader, I absolutely loved series, even when they petered out in the later volumes (I’ve read the first five Anne of Green Gables books more than a dozen times, the last few rarely or never). I especially enjoyed following characters across books. And I like shared worlds most of all. The Warrender Saga is one of the best shared world series I’ve read, in any genre. I think that’s in large part because Mary Burchell was extremely knowledgeable about the classical music world, and her love for it shines through. Every book in the series isn’t outstanding, but they’re all worth reading and they don’t copy each other in plot and characterization (or at least no more than category romances do in general).

My other favorite shared world series is Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire oeuvre. You might almost call it fan fiction. Thirkell took the English county that Anthony Trollope invented, created descendants of his Barsetshire and Parliamentary series characters, and made them entirely her own. She wrote a book a year from the early 1930s on, mixing in new characters with the old families, and she took them through the pre-World War II period, the postwar era, and into the early 1960s. Each book has at least one romantic storyline, and some have two or even three. Not all the books are great, and the later ones get both less interesting and more mean-spirited about changes in English society. But it’s a thoroughly immersive world as well as a valuable snapshot of a certain type of English County life. The 1930s and 1940s novels, in particular, are top-notch in both characterization and evocation of setting.

The family/friends category of linked books are not as appealing to me, and I don’t seem to be alone. These are the ones readers tend to complain about the most these days (Spies! No More Spies! Please!), but they aren’t a new phenomenon. Marion Chesney wrote The Six Sisters back in the 1980s. The patriarch is a hunting-made Squire rather than a Ducal Head of Family, but they’re structurally similar to the Bedwyns and the Mallorens.

While I have fond memories of the Chesney series, this type of series seems to be the most uneven in terms of individual installments. Balogh’s Slightly series had a couple of books that were keepers for me, but it also had the Disney Whores. All of Chesney’s Sisters weren’t equally interesting. And, of course, there’s the suspension of disbelief. Not only is the whole family or group of friends hero/heroine material, but they all find equally fabulous mates. It’s asking a lot of authors. And what about the times when the supporting character of one book takes a turn as a hero in the next, and in the process seems to undergo a personality transplant?

Finally, there are the dreaded open-ended series, which we find in all of the above categories. They can grow and grow, especially if  the early ones sell well. A previously well-defined family series can beget a second set of linked books (Balogh’s Slightly series was succeeded by the Simple quartet, with Bedwyns showing up yet again). Sometimes they have a fully developed and consistent world across the installments, like Jo Beverley’s Rogues, but at other times, no so much. The plots, characterizations, and themes all get recycled, and characters seem to exist primarily as sequel bait.

At this point a reader will throw up her hands, wish a pox on all series books, and read stand-alones to get the bad taste out of her mouth. But inevitably, she comes back when a new series with rave reviews comes along. I doubt series are going anywhere any time soon. They are catnip to publishers, because if readers like one book, they’re likely to buy the rest, and who is going to pass up the chance to sell to a captive audience?

But we can vote with our feet by telling publishers which types we prefer. For me, it’s shared worlds. How about you, readers? Which types do you gravitate towards, and which examples of linked books stand out for you as especially strong or weak?

Related posts:

1. The Enduring Appeal of The Small Town Romance
2. Dear Authors: Can We Put Some Mystery Back Into Our Relationship?
3. Do You Need the Words “I Love You” in your romance books

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a lot of bluster in the YA community over what reviews “should be” and how they should be written and defined and what they should and should not contain. It’s a conversation that was very common in the online Romance community not so many years ago, and the topic still breaks the not-so-still waters periodically.

I won’t rehash the arguments made over the past few weeks, but I will provide a link round-up for anyone trying to catch up on the crazy:

A nice summary of the Goodreads flameouts

YA author Hannah Moskowitz’s “open letter” to Goodreads reviewers

Veronica Roth’s thoughtful response to some of her fellow YA authors’ meltdowns

Maggie Stiefvater’s insistence that reviews should be like academic papers, with a thesis and supporting sentences

Crime writer Jim Thompson’s rules for reviewing

Common themes have emerged from authors and reviewers. On the authorial side we’ve seen the assertion that there is a certain type of review that deserves to be called a “review,” and there are certain “professional standards” said “review” must meet, else it becomes something else, something decidedly lesser. And on the reviewer side we have the persistent refrain, “reviews are not for authors, so authors should not be trying to define them.” Of course there are authors on the so-called reviewer side and vice versa, but this conversation has occurred so often over the past decade or so that I’ve been online, that many of the issues are now well-rehearsed.

There also tends to be this polarization of micro and macro perspectives. On the one hand, you get rants on specific reviews that generate numerous generalizations and misunderstandings. We saw that here on Dear Author just yesterday. Then you get these macro-level generalizations about, say, less than stellar Amazon or Goodreads reviews, as if these reviews are mass-produced in some anti-author factory somewhere. In fact, one of the interesting things Veronica Roth notes is that “98% of the time, the reviewer is expressing opinions about a book, and if an author expresses his or her opinions about a review, they are always saying something about the reviewer.” We’ve also seen that here at Dear Author, too.

And let’s face it; it’s not difficult to see why that happens. A book review can feel like an incredibly personal thing, even though it’s directed at the book and not the author. Responding publicly in a way that doesn’t sound like a personal opinion about the reviewer is not as easy as it may seem, in part because a review is a personal opinion, with the reviewer and the review more closely combined in the review itself.

Which is, I think, one of the best things about reviews and one of the chief reasons we (that is, the broad community of readers, authors, editors, and publishers, regardless of favored genre) should be encouraging as broad a diversity of reviewing voices as possible, with the fewest set “rules” about what constitutes a proper or legitimate review.

I suspect a lot of the rule-setting is about legitimacy. I mean, what author wouldn’t want a glowing review in the NYTBR? And regardless of all the dismissive “I’m laughing all the way to the bank” comments about gaining critical exposure in certain venues, there is still a lingering sense that certain critical attention equals cultural or literary legitimacy. I think some of the current muddle in YA is connected to a desire for the perception of greater legitimacy for the genre. And I don’t think that desire is, in itself, illegitimate. What I think is unproductive and short-sighted, though, is the attempt to proscribe reviewing, especially when those doing the proscribing are not, in fact, doing the bulk of the reviewing.

For example, how many people consult Yelp or Trip Advisor when checking out a hotel or restaurant? How would you feel if the restaurant or hotel industry came out publicly against certain kinds of online reviews? Wouldn’t that seem to represent an overstepping of bounds? But book reviewing is different! Books are art! Writing is hard! Yes, writing is difficult. Writing reviews can be difficult, too. Not everyone articulates their opinion easily or in the same way. Not everyone is versed in the language of literary theory or writing craft. Not everyone has the same writing style or feels the same way about a book. In fact, it’s the very personal experience of reading – much like the experience of writing – that makes it special and makes the articulation of its lasting effects on the reader so critical. Not that every review is a gem of brilliant insight or linguistic beauty, but as a whole, reviews are tangible evidence of the importance and legitimacy of reading and of books.

At its best, reading creates an alchemical reaction between book and reader, an elevation of both through the synergy created in the radiance of the experience. Although difficult to express, every reader knows what I’m talking about here, because we’ve all had that experience, thus our ongoing dedication to reading. It’s a very personal experience that, in and of itself, cannot be expressed. However, what can be articulated are the thoughts and reactions we have to books in a review – literally a re-viewing of the text through words. And in that re-viewing, we can share a part of that reading experience with others, making something that is unique and personal into something collective and connected.

If legitimacy is really the issue here, then let’s think about the long-term legitimacy of reading and book buying in general. How many nail-biting admonishments do we hear about the future of books, which are in hot competition with myriad other forms of entertainment. Reading, a largely solitary experience, becomes shared and communal through conversation, some of which may begin with reviews. Conversation both reflects and fosters personal investment, which in turn promotes more reading and conversation. The book is critical, but so are the forums in which the book becomes alive again through discussion and debate. This second-life doesn’t always take on the form most pleasing to the author, but it’s life, nonetheless, and that vivification is productive. It keeps interest in reading and books alive and growing, in the form of overlapping communities, forums, and venues, and in the inclusion of more and more voices. Why would anyone want to limit the number or type or style of voices in reading communities when there is so much worry about the long-term viability of books and reading?

But perhaps even more importantly, why would we want to stifle the precise thing that makes reading so powerful to so many of us – the enduring promise of that alchemical magic – for the sake of formalities? If books are special, if they are to be regarded as “art,” and if genre fiction in general is legitimate, then it will survive bad grammar, bad language, and even bad reviews.

Related posts:

1. In Praise of the Man Titty
2. REVIEW: Personal Demons by James Buchanan
3. REVIEW: The Personal Touch by Lori Borrill

Think of it this way. A number of authors host their own message boards. If one user posts a link to an image of a hot guy that is copyrighted, someone else could get that author’s site pulled down. If an author posted a video from YouTube that used copyrighted songs, that author could be in violation of the law and have access to her site blocked.

A protest against this bill is not a protest against the fight against piracy. Instead, it is a statement in support of a due process, the right to be heard, the right to be presumed innocent of wrongdoing until proof has been made.

Tomorrow some sites around the internet will be black to display what the outcome of PIPA/SOPA could be, if passed. But don’t take my word for it. I urge you to spend some time tomorrow reading up about the law.

Related posts:

1. Tuesday Links: SOPA Blackout & Deals
2. REVIEW: Stop Me by Brenda Novak
3. What Goes on on the Internet, Stays on the Internet?

As more authors bypass traditional publishing to bring their products directly to the consumer, the greater the risk is to the reader that she wastes her money (albeit a low amount of it) and her time (possibly more precious) on a sub standard product.  The benefit of a book that is published by an actual publisher, whether it is a print or digital first publisher, is this idea that someone impartial has said “this is worth reading.”  With a self published book or one published by a house that is run by the author herself (this is more common that you think readers), there is no impartial person standing between you and the book giving a single stamp of approval.

But even with that impartial person given a stamp of approval, non discounted book prices drives down the number of chances readers can take on a book in any given month. With covers, titles, blurbs, and themes so similar from one book to another, relying on the old browse method can be tricky and expensive.

With the increase in pay to play reviews which will undoubtedly grow as the secondary publishing services market grows to address the needs of self published authors, readers’ opinions are more important than ever.

I’ve been trying to buy and read more books that are self published. I feel like I am a pretty forgiving reader and am willing to overlook any number of grammatical and spelling errors and typos so long as the story is readable but I am overwhelmed by the sheer volume of books out there, even for 99c.  I’m not concerned about the money as much as my time, although 99c failures can add up fairly quick.  In order to sort through the books, I rarely buy one that doesn’t have at least 30-40 reviews with an average of four stars and above.

I asked Ned about this and he says he feels absolutely no compulsion to rate or review anything he buys, reads, consumes.  ”There are plenty of people who are willing to provide their opinions,” Ned said, looking at me pointedly.  But I rarely leave reviews at Amazon or even Goodreads, both places that I go to look for reader opinions of books.  I write reviews here at Dear Author and that is about it.  Since the turn of the year, though, I have started to leave one to two sentence reviews at Goodreads of every book I’ve read, kind of like one of reading list roundups here at Dear Author, as a way to give back to the Goodreads community.  I haven’t yet started leaving reviews on Amazon but I’ve been thinking about whether I owe the customers on Amazon to rate the books I’ve purchased there.

I don’t think readers owe it to authors to review or rate their books up or down but I do wonder if readers owe other readers to review/rate their books so as to help other readers.  Maybe it is to warn readers away or maybe it is to help a book you really think is a gem find an audience.  Of course one can say that some readers’ reviews aren’t worthwhile because they are universally “THIS IS THE MOST WUNDERFUL BOOKES EVERR!!! or “icantbelieveiread that cruppy book”.  Or you can argue that one good review outweighs a dozen one line reviews that tell a consumer almost nothing.  Nonetheless, a cumulative number of reviews, either good or bad, can help to create a general picture of whether a book is worthy of your time.

What do you think?

Related posts:

1. Random House Zogby International Survey of Readers Reveals and Confirms Buying/Reading Habits
2. Barnes & Noble Engaged in Deleting Reviews
3. Bookstore Etiquette

Apparently some author with the initials MB who is a redhead has been keeping diary of her behavior which is incredibly hilarious appalling.  So appalling that I can’t help but express my dismay in LOLCat pics.

According to her diary, she is hassling her publicist, editor, and god knows who else.

Woke up. Googled self. Found a new positive review. Sent quote on to publicist.

Compiled all quotes ever received and sent to publicist. Just in case she lost the last quote. Cc’d to editor, and editor’s assistant. Bcc’d to self, in case they pretend they never received them later. I will know.

Becomes enraged over a pig farmer who left a review complaining about pacing. I  think MB’s book was insulting pig farmers and didn’t really portray pig farmers accurately (I mean, she had them wearing Hunter boots instead of Carhartts.  Everyone knows that Carhartts are the only boots worn by pig farmers. I remember grading that book down for being farming inaccurate. I even made up a name: #infarmaccuracy.)  Anyway, MB makes up anonymous accounts to attack pig farmers:

If you are trying to be anonymous, why blog about it?  On day 2, she downrated the positive reviews on her “competitors’” reviews.

On Day 3, MB discovers a group called “Let’s Make Authors Cry” but I couldn’t find it on Yahoo.  It must be a hidden group.  MB plots revenge on readers by using cliffhangers cheating heroes oh she has run out of ideas.

But we can’t look away from the train wreck:

And while gawking and spending hours talking about the book and the author and the author’s book, to the exclusion of other books, including ones we love, we vow not to buy the book (but try to borrow it from the library).

Day 4 reveals a shocking discovery.  Apparently MB is the entire internet except for a couple of people.  I’m wondering if she is secretly me.  Would I know? Have I been possessed?

Also, why would a reviewer use the name Jealous Cow?

Related posts:

1. My Big Fat Cover Rant from Heather, The Galaxy Express
2. The Galaxy Express Compiles a DRM Free Publisher List
3. REVIEW: The Sharing Knife: Passage by Lois McMaster Bujold

I was going to write about whether readers have a duty to other readers to write and leave reviews where they shop, even one or two line reviews. But given the five days of flameouts in roughly the first five days of 2012, I thought I would briefly address the issue of the author/reader paradigm.

The authorial flameouts have primarily been young adult and self published authors. I think part of the reason is the maturity of the online reading community. I don’t mean maturity by chronological age of the community but in the length of time that the community has existed. The romance community had these kerfluffles stemming back to the 90s, and they were mean and ugly and worse than what you see today, thank goodness. (Thank goodness, because I don’t wish some of those author flameouts on anyone).  But the early reviewers of romance did not back down. Mrs. Giggles, Laurie Gold, reviewers at The Romance Reader, and the author reviewers at Paperback Reader kept on, and in doing so, helped to change the atmosphere and culture of the romance reviewing community.

It is not that romance is free of these flareups.  Just last year, an author jammed her foot in her own mouth by suggesting she would like one of our DA reviewers to “throw up.” But by and large, we’ve really matured as a community because readers, reviewers and even authors have stuck up for the right of reviewers and readers to have their say.

I don’t think that the self-publishing community and the young adult authorial community have quite reached that level of sanguinity and realization that critical readers and reviewers are an important voice in the community. Although several YA authors have come out in support of reviews, others have yet seen that by their authorial flameouts they embarrass themselves (witness the deletion of comments and blogposts) and their fellow authors, and can put a damper on a burgeoning community. One moment of great irony in Julie Halpern’s now deleted rant was when she claimed that negative reviews are “discouraging people from reading.” Those of us in romance know that precisely the opposite is true – negative reviews and the controversy surrounding them can sell a book as fast or faster than a glowing review. Of course not everyone in romance values the critical or negative review, but those reviews have become much more mainstream as the community has matured.

Creating a robust community of readers is something that takes time and perseverance, and it does make sense to for readers to stand up for themselves. But understanding what is driving these authors can also help readers respond more effectively.

Readers and authors each have their own paradigm – that is, a set of beliefs, circumstances, and assumptions that guide and contextualize their behavior. Sometimes these paradigms seem to mirror one another, while other times they are in direct conflict. Under the reader paradigm, the author is perceived to have a large platform, and thus when they say something, it has resonance. They can start Twitter campaigns, affect a group down voting of reviews on Amazon, and rouse a group of fans to charge after a reader. Under the author paradigm, the reader is perceived to have a platform (even when she does not) and it resonates. They can start Twitter campaigns, affect a group down voting of reviews on Amazon, and rouse a group of like-minded fans to charge after the author.

Both parties believe the other has a larger platform and a position of power from which to affect others. In my opinion, generally speaking, a published author has a natural and intrinsic platform. She has an author loop with like-minded authors at the ready to exercise their down vote button at Amazon. She has friends and family that she rounds up to leave positive reviews at various sites. She has a readership that she acquires or has already acquired, and loyal fans who will defend the author’s work at various boards, blogs, and other review sites.  The Author can also write negatively about reviewers in her books as Lori Foster and Victoria Laurie.

Readers, on the other hand, have much smaller circles. Few will go around and get their reviews up voted on Amazon. Few will be able to get other readers to leave negative reviews, mostly because it’s difficult to get enough people who have all read the same book. This may be changing, but published authors still inherently have a larger platform. Witness, for example, the reviewer, Sophie, that was the target of Jamie McGuire. She had 31 followers at the time McGuire posted her blog post. At that time, McGuire had over 670 fans.

The awful “cow” and “toe rag” reviewer, Stephanie has 39 followers. Leigh Fallon, who tried to start a campaign against Stephanie’s Amazon review, which included several personal invectives against Stephanie, has 907 friends, 358 fans and is the #1 most followed.

Julie Halpern totally lost it over a review posted at The Allure of Books. It is, as Halpern suggests, a blog with a big following. 1258 followers are proclaimed on the blog. Halpern, however, is a multi-published author with four books under her belt and a new one due to be published in 2012. Halpern even views herself as superior in her blog post: “ I know it should not matter what this blogger says about my book (and after just reading her bio, which has much in the way of potential mocking, I am just going to rise above). Because I am already SO FAR ABOVE in my life.”

Under the author paradigm, publishing a book is one of the greatest achievements ever.  (This is not to say that it is not a great achievement but that it is not valued the same by readers).  Under the reader paradigm, the book is a commodity of entertainment to be valued, weighed, and judged like so many other products that they spend their time and money on. The book as an object is not necessarily special. A book can become special and hold a favored position in a reader’s mind, but not all books have that status, especially books that will never be read or have been read and not enjoyed.

Under the author paradigm, the feelings of the author matter.  Under the reader paradigm, the author’s feelings should not matter because the book and the author are two separate things. For example, a review written with the author’s feelings in mind can end up being less than truthful, and the reader review system relies on the veracity of the review, the transparency of the bias.

Under the author paradigm, a negative review can affect their livelihood. Consequently, critical readers and reviewers deserve to be mocked in a book (PC Cast) or brought to heel. Under the reader paradigm, one negative review does little, particularly when there are dozens of positive reviews, or in the case of some authors, several hundred positive reviews. And if there are a multiple negative reviews such that the average rating of the book is 3 stars or less, then well, that pretty much indicates to the reader that the book is getting the praise or criticism it deserves. According to Jamie McGuire, “In no other work environment is someone expected to be attacked so viciously and then say, “Thank you,” which makes the book review equivalent to a job performance evaluation. And a bad evaluation, presumably, can jeopardize one’s career.  But we know from many years of experience, that negative reviews don’t crater careers because no book ever written has been exempt from negative reviews.  Says one reviewer regarding To Kill a Mockingbird:

If I could give this no stars, I would. This is possibly one of my least favorite books in the world, one that I would happily take off of shelves and stow in dark corners where no one would ever have to read it again.I think that To Kill A Mockingbird has such a prominent place in (American) culture because it is a naive, idealistic piece of writing in which naivete and idealism are ultimately rewarded. It’s a saccharine, rose-tinted eulogy for the nineteen thirties from an orator who comes not to bury, but to praise. Written in the late fifties, TKAM is free of the social changes and conventions that people at the time were (and are, to some extent) still grating at. The primary dividing line in TKAM is not one of race, but is rather one of good people versus bad people — something that, of course, Atticus and the children can discern effortlessly.

The “I’m not going to buy” mantra stems in greater numbers from the author’s response to the review than from any negative review.

I know these are generalizations and do not apply to every author and reader. There are well-balanced, respectful authors who value the role of critical debate about their books. And there are poorly-behaved readers who make thoughtless comments about books and authors. But over the years, these generalizations continue to return in the author-reader dynamic, especially as the community grapples with the growth of reader-generated criticism.

But one constant remains: book reviews are not the same as a workplace performance evaluation. They are not even meant for authors. Reviews are for readers. This needs to be our mantra.

Readers do not have a limitless money and time to devote to reading. Readers use the opinions of others to cull through the thousands of books that are thrust before them to choose what is worth their time and money. Both are important. Readers use reviews to open up discussion on books, because while reading itself is a solitary act, books are a community good, and readers love little more than gushing over or ranting over a book that moved them. And readers love nothing more than a good book. They will often overlook a book (or ten) that disappointed them to try yet another by the same author that got great reader feedback. I think it can be very helpful for authors to remember that readers are generally not invested in the author unless they are adamant fans or the author has distinguished herself in a negative way.

But it’s also helpful for readers to remember this. It’s why readers would not say the same thing to an author directly at a book signing or convention as she might say in a review. Readers are not critique partners and it is not their job to “help” an author “get better.” While tagging an author in a tweet announcing your less than stellar review may seem like a small thing, it can seem like a hard poke to the author. Most of us know that criticism is inevitable, but not every author wants to see negative reviews of their books. And what doesn’t seem negative to the reviewer can come across as criticism to an author.

Witness the furor against C reviews here in this blog post or witness the Facebook posting of Jessica Park (self-published author) who can’t imagine why anyone who gave her a C review would want to follow her on Goodreads.  Anything less than a glowing five star review probably shouldn’t be shared with the author unless she asks directly for it. If readers don’t want authors defending their work in the comments to reviews, it seems fair to not directly invite them to the review.

Reviews are for readers.  If you are a reviewer, don’t assume that the author wants to hear what you have to say, no matter how insightful or brilliant it is.  Let her find out from her critique partner, editor, or beta reader.  It’s true that errors have become more frequent in books, but pointing those out to the author isn’t a public service. Once a review is public, any number of people might read it, including the author. But if readers start thinking that reviews can help authors or that authors should read reviews, then that just validates the idea that reviews are like a personal performance evaluation, which in turn overpersonalizes the relationship between reader and author and encourages more bad feelings between the two.

Related posts:

1. The Author/Reader Disconnect or Why Can’t We Just All Get Along?
2. Author DeborahAnne MacGillivray Harasses Amazon Reader
3. The Reader Responsibility to Author Direction

Maili suggested I do a prediction of the 2012 romance genre, but those books have already been bought, mostly.  Here’s what I would like to see:

1. More diversity, not just in the characters, but in the settings.
2. I’m iffy on wanting more steampunk. Too many people slap an iron bustle in a book and throw in a few mechanical devices and an airship and think that is a steampunk but a steam powered manufacturing creates an entirely different societal construction with political, class and gender differences.  Successful steampunk books recognize this but I don’t see too much of it.  I’d much rather see more fantasy romance ala Elizabeth Vaughn’s Warlord series or CJ Wilson.
3. Longer narrative books.  I am very tired, particularly in erotic romance, of reading 15K, 25K, 40K word stories. I want in depth romance and sexy times with exploration of the internal machinations of the characters and not just insta lust followed by a dozen of club scenes. ENOUGH WITH THE CLUB SCENES.
4. Straight up contemporaries.  I’ve been asking for this for a long time but I want to see more straight up contemporaries with no attendant mystery or suspense plot line.  With Harlequin Superromances moving to 85,000 words, one might think my contemporary jones would be satisfied but there is a stunning lack of sexual tension in the HSR line except for a few authors.  These are adults who are supposed to be attracted to each other, not siblings.
5. More courtship.  I am not sure whether it is paranormals and the fated mates that have led to the slow devolution of the courtship, but whatever is the reason, we need to put a stop to it. I love the courtship. Dating is so rife with opportunity and conflict.  Where is the slow build of attraction?  One of the reasons I think Jenny Crusie’s books are so entertaining because many of the stories are about the courtship and I think you can still have plenty of sexy times and have courtship.  See, e.g., Liberating Lacey by Anne Calhoun. I also think courtship, the drawn out tension, the will they or won’t they get together is one of the reasons adults read YA.
6. Creativity in worldbuilding.  I think people are looking at steampunk because it is new and shiny and creative and it’s not just one lonely demon/angel/vampire/werewolf who searches for his mate so he can a) not go mad and b) settle down to knit booties in his spare time.
7. Less series books.  I don’t mind if a couple shows up in a later book, kind of like an easter egg, but I am tired of every book out there being a series.  I would like the occasional stand alone book now and again so that when I start to read an author I don’t have to read 9 books to get a sense of what book 10 is going to be about.
8. Fewer cliffhangers.  This is more of a paranormal thing, but can’t anyone write a UF or PNR or YA Dystopian book without a friggin’ cliffhanger?  Tell the story in one book, please. Just sometimes? Like 1/34 of the time.  *cries*
9. Not everything has to be serious business.  I know that humor is hard to write because everyone has their own definition of what is funny (I’m not a fan of slapstick or physical humor) but leavening a little emo agnsty tragedy with humor is a good thing.
10. More middle-class characters in the Victorian period. Not everyone needs to be a Lord or Lady.  Landed gentry and wealthy merchants can still provide all the trappings of the historical such as the pretty dresses and the parties. I think that we are all tired of the ghastly Almack’s lemonade scenes.

And just because I want the above doesn’t mean I want to eliminate what people are doing well these days. I just want more variety, more choice.  Why write the thing that everyone else and their cousin is writing?  (I know, to sell, but still).  What about the rest of you?  What do you want to see in 2012 and beyond?

Related posts:

1. Does the romance genre need to be more expansive?
2. Infidelity and the Romance Genre
3. Discourteous Discourse & Why Erotica Is Killing the Romance Genre

The following are my bold and not so bold predictions for publishing in 2012.  My boldest prediction will be that Amazon will buy Goodreads in 2012.  The most unlikely to happen prediction is Number 10.    What are your predictions for 2012?

1.  More authors will self publish than in 2011.  I suspect that nearly every author will try his or her hand at self publishing new and previously unpublished content, either in novella or full length book form.  After 2012, I suspect that there will be a retrenchment in self publishing and authors will look to digital first arms of traditional publishers or digital first only publishers as they realize that a) self publishing is difficult and b) they’d rather write than focus on the business aspect.  However, there will be a rise in the number of self publishing success stories and the quality of self publishing will increase as supply increases.  Along with this prediction, we will see the rise of publishing service companies and indie communities of publishing service providers akin to Penguin’s Book Country and HarperCollins’ Authonomy where editors, copy editors, graphic artists will be able to offer their services and be voted on by the community.

2.  In an effort to capture the attention of talented authors, the digital rate of books at the big six will rise to 30-35% off the net with higher figures being offered to backlist only titles in exchange for nominal to no advances.  And/or more tiered royalty structures will appear similar to the Avon Impulse and Samhain Retro Romance line.   The advances in 2012-2013 will be either very high or very low.  High advances cannot be sustained by sub $5.00 price points on books.

3.  Readers will gravitate to lower priced books, those priced 3.99 and under, so long as the book has a good hook and a decent cover.  These books will be substitutes for traditionally priced books.  In looking back at Bookscan, authors sold well if they had an established name.  Breaking out as a new author is more difficult than ever, particularly from traditional publishers.  I suspect the new books that readers will be talking about will come from the $3.99 and under price range and those books will be available to readers around the world.  That’s the discovery price range.

4.  I think the price of most digital books will be $3.99 and that $.99 fiction will fall into either short fiction price (under 25K words) or will be promotional.  Publishers will experiment with book pricing and readers will be more hesitant to buy older titles at full price, hoping for a lower price deal.

5.  There will be a Steam-like publisher offering resellable digital books, available only in the cloud.  This is being experimented with by Austrialian publishers Book.ish and ReadCloud.  This might be offered by a romance publisher, but I suspect it will be a small press publisher for SFF or maybe comic books or a textbook publisher that would allow students resell ability of their digital texts.

6.  Sites like Goodreads will become more popular and thus more powerful.  Goodreads currently has over 6 million users.  Membership at Goodreads is increasing on a daily basis. Publishers are attempting to break into that market through Bookish, the as yet unreleased website backed by Hachette, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster, but I suspect that Bookish and sites like it will wither on the vine mostly because they won’t be reader oriented but book oriented which I think are two very different things.  My boldest prediction is that Amazon will purchase Goodreads for the community and its recommendation engine.  (Amazon already owns Shelfari but back in 2007, Amazon purchased DPReview.com, the premiere digital photography recommendation site)

7.  Digital book sales will represent 50% of trade sales by the end of 2012.

8.  BN will offer an iTunes matching service for books which scans your hard drive for books and then offers you a matching book in Nook compatible format for no extra charge (this might be cloud available only).  This will be a move that will encourage Kindle users to trade in their Kindles in exchange for a nook.  This will either signal the end of Agency pricing or Amazon will file suit for unfair collusion.

9.  BN will continue to move toward offering non book content. BN will allow large store leases to expire and relocate into smaller locations. The larger locations will decrease the book content to half of the retail contents.  BN will begin to carry more toys, house ware goods (like cooking supplies to go with the cookbooks and craft supplies to go with the craft books), and other celebrity designed products ala Target’s pairing with Moschino and Jason Wu.  BN already has Vera Bradley paper goods.

10.  There will be an innovative print on demand machine that non bookstores will install.  Maybe it will be something you see in department stores.  The new print on demand machine will print mass market or trade versions of books.  (This is probably something more that I would like to see than what may happen, but I do believe that print on demand technology will increase dramatically in the next few years. There will be a high demand for it.)

Related posts:

1. The Things I Learned from RWA 2011
2. Can the Digital Market Expand Reader Choice?
3. Friday Midday Links: MWA Breaks Up With Harlequin

Although I’m not exactly a devoted reader of John Scalzi’s Whatever blog, a Twitter retweet last week drew my attention to a recent post, in which he announces that readers protesting ebook prices on his “Big Idea” posts will have their comment deleted:

Why? Primarily because here at the tail end of 2011, I find the subject boring and I find the people who get huffy about an electronic book not being [insert price you believe for whatever reason an eBook should be] are exhibiting a particularly tiresome sort of entitlement, to wit, that owning an electronic book reader means that you are possibly obliged to announce your opinion on book pricing at every turn. See, the thing is: You’re not. You don’t have to. At this point, I wish you wouldn’t.

But it doesn’t stop there. Scalzi goes on to insist that such complaints are “kind of mean to the author,” and that

. . . going into a comment thread of a Big Idea and making a big show of why you’re not going to buy the book because of a price point that the author very frequently has absolutely no control over kind of makes you a dick. Authors are already neurotic and twitchy about how the book is going to be received; you going in and announcing “I will not buy your book for reasons entirely unrelated to your writing and about which you were given no say” is really cluelessly rude. If you want to complain about the pricing, please do — to someone who actually has the wherewithal to do something about it, namely, the publisher. They are not hard to find and e-mail.

Without a doubt, Scalzi has the right to delete comments on his blog, and at least he’s giving people fair warning that he will do so in certain circumstances. That’s not what irked me about the post. What irked me is this belief that readers who protest book prices to the author are “entitled,” a word that in the context of his post suggests that we are somehow overstepping and over-reaching beyond what is our right. That, combined with Scalzi’s belief that readers have easy access to publishers and that not utilizing it is “mean to the author,” struck me as just plain wrong. Numerous supportive comments to his post honestly surprised me, as did a point Scalzi brought up to me in a long Twitter exchange, namely his belief that the big 6 publishers regard readers as their customers – which stands in contradiction to what even the publishers themselves say. And while I certainly understand why authors would get frustrated and even resentful over reader complaints about pricing, I think Scalzi’s argument is, at best, myopic and mistaken in regard to readers, authors, and publishers.

The Nature of the Book

There is an ongoing tension around whether books are the same or different from other consumer goods. Is the book a sacred cultural artifact or a commercial product akin to a vacuum cleaner or a kitchen appliance? The rise of digital books suggests that even within the realm of books there is a hierarchy of cultural value. Eloquent eulogies to the paper book abound, elevating its status and calling into question whether something that’s not printed and bound can even be called a book. Publishers currently treat digital books differently from print books, both in royalty structure and pricing (i.e. no so-called agency pricing model for print books). Scalzi argues that “eBooks are not special snowflakes; they’re just books in electronic form. As someone who prefers to read in eBook form, you are not substantially different from someone who prefers hardcovers, or trade paperbacks, or mass market paperbacks,” but what about books in general?

The Nature of the Reader’s Relationship with the Book

My own view is that books are both a commercial good and a cultural artifact, which means that behavior toward them will be a hybrid of consumption and critical engagement. And one of the biggest aspects of the commercial nature of books is the price. Under the current so-called agency pricing (Charles Petit does a great job explaining why it’s not really an agency model), big 6 publishers set the price of books, but consumers still primarily acquire books via retailers, which have long been considered the customers of publishers. As cultural artifacts, books are creative products, and readers are conditioned to identify them primarily with the author’s name on the cover. In the broad universe of books and readers, what is the likelihood that a reader will identify a book with its publisher?  I know for myself that even now I’m much more likely to know a non-agency book’s publisher than I am one from the big 6. Some of those non-agency books I purchase direct from the publisher (e.g. Harlequin), but most I still buy from a retailer.

The Nature of the Reader’s Relationship with the Author, the Retailer, and the Publisher

When I learned that publishers don’t view readers as their customers, so much made sense to me. My inability – until very recently – for example, to find a contact link on the Penguin publishing site; Macmillan CEO John Sargent’s failure to include readers in his letter on the agency stand-off with Amazon; the seeming hostility to digital demonstrated by big 6 leaders like Simon and Schuster’s Carolyn Reidy, who unselfconsciously explained the practice of “windowing” digital releases, admitting that,

“The right place for the e-book is after the hardcover but before the paperback. We believe some people will be disappointed. But with new [electronic] readers coming and sales booming, we need to do this now, before the installed base of e-book reading devices gets to a size where doing it would be impossible.”

Hachette CEO David Young added, “We’re doing this to preserve our industry. I can’t sit back and watch years of building authors sold off at bargain-basement prices. It’s about the future of the business.” And the big 6 business model is built around the hardcover, something I do not believe reflects the priorities of the reading public as a whole.

I know it’s not personal; I understand that publishers, like all commercial businesses, are profit-driven; I don’t doubt that publishers know consumers are end-users of their products. However, their business model has not included readers as customers. Digital growth is beginning to challenge this tradition, but as the publishers themselves admit, it’s a challenge. Part of the problem is that big 6 publishers have decidedly not made themselves accessible or even recognizable to readers. Frankly, I’d love to know when it became easy to contact publishers directly, because that certainly has not been my experience.

Consumers sometimes vent their complaints about a product directly to the manufacturer; however, as gazillions of Amazon reviews demonstrate, the retailer is the likely first stop for the consumer, because they have a direct customer relationship with the retailer. And as readers, especially readers online, we identify books with their authors, more and more of whom have websites, blogs, Twitter and Facebook accounts. In their own way, authors have become like direct marketers of their literary products, not necessarily selling books directly, although more and more authors are, in fact, publishing their own books and selling them via retailers.

Which brings me (FINALLY!) to my central question: why is it inappropriately entitled behavior for a reader to complain about ebook prices to or in the presence of the author?

If ebooks are not “special snowflakes,” then why wouldn’t we expect readers to act any differently from other types of consumers? Consumers complain to the store; book consumers also complain to the authors. But, Scalzi says, authors can’t control their book prices, so it’s “mean” to complain to them. I’m not going to debate the question of whether authors can or cannot control prices, because for me that’s not the point (although clearly self-publishing indicates that author can create an environment in which they can control the price of their books). Rather, I’ll focus on this: among retailers, authors, and readers, the only party not in contractual privity with the publisher is the party Scalzi insists has the burden of dealing with directly. This just strikes me as fundamentally illogical.

Even if I accept Scalzi’s assertion that big 6 authors can’t control price, as contractual partners with publishers, does that invalidate the reader’s right to protest? Authors make choices in what publisher they contract with, and maybe some authors want to know the deterrents readers face in buying their books (this goes for geographical restrictions, too, for example). As Dan Gillmor, director of ASU’s Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, pointed out in his recent Guardian blog post,

Sure, I can afford the higher prices. But the greed of the publishers has inspired me to make different plans. Now I reserve bestsellers at my local library – run by people who love books: imagine that! – and read them whenever they are available. What were impulse purchases of books that sent revenue to publishers are now impulse reservations that do not. If I have to wait a few weeks, no big deal. I should have remembered that all along.

How many readers are now forgoing purchase of big 6 books because of so-called agency pricing, even if they can afford the higher prices? Is this something authors want to know? As authors continue to reach out directly to readers to market their books, I don’t think it’s reasonable to view readers who complain to the author about prices as misbehaving. Because as popular as it is to say that the reader rules, if that were truly the case, I’m not sure the big 6 would even exist, let alone have been able to establish so-called agency pricing.

And do I even need to address the question of whether it’s “mean” to complain about prices to the author? The person who has commercially sold his book in the hopes of making money from it? The person whose name is figured most prominently on the book itself?

Why Shouldn’t the Reader Complain to the Author?

I’ll give Scalzi this: he’s right that I don’t “have to” complain about the price of digital books. What I think he’s dead wrong about, though, is that complaining about the price of digital books is a form of illegitimate entitlement.

When I purchase a digital book from big 6 publishers, which I do infrequently if the price is not reduced, I am denied the right of first sale, which is one of the most fundamental copyright principles. More and more, I am also being denied the kind of editorial and formatting quality I associate with a higher book price (even print books have declined in size, paper quality, and editing, which creates another pricing issue, but I’ll leave that aside for now). But to abdicate my own rights under copyright law in purchasing a digital book means that I am ultimately buying a lesser or at least more limited product. And just as I don’t think it’s anywhere near reasonable to pay $15 or $20 to rent a movie, I don’t think it’s reasonable to pay print prices for DRM’d digital books.

So what about publisher costs? The current print model demonstrates clearly that price is not determined purely by the cost of producing an item, so I don’t find that a helpful argument in determining the cost of digital books as compared to print. With the big 6 business model built around the hardcover, the growth of digital books is not a good thing, which means that publishers do not have much incentive to promote their growth unless the model is changed. With debates over whether so-called agency pricing has helped or hurt authors, it’s unlikely that authors will stand united for or against the practice.

All of which makes it more likely than not that if readers protest digital pricing, they will do so to authors. Even if authors feel that is unfair. Which, in some cases it might be. And perhaps it’s not the most effective venue of protest, although I don’t think it requires subtle interpretive tools to read Scalzi as dismissive of readers who protest digital prices period. But how does lodging the protest with the author’s online book marketing presence make the protesting reader a “dick”? How is the reader’s frustration about an ebook price any different from an author’s frustration over, for example, a royalties structure? I know there are authors who forward reader comments to their publisher. Not every author does this, nor should readers expect it. I think we all have to accept that for the most part people act in what they perceive to be their best interest. The question here, I think, is whether pricing is in the interest of the author, as well.

Without a doubt, the primary perceived interests of readers, authors, and publishers are not always in alignment. But when we have direct evidence that digital book pricing is aimed at slowing digital growth, which in turn potentially slows digital sales for authors and deters readers from buying their books, I think price is a shared concern between authors and readers, one which we are all reasonably entitled — and perhaps should be encouraged — to discuss. Except, of course, at Scalzi’s blog.

Related posts:

1. Adobe Labs Cooks Up Worst Ebook Reader in Ebook Reader History
2. Whither the Reader
3. The Author/Reader Disconnect or Why Can’t We Just All Get Along?

For many years, we’ve preached that review are for readers and they are. Oftentimes, when authors react to reviews, it results in an unfortunate dustup with authors saying things they wished they hadn’t and readers throwing out threats of a ban list. The comment threads to a review can be contentious whether it is here at Dear Author or at places like Goodreads and Amazon.

But there are times when authorial interaction might actually produce interesting discussion. After I reviewed “Lord of the Abyss,” I wrote a note to Nalini Singh and Singh wrote me back* and said that she wanted to share with me why she turned Liliana beautiful at the end, an ending that I complained about:

I did consider not having that fairytale makeover, because like you said, Micah didn’t care. The thing was, I couldn’t do it to Liliana, herself because it hurt her so much when people were cruel to her, or said nasty things like in the village. The thought of her living her entire life having to bear those slights (and the reality is, people still would’ve said them and they still would’ve hurt, even if only a tiny bit each time since she would’ve had Micah’s unwavering love in contrast) – yeah, I just couldn’t. And since it was a fairytale, I did get to play fairy godmother.

I responded:

You know, your comment is one that I think would be interesting to readers, if you would be willing to post it. I’m not sure how I feel. It’s true that I wouldn’t want Liliana to be hurt constantly by the shunning of others, but I loved the idea of a truly ugly heroine. It’s amazing how none of that really matters when you are in the meat of the story.

Nalini’s response:

As for the Liliana comment, I don’t know. I always wonder if author intention should have any place in a reader’s experience. I’ve always liked the idea that each reader reads a different book, dependent on what personal ideas/life experiences they bring into the story. It’s an interesting thing to think about, especially now, with authors so accessible via the web.

This got me thinking. Jeannie Lin’s response about the ending of her book was posted on her website. I thought her explanation of the Eastern philosophy that drove her story was interesting. It didn’t change how I felt about the book but I enjoyed reading it and contemplating her perspective.

Both the Singh and the Lin comments were ones I would have liked to have discussed with other readers. These might be appropriately questions at the end of the book that could be asked for a reader group (those are sometimes included in trade paperback books).

I emailed Caitlin Crews to see if she would like to write up some thoughts about Shame and Heroines in romance and mentioned that I found that Jake, the hero in “Heiress Behind the Headlines,” hadn’t suffered enough for all the horrible things he said to Larissa, the heroine.  She gave me a really interesting response:

I’m really interested in your take on Jack. I was worried that many readers would not find Larissa at all sympathetic (and indeed many do not) and so in some ways I suppose I saw Jack as a kind of mouthpiece for what I anticipated those readers might feel about her. I also thought that his public acceptance of her at the end would be more meaningful to *her* than any sort of extended grovel might be, as I imagined she wouldn’t necessarily believe that. My understanding from some of the feedback I’ve gotten so far is that some readers just hated her as I worried they might, and those readers seem to think Jack could have done much better. I guess I was trying to strike a balance between those two takes on the story; it’s always so fascinating to hear how/if that kind of thing worked!

But author interaction can result in two things, no matter the intention of the author, both which are detrimental to reader conversation. First, an authorial inerjection can reduce reader commentary. Meljean Brook shared:

I think there’s room for author interaction in the comments of a review, but it’s very limited room. In general — unless the reviewer has notified the author directly about the presence of a review and invites a reply — I think that it’s best not to comment at all. We all know that many authors are online, seeking reviews of their work and looking in on discussions; there’s no need to tap the readers on the shoulder and say, “Hey, I’m here,” because it’s likely to have a chilling effect…and for good or bad, the best thing for an author is for readers to talk about her book. Why shut that down?

The other thing that can occur is for readers to mistake the intention of the author or interpret the author’s intention exactly right and either results in a kerfluffle. Another author emailed me this response:

Explaining a book in the comment section may invite discussion, but it seems argumentative to me. A reader has the right to their opinion of the book, no matter what that opinion is. If an author thinks their book is A and the reader thinks it’s B, no matter how much the author argues the point, it’s very rare the reader is going to change their mind–they’re always going to think it’s B. It’s the reader’s experience that matters. That’s their takeaway and no amount of explaining on the author’s part is going to change that. The only additional takeaway the reader will receive is a bad view of the author, which is never a good thing, in my opinion.

Another author shared that it was frustrating to read in a review what the author’s intention was when writing. It’s one thing for a reader to say that it came off as if an author meant it X, Y, or Z and another for a reader to speak as if she is an authority on the author’s intent:

I’ll be honest, it really pisses me off when readers speak with “authority” on what my intent as an author is. They can think what they want. They can speculate to their hearts content. But don’t go around saying that Author thought this or Author did that… And any time a reader claims to KNOW what an author meant or what she was “really” doing, they just make themselves look like an ignorant.

Almost universally, the authors I emailed on this topic felt that comments to reviews are simply not a place for authors to interject their opinions. I know that at DA, if an author comes in during a discussion and I sense that it might reduce reader discussion, I’ll make a comment to try to encourage readers to discuss the book, as if the author is not there.

One author said that the only time she felt is was appropriate to comment publicly with readers is when the author is invited, such as to a Book Chat. Most authors echoed this

“In my experience, when readers really want to hear from an author, they’ll e-mail her.”

I admit that I rarely email authors at all mostly because I feel, maybe wrongly, that most authors really don’t want to hear from anyone with dearauthor.com in the email address.  I don’t know whom I’ve offended with strongly worded reviews and I don’t want any one to feel like they need to be nice or gracious to me if I’ve hurt their feelings.  To that end, there are often questions that arise from a book for which I have no answer.

I’m curious what readers and authors would like to see.  Do they want more authorial interaction?  Do they like that the conversation is primarily between readers of the book or potential readers of the book?  Are they interested in hearing the author’s perspective?

*All emails reproduced with the consent of the sender.

Related posts:

1. Is the internet bringing us together or moving us farther apart?
2. What Goes on on the Internet, Stays on the Internet?
3. Author. Authorial persona. Book. It’s getting harder to tell them apart.