Tuesday News: small press success, artistic freedom online, age and sex, and Star Wars spoilers
Publishing Newsage / digital publishing / independent presses / Laura Ingalls Wilder / music publishing / social media / spoilers / Star Wars16 Comments
Surprise Laura Ingalls Wilder Bestseller Transforms a Small Press – This story is really about the success of two things: South Dakota Historical Society Press and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s autobiography. I’m actually not surprised at the success of Wilder’s book, but the impact of its success on this small publisher is interesting to witness. While the Press has certainly benefitted from the increased demand (and potential quality of publications), it has also struggled to keep up with demand, and has actually had to cut back on titles this year and next to catch up. It’s good to remember, though, that unexpected successes continue to persist, regardless of Amazon, the Big Five, and all the other publishing ’empires’ out there.
It has been a remarkable 12 months for South Dakota Historical Society Press. On Nov. 17, 2014, the 18-year-old publisher of regional titles about the Coyote State released Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, edited by Pamela Smith Hill. It immediately shot up bestseller charts and, within days, sold out of its initial 15,000-copy print run. One year later, it has sold 140,000 copies, gone through eight print runs, and has transformed a small press whose previous top-selling title, Tatanka and the Lakota People, had sold 15,000 copies. – Publishers Weekly
Akala: ‘the internet has given me freedom’ – This interview with multimedia artist Akala, who is also founder of The Hip-Hop Shakespeare Company, not only reinforces the importance for publishing of NOT following the music industry’s disastrous rejection of the digital market, but also the value of producing work that does not just have one commercial or artistic thread (and, by extension, appeal). He has also used social media and the online marketplace as tools to maximize his success, and he has done so in a way that highlights the potential for artists with ingenuity, prescience, and the willingness to adapt to changing commercial and creative conditions:
Akala also stressed that there was a strong reading audience outside of the mainstream that would benefit from different approaches. “Publishers underestimate who is reading: I have a young inner-city multicultural fanbase, and I look at my friends, and they all read, but they are under-served and that is publishers’ loss. There is a way of servicing that audience in a wholly different way, not just in what you publish, but how you market, including what events you put on. And as the demographics change in the UK, if you don’t cultivate that demographic, then you are not going to have an audience in 30 years. That is a general challenge across a lot of industries.” – The Bookseller
Why are sex scenes for the over-60s such a taboo? – I think Romance authors and readers might have an answer to this question, as well, and it may have less to do with the idea that your grandparents didn’t have sex, and more to do with the fantasy aspects of sex in fiction and film. Except that the fantasy doesn’t seem to be one of ‘sex and romance will still be rockin’ in my 60s!’ It’s always been an interesting trend in Romance fiction, for example, that heroines, in particular, are often in their early 20s – just look at the success of New Adult books (I know a lot of people knock Kristen Ashley’s books, but her protagonists are routinely in their mid to late 40s, and they even have near-grown children. It’s refreshing to see full-grown adults working through complex romantic relationships). Does the prejudice persist that passionately romantic relationships are primarily for younger characters?
Mitchell calls the idea of later-life sex on screen “a taboo because it’s so rare” and Andrew Haigh has his own theory about why audiences can react with shock, and even disgust. “The warped view we have comes from when we are very young, I think, and our first relationships with older people are usually our grandparents. They just, for the most part, don’t ever talk about sex, so I think we just don’t understand the need or desire even existing.”
Even deeper than this, suggests Dr Rebecca Jones, a lecturer specialising in older sexuality at the Open University in the UK, is that humans have what she calls “a psychological glitch – which is almost always down to us thinking about our parents or grandparents having sex. We make the mental association and we can recoil from it. – BBC
Major Force Awakens Spoilers Were Found in a Leaked Children’s Book – To spoil or not to spoil – that is apparently the question around the leak of pages from a children’s book adapted from The Force Awakens, and it has pissed some folks off because it contains major movie spoilers, ripping the cloak of secrecy around the film. For those of you avoiding spoilers, you can read the Maxim article linked to above. For those of you who love and want the spoilers, check out this ComicBook.com article.
Some hateful cretin got his/her hands on an advance copy of a children’s book believed to be based on The Force Awakens and callously undid all the hard work J.J. Abrams and Disney have put into protecting the Star Wars sequel’s plot points. – Maxim and ComicBook.com
Re: Sex over for over-60s. I hope this topic gets more discussion. I quit reading a favorite small-town romance novelist when she made the comic relief set of oldsters a target of disgust by the hunky male leads. Hell if I’m going to buy her books if her characters are deriding me.
Personally, I love spoilers, so I clicked immediately. Every plot point mentioned in the article is pretty minor, and has already been floating around the online rumor mill for a long time.
@Mzcue:
Uh oh – who?
I was about to say that so many Robyn Carr books I’ve read have been great with this (so I hope it’s not Carr!). I think Carr treats relationships at all ages wonderfully. I know she upsets some more conservative readers by having her older teens in sexual relationships (here, the age of consent is sixteen, so I don’t see it as horrifying!), but she covers everyone from that age to over sixty and treats them like normal people. I think…
Desiree Holt is known as “the world’s oldest erotica writer” – she is very prolific in producing erotic romance that usually features pretty young things. However, this year she also released a book (“Sexy Designs”) featuring a much older couple, and touched on some of the baggage that accompanies relationships and sexuality in later middle age. It wasn’t quite as erotic as some of her other titles, but it was certainly sexy. It was unfortunately very short, and I’d have liked to see it longer simply to explore the baggage issues in more depth, but it was interesting to see.
@Mzcue:
I would love to know who so I could avoid the author like the plague.
A couple of years ago Dreamspinner Press put out an anthology of m/m stories called Snow on the Roof, where at least one of the main characters in each story was over 40. I thought it was a pretty solid anthology, and one of the stand out stories was Grandad’s Cup of Tea by Amy Rae Durreson, where both main characters were in their sixties.
My oldest hero is 56 (not quite 60) but that’s still a WIP.
My oldest heroine is 46. I generally stay within the late 30s and mid-40s range. Sandra Antonelli writes 40somethings exclusively (I think) and she wrote her dissertation on over 40 romance. It’s actually a fabulous read I think she should publish.
Re the Laura Ingalls Wilder book: I got this when it first came out. It is one of the most gorgeous books I own. I can barely stand to touch it, much less open and read it, it’s such a work of art. I wish they’d do a paperback version so I can read and mark that one up.
Re: Sex in Characters over Sixty
Here’s where I parted company with Jill Shalvis. The book was “Once in a Lifetime,” pg 45. Speaking is Jack, hero of an earlier book in the Lucky Harbor series, in a conversation with Ben, the love interest of Lucky Harbor #9.
“As fire marshal, I inherited all these pet projects for town council and the like. And in all the monthly meetings, everyone always says they’ll help, but then they don’t answer my calls.”
“What do you need?”
“Everything. There’s the senior center—”
“Pass,” Ben said quickly. “Those old ladies are sexually depraved miscreants.”
“Afraid of Lucille?” Lucille was a gazillion years old, and there were rumors that she’d been the first person to inhabit Lucky Harbor, around the time of the dinosaur age. She was still in town, running an art gallery and the gossip mill with equal fervor. “Hell, yeah, I’m afraid of her,” Ben said.”
Shalvis, Jill (2014-02-18). Once in a Lifetime (Lucky Harbor) (p. 46). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.
I had shrugged off Shalvis’s use of the Lucky Harbor seniors as a plot device and source of endless chuckles through the earlier books. I enjoyed the stories that much. But “old ladies are sexually depraved miscreants” was the end.
I don’t attend a senior center yet myself, but I hope to live long enough to do so. I experienced it as fundamentally offensive to have those words coming out of the mouth of the book’s “hero,” whose love life and struggles I was presumed to be engaged with as the reader. I wouldn’t want to read a book with a hero who kicks puppies, and I don’t want to read books about heroes who find women over sixty with libidos to be creepy and frightening.
I admire Shalvis for her body of work. She was an early favorite of mine when I caught the romance reading bug. Nevertheless it got to the point where her employment of seniors for comic relief to be more offensive than entertaining. I figure I’m no longer in Shalvis’s intended market, so I’ll leave her books to those who are.
In the mean time, I buy up everything I can find with characters unafraid to acknowledge that there is, in fact, sex after 29.
Re: Sex for over sixties.
Every generation likes to think they invented sex (See all the “Not your mother’s erotica” blurbs), so all those studies proving people in their sixties have a lot more fun than the twenty-somethings is a sucker punch the younger people can’t take.
“How dare you say my grandmother knows more than me just because she’s lived longer and has had a lot more experiences? ” and all that.
Also, sexual desire in movies is always about perfect skin, flat stomachs, and taut skin. You might get a sixty-year old couple kissing in the background, but there’s a reason the original ending of “The Notebook” got changed for the movie.
(Yes, original ending has Allie remembering and going to her husband’s room for sex. With a specific mention to the fact he can’t unbutton his shirt because of arthritis in his hands.)
@Mzcue:
I get where you’re coming from because suddenly I’m starting to see my age in the mirror (I look like my mother. EXACTLY like her.) and it’s, well, disheartening, to say the least.
That said, my characters say things all the time I don’t think or believe because they’re them and it’s part of what makes them unique. I take that passage as coming from the mouth of a young dude, who would, in fact, think that way.
I can’t speak to how other authors work, but I can’t assume that’s the way the author feels when I read something I don’t like.
That’s not to say I don’t understand, because I do. Trust me, I’m kind of hitting an emotional wall with this age thing.
Mzcue:
Thanks for letting us know. I was wondering if that’s who the author was because I thought I remembered hearing/reading some criticism of Shalvis’s employment of “oh, those wacky oldsters” caricatures. I’ve never read the Lucky Harbor series. Now I have less desire to rectify that.
@Moriah Jovan: “…my characters say things all the time I don’t think or believe because they’re them and it’s part of what makes them unique. I take that passage as coming from the mouth of a young dude, who would, in fact, think that way.”
I absolutely agree with you…up to the point that this was the story’s romantic lead. And if in the story he had gone on to reevaluate his disgust, or even thawed just a bit, I would have been fine. But he didn’t, and I assume the creepy oldsters continued to leer and grope and cackle through the rest of the series like some deranged senile version of Scooby Doo.
I don’t expect authors to provide worlds that mirror my views or offer cotton wool for my sensitivities. But assignment to the group of ‘sexually depraved miscreants” was too reminiscent of the crap slung by the privileged male teens all the way back in my high school days. Like President HW Bush, I’m of an age that I no longer feel obliged to eat the broccoli.
Does it make younger readers feel more included in the romantic action to see the derision of “others?” That certainly motivates snide references to homosexuality in mainstream storytelling. I just woke up and realized, “Hey wait a minute. That’s me he’s talking about. And I now I don’t give a damn whether he gets the girl or not.” I can take a joke, but after one or two it’s time to get off the plane.
Mmm. I hit a hard wall over Lucille’s behaviour in the last few Lucky Harbour books – it felt like it was intended to be a combo of wacky grandma and the post menopausal woman takes-no-prisoners cliché, but it overstepped into really uncomfortable territory with borderline stalkery, intrusive and maniplatitive ‘shenanigans’. I remember thinking that possibly there was a set up there for a future book (with the relative of hers arriving in town) where this behaviour comes to a head, but I won’t be reading it because I just don’t have faith that Shalvis has the writing chops to adequately resolve it at this point.
I didn’t mean to launch a diatribe about the Lucky Harbor novels, although I guess my rant has been percolating for awhile. Ms. Shalvis’s books brought me a lot of reading pleasure over the years, including her other series like the Animal Magnetism and Brava stories.
What’s more exciting to me is that the subject of romance for older characters finally seems to have surfaced. I hope that writers recognize the under-served market that Antonelli, Reid, Ashley and others have begun to address. Additionally, I hope that DearAuthor and other book blogs will watch out for older adult stories and alert fans when they do turn up.
Thanks, Robin, for the good news that people are thinking about the subject. It’s welcome indeed.
@Mzcue: I haven’t read the Shalvis so I was taking the excerpt at face value.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (whom I broke up with) always has a secondary romance with 40- and 50-somethings, and occasionally those are sweeter than the A plot. I remember one B plot in particular, but (and this is why I broke up with her) I can’t remember the A plot enough to look it up. I remember because she likened the man to Tommy Lee Jones and I have had a crush on him for not-gonna-say-how-many years.
(Full disclosure: I have a May-December fetish that won’t quit.)
I haven’t read a Jill Shalvis book for a few years, but I loved her books. However, I’ve also seen mentions in blogs of her mocking feminists, so now I’m worried for multiple reasons! I don’t know if anyone knows where she mocks feminists (if it happened)…
Hmm. The women in my family who are in their mid to late sixties certainly aren’t decrepit biddies!
When I travelled in Europe with my family as recently as 2013, everyone thought my mother was my sister! She’s thirty years older than me (maybe *I* should be worried she looks so much better!).
It’s a little like historical romances, where the mothers are probably about forty, but they’re portrayed as a couple of generations older – and always insane. I never understand that.