Dear Author » npr

Monday Midday Links: Sex Is Dangerous

Jane — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 16:34:46 +0000

Sharon sent me this link to an NPR review of Erica Jong’s collection of stories called “Sugar in My Bowl”. Various female authors have contributed essays on the topic of sex and sexual fantasy.

Liz Smith, of gossip column fame, contributes a tale of losing her virginity to her cousin. (Intriguingly, the family connection didn’t seem to faze her.) On the delicate question of orgasm, Smith writes, “I was so ecstatically having ‘something’ special happen that I didn’t know if I was missing something else.” The memory of her forbidden flame remains an oft-consulted fantasy for Smith — she still wonders if she should have retired with him to Arizona.

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From Linda Holmes at NPR comes a great rebuttal to a poorly sourced paper by Susan Quilliam, a British psychologist who apparently counsels women to, among other things, give up romance. Quilliam says that women who read romance novels have a hard time differentiating fact from fiction and thus romance novels will lead to women making poor life choices like not using a condom. Basically sexual unhappiness can be traced back to romance novels. (The actual essay really isn’t that bad until it comes to Quilliam’s conclusions. It’s sensationalized by the newspapers picking it up). This paper by Quilliam has been quoted in newspaper articles and blog posts despite the basis of the paper being quite suspect. Holmes’ rebuttal is the best one out there because it points out the flaws in the Quilliam paper.

Moreover, I tracked down the “recent survey” myself, and I can confirm what’s been going around Twitter, which is that it covers a total of 78 novels published between 1981 and 1996, selected by plucking books off the shelf at three Cleveland bookstores. None of the books are less than 15 years old, and some were published 30 years ago, before condoms and AIDS were receiving anywhere near the public attention they receive now. Presenting this as the current state of the romance genre as concerns condoms in light of current information about sexual health is more than a little problematic.

Honestly, I wish the academics in romance would be more swift to respond with this science based destruction of the supposed expert’s conclusions although Laura Vivanco did put together a response here.

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The result of the cover contest were posted on the Cover Cafe contest two weeks ago. I think the Contemporary category is most interesting. The covers were pretty bland and uninteresting as a whole but I loved the Historical winner. That cover told a lot about the book in a beautiful way.

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I kept meaning to post this press release, but forgot.

Beginning in early 2012, D.W. Neal Publishing LLC will launch an electronic magazine/journal devoted solely to the art of short form romance stories. Romancezine will be available for download at a price of 99 cents on the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Apple iBook, Sony eReader, Smart phones and several other electronic retailers and formats. Each issue will contain a selection of 10-20 stories. Each story will be accompanied by a title page and appropriate graphic imagery.

Authors are encouraged to submit stories in all romance genres at lengths from 500 to 10,000 words. Authors will receive compensation on a per word basis and a small ad at the end of each story to promote the author and their other works. Romancezine will contain no advertising other than the promotion of the contributors.

For more information about submissions and no-fee writing contests please visit www.makinglovestories.com orwww.romancezine.com.

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I had an email exchange with someone about DRM and I received permission to share it.

I recently discovered another reason why some books are DRM’ed. I’ve been doing some ebook formatting for self-publishing authors and have tried a number of ways to compile the various file formats, and one of the ways I create EPUB files is to export them from InDesign, which actually does a pretty good job. The process embeds fonts, though, and if they’re commercial fonts, InDesign automatically encrypts the resulting EPUB file — i.e., it puts DRM on it. The first time I did it and tried to open the file in Calibre, it came up, and it was a complete surprise to me. The DRM lock on it was unintentional on my part. I had to tweak the EPUB file to remove the encryption, or use open-source fonts. Had to do a lot of Googling to learn how to do either of these.

In other words, a lot of the DRM books out there are probably unintentional on the part of the publishers. If they’re using fonts that require a license, and if they’re using InDesign for both their print and ebook editions (very, very likely on both counts given that InDesign is the industry standard), then it’s possible their EPUB files are just getting automatically encrypted.

I should add, though, that there’s an option in InDesign NOT to embed the fonts, which easily eliminates the possibility of the DRM being applied (and results in smaller file sizes, too). I think it might embed them by default, though (I’m not sure), and if the designer creating the EPUB file isn’t aware of it, voila — unintentionally DRMed books. I’ve read that some e-readers don’t even support embedded fonts (like Stanza), so in many cases it’s kind of pointless to include them anyway — best to turn off the option to embed fonts. But other e-readers do support them (I’ve read that the Sony Reader does), and book designers do like having control over their typography, so I imagine that a lot of EPUBs have embedded fonts in them.

I think it’s Adobe’s way of protecting the licensing of commercial fonts, because when fonts are embedded, the font files are actually included in the EPUB package; the export works fine without encryption, even with the embedded fonts option turned on, if only open source fonts — like LinuxLibertine, Bitstream Vera, DejaVu, etc. — are used. There’s a way to keep the commercial fonts embedded and the EPUB file DRM-free by tweaking the EPUB file afterward, but it requires “unzipping” the EPUB, getting into the code, and removing a specific file from the package.

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And:

Hope you’re well. I’ve been reading Dear Author quite a bit recently, and noticed you had a big focus on the different eBook reading platforms.

I’m interested in the same thing, and noticed that there was quite a big difference in prices among Kindle, Nook and iBook stores. So, I created a site (and iPhone/iPad app) with a few friends of mine that compares prices across all three of those stores in a single search, it’s called Leatherbound: http://leatherbound.me/

News I Should Have Posted But Was too Busy at RWA to Attend to the Computer

Jane — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:45:31 +0000

Last week, Amazon crept into consumer’s Kindles and deleted two ebooks that had been purchased: 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell. These books are considered public domain in several countries but not in the US. The copies that had been uploaded were not authorized copies for readers in the U.S. Instead of contacting the consumers, Amazon decided to delete them and refund the money. It proves the point that your books are not your own when you purchase them via the Kindle. (Thanks to Churrosnchocolate and chris for sending me the link). Check out the annotated Kindle Terms of Service. (readers you have no rights).

Class action lawsuit has been filed against Amazon over the fragility of the Kindle device. Matthew Geise purchased the Kindle and optional protective cover. Shortly after its purchase, the Kindle screen began to crack. Amazon refused to pay for repairs. Geise found others who suffered the same problem and thus the class action suit was birthed. Amazon has responded by offering to repair the devices without charge, but the lawsuit lives on.

The Washington Post got to post its snarky commentary on the romance genre in When Romance Writers Gather, The Plot Quickens. The article starts out with a quote by Colleen Gleason regarding the number of orgasms she includes in her books (one per chapter) and goes downhill from there.

There is no prototypical romance writer. Here at the Marriott Wardman Park hotel, some 2,000 women of all races and ages wear everything from chunky Goth boots to strappy stilettos. (There are also men. Maybe five of them.) But if you squint and look for a general appearance trend, this is it: They look like your mom. They look kind, comforting, domestic, as if they are wearing perfume made from Fleischmann’s yeast.

NPR did a piece on romance publishing and how it is one area that is surviving in the troubled publishing world. Nora Roberts was interviewed. Nora says romance books are about hope and continuity and help us to feel good. Nora says that there are constants and frameworks to romance: need sexual tension, emotional commitment, conflict, and a satisfying ending. She goes on to say that romance is broad enough to encompass aspects of mystery, horror, fantasy. It’s worth a listen.

All Romance eBooks has opened a sister site called OmniLit which “will offer genres currently not available on the All Romance site, including best sellers from some of the biggest names in publishing, as well as offerings from small, midsized, and indie presses. Customers will be able to select from hundreds of thousands of titles, everything from mainstream, children’s, and speculative fiction, to books on health & fitness, cooking, travel, and business.”

More news later in the day…

Sweet Savage Love Links of the Day

Jane — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:00:29 +0000

The Kindle’ 2 price drop from $359 to $299. Some reports say this is due to the drop in cost of manufacturing of the eink screens. Who knows.

Lucinda Betts and Elise Logan sent me the link to NPR’s piece by Jack Murnighan who is a closet romance reader (not so closeted anymore, Jack). Wonder if Jack prefers the romances with “Jack” as the titular character?

Not unlike the great late-teen realization that girls like sex too, the very thought that men and women were occasionally conjuring the same sugarplums made me feel much closer to my female compeers in general, and less like a creeping lust monster.

Here is a Capital! piece of social media mockery. It’s Pride and Prejudice recast in Twitterverse. There are so many brilliant moments that it’s hard to quote just one favorite.

Bingley:
@Darcy I can hardly wait to dance with @JaneB. She is the most capital girl I have ever met. #loveat1stsight

Darcy:
@Bingley Any savage can dance. #proofofmysuperiority

Bingley:
@Darcy JaneB’s sister, Lizzy is pretty. You could dance with her. It would be capital fun.

Darcy:
@Bingley She’s tolerable, but she is not handsome enough to tempt me. Also: could you stop saying “capital” so much? #abovemypeers

LizzyB:
@CharlotteL RT @D*rcy “She is tolerable. But she is not handsome enough to tempt me.” #twitteratiRtwats #takeyrtweetsprivatefool

In non book news, scientists have been able to recreate human sperm from stem cells. This will help those that have bought this cookbook. (hey, it is kind of book related)

NPR’s All Things Considered Takes a Look at the Book Industry

Jane — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 17:51:59 +0000

Once considered recession proof, the book business is suffering the same kind of economic turmoil as the rest. Booksellers, according to All Things Considered, incur 25% of the book sales in the holiday season. One long time bookseller is getting out of the new book business and will now sell used ones. Big box chain stores are struggling for survival. Publishing will need to reinvent the way it does business and makes money in order to survive in the future which means taking a look at the system of returns and capitalizing on digital technology.

Via NPR from SB Sarah.

npr discusses memoirs and free reads

Jane — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:17:18 +0000

NPR this morning discussed the fake memoir and the online previews of books. The acclaimed but fake memoir of Margaret B. Jones aka Peggy Seltzer came under attack by writers who actually did live the gang life. Needless to say, the writers feel disrespected by Seltzer’s attempt to profit off of their lives. But more importantly, Seltzer was successful because so much of the publishing white elites are unfamiliar with the gang culture experience that the “scroll of cliches” did not register.

Thanks JillF.