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Barnes and Noble is advertising free digital books.   Except these are books that are in the public domain so its a pretty lame promotion, if you ask me.   I did a post a couple of weeks ago about where to get public domain books which include   Project Gutenberg,  MobileRead, and  Feedbooks, Amazon and Sony.   Commenters pointed out manybooks.net.   The reality is that BN does have some good freebies to promote such as Karen Marie Moning’s DarkFever and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Steve Hockensmith.

Don’t forget to check out Books on the Knob for a list of more promotional freebies.

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Books on Board has a list of all the RITA nominees on one page.   I really appreciate this.   I use the RITA nominees to find new category books (not so much for the mass markets).

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Borders has opened up its ebook store.   It sells ePubs encrypted with the Adobe DRM.   Last week it was giving away a few books but that promotion appears to have ended. In perusing the store, I noticed that if Borders could discount a book, the book was generally at least 20% off.   I found one really good deal and a worthwhile freebie:

• Too Good to Be True by Kristan Higgins $3.60
• Dark Fever by Karen Marie Moning Free

Because Borders is missing a lot of content, it isn’t a replacement for your main shopping site, but it would be worthwhile to check out from time to time to see if you are getting the best deal for your Harlequin, Kensington and Random House purchases.

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Hearts’s iPad Magazine Apps will offer more functionality than just allowing a reader to peruse the magazine contents.    The Oprah magazine will have a built in ebook reader and will allow readers to purchase Oprah recommended books and read them through the “O” magazine.

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Michael Wolff writes for Newswer that it is a wasteland at the Times and SundayTimes in London behind the newly institute paywalls.

A Murdoch and Fleet Street veteran with whom I've been corresponding about the paywall reported to me on his recent conversation with an A-list entertainment publicist: "What was really interesting to me was that this person volunteered a blinding realization. "Why would I get any of my clients to talk to the  Times or the  Sunday Times if they are behind a paywall? Who can see it? I can’t even share a link and they aren’t on search. It's as though their writers don’t exist anymore.'"

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Paul Biba writes that there is a strong rumor that Apple and Amazon are going to employ individuals who will pursue ebook rights from authors whose rights have reverted or whose digital rights have never been sold.   This will be interesting.

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I thought this post at All About Romance by author Lisa Kleypas was quite interesting.   She said that she hoped her next books would be paperback or trade paperback at least.   It sounds like the publisher is pushing for hardcover.

Because this is a Christmas story, it’s going to be a shorter book in a hardcover format (I think price is 16.00)–this length and format seems to be what many readers prefer for a holiday read. But every book in the series can be read on its own, and the following three titles will all be full-length (which to me is much easier to write than a shorter length!) I would love for them to be released in paperback or possibly trade, but no decisions have been made yet.

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Speaking of libraries:

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Last, but not least, is a news bit about Lazy Day Publishing.   LDP came to my attention via a notice in my inbox.   As new epublishers spring up, I try to check them out.   This one, however, lacked any concrete information on who was backing the publishing house.   I put the email aside and figured I would check   back upon the release of their books.

This weekend I received an email that LDP was upset about the comments on Absolute Write Forum.   AWF, like all forums, has good information and bad information but there is no doubt it is a seriously valuable tool for aspiring and published writers a like.   AWF, for example, had posters up to two years ago reporting non payment by Dorchester. The purpose of AWF is to provide a safe haven for writers to share ideas about craft but also advice about the business side of publishing.   One of its most oft visited areas is the Bewares section.

Lazy Day Publishing starts its own thread on AW and the commenters were initially cordial but eventually there were the “who the f are you?” questions because, well, who are these people and what do they know about publishing?      Lazy Day took exception to this thread and wrote a blog screed which they deleted after a couple of days.   Why delete Lazy Day?   Have you not heard of Google cache? or um, screencaps? (I took the screencaps because I KNEW that this would be deleted).

took the higher road on this forum.  This was  not an easy thing to do.   How these cranky, arrogant and rude authors suddenly became the voice of the forum, I'm  notsure.   I guess the better question would be how they became so  negative in the first place?   Maybe it's all the rejection letters they have received in their lifetime.    

….

These few authors who fuel the negativity on this site are doomed to an unhappy existence of barely making it as a writer.   I feel sorry for them.   I feel sorry that they have forgotten about the art of storytelling.   They have lost the dream of sharing their writing with others.   They have created this microcosm of hostility.   An existence I wouldn't wish on anyone.

Wow, does this sound familiar or what?

In reading over their website, there are wrong word choices and bad grammar usage.   There is no question that you will see bad grammar on our site all the time, but we are an unedited blog site, not a site for a publishing house.

So what do I take away from Lazy Day Pub?   They have short fuses, will try to embarrass you on their blog if you cross them, and they lack a copy editor for the Frequently Asked Questions.

Related posts:

1. Authors Behaving Badly: #2, RWA Literacy Episode
2. Authors Behaving Badly Episode #3: Jan Butler
3. Update on the Hachette eBook Situation or Retailers Behaving Badly

One of the responses that I heard was that readers like to be entertained and not issued to death. I don’t know when the two (entertainment and serious books) became mutually exclusive. The fact is I read issue books every night, except most of the time they are books I read to my four year old.

That’s right. Sneetchs. Nearly every children’s book out there is an issue book. My favorite ones are the Dr. Seuss stories. My four year old’s favorite Dr. Seuss is “Sneetches and Other Stories.” My DD always asks me if I will read “all stories” in the book. It contains four, all of which revolve around the issue of bias or prejudice and the danger of sameness. Prejudice comes at a cost. For the Sneetches, all their money was spent trying to maintain their illusory differences–the stars on their bellies.

The first story is the headliner: Sneetches. For those who haven’t read it or had at one time but since forgotten it, Sneetches tells the story of the Seuss creatures who have stars on their bellies and the creatures who have “none upon thars”. The Sneetches with the stars are snotty and do not let the plain belly Sneetches partake in any of the parties or picnics. Then a shyster comes along and says that he can put stars on the bellies of the plain belly Sneetches and once he does, the snotty Sneetches are disgusted. Of course, for a greater fee (ten dollars eaches), the shyster agrees to remove the stars of the snotty Sneetches. The climax is the scene where the plain belly Sneetches and the star belly Sneetches keep going into the star on and the star off machines

until neither the Plain nor the Star-Bellies knew
whether this one was that one or that one was this one
or which one was what one… or what one was who

In the end, the Sneetches grow “quite smart” and realize that a Sneetch is a Sneetch no matter the outward physical appearance.

The fourth story in Sneetches is a story of racial prejudice, in my opinion. It’s title, What Was I Scared Of? This is the story of the pale green pants with nobody inside them. The Seuss like character has never seen a pair of pale green pants without anyone inside them before. He is scared with every increasing encounter until one day he’s in Snidefield and reaches inside a bush and what should he find but the eery pale green pants. The story ends with the Suess like character confronting the fact that those pants were just as afraid of the strange Suess character as the little creature was afraid of the pants. The two weren’t so different at all, even though they looked odd to each other. There really wasn’t anything for either to be afraid and those fears fell away once they began to get to know each other.

Dr. Seuss tackled a number of issues in his stories. There is the issue of conservation and imperialism in The Lorax where Once-ler keeps “biggering and biggering and biggering” his factory, his loads, his trucks, just because he can. Once-ler comes upon a wonderful tree called the Truffula. He begins chopping them down at such a rate that it harms the ecosystem. The Lorax attempts to first speak for the Brown Barbaloots who are fed by the Truffula fruits. Because of the declining source of food, the increase in smog and pollution, the Brown Barbaloots have to leave and soon after the fish and birds follow until the paradise is totally destroyed with nothing but wasteland and empty buildings. The story ends with the Once-ler dropping down a seed to the boy below saying that that change might occur if someone plants the seed, tends it with care, and perhaps the Lorax and his friends will return.

Dr Seuss himself said that Cat in the Hat was about objecting to authority

“I’m subversive as hell,” Seuss once said. “The Cat in the Hat is a revolt against authority. … It’s revolutionary in that it goes as far as Kerensky, and then stops. It doesn’t go quite as far as Lenin.

He wrote an anti-war book called The Butter Battle Book wherein two rival factions take up an arms race and are poised to destroy each other totally other over the fact that one faction eats their bread butter side up and the other butter side down.

Entertainment and serious issues aren’t mutually exclusive. The fact is that it takes a talented author to make it seem less so. I know that there are talented authors in the romance genre who can take a moral, an issue, a serious topic, and make it fascinating for the reader. And I also believe that adult readers are entitled to same smart but serious topic-ed books as their children.

Related posts:

1. James Patterson is really an entertainment conglomerate.
2. Jennifer Estep’s Hot Mama Gets B in Entertainment Weekly
3. Meljean Brook’s Demon Moon Gets A- in Entertainment Weekly

A legitimate criticism of romance as serious literature is it’s often cavalier treatment of important life topics. Too often, war, separation, human indignity, are treated as plot devices, conflict mechanisms, and not given the attention and treatment those important issues deserve. How many romance books are thought provoking? How many challenge your personal concepts of right and wrong? How many portray multi hued individuals as both heroic and villianous? Surely within the umbrella of the romance genre, there is room for these books.

Now, this is not to say that I think we should be preached to. Nor am I saying that romance should be about more serious issues. What I am saying is that the lack of these types of books within the genre does not help its image as frivolous literature.

Let me provide some examples. I tend to shy away from books about war and terrorism and I think that either authors are not writing these books or publishers are not buying them because I’ve seen a decline. The Navy SEAL became, for a short time in romance literature, a shorthand for alpha male protector in the contemporary romance ouvre. The problem is that too many of our personal lives have been touched by soldiers in combat and therefore the ability to read these romantisized versions has become less easy.

On Sunday, the death toll in Iraq for American soliders turned 4000. It is more lives than was lost in 9-11. And as we passed the 4000 mark, the 4001 death will be quickly upon us. The death toll of soldiers doesn’t even begin to tell the story of loss. It doesn’t tell us of the loss of Iraqi life. Or the losses continue once the soldiers return homebound. Because mental illness is not one that is measured by CT Scans or MRIs or some other objective test, it is often dismissed as un important but a military task force reported that 38 percent of soldiers “report psychological concerns such as traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder after returning from deployment.”

So many books give male heroes a military background without having that experience mark them in some way. It is common for both contemporaries and historicals to feature these war heroes whose missions in battle have no affect on them when they return. Is that really plausible? I don’t believe so. Could anyone could live in combat zones with the mission of kill or be killed and come out unchanged?

There are a few books that deal with emotional traumas like Suzanne Enoch’s England’s Perfect Hero (Hero is a PTSD sufferer) or Carla Kelly’s Beau Crusoe (man stranded for five years). I am sure that there are others that I can’t recall at this point, but the majority of romances don’t deal with the consequences of choosing a particular backdrop such as experience in combat. It’s not dissimilar to discussions we had last week about the worldbuilding issues that are weak within the genre.

Take, for example, the villian. Almost all romances contain a villian. Some very bad, very evil character who thwarts the happiness of some character. Villians are caricatures at times and authors have employed different standard devices to show how truly bad they are. Villians usually have perverse sex (sometimes incestual sex). They often times treat women and animals poorly. They are infidelitous. The problem with using villians as a plot device is that it creates some hard and fast rules about the good and the bad. One thing that I appreciated about Joanna Bourne’s The Spymaster’s Lady was the portrayal that not all French were bad and not all English were good. Linda Howard’s villian in All the Queen’s Men killed people, wreaked havoc on lives, engaged in illegal arms trade, but all to save his daughter. It made him moderately redeemable.

It is not just with the war that romance trivializes important concepts. I stopped reading Christina Dodd because of her series of three adopted children and their search for each other. Dodd’s treatment of adoption in the book was cursory at best. I don’t know if she spent time talking to adopted children or reading books about adoption, but the characters lacked any emotional realism of the issue that could have been used effectively to move the emotional arc. However, in the first two books, it was clear to me that the topic of adoption was merely a plot device and not one that was going to be dealt with in any deeper emotional context. For me, as an adopted child, this trivialization of an important emotional and social topic was too demeaning. (I’ve since started reading Dodd again in her paranormal iteration because hers is a voice I enjoy).

The point that I am trying to make is that there are few romance books that take on serious social concerns and actually deal with those traumas. Instead of just giving a character a job or a backstory and not dealing with consequences, I want authors to choose deliberately. If you are going to make your character a soldier, ask if the soldier will have any post combat difficulties either in connecting with other people or coping with the day to day activities of life. If you are going to make a character adopted, why not use the issues of abandonment, separation, identity issues, to make a more poignant character arc. This is not to say a book can’t be frothy and light, even if the hero is a soldier. It just that I want, as Jan said last week, for authors to have thought about the repercussions of giving the hero that backdrop.

I don’t think world building is about explanations either. It’s about, as you say, adding the right amount of detail. But crucial to that detail is consistency. Writers don’t need to put the system of religion on a page unless it’s necessary for the reader to understand the story. But if a writer refers to anything religious, they’d darn well better think of the repercussions of the choice they’ve made.

In High Noon by Nora Roberts tries to address the issue of agoraphobia of the heroine’s mother and how that affects the romance between the hero and heroine. Kathleen O’Reilly tries to address the issue of loss in 9-11 in Sex, Straight Up. Can a New Yorker ever get past 9-11 when the city won’t let it. It was a very touching question.

I’m not saying that there isn’t a place for froth, fun, and entertainment. I love those books just as much as the next person. I am saying that the inability or unwillingness to really understand and tackle the serious issues that romance authors blithely use to further the action or create tension is a weakness in the genre. This, of course, is not an issue that is solely germane to romance. John Rickards, an acclaimed thriller writer, stated much the same thing about his own genre, urging his fellow authors to move beyond doing unspeakable things to children in writing just for the drama of it.

We’ve covered how crime can tear a family apart many times. There have been hundreds of books in which suspicion falls upon the wrong individual. I doubt there is anything more to say about the tragic loss of a child that hasn’t already been said.

I enjoy some emotional justice as much as the next person. In Lynne Connolly’s Rose and Richard series, Rose is a poor village girl who ends up marrying very well. At some point, Rose and her husband, the delicious Richard, return to Rose’s village with great pomp and circumstance, rubbing the locals’ collective nose in her good fortune. It’s a great scene. So I am not advocating for the removal of villians or the removal of emotional justice. I am advocating for more romances to tackle, seriously, hard issues and morally ambiguous characters. I think there is room under the tent for them and I think that those books would lend some grativas to the genre.

Related posts:

1. Ebookwise Conversion Issues
2. Marvel Comics Makes 2500 Back Issues Available Online
3. Tailor-made Romances

The question of whether there is a divide between authors and reader/blogger/reviewers has been discussed and debated here and elsewhere. To me it seems clear that it does, at least in some quarters. Some reader/blogger/reviewers, including some of my fellow bloggers here on Dear Author, have called out some authors for behaving badly. And some authors have called out reader/blogger/reviewers for being mean girls. Recently, Janet (Robin) blogged here about her own response to some authors’ reactions to the recent Cassie Edwards scandal, saying that “It felt to me (and still does) that there was a frighteningly easy shift into reader v. author discourse.”

But nowhere, perhaps, is the rift more evident than in the relative absence from the romance community of people who bridge the gap — those who are both writers or authors, as well as bloggers and reviewers.

I don’t mean to suggest that this hybrid is completely nonexistent in the romance genre. Authors HelenKay Dimon, Alison Kent and Stephanie Feagan all write reviews for Paperback Reader. Bam is a blogger and former reviewer who is now published. There have also been some unpublished writers who have reviewed for AAR, including Kathryn Smith, Marianne Stillings and Megan Frampton, all of whom went on to be published. And there are others as well.

Still, those are a handful of women out of a far larger number of published authors and aspiring authors. It is enlightening, too, to read Frampton’s comments on her decision to stop reviewing.

…I don’t think other writers would do anything close to an objective job in terms of reviewing their peers. I know when I was writing reviews AND fiction, an author told me I had to make a choice: either I was a reader/reviewer or a writer. If I continued to do both, I would face awkward situations and possibly snubbing, etc. in the authors’ community.

A little under two years ago, there was an interesting debate on this topic on AccessRomance All-a-Blog. In comment #43, author Leslie Kelly said:

…The romance fiction industry, despite the number authors, is an *incredibly* small community. Everybody knows everybody. Everybody talks. There’s a lot of loyalty between friends and catty backstabbing between enemies. Honestly, I think a reviewer-author can be shooting themselves in the foot if they rip apart the wrong book and offend that author and alllllll her friends. And, by the way, her editor! (Um, I have personal knowledge of this one. I know an editor who will NEVER buy a particular author because that author has publicly slammed the editor’s authors & basically said their books shouldn’t have been published. Uh, EXCUSE ME? You really think the editor who bought those books is going to buy you after that???)

If a good friend of NYT bestselling author A is ripped to shreds by author/reviewer x and someday author/reviewer x wants a cover quote, or wants to do an anthology, or a miniseries, or in any way interact with NYT bestselling author…hmm-what do you think the answer will be?

And in comment #47, author Julie Leto chimed in:

And I thought I’d mention here that unpublished writers or aspiring writers who trash published books are doing themselves a disservice. My editors read reviews…and those names stick with them if the reviewer has been unfair or cruel.

Leto went on to clarify her comments in comment #56:

I’m not talking about reviewing in general. I’m talking about TRASHING.

But since she also said (to author/reviewer HelenKay Dimon) “Maybe we’re talking apples and oranges. I don’t know…but maybe what you see as an honest review I’d see as an snarky attack,” and since author/reviewer HelenKay Dimon admitted in this same thread that “I’ve gotten hate mail, two of which I viewed as threats,” (comment #70) it is with trepidation that I make my confession here today.

Here it is: I write. I’ve been writing since elementary school, and in a variety of forms. I’ve written poems, plays, short stories, and movie reviews in the past, among other things; I currently write book reviews and the occasional letter of opinion here at Dear Author. But the reason for this post is that my current writing project outside of Dear Author is also my first attempt to write a romance.

Let me take a moment to also admit that trying to write a romance, and trying to write one well, is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever attempted. What a humbling experience it is to come up against the limits of my abilities on a regular basis. It has a way of making me appreciate the effort that’s gone into each and every book that I review, whether or not that book works for me.

And here I come to the crux of the matter: I am an unpublished writer who is also a reviewer and blogger.

How did I come to be all these things? Well, I’ve been reading romances since I was thirteen. I cut my teeth on books by Johanna Lindsey, Rosemary Rogers, Kathleen Woodiwiss and Jude Deveraux. Later I discovered Judith McNaught, and later still, Mary Jo Putney and Linda Howard. When, in my twenties, I found Laura Kinsale, I was stunned by the power of the feelings that her books evoked in me. When I discovered Patricia Gaffney a few years later with To Have and to Hold, it was electrifying.

But as much as I adored some books, I was also beginning to feel dissatisfied with many others. At thirteen, just reading about romantic and sexual love was thrilling, but by my mid to late twenties, many of the books I found in bookstores were feeling very familiar to me. I was desperately craving something new and different, something satisfying, but trying to find it by picking up books at random at the bookstore wasn’t working for me.

And so, about ten years ago, I hit the biggest romance reading slump I have ever experienced. For about a year and half, I read mainly in other genres and, except for rereading those few romances I loved and waiting for books from a handful of authors to come out, I became jaded where most of the genre was concerned.

It was around this time that I discovered the internet. For a while, I hung out in a reading community where people mostly discussed books in other genres, which is what I was reading at that time. Then, one day, I found AAR, and soon thereafter, TRR. I can’t begin to say how wonderful it was for me to find these sites: wonderful because for me, they re-opened the world of romance.

Through the recommendations of their reviewers, and in the case of AAR, of readers on their boards as well, I was once again able to find new books I loved — able to discover new-to-me authors like Mary Balogh, Carla Kelly and Connie Brockway.

If it hadn’t been for those reviews, I wouldn’t have plunged back into the romance genre, wouldn’t have realized that there were so many more good books out there than I’d been aware of before. If it hadn’t been for reviews and for the book discussions that have kept me so engaged, I would not still be an avid romance reader today, much less trying to write a romance.

As the introduction to this opinion piece makes clear, I am aware that in the romance community the majority of writers, both published and unpublished, don’t speak publicly about books that didn’t work for them or that they did not enjoy, and do not write critical reviews.

Perhaps if I had come into the romance community with the intention of being a romance writer from the beginning, I would not have done so either. But when I first discovered the romance boards, I did not intend to write a romance, and at first, I also had no awareness of the negative perceptions that some people in the community had of readers who examined in public what did and didn’t work for them in a book.

In hindsight, I wish now that over the years, I had stated some of my opinions more courteously. But I can’t, and don’t, wish that I’d never put them out there. The discussions of books with fellow readers have become a huge part of my love for the genre. And it’s partly for the readers who I’ve met and befriended that I’m now trying to write a romance as well. Because it’s in large part this ongoing internet conversation that’s seduced me and made me fall in love with this genre all over again.

When Jane and Jayne approached me about blogging for Dear Author, I was faced with a dilemma. But ultimately, I decided to join Dear Author because I liked and respected Jane and Jayne, because I wanted to see what my thoughts on books would look like in a more formal format, and because I wanted to contribute and give back in the same way that review sites had given so much to me.

I believed, and still believe, that there is a difference between thoughtful, polite criticism and bashing, and the former is what I have tried to provide here at Dear Author. I don’t know if I’ve always succeeded, but I do know that I have tried.

I know that even thoughtful, polite criticism can sometimes sting the author whose book is being examined. But I also know that one can’t publish something, be it a book, a review or an opinion piece like this one, and expect everyone who reads it to love it. Even Shakespeare didn’t get universal approbation in his time. Why then should we expect everyone to say they love a book, or else to say nothing at all? Doesn’t an open, thoughtful conversation about our differences of opinion also have something to offer us?

I believe that it does. A well thought-out review is of benefit to readers, because it can help them decide how to spend their purchasing dollars, and make them aware of books they would not have known of otherwise. It can also, of course, be a source of publicity for an author.

In addition, having had my writing workshopped in writing classes and critiqued by fellow writers, I know that the process of having your writing examined for flaws as well as strengths can be difficult, but I also know that I have grown as a writer as a result of this same process. Reviews aren’t exactly the same thing, but (at least when some thought has been put into them) they’re also not completely dissimilar.

And finally, I believe that discussions of what makes some books stronger than others can help strengthen the genre as a whole. If the best books in the genre (and I am not saying I am the arbiter of what is best — that is something that is up to the entire community to determine; my role as a reviewer is merely to help keep that discussion rolling) remain read and in print, examined and discussed, then they can only influence and inspire new writers to attempt to equal those books.

Despite all that I have said here, I reserve the right to stop reviewing if I come to some fork in the road. If I find I simply don’t have the time, or that I no longer enjoy it, or if I get published and feel that it creates a conflict of interest. I’m not saying I’ll feel that way in the future; I simply don’t know how I may feel.

For all these reasons, I do not judge anyone else who makes a different choice than the one I’ve made. But I would like to encourage writers and authors to think about what I’ve said here, and consider the possibility of putting opinions of books out in the public eye.

I know that some authors won’t even say what their favorite books are when asked to name them in an interview, and for that reason, I’m glad every time I see a writer or author pipe up to say why she loved a particular book, or explain why some aspect of another book didn’t work for her. Because it makes me feel less alone here in the blogosphere, yes, but also because I truly think that this kind of conversation is the lifeblood of a genre, and that any time writers enter into these discussions thoughtfully, they are making an important contribution to the community.

In closing, I’d like to return to last week’s topic of ethics in blogging. The reason I’m disclosing the fact that I aspire to be a romance author isn’t because I’ve suddenly become courageous. It’s because I have two friends who are about a month away from being published for the first time. Sherry Thomas and Meredith Duran aren’t just my friends, they are also my critique partners.

At one time, I thought that I could, if I disclosed my friendship with them, and if another reviewer offered a second opinion, review Meredith and Sherry’s books (The Duke of Shadows and Private Arrangements, respectively). But as their publication date has neared, I’ve become more uneasy with doing so. It could be argued, I think, that I have a conflict of interest, and I don’t want my actions to reflect badly on Dear Author.

And so, I have decided not to formally review Sherry or Meredith’s books, and to disclose my relationship with them so that if I comment on the reviews of their books in the comment sections, or mention that I think both Sherry and Meredith are immensely talented (as I do) you can all decide for yourselves whether or not to take what I say with a grain or more of salt. It seems to me that transparency is the best way to take an ethical approach to the situation.

And now, let me turn this over to all of you. What are your thoughts on the possibility of a backlash to writers and authors who choose to review? Is it real or, as a friend of mine suggests, merely imagined? What are your thoughts on the role of the ongoing conversation about books? What do you think about unpublished writers as reviewers, published authors as reviewers, authors commenting on books, reviewers reviewing their friends, or any other topic that came up in this post?

Related posts:

1. Confess Yourself: Are you a closet category romance reader?
2. Love of Reading Online Book Fair Coming to an Internet Connection Near You
3. Dangerous Book for Boys Coming to a Big Screen Near You

Romance is an easy target for dismissal by critics, both insiders and outsiders alike. Respect that the genre deserves isn’t being earned despite the tremendous buying power that the genre readers command. Science fiction and mysteries are more honored and more respectable by mainstream press and critics.

This past summers brou ha ha over the costume arose out the anger of authors such as Nora Roberts and Jennifer Crusie at how the costume was all that the press could talk about and how it diminishes the genre as a serious concern.

There have been alot of reasons tossed around as to why the romance genre does not get respect: It’s written by women. It’s about love. It features the a happy ending. It’s formulaic. It’s about sex.

The problem that I see is much more cosmetic. It’s the titles, the covers, and the whole package that is put out there for everyone to see. With the majority of non romance readers and with the common misconception about what romance actually is (i.e., whenever LKH is referred to as a paranormal romance author, I cringe and not just because I think LKH’s writing has totally gone in the shitter, but because that is not what romance is – group orgies and woman with unlimited power).

I don’t think the genre will be taken seriously until there is a shift in the covers, the back cover blurbs and the titles. The book by Joanna Bourne is so delicately wrought and so intelligently written that I believe it could stand up to a serious literary critique but with its man chest cover, who would take it seriously. For non romance readers, the cover already characterizes the book as fluff.

I am much more hard on those within the publishing industry than I am on those outside of it. Genre authors, publishers and editors should know better than to make scurrilous statements about the romance genre based solely on the covers, the sex of the writers, the formulaic constraints of a genre.

Can you really blame the outsiders, though, for creating negative assumptions when the main exposure to romance is the factory-like, horribly named books with the clinch cover or the man titty cover? When the major representative of our industry from the reader point of view is RT and its man-a-tastic festival of oiled chests and pleather?

You can’t blame the outsiders for our negative image. We’re part of it by accepting the covers and titles, making excuses for our deficiences, attacking without questioning. We can, however, be part of making it more respectable. By allowing spirited debate. By acknowledging our flaws. By speaking out about issues that we think are important to the issue of romance as a genre.

It’s not about keeping certain genre topics out, i.e., not permitting the forced seduction books. Those are obviously a cherished part of the genre and should be given their due. But there are changes, particularly cosmetic ones, that could happen within the genre such as better covers.

Ned is currently reading the Golden Compass series but from October and November he read nothing but romance novels: Meljean Brook, Claudia Dain, Shana Abe, CL Wilson. I asked him if he felt like he was a romance reader now. He looked at me curiously and said, “I guess if that is what romance books are, then I am a romance reader.”

The stories within the covers have universal appeal else they wouldn’t sell so well. Shouldn’t the covers and titles reflect that? Shouldn’t the image of the genre reflect that?

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I wish Allen had talked more about the historical aspect of the novel and less about the idea of feminism as owning the right to have whatever fantasy a woman wishes.

Via Michelle Styles.

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“It’s driven by the same compulsion as the GOP: the need to shame others, rather than facing up to your own shame.” and “Gawker readers remind me of all those aggrieved citizens who continue to fall for the GOP’s hate campaigns — and to vote against their own economic interests.”

Given Almond’s renowned wit and writing, I am just a little disappointed at his flailing about at the Huffington Post and attributing the downfall of morality in the US to the New York literati’s addiction to Gawker and the country’s “culture of grievance.”

“If this country ever hopes to rouse itself from the moral torpor marked by the Bush years, we are going to have to end our addiction to Gawking, and face up to the common crises of state.”

I’m pretty sure that everything that Almond says about Gawker could be said about his own work, particularly the essay in which he refers to Oprah as the “Wal-Mart of Hope”. Gawker responded by accusing Almond of taking things out of context. Everyone wants a piece of Gawker these days, given its rise in prominence. I read the Vanessa Grigoriadis piece but was struck by the vitriol she expended. In reference to the owner of Gawker Media, Grigoriadis writes:

The moment that he told me that he would not conduct an official interview with me, and I said I'd continue reporting without him, was perhaps the only one where I've seen him express emotion. For a split second, he was furious. His eyes flicked back and forth over mine like a metronome, searching for some clue to what I was planning, what angle I might be playing, and he spat out his denial with the intensity of a losing tennis player.

What struck me the most, however, was the pay these bloggers at some of my favorite sites like Gizmodo were being paid: $12 per post with an average of 12 posts per day. Now that’s Gawk-worthy.

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1. REVIEW: Which Brings Me To You by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott
2. iTunes Sales Are Way Up Says Steve Jobs
3. Selling Books to Match Your Handbag

What do you ladies think? Does it take away from the current schtick? Could we still call the blog Dear Author?

Opinions wanted.

Related posts:

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3. More Evidence On the Unreliability of Amazon Reviews

Plus, I read that contributor Jayne Ann Krentz would never appear on a site that gave negative reviews.

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While much of the blog posting is about one particular blog in question, it is used as illustrative of an example that we believed was over the line, in terms of personal attacks. You may disagree. I think this is really an important topic because I see it discussed briefly from time to time. We want to know your opinion as to what is appropriate in terms of criticism.

Please join us, after a deep breath and some chocolate as Sarah says, at the Smart Bitch site for the first of the Smart Bitch/DearAuthor Cross Blog Debate.

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In our FAQ section, Jane and Jayne posted the following review grade explanation:

Our review grades are our own opinions, obviously, and therefore fraught with subjectivity. You may or may not agree with our opinions, our grades, or anything else. We’d love for you to comment on the reviews and tell us where we went wrong or what we got right. If you are wondering if there is any objectivity in a review, we can only provide you with the information below:

A: I loved it and would cry if someone took it from my library. I would need lots of chocolate to get over its loss.
B: It’s good and I would buy it again, given the chance.
C: Eh. Not bad but I probably would never read it again.
D: I want my money back.
F: I want my money back and repayment for the time wasted reading it.

At the bottom of this grading scale is one more grade:

DNF: does this really need an explanation?

I’ve decided that in my case, it really does.

What brought me to to this realization was the inauguration of our Dear Author Book Club. Naturally, I offered to read our first book club selection, Meljean Brook’s Demon Angel. After hearing Jane’s raves, I looked forward to the book and was excited to begin it.

At first the book and I got off to an intriguing start. The protagonists in Demon Angel run against type for the romance genre. Far from being a naive virgin or a savior of orphans, the heroine, Lilith, is an honest-to-goodness demon who initially doesn’t balk at using the good, kind Hugh in her scheme to bring about the downfall of the man he serves. And rather than give us another rakish alpha hero, Ms. Brook makes Hugh a virginal seventeen year old knight in the book’s opening section.

I liked Hugh and Lilith quite a bit, and though I wasn’t completely won over (the prose seemed a bit stilted in places, and Lilith’s conscience showed that she wasn’t as wicked as I wished she were), I had high hopes.

They didn’t completely pan out in the next 200 or so pages. Except for its end, a section in which Lilith and Hugh had brief meetings through the centuries failed to excite me, in part because of cryptic references to characters who remained offstage and whom I didn’t feel invested in, and in part because information sometimes seemed like it had been inserted into the characters’ dialogue a bit awkwardly.

Then came the contemporary section, where I began to feel a lack of setting descriptions. Some of the interiors were described as plain rooms; others were described very briefly. I could visualize the characters, but not much else, and I am a reader who likes to form pictures in her head as she read, and better yet, imagine scents, sounds, flavors and textures as well. That kind of sensory experience was missing from the contemporary section of Demon Angel, for this reader at least.

In addition, I didn’t care much about mankind’s fate, or the death of one character. I mainly cared about Hugh and Lilith’s relationship, but even that was developing too slowly for me. I felt that the book had bogged down. The pacing, an element which can make a 600+ page book race along or a 200 page book crawl, had decelerated too much.

But then, so had my reading. By the halfway point, I was reading no more than half an hour a day, a rate at which I couldn’t hope to produce a review on a timely basis. Pushing through and forcing myself to read more would just make me dislike the book, and it didn’t deserve that. Even with all the flaws I’ve mentioned, it seemed like a better than average book. The characters were interesting and a lot of creativity had gone into the world-building. But what was the alternative? A DNF grade? Could I really do that to Hugh and Lilith?

Several years ago, I had a habit of finishing nearly every book I started in the hopes that it would improve toward the end. But since then my time has become more valuable to me, and I’ve decided that I value it more than my money, and that life’s too short to peel grapes or to finish books I’m not in the mood to keep reading.

I’ve pretty much held to my selfish principle. I’ve skimmed, I’ve peeked at the end with impatience, and in the past year I’ve even dumped two books I’d read no more than a few pages of. I haven’t reviewed these books, because I didn’t feel I’d read enough of them that that would be fair to their authors. But I’d read enough of them to know that forcing myself to read every word would go down no better than a big plateful of Brussels sprouts on a full stomach.

Sometimes you want to give a book a fair shake, but you just can’t.

Plopped down beneath the F grade, DNF seems like it could be worse than an F, the worst kind of grade to give an author. I’m hesitant to use it in this case, since I suspect if I did, some people might think I was saying:

Dear Ms. Brook,

Your book was so bad I couldn’t be bothered to finish it.

Sincerely,

Janine

But they would be wrong. Demon Angel, at least the half of it that I read, was not a bad book. It just wasn’t a book that compelled me to read further. That says some things about the book, but it also says some things about me as a reader. I’m spoiled. I’m finicky. I have a short attention span. Sometimes I just don’t feel like finishing.

What about you? Do you always finish the books you start? If not, does it always mean they’re bad? And if a blogger doesn’t finish a book, would you rather see her give a DNF grade to that book, or a letter grade for the part of the book she read, or in that case, no review at all?

Let me know.

Sincerely,

Janine

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