Oh My Eyes! My Eyes! Say It Aint So Bitches…
Wednesday, August 5, 2009Posted in: Adventures with Blog people, Chancery Stone
Listen, I know that advertising on one’s blog is all the rage these days, but I must admit to feeling slightly uncomfortable when I saw that Chancery Stone had an ad up at the Smartbitches website.
You remember Chancery Stone, surely? She was the seemingly messed up individual who thought that incest was romantic.
Not only that, but she started that random kerfuffle on Amazon, for no other reason than to try to drum up some publicity for her self-pubbed book. I believe she ended up getting banned from Amazon eventually.
The woman even has a full Wiki page on Fandom Wank dedicated to her.
I don’t know, I guess I have my judgemental (yes, there’s an e in judgemental!) head on, but I’ve always been hugely against books that glorified incest, so to see such a book advertised on the SB’s website, was bad enough, but for the incest book in question to be penned by none other than Miss FUBAR herself, well….
Listen, the girls can advertise what the hell they want to, but I’d have thought they’d have been a bit more choosy.
But we’re all different I guess. I admit to feeling a tad disappointed by their willingness to display Chancery Stone’s wares on their website though, I don’t care how much money was involved.
Judgemental much? Hell yeah.
Edited to add: Azteclady here.
When I saw the ad late last night, I sat there in shock for a bit.
Why the shock, you ask? Because my feelings about Ms Stone and her oeuvre are pretty much the same as Karen’s and I wondered about the SBs choosing to advertise this stuff.
And perhaps shock is too strong a word–what I am is puzzled. I may be indeed doing them an injustice, and if so I apologize, but I find it unbelievable that they could be ignorant of what Ms Stone writes.
Karen Scott
August 10
11:41 pm
You’re totally right, but I have to say, I can’t bring myself to reverse my decision about not buying books from them, plus it’s not like I blog for money, so not having the revenue from being part of their Associates thingy isn’t a problem for me.
Well, I think you’re probably right.
I think that after this though, I’ll probably find it hard to take any of the SB’s ethical rants/campaigns/crusades seriously again.
Mireya
August 11
12:02 am
Karen said: “I think that after this though, I’ll probably find it hard to take any of the SB’s ethical rants/campaigns/crusades seriously again.”
And you hit the nail on the head. I feel exactly the same way.
Do You Blog For Yourself or Your Readers? «
August 11
1:50 am
[…] third example is the ad for a book about incest at the Smart Bitches website, first discussed by Karen Scott, and then picked up by […]
Jen
August 11
1:51 am
To play devil’s advocate for a second, I don’t think the comparison of Chancery Stone to a writer of KKK-romance is really fair. When it comes right down to it, Stone isn’t writing anything approaching hate speech (I assume- I’m not going to be wading through her novel any time soon). There are three basic problems with her- 1) the subject matter of her book is completely disgusting 2) she demonstrates at best a tenuous grip on English grammar and 3) she behaves like an ass on blogs. Certainly none of these qualities makes her an endearing figure, but should she lose the ability to attempt to profit from her writing, however inept or offensive it may be, because of them?
Cassie Edwards may not be an irritating internet presence, but she is plagiarist. Deb Macgillivray stalked and harrassed a reader. (Victoria Laurie, I don’t remember.) Those are much bigger problems to me than what Stone seems to have done, and much more worthy of shunning.
Of course, I don’t know much of anything about Chancery Stone, so if she goes around harrassing readers, too, I’ll stand corrected.
CindyS
August 11
2:12 am
They posted a private e-mail probably over 2 years ago and the dancing and prancing over how they had the right to do so was sickening to me. I was done. I went back when I heard about Cassie Edwards and I thought the dancing again was the least classy thing I’ve ever come upon. I remember posting and having Jane of Dear Author respond like she was one with SB’s. In fact, I look at DA and SB as one entity. They slap each other on the back and rarely (if ever) disagree with each other.
So the silence on this just doesn’t surprise and maybe other bloggers in blogland aren’t commenting because we already know ‘they’ can do no wrong.
My opinion
CindyS
medumb
August 11
10:51 am
Am finding the uproar about people not posting interesting, I haven’t posted previously, not because I am a diehard fan of SB and that they can do no wrong in my eyes, but because it is not really an issue that I care about. I do not look at advertisements, so what is advertised is not really of interest to me.
I may be morally corrupt?? But am not overly convinced on the moral/ethical issue here, and it just doesn’t hit any of my many and varied hot buttons so not inclined to do my usual disjointed, poorly worded rant about it. Sure if they had reviewed the book in their content, rather than had it in a ad that I was never going to click on, then it might have hit some buttons.
While personally thinking incest icky, and thinking it might have been the better option for the SB ladies once alerted to the “distasteful” nature of the product/author behind the ad, if the ad contract allowed them, to remove it. But then we enter the area of censorship, where I am not overly comfortable residing, and how/where do you draw the line? As someone said elsewhere, what about the m/f/m that includes brothers? A personal eek.. but anyway. Just my rambly two cents.
humbledsinner
August 12
3:07 pm
Chancery Stone, thank you so much for clearing that up! And here I was tempted into falling for the optimistic falsehood that god might just not be a jealous, vengeful, insane entity. Ssheew, close call! Now I know.
Jessica
August 12
3:45 pm
Jen wrote: “To play devil’s advocate for a second, I don’t think the comparison of Chancery Stone to a writer of KKK-romance is really fair.”
Just to clarify, I was not comparing the two. In fact, I actually said that I wasn’t sure if writing about incest in a romantic way was morally problematic.
The KKK book was my imaginary example to show why the notion that “an ad is just an ad, any ad is ok, it’s just business.” is wrong.
West
August 12
6:53 pm
It’s always nice to see a hard working author who doesn’t let a little notoriety go to their heads. I applaud Chancery Stone for staying so grounded and level-headed.
/sarcasm.
Shiloh Walker
August 12
7:11 pm
West, now come on… you know arrogance is the key to impressing people, right?
/sarcasm here too. as well as smirking, snickering and rolling eyes.
AztecLady
August 12
7:15 pm
Oh good, for a moment there I thought I was the only one awed by Ms Stone’s blog’s url (and it does seem that there’s a danny-is-god one there too)
(do I need to add the /sarcasm tag, you think?)
West
August 12
8:10 pm
Shiloh- this is why I love you. It’s not just for your awesome books.
Aztec- you might want to add that- you know, on account of her being god and all, she might be too busy answering all those prays to notice (when do you think she’ll answer our prayers?)
Tuscan Capo
August 12
9:10 pm
I’m disillusioned. I thought God was above putting a spin on the opinions of mere mortals. Dam nice of her to take time out of her busy schedule to set things right!
Hail Chancery, full of waste,
Your ego is with us,
now and at the hour we read.
Holy Chancery,
mother of DANNY,
Blessed are you among the mediocre,
and blessed be the fruitcake of your pen.
West
August 12
9:31 pm
Tuscan- I heart you.
And now I must clean the orange juice you made me spew off my screen.
Francine
August 17
8:56 pm
For all of me, SBTB can run Chancery’s ads if they want. It’s just an ad. But I’m surprised about two things:
(1) I’m surprised that *she* will deign to do business with *them*–that SBTB hasn’t yet done something to earn her ire and shunning, and
(2) Chancery has money to buy ads?