Jan 10 2013
Thursday News: Facebook couples destroy love; Monopoly is axing a game piece; and Jane Friedman makes some suppositions about self publishing
23 Reasons Why Facebook Couples Are The Worst – Buzzfeed has made a list of why Facebook couples should cease to exist. The reasons run the gamut from thirteen year olds celebrating their proposals of marriage to a woman morose that her man is cheating on her by decided to stay with his wife. There is the woman who wants to cut her lover up into pieces and tuck those pieces into her handbag and the woman who can’t spell the name of her one and only true love right. Let me be the first to victim blame, if Melissa’s boyfriend is found out chopped up, that’s all on him. He had clear warning of her intentions on Facebook. Buzzfeed
Monopoly is sending a game piece to jail, permanently – One of the iconic Monopoly game pieces will be eliminated from the game. Why? Probably because Monopoly wants to a) increase its social media presence by having people fight over which game piece should be axed (the Iron, for god’s sake, why is this even a contest) and/or b) wants to create increasingly limited collector’s items. Life Inc.
Commodity Publishing, Self-Publishing and The Future of Fiction – Jane Friedman argues that self publishing works for genre fiction and depends on readers consuming books like candy. The self publishing model works best, according to Friedman, if the author produces mass amounts of product and usually because of speed to market, it is of low quality.
This is not to say that a reader does not enjoy both books of high quality and those of low quality but that self publishing model works, primarily, for those that can publish masses amount of work in a short time. It’s an interesting article and precludes other successes in self publishing that aren’t dependent on mass releases such as On Dublin Street, On the Island, Courtney Milan’s books, or Tammara Weber. Friedman does not recommend self publishing for literary fiction but I think that’s bad advice and have argued that in the past. Containers don’t define the work. The work defines the work. Jane Friedman
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Jan 10, 2013 @ 05:50:34
I always disliked being the boot. At least the iron has that cute handle. So long as they keep the dog and tophat I’m good though. Which is good, since I am not on Facebook and thus unable to vote.
I resent all these Facebook only votes/contests/etc. Not everyone is on Facebook. When searching for new-to-me authors lately I’ve seen they’re on Facebook, but have no actual website. What’s up with that?
Jan 10, 2013 @ 06:29:49
@library addict: I’ve also been noticing authors only on facebook, and a few who have websites but only post news on facebook. I hate it. Beyond the fact that it excludes any reader that doesn’t want to use facebook, the few I’ve checked out don’t keep specific news/books pages within their facebook pages, so you need to scroll through all of the comments on the hope you may stumble on something. However, there are also a ton of terrible regular websites out there too.
@Jane- I think it’s time to repost Dear Author’s Dos and Don’ts for Author Websites. It would be a public service.
Jan 10, 2013 @ 06:57:17
Friedman’s article is interesting but she’s forgetting or downplaying another big area – backlists. Authors are doing really well with putting their backlist up themselves, or paying a third party to do it. I know several authors whose careers have been rejuvenated after their publisher “cleaned house” and gave them their rights back. Of course, some publishers are getting wise to it now and making it harder to recover rights.
Just did a little redesign of my website. I did a big revamp when it became obvious that mobile was important – cut out a lot of the fancy stuff.
The most difficult thing is putting the backlist in order. Tricky.
Jan 10, 2013 @ 07:32:13
I’ve been cruising the back highways of Maine and have noticed that a lot of the “antique” stores sell used books. Maine has plenty of towns where the per capita income is $20K or less. Where family income is under $35K. These people can’t afford to buy a lot of books full price. Hence the ubiquity of the used books and the scarcity of stores selling new books. I suspect there are plenty of places like this in America. Sure, they mostly sell genre fiction, but my book club has taught me that a reasonable amount of literary fiction is just pretentious writing that appeals to a clique of insiders in New York, rather than having any greater literary merit than well-written genre fiction.
Jan 10, 2013 @ 09:22:58
Regarding the Monopoly pieces, I read another article that said the piece wouldn’t be axed permanently, but replaced in some limited edition game. I think it’s a silly contest. There are so many different Monopoly games that if you don’t have a favorite piece in normal monopoly, I am sure it is part of the Disney version, or Pokemon, or any sports team ever…
Jan 10, 2013 @ 09:38:12
Much appreciate the link, thank you, and hope I’m wrong about self-publishing as a poor launchpad for more literary fiction. Are those who do succeed outliers? Regardless, it’s a path considered odd/unfortunate by those in that particular community—academia/MFAs, I’m thinking of.
Fabulous point by Lynne Connolly above. I’ve read conversations by those in the indie community who see that as an upcoming competitive threat.
Jan 10, 2013 @ 10:44:33
No! Not the iron! The battle ship must go. People aren’t playing board games now which is too bad so I can see why the Monopoly people are doing this contest. We have tons of board games and my kids still like them, we have fun “together” and there is a lot of healthy competition. It’s better than everyone off on their own surfing the web or watching TV. IMHO.
Jan 10, 2013 @ 15:00:07
My family wants the iron to go. Heck, my kids don’t even know what it is. And the robot’s our favorite to vote in.
Having the Bruin’s Stanley Cup edition makes it a moot point for us, but we had a fun half-hour or so battling it out.
Jan 10, 2013 @ 20:37:16
One more for the Facebook-only haters. Authors, especially self-publishing authors: if you only post on Facebook and you only sell through Amazon, I will never hear of you, never discover you, and never buy your book(s). Diversity: it’s a good thing.