Apple is hosting a media event in New York later this month and according to various websites, the focus is on books.  There is some speculation that Apple will be rolling out a more full fledged self publishing platform.  It already accepts self published books and Pages, Apple’s word processor, has a “save as epub” option.  Another speculates it is about textbooks. I vote the latter.  More money in textbooks and not only because the textbook market is huge, but because Apple can sell their products to text book users.

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India Grey has a lovely personal tribute to Penny Jordan who was Grey’s “writing mum.”  I am sure that Jordan was proud of the writer Grey is becoming.

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This link was posted on Kindleboards, a forum that has a section that is frequented by a number of self published authors, and is basically, as the lone review states, a “blatant beggar’s offering.”  I reported the book to Amazon and hopefully it will be taken down.  Right now there is no buy link.  This sort of thing is ridiculous.

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We have our first episode When Authors Attack! of 2012.  Kira, a long time user of Goodreads, quotes some pages from Tempest by Julia Cross.  Part of the book is apparently told from the young male point of view who views the object of his affection’s roommate as a raging hater feminist:

I loosened the tie on her robe. “She’s at least two hundred dollars richer, so there’s nothing to bitch about. And when is she not angry?”

“Never. But thank you for one night free of feminist lectures.”

I leaned over and whispered, “Consider it your make-up gift.”

Nice!  Well, Dan Krokos, who apparently shares an agent with the author, came to defend Julie’s honor in the comments and started harassing Kira on twitter.  Dan apparently believed that what he did on Twitter wouldn’t be seen or screencapped by the Internet? Do these folks not understand how the internet works?  Dan starts a hashtag called #goodreadsslogans.  Then Lauren DeStefano says and I quote because the you cannot make this stuff up “I’d even venture to say GR makes 4chan look like a hallmark card from my own loving grammy”.  4Chan, you guys.  Lauren DeStefano compared Goodreads to 4Chan.

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Sorry, back. I had to pick myself off the floor from laughing so hard.  Anyhoodle, Dan and Julie’s AGENT comes in:

So I represent both Julie Cross and Dan Krokos. I love both their books and as someone who knows them personally I think they’re both great people. So my opinion is not objective.

I think negative reviews are valuable–to readers, to authors, to everyone. I think personal attacks are not.

But even more than all that, I thought Goodreads was supposed to be a forum to talk about books, not group up and personally attack people who disagree or question a review.

This thread makes me feel ashamed to be a member of this community.

Oh, Suzie.  Then Courtney Allison Moulton, another YA author, trots out the old yarn that you won’t get published if you aren’t nice.  ”#goodreadsslogans the hot new way to destroy a career in publishing before you have it.”  Round up the wagons and shoot the readers. That makes a ton of sense.  Goodreads, as author Hannah Mosckowitz says, is really a reader’s platform.  Oh, I know some authors will argue that Kira’s post is not a review.  And it’s probably not but Goodreads is about readers sharing their opinions with other readers.  They don’t need to be hounded and mocked and harassed by authors.  This is a YA book and another commenter pointed out that Kira is an adult and she can handle the harassment but what if it was a teen?

My advice? Stay away from Goodreads if you are an author that can’t take reading negative statements about your book.  And if you think that Goodreads is 4Chan, then, well, maybe you should delete your Goodreads profile and stay the heck away.

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Disney-Hyperion wants to avoid bloggers altogether.  I was cruising NetGalley yesterday and noticed this proviso at the end of every D-H book:  ”Disney-Hyperion accepts requests from librarians, educators, booksellers and media professionals. We are not accepting blogger requests at this time.”

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If SOPA does pass, it means that some of your favorite websites will have the DNS routing service shut off.  This means the name of the website (i.e., Dear Author or Amazon or Goodreads) will not bring up the website.  However, that does not mean that those sites are dead or completely inaccessible. Users are compiling internet protocol addresses and will be spreading them around so that if SOPA does pass, you can still access your favorite sites (and yes, piracy will continue apace).  Here’s a listing of IP addresses of some of the biggest media sites around such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the like.

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Speaking of SOPA, apparently there are a number of instances in which SOPA proponents have listed companies as supporters when those companies are not supporters (this is not true of GoDaddy who helped draft the legislation and received a special exemption in return).  Petzl America posted a notice on its website stating the following:

To reiterate, Petzl America has not and does not support SOPA or the Protect IP Act. Nor do we support any legislation that would harm the freedom of the Internet. We are strongly against counterfeiting, especially, as in the case of counterfeited Petzl products, where the safety of the end user is concerned. By extension, we are for legislation that would help reduce the theft of intellectual property, production of counterfeit goods, and knowing sale of counterfeit goods. However, we believe that SOPA and Protect IP do not address these concerns in a constructive manner.

We hope that this statement helps to clarify our stance on SOPA, Protect IP, and the general issue of IP theft and counterfeiting. We sincerely apologize for any confusion surrounding these issues.

Nintendo, Sony, and EA sports have quietly dropped their support of SOPA. I do know that there are authors who have written in support of SOPA. One of the historical romance authors with the first name Karen (I get Ranney, Hawkins et al mixed up) wrote in support of it. Karen Ranney wrote in support of the bill. I have no idea if she understands the implications. I am going to assume that she does and still wants to allow support a law that would cripple the internet.

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DEALS

Freebies

• Ryan’s Return by Barbara Freethy * 0 * A | BN | K | S
• Left Behind by Tim LaHaye * 0 * A | BN | K | S
• Wild Angel by Miriam Minger * 0 * A | BN | K | S
• Only Us: A Fool’s Gold Holiday by Susan Mallery * 0 * A | BN | K | S

• The Bachelor by Carly Phillips * 1.99 * A | BN | K | S
• Deadly Desires by Ann Christopher * 1.99 * A | BN | K | S
• Highland Captive by Mary McCall * 1.99 * A | BN | K | S
• Haunted by Heather Graham * 1.99 * A | BN | K | S
• Return to Paradise by Simone Elkeles * 1.99 * A | BN | K | S *This is a highly acclaimed YA author*
• Collision Course by Zoe Archer * 1.99 * A | BN | K | S
• Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George * 2.99 * A | BN | K | S

Indie Must Buy

• Angelfall by Susan Ee * 0.99 * A | BN | K | S  * This book is only $.99 and it is such a good story. I encourage you to buy it now for the $.99 price. I bought it a few months ago at $2.99.  I would have paid 3x that to read it.

I’ve been wanting to read more YA; the genre seems to have changed so much since I was a, well, young adult. There are so many fresh and exciting YA books being written these days, and that’s exciting to me, especially when I’ve just finished my umpteenth uninspired English historical. Even though some of my favorite YA novels of the past several years have been set in alternate realities (The Hunger Games and sequels, the Megan Whalen Turner series, Dia Reeves’ A Slice of Cherry), I tend to pass over such books when looking for something to read. I usually only read paranormal/fantasy books on the recommendation of other readers; maybe it’s just that such books absolutely glut the romance market and have for seemingly ages, but the minute I read the phrase “shape-shifter” or something like that in a book blurb, my eyes start to roll (yes, I know someday they’ll get stuck that way) and I begin sighing a put-upon sigh. Can’t I just read a normal book, about normal people?

That sentiment is what brought me to your YA novel, Saving June - the blurb contained no fairies, vampires or magical goats. Rather, Saving June was about a teenager trying to cope with her older sister’s suicide. This sounded like a relatable, if grim subject. Harper Scott is sixteen years old; her sister June was just a year older, and about to graduate from high school, when Harper found her in the family garage, dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. In the aftermath, Harper is numb, her mother is coming apart at the seams, and her father (estranged from her mother and in the process of divorcing her) has withdrawn from the scene entirely.

It’s at the gathering after June’s funeral that Harper conceives of the idea of taking her sister’s ashes to California. California was a fixation for June, a destination as different from her small, dreary Michigan town as possible. June wanted to go to college in California, and Harper decides that California is where what is left of June belongs. She comes up with a plan with her best friend Laney to liberate the ashes and go on a road trip. The only problem (well, the only one they can think of; I thought of several, myself) is the lack of a reliable vehicle – Harper doesn’t drive, and Laney’s car is not up to a cross-country trip. That’s where Jake Tolan comes in.

Harper doesn’t even know Jake when she encounters him at June’s wake; later she vaguely remembers him from high school, but she was unaware that he knew June at all, never mind that he was close enough to her to be making her CD compilations and giving her CDs of some of his favorite artists – Tom Waits, The Kinks (artists that our young protagonist seems entirely unfamiliar with; man, I am old). It turns out that Jake made the CD compilation that was playing on the car’s CD player when June died.

Harper is pulled out of her ennui by her road-trip plan and by her curiosity about Jake and what seems to be his mysterious connection to June. Jake denies a romantic relationship with June (who had broken up with her cheating boyfriend shortly before her suicide), though he’s not exactly straightforward about the nature of their association.

Harper, Jake and Laney eventually head out on their road trip with June’s ashes in tow. I had some issues with this; even though neither of Harper’s parents was especially sympathetic, stealing all that they had left of their dead daughter seemed to me to be a heartless act. Strangely, this is not addressed until the end of the book, when Harper indicates that she hadn’t really thought of what taking the ashes would do to her parents. Which was oddly realistic in context; Harper’s a teenager after all, with a teenager’s occasional great lapses in awareness and tendency towards self-obsession.

This was actually a larger theme with Harper, one I had to work out my feelings about. She was a bit of a difficult character for me to warm up to, and I struggled with whether I thought her depiction was realistic. It was the old problem of the first person narrator; I can be a bit thick as a reader and can find it difficult to separate the first person voice of the narrator from the author’s intent. Harper’s worldview is very binary: June was perfect and she, Harper, is the screw-up. Laney is beautiful and outgoing, while Harper is plain and awkward. The black-and-white contrasts felt trite to me, but I had to remind myself that this was the world the way Harper viewed it, not necessarily objective reality as created by the author. I’ve known enough teenage girls to know that they aren’t always big on nuance, particularly if lack of same gives them an opportunity to sulk. Still, Harper’s relentless focus on how awkward and socially inept she is and how perfect everyone else appears to her to be became aggravating.

The road trip aspect of the story, I think, lightened the heaviness of the suicide theme for me. The trio have interesting little encounters along the way, some of which deepen their relationships or give a bit more insight into who June was as a person. In a sense, even though her suicide is the reason behind the trip, the trip itself allows Harper, and thus the reader, to sort of put off dealing with it.

When they finally arrive at their destination, in San Francisco, Harper is forced to confront both letting go of June and the secret Jake’s been keeping from her. The secret felt a bit anti-climatic to me; its purpose seemed to be to cause conflict between Harper and Jake, more than anything else.

I felt ambivalent about the resolution of the mystery of June’s suicide – there is no real resolution, and while the reader in me wanted something dramatic and emotionally cathartic, ultimately, again, the truth was more realistic. There’s no resolution because there was no single mystery: there was just a girl who kept a lot of things inside, and was in more pain than anyone around her realized. That’s not the reality of all teen suicides, but I’d guess it’s not a rarity in such cases, either.

There were events in Saving June that objectively felt trite: most notably, the resolution to a late-in-the-book crisis for Laney. In general, I guess the whole road trip dynamic was kind of trite, though it’s still very effective. Music plays a big part in Saving June; music is hugely important to Jake and it’s largely how he communicates with the people he cares about. During the road trip, the three bond and argue over their musical tastes in turn. As a lover of music (including some of the music mentioned in the book; Jake has eclectic tastes), I appreciated this aspect of the story a lot.

I don’t know that the hopeful ending is quite the right note; the suicide of one’s only sibling seems so devastating to me that it’s hard to imagine any sort of closure of the sort depicted in the book could be achieved in a few scant months. This is a case where an epilogue several years out might’ve worked better for me. Still, Saving June is a solid effort, and a welcome respite from fairies and werewolves. My grade: a high B.

Best regards,

Jennie

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | nook | Sony | Kobo

I’ve never read your other series, but as soon as I heard the pitch for this book, I knew I had to have it. Werewolves on the Titanic? How can I resist?  I’m always on the lookout for an intriguing twist, and this sounded perfect. While this book was enjoyable and the characterization spot-on, I felt that it was still missing some key elements that would move this from ‘good read’ to ‘great read’.

Fateful follows the story of Tess Davies. She’s a maid in the household of a wealthy, unlikable family who is completely and utterly broke. They’re heading to America in search of a wealthy tycoon’s daughter to marry to their titled son, and hopefully replenish the family fortunes. Tess hates being a maid, and is planning on using her arrival in America as a chance to escape servitude. They are, traveling on the Titanic, which will lay a kink in everyone’s plans. While on board, she runs into Alec Marlowe, a mysterious, wealthy and attractive man that she’d also mysteriously ran into the night before.

Alec is a werewolf. Not the sultry “I occasionally grow hair and look at you smolderingly” sort of werewolf, but the kind that must transform every night from dusk until dawn. While he is in werewolf form, he cannot control himself or remember anything, and he is a dangerous menace. Alec is being pursued by The Brotherhood of Wolves who want to bring him in control. If he joins them, they’ll perform a magic rite that will give him control of his beast, imbue him with other godlike abilities (that aren’t really mentioned in the story but hinted at) and will also control his mind. Alec wants nothing to do with the murderous Brotherhood, and is headed to America to escape them. He finds himself trapped on the Titanic with his pursuer, and things escalate from there.

Your research was excellent. I felt like you painted a very detailed picture of life on the Titanic, down to the small, fiddly details of who would have a key where and what meals were served. Tess is serving a first-class family but resides in steerage, and her friend befriends one of the deck officers. All angles of the story were covered, and I appreciated this. As a reader, I felt like you did your research and it enhanced the period feel. Tess’s observant details added a lot without feeling as if they were being forced down the reader’s throat. It’s clear you love your topic.

The story is told from Tess’s point of view – all first person present – so the story is encapsulated based on her experience entirely. Her time on the Titanic is spent caring for the family she serves and sneaking time with Alec, who has a multitude of his own problems. Tess is a straightforward but likable character. She worries about others and cares for them, and makes friends easily on the ship. She has one rather stupid moment, but for the most part, I found myself cheering for her. Alec is a more one-dimensional character, as we only see his reactions through her eyes. In addition, because we as the readers know that there will be a terrible disaster, there’s an undercurrent of tension through the entire book. The author foreshadows it delicately, but the conversations and context lead the reader into a sense of welcome dread. Every time the date ticked over at the start of a chapter, I grew more anxious for the sinking to begin.

However, this is where the story disappoints. For those that buy this expecting Titanic survival porn like the 1997 James Cameron movie will be disappointed. For 80% of the book, this is the story of a serving maid that falls in love with a man being chased by werewolves, and it just happens to take place on an ocean liner. Even though the writing was interesting, I found myself impatient to have the actual disaster happen in the story. When it does happen, it is not drawn out and lengthy, but is only a few chapters. Since this book was billed as “werewolves on the Titanic”, I admit that I was hoping for more. The subsequent rescue and time on the Carpathia is reduced to a few recap pages, and the ending (even with the pleasant twist) was abrupt.

I think this is my biggest issue with this story. There is a distinct lack of emotion through the pages. Though the characters have emotional events happening in their lives, it all feels very clinical and detached. When the hero and heroine declare love to each other, I did not feel it. When the ship was going down, I did not feel Tess’s horror. I did not feel the atmosphere of the story, and by all means, this should have been a deeply emotional, wrenching read. I went in expecting to shed tears. I did not shed a tear. I feel like you could have done more with the storyline, and you chose not to.

Your research is superb, the characters appealing and the topic a winner, and yet I found myself entirely separated from the story. I wish it had been more emotional. I wish there had been a few more chapters about the disaster as it was occurring, and the subsequent rescue of the heroine, and at least one more chapter added to the end so we can see more of Tess’s new life.

Despite the lack of emotion, this book was headed into B+ territory until the too-abrupt ending. Instead, I’m going to pull this back down to a strong B.

All best,

January

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | nook | Sony | Kobo

If you wonder why there aren’t people of color, GLBT people, in books?  Maybe look to the agents.  Here is a chilling piece at Genreville about two well known authors being shot down by agent after agent for having a gay lead.  It is a must read.

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Author’s Guild has turned into a plaintiff’s class action.  The Google Settlement is dead in the water and the AG must decide, along with the other plaintiffs, whether they are going to pursue a costly litigation that may end unfavorably toward them.  They can’t really dismiss the petition and so they’ve doubled down on spending their authors’ dues on more litigation but this time against research institutions.  (I had no idea that the AG was so flush!)  Yesterday, AG and a few others, filed suit against the Hathi Trust. (PDF of Petition) Essentially the Hathi Trust is a partnership of educational institutions that are combining resources to digitize the various institutions different libraries.  AG views this as a (and this is a direct quote from the petition) “potentially catastrophic, widespread dissemination of those millions of works in derogation of the statutorily-defined framework governing library books.”

Part of the AG’s complaint is that the HathiTrust did not digitize these books themselves, but “ingested” the digitized books from Google. The thrust of that argument, I suppose, is that someone cannot profit from the fruit of the poisonous tree. Google being the poisonous tree. Another argument that the AG is making is that in the process of running the trust, several digital copies are made.

Upon information and belief, HathiTrust’s storage architecture employs two synchronized instances of server farms (each including at least two web servers, a database server and a storage cluster), with the primary site located at UM’s Ann Arbor, Michigan campus where ingestion occurs, and a redundant mirror site located at IU’s Indianapolis campus. HathiTrust also routinely creates tape backups of all data contained in the HDL. The tapes are stored at a different facility on UM’s campus and, upon information and belief, these tapes are replicated and the copies are stored at yet another facility on UM’s campus. Thus, once a University distributes a digital object to the HDL, at least eight digital copies of the work (four image files, four digital-text OCR files) are generated.

Think about this. Every time you back up your files, either to an SD card or to dropbox, AG is arguing you are making an unauthorized copy.  I don’t know if the RIAA has made such ridiculous and anti-use copyright arguments.

AG is demanding that the HathiTrust cease all of its activities, stop sharing with Google, and that the Court impound the already digitized volumes and “held in escrow under commercial grade security” and that such network be disconnected from the internet. And, of course, that the plaintiff’s be awarded attorneys’ fees and costs. This is a big battle but probably a necessary one.

I asked Sunita her opinion on the HathiTrust as she is an author published by a member of the HathiTrust:

I have really mixed feelings.

Obviously public domain stuff is easy, and they should be doing that first. But the “orphaned works” part is what I’m conflicted about. The way I read it (please correct me if I’m wrong), it’s up to the copyright holder to contact the Trust. All they do is put a notice on their website saying there is no clear copyright holder. But why isn’t it *their* responsibility to try and track down the rights holder? If a library buys a book, the author doesn’t necessarily know that, and so the heirs wouldn’t either. Suddenly, by virtue of it being in the U of Michigan library, it’s “orphaned” and UM & Google can slap it up online.

OTOtherH, the more material that’s in the public domain, the better. I just worry that the burden of proof is on the wrong people. UM & Google & the other libraries want to do this, so presumably they will derive benefits (I don’t believe it’s *only* about providing a public good, sorry). Then the burden should be on them.

I am thrilled that the pre-1923 stuff is being digitized, and I am thrilled that Google & the British Library are in partnership to digitize the public domain holdings. It’s already made my research easier.

Also, the argument that UM will only make the orphaned work available to students and faculty is a red herring. I find copyrighted materials (chapters of scholarly books, journal articles) on line ALL THE TIME. Unless they vigilantly police their students and faculty (which they sure as hell aren’t doing right now), all the stuff people are most interested in will wind up on the internet.

I read this article for backstory:  http://bit.ly/pox2TG

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A mysterious artist is leaving sculptures created out of books at various literary locations in Edinburgh.  The sculptures are beautiful and support the concept of paper books.  The creator has not stepped forward.  There is some kind of irony that deconstructed books are being used for these sculptures.

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Ned believes that at some point in the future animation will be so realistic that there will be no need to hire actors for their faces, only for their voices.  A New York Times article suggests that writers might be the next set of creators to be replaced by technology.  Narrative Science has developed a program based on artificial intelligence that is now being used, amongst other things, to write news wires for sports.  The creators believe that in five years, a Pulitzer Prize will be won by a work  written by Narrative Science.   After reading this article, I have little doubt that at some point in the not so distant future, there will be fiction books, in part, written by these programs.

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Fast Company argues that Apple and Amazon are pushing toward segmentation of books for increased profit.  It makes sense. Sell a chapter for $1.00 and you’re making 2-5x more money than if you sold it individually.  I dislike this idea intensely. On the one hand I think there is a place for serialization but if this was the primary way in which books were sold, I’d balk.

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