Apr 24 2012
Tuesday Midday Links:Least Helpful Amazon Reviews; Pub Exec Admits to Stripping DRM
Jim C. Hines – Posing Like a Man – Jim Hines recreates a series of mantitty covers and comes to some interesting conclusions about the objectification of men on covers (it’s almost always positive).
Karen Knows Best – “It hasn’t passed my attention that within romance, enhanced breasts are usually hung on the ‘bitchy other woman’, as if somehow having silicone implants automatically makes her a bad person. This has started to annoy me a little bit. I don’t know, it just seems a tad judgmental.” This reminded me of the Harlequin Superromance book I read where the actress heroine (America’s Sweetheart) said she would nevuh have plastic surgery. Karen Knows Best
Crovitz: Justice Department Bites Apple – WSJ.com – Wall Street Journal
“I don’t think you understand. We can’t treat newspapers or magazines any differently than we treat FarmVille.” With those words, senior Apple executive Eddy Cue stuck to his take-it-or-leave-it business model of a 30% revenue share payable for transactions through the iTunes service. Despite my arguments to Mr. Cue in Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., offices last year on behalf of news publishers seeking different terms, to him there was no difference between a newspaper and an online game.”
This is a quote from the WSJ article. The problem is that the Journal and Apple fails to tell the whole story and that is not everything sold by Apple for the iOS system is under the agency model. For instance, music is based on the wholesale model wherein Apple buys from the labels and resells at the price in which it deems appropriate. Further, books are tied to a price/ceiling set by Apple. Apps are not. I don’t believe magazines are either.
Least Helpful » “Product worked well. Brain? Not so great.” – Least Helpful was brought to my attention by Wahoo Suze. Someone is mining the Amazon reviews and posting some of the “least helpful” or the “most hilarious”. Suze’s favorite is the Veet for Men. I’m hard pressed to disagree with her. “Being a loose cannon who does not play by the rules the first thing I did was ignore the warning...” Least Helpful
“Why I break DRM on e-books”: A publishing exec speaks out — paidContent – “I believe this is justified because I realize that when I buy an e-book from Amazon, I’m really buying a license to that content, not the content itself. This is ridiculous, by the way. I feel as if e-book retailers are simply hiding behind that philosophy as a way to further support DRM and scare publishers away from considering a DRM-free world. I’m not going to say where I work, or anything about my company, but I will say that I don’t think DRM is good for the publisher, author or customer. Don’t pro-DRM publishers realize this is one of the key complaints from their customers? I’ve heard plenty of customers tell me that e-book prices need to be low because they’re only buying access to the content, not fully owning it. That needs to change.” Read the WHOLE DAMN THING PEOPLE. As Pablo on Twitter says ” this guy—or gal—just now started paying attention to the customer experience?” paidContent
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Apr 24, 2012 @ 12:27:02
Tor (Macmillan) just announced an intent to go DRM free.
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/04/torforge-e-book-titles-to-go-drm-free
I’ve always been under the impression though that DRM was the choice of the publisher on Amazon. They could sell DRM free and set their own own simultaneous device limits.
Is that not true? Does Amazon force them to apply DRM?
Apr 24, 2012 @ 12:30:10
@Janet: Yes, the decision to have DRM on books is a decision of the publishers. Amazon does not force any one to apply DRM.
Apr 24, 2012 @ 12:33:14
@Janet, from what one of Tor’s authors told me Tom Doherty (head of Tor) told him they had no choice on the DRM issue, Amazon required it due to the way the publisher was uploading/publishing their books (through Mobipocket at the time).
Apr 24, 2012 @ 12:39:51
I loved the bit of misdirect in there from that Exec, making it seem like Amazon (B&N etc) are the ones who really want DRM. Do they take advantage of it by allowing it to lock readers into their device? Sure, why wouldn’t they? But I can go publish a book on Amazon right now and not have DRM put on it. Publishers have been the ones insisting on it.
Nice to see Tor is going DRM free. Though I’m wondering why it has to wait until July.
Love that, and the previous, blog post by Jim Hines. Well worth reading/viewing.
Apr 24, 2012 @ 13:00:49
My husband is a plastic surgeon. So many of the women who come to him for implants aren’t there to look like Pamela Anderson. Most of them just want to feel better about themselves about taking their clothes off. It’s a bummer they are all, in romance, portrayed as vain ho’s.
Apr 24, 2012 @ 13:34:48
How you can tell the difference between a heroine and The Other Woman.
The heroine may be beautiful, but if she’s considered a little plain, this is usually fixed by a surprise visit to the modiste/spa, where someone (usually a French seamstress) agrees to take her as a special surprise, because all she needs is to wear a flattering blue and she will be jaw-droppingly beautiful.
The Other Woman, by contrast, is regally, coldly beautiful–but rarely “naturally” so.
Also notice: a proper heroine rarely drags herself in for a makeover. The makeover is imposed on her, often over her protest, by friends/family/the hero. The Other Woman assumes agency over her own body image, and is willing to unflinchingly order skimpy clothing/make up/plastic surgery. The heroine gets her body image as a gift from someone else.
All this makes me think that I’d love to read a book where the heroine is proactive and unapologetic about taking charge of her looks. Any recommendations?
Apr 24, 2012 @ 14:23:24
@Courtney Milan: Private Arrangements? (It leaps to mind because I was reading it last night.)
I actually feel as if a lot of contemporaries do show women who are happy to look their best. But I know what you mean about the repetition of this motif! It appealed to me when I was a teenager but got very old as I grew older and kept running into the same motif. I do think there can be a legitimate transformation (a growth of confidence in one’s looks) that can be part of the growth of a heroine (she learns to love herself/believe in herself/be her best), but the French-modiste-type intervention can be aggravating.
Apr 24, 2012 @ 14:24:57
@Courtney Milan: One of Linda Howard’s does that. The one with Daisy. Google tells me it’s Open Season. One of the reasons I love that book. It does conform to the “hero was attracted to her before the makeover” trope, though.
Apr 24, 2012 @ 14:33:52
I love that I just saw Posing like a Man tweeted by io9!!! My geekdoms are colliding in the coolest ways today.
Apr 24, 2012 @ 14:53:10
Loved Jim’s cover post.
Glad to hear Tor is going DRM free. Hope other publishers follow.
It was my understanding that JK Rowling wanted to go with just social DRM for the Harry Potter books and Amazon gave her the choice of no DRM or full DRM.
Apr 24, 2012 @ 15:30:18
@Courtney
Kristan Higgins Fools Rush In came to my mind. Woman finishes medical residency and embarks on a weight loss, spiffy up program to snag the guy she always lusted after. Plans, of course, go awry.
Apr 24, 2012 @ 16:05:13
@Courtney Milan: I haven’t read it in years, but Sharon Sala’s Amber by Night reminded me of Linda Howard’s Open Season when I first read it. One difference was that the hot version of the heroine was her secret alter ego–she became “Amber” at night to work in a club and turned back into Clark Kent for her day job. Needless to say, things didn’t go according to plan.
Definitely not a romance but a black comedy, I loved the amazing Fay Weldon’s The Life and Loves of a She-Devil. It was a wonderful book ruined by that piece of film excrement with Roseanne Whoever. (The BBC production was far, far better but is hard to get a hold of for American audiences.)
Apr 24, 2012 @ 16:22:25
@library addict: Do Rowling’s books have anything other than social DRM? That was a discussion point when the books went on sale. Pottermore is where the books are sold, Amazon just points customers there. A quick Google search doesn’t suggest otherwise about the DRM.
Apr 24, 2012 @ 16:32:31
@library addict and @DS – I’m not exactly sure how the DRM works on the Pottermore books. I believe that they use some kind of social DRM and it wasn’t compatible with either the systems of the BN or Amazon because you can obtain NON Drm files through downloading directly from Pottermore. When the transaction occurs through BN or Amazon, DRM is applied.
However, for both BN and Amazon, DRM is an option. There is just something not compatible with the social DRM program pottermore is using and the systems used by both BN and Amazon.
Apr 24, 2012 @ 17:03:49
Pottermore books are all social DRM’d – watermarked to the purchaser.
Apr 24, 2012 @ 17:24:44
@Courtney Milan: Kate Hewitt’s The Bride’s Awakening (think it has a different title in the US, sorry) has a woman who not only rejects the hero’s attempts to give her a makeover, she then takes control and decides to have a makeover on her own terms, for her own reasons. Meantime, he falls in love with her in her work clothes – grubby jeans and shirt, if I remember rightly. It’s really awesome.
Apr 24, 2012 @ 17:26:04
@Jane: What’s social DRM?
Apr 24, 2012 @ 18:25:53
@Courtney Milan: The heroine of Rachel Gibson’s latest novella has implants.
Apr 24, 2012 @ 18:38:54
@Ros Clarke: In the case of the Pottermore books there is a unique ID number at the front of each copy you download. This number is also embedded (hidden) in various image and other files within the ePub. When you link your Pottermore account to Amazon for Kindle downloading or B&N for Nook, the books have a unique ID, but I have a feeling the other hidden ID stuff gets left out, therefore Pottermore requested both places use regular DRM.
In other cases, such as DriveThru RPG, files are watermarked with your name in small text at the bottom of each PDF page.
The idea being you won’t share the file when it has an identifier that leads back to you.
Apr 24, 2012 @ 19:01:42
It’s not usually a theme in romance novels (more women’s fiction), but some of us who’ve undergone mastectomy choose reconstruction with implants. There are alternatives, including not doing reconstruction at all, but I considered it the least invasive option as well as vitally important to my emotional recovery. I’m much more sensitive to it now when a character in a novel starts deriding plastic surgery….
Apr 24, 2012 @ 20:43:33
@Courtney Milan: Carolyn Jewel’s latest has a heroine who is unapologetic in her efforts to always look good.
Apr 24, 2012 @ 21:36:14
Tangent re: makeovers – I just finished Elizabeth Hoyt’s “To Seduce a Sinner” in which the heroine is not only plain and dresses unassumingly, but both she and the hero acknowledge it and do nothing about it. I kept expecting a transforming visit to the modiste but ended up appreciating much more that the obligatory makeover never appeared and that the characters were appreciated in other ways.
Apr 24, 2012 @ 22:25:26
I’m making a list of titles that you all are recommending and will post it tomorrow.
Apr 24, 2012 @ 23:52:44
@Courtney Milan: Not exactly the same thing but Beast by Judith Ivory is a great book with a heroine who is fully aware of her beauty and not the least bit apologetic for it.
Apr 25, 2012 @ 00:18:53
Thank you for the recommendations! My mind thanks you all, even if my wallet does not. I’ve read some of these, and the ones I have read I do like…so yay, moar plz.
Apr 25, 2012 @ 02:10:17
@Courtney, also Miranda Neville’s THE DANGEROUS VISCOUNT has a confidently attractive heroine and a geeky, bookish hero.
Apr 25, 2012 @ 12:04:19
Ok, thanks a lot for the Least Helpful link – are you trying to make extinct what’s left of my endangered time? Ha!
This one about Attwood’s Handmaid’s Tale is hilarious – male activists, really? Heehee!
http://leasthelpful.com/post/21592764497