Been Around The Blogs And I, I, I -The One About The Kindle, The MM Debate, and The HQN Presents Eff Up…
Monday, January 4, 2010Posted in: Been around the blogs
So I finally managed to take a look at my Google Reader and here are some of the more noteworthy posts highlighted for your delectation.
1. First up, apparently Amazon may have been exaggerating about the success of the Kindle. Some industry insider claimed that the maximum number of sales for any one book for his/her particular publishing company was no more than 1000 downloads. I wonder if this is reflected within other publishers?
Mike Cane has a post entitled, Is Amazon An Outright Fraud?. It starts with a quote, then Mike questions the true stats that thus far Amazon has refused to publish with regards to actual Kindle download numbers.
Cane writes:
This is the game Amazon has been playing since the introduction of the Kindle. A “Look over there!” game of misdirection that smells of outright fraud.
It’s well past time for Amazon to put up or shut up.
Honest companies don’t continue to hide something like this.
Honest companies show transparency.
Honest companies understand that real numbers are related to real shareholder value.
What is Amazon’s game here?
It seems to me that if the Kindle was doing as great as Amazon says it is, then they would probably be breaking their necks to get the numbers out there.
2. In other news, some bird over at The All About Romance Blog has a great post up, the post is entitled The Need For Recognition.
The columnist, Abi, is a black reader who has started to feel increasingly frustrated by the lack of black heroines within romance.
She writes:
This past week, I read The Mane Squeeze by Shelly Laurenston. About halfway through the book I realised the heroine’s best friend was black and though she had previously struck me as slightly annoying, I finished the book eagerly anticipating a sequel with a romance story for her.
Why was I all of a sudden so interested in this character? The long and short answer: it’s because she was black. A slightly annoying white best friend would have garnered no more than cursory interest for me, but once I learned that Blayne – in the most superficial of ways – “resembled” me, I was invested in her story.
I totally understand where she’s coming from. I do find that I’m generally more interested in secondary characters that are black, but those are few and far between in traditional romance I find.
I often wonder if Shelly Laurenston would be as popular if it was widely known that she’s black?
Abi continues:
I have existed for most of my literate life on a steady diet of romance novels and ninety-nine percent of the characters in these novels are Caucasian – and American. I expect that for the rest of my literate life, my diet will remain pretty much unchanged. African-American romance novels are hard to come by in my neck of the woods and because I don’t read with race in the forefront of my mind, it is very easy to accept the status quo. That said, my reaction to Blayne (with whom I had absolutely nothing else in common apart from skin colour) highlighted for me a subtle but present undercurrent of need for recognition in my romance.
It’s a really interesting column, I urge you to pop along and read it in full.
3. Tumperkin has an interesting post about reader belief, she asks:
Do stories that include beliefs or values you disagree with turn you off? Do you have personal triggers that bother you? Or are you the kind of reader that can read anything with an open mind?
As long as I don’t feel that I’m being preached to, I can cope with most things.
4. Mrs Giggles has an interesting blog post on the fetishization of MM books, or rather she tackles the erroneous assumption on the part of Alex Beecroft that the women who write MM books are doing so as GLBT (gah, I always want to write LGBT) activists, i.e furthering gay rights, whilst seemingly ignoring the fact that for a lot of writers (Carol Lynne, I’m looking at you) MM is probably just another reader kink, much like threesomes and were-sex are. If one took the sex out of MM books, would as many romance readers embrace them?
Apparently Beecroft wrote:
That’s the difference between m/m fiction for women and f/f porn for men – straight female writers of m/m fiction are aware that we have a responsibility not to allow it to turn into just another way that straights oppress GBLT people. We don’t want to be the female equivalent of the kind of man who will watch faux lesbian porn and then vote against the rights of real lesbians – that’s hypocritical and immoral and just generally disgraceful.
Mrs G writes:
I feel that we all heading down that slippery slope when we arrogantly assume that non-GLBT women automatically understand the fight of the GLBT people for equal rights or that we are entitled to be bonded to GLBT people somehow because women had been oppressed/objectified too. The very argument David Ehrenstein was making in that discussion is that it’s not the same. Any woman who butts into the gay scene claiming to be an ally just because she thinks she knows what it feels like to be oppressed is actually being quite patronizing…
This is a dangerously sweeping statement, oversimplifying the complex MM romance scene into a bunch of female activists fighting for GLBT rights. I don’t know why we are denying the degree of fetishizing and objectification in the MM romance genre, because there is such a thing. It’s the same with straight romance novels, where some people who try to present a more intellectual version of romance genre to critics try to insist that sex doesn’t play a part in the fun of a romance novel. If we don’t objectify and fetishize, there is no need for sex scenes in our stories. There is no need for the pretty as well. And we’d actually find slash stories involving the likes of Richard Simmons and Danny DeVito instead of all those pretty men all the time and all over the place.
The column she’s commenting on is this one.
I think Mrs G makes an interesting point.
5. Apparently an author called Candace Sams went batshit crazy on Amazon after receiving a one star review. Oh, again? Apparently she also stated that Harriet Klausner was an exemplary reviewer, and everybody should take a leaf from her reviewing professionalism. Yep, crazy as an effing fox.
Via Dear Author.
6. In other news, Harlequin launched a Harlequin Presents Writing contest for aspiring writers. It was all going swimmingly until HQN announced a couple of the winners. Susanna Carr and Maggie Marr.
Aspiring authors eh? Seems a tad unfair seeing as these two would not be my definition of ‘aspiring’ authors. Some of the Iheartpresents.com readers felt the same way, hehe. This was my favourite comment:
It is very easy to sit back and say nothing or to praise and send best wishes to your friend/club/critique mates. Published authors who tell those of us struggling to get noticed that we should be happy for the winners regardless of the fact they are already published and just try harder is an insult. You are published, but remember what it was like when you were new and praying with every ounce of your soul that someone would take notice of your passion and talent. It is much easier to smile, say ‘oh well, better luck next time’ and pretend what happened here is not unfair and not in any way bias than to speak up and risk being put down for your honesty.
How many of the 544 aspiring authors…and that was what this contest was for, are honestly disappointed in what happened and how Harlequin handled this contest? How many waited with baited breath for weeks on end in hopes that this might be a chance for a newbie to be noticed and have the opportunity to learn and polish their work. How many can honestly say they are truly happy for the winners knowing the rules have been bent and grumble under your breath or even worse may give up trying because there is not way you can compete with authors who have already had the benifit of editorial advice and guidance? If a contest is offered for unpublished authors, the least one would expect is that an unpublished author would get their chance to shine.
There are currently 268 comments for this post. I love it when the HQN Presents lot get their knickers in a twist.
This was the most irritating comment of them all:
The venom and bitterness in this thread turns my stomach.
Urrrgghh, bloody oxygen thief. If the venom and bitterness was that bad, then why wade in? Because she’s a drama-queen-in-denial perhaps? Silly moo.
7. Over at Teddy Pig’s blog, we got into a discussion about Loose-Id and my perception of them as mostly an MM publisher. The discussion started when I happened to pop over to Loose-Id last week and noticed that all of the new releases were GLBT books. I posted this on Twitter and Anne Douglas pointed out that I was deliberately only posting the weeks when the releases leaned towards majority GLBT.
Of course took this as a challenge, and went to their Year To Date page, and counted out the number of GLBT books. I tweeted the results to Anne, who decided to not reply. Fair enough.
As I was catching up on Teddy’s blog posts on Google Reader, I noticed his reference to my tweets to Anne, which wasn’t a problem, until I saw this comment from Anne herself:
I don’t get what Karen’s problem is. She’s even had the OWNER of LI tell her they are not a predominant MM publisher, but they have to play swings and roundabouts with submissions.
Actually, to tell the truth it fucking pisses me off. And… and I think I’ll shut my trap now, because this really pisses me the fuck off, and really what’s the point? LI could publish nothing but MF for 6months and Karen would pick the one week they pub all MM to get on her cart again.
Of course I responded, but I think that Anne decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and I ended up debating with Teddy instead over my “obsession” with the Loose-Id = M/M thing.
Anyway, he doesn’t get why it bothers me so much, and to be honest I don’t actually lose any sleep over it, but I do so love beating a point into submission, so as long as people disagree with me about my perception that Loose-Id mostly publish MM, my interest in proving them wrong will persevere. I’m a little contrary like that, so those ‘people’ who find my comments annoying/offensive should remember that my disinterest in MM books isn’t proof of my raging homophobia.
Off topic, Teddy seems to think that as a black person, I should promote AA romance, which I of course disagreed with. I write about Racism in Publishing because I want to, not because I feel as if I have to. As for not promoting AA romance authors, I read them, but the books have to either suck great big hairy balls, or totally blow me away in order for me to feel moved enough to mention them on the blog. My blackness isn’t a good enough reason to go African-American Romance Promo-Crazy. Sorry. Ok I’m not really.
For more of our scintillating discussion, pop over to Teddy’s blog.
8. And finally, a random question from me inspired by a post from God-Knows-Where re inspirational romance: My question is, if an inspy romance has explicit sex before or after marriage, does that mean it can no longer be classed as an inspy, even with the emphasis on religion?
Anyway, that’s all I can be arsed with at the mo, I still have 800+ posts to catch up on my Google Reader, so I may have to write up another Been Around The Blogs Post, if I come across more than five interesting blog posts.
Teddypig
January 4
3:45 pm
Karen, when you do find something that blows you away you are very good about explaining why it rocks. I wish you could find more books that did just that because you write good honest reviews.
katiebabs
January 4
4:35 pm
Harlequin is on a roll it seems. To me, an aspiring author is someone who hasn’t been published yet. And if you are a published author, why would you enter the contest? Give those who haven’t been published a chance. It isn’t fair and personally wrong for a published author to enter an aspiring author contest.
I finally read my first Shelly Laurenston and love it! In one of her books, she has a secondary character who is black and a shift changing jaguar who I am dying to have her own story written.
Ann Bruce
January 4
4:54 pm
Huh? What is Mike Cane smoking? Do all publicly-traded companies reveal numbers they are not required to by law? Last I checked, shareholder value has more to do with net income than number of units sold. If Amazon sold a billion units, but the profit margin sucks or is non-existent, that doesn’t really help shareholder value.
anneD
January 4
5:06 pm
Honestly, I didn’t realise there had been any further posts made Karen. I’ll go look now.
And yes, I was angry, I chose not to reply to on twitter for that exact reason, as I’d counted the numbers previously in a very similar conversation what 6 maybe 9 months ago and come out with mm still not being more than 50% of LI’s listings.
Maili
January 4
5:09 pm
Probably because in the UK, it’s usually written as LGBT. 😀 But yeah, both LGBT and GLBT are fine. A matter of preference, really, but I think LGBT seems more common.
Jane
January 4
5:14 pm
Reuters had an article on Amazon’s opaqueness and how it could come back and bite them in the ass if earnings fall. As long as earnings are high, it will be fine. The Reuters article noted that the stock is trading far far far above its valued share, higher than google and apple by large margins: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BU2CN20091231?type=globalMarketsNews
I’ve really struggled with the gay romance fiction concept, particularly when it is written by women for women. I’m not sure how that makes the authors into activists. Maybe I’m misunderstanding Beecroft’s point.
Like you, I view Loose ID to be a primarily gay romance publisher, for good or ill.
Teddypig
January 4
5:24 pm
Maili,
I always say GBLT with extra mayo and avocado please.
sallahdog
January 4
6:28 pm
venom and bitterness run the internet… If it dissapeared then there would be no reason to post..or read..
I wouldnt say Karen is one of the bigger offenders in the ” but I do so love beating a point into submission, so as long as people disagree with me ” crowd… I would put Robin from DA as the queen of that (and lord knows I love her for it)… But if your a blogger, you HAVE to have a bit of this attitude or otherwise you would be like me, and forget to update a blog for months at a time because you got distracted watching shiny things or chasing butterflies…
and on this question…And finally, a random question from me inspired by a post from God-Knows-Where re inspirational romance: My question is, if an inspy romance has explicit sex before or after marriage, does that mean it can no longer be classed as an inspy, even with the emphasis on religion?
Probably only if it was after marriage, as long as it wasnt too kinky (anything other than missionary and fade to black) If it was before marriage there MUST be terrible consequences… killed and or maimed in car wrecks, disease, giving birth to horribly deformed babies (i kid, i kid)…
Becca
January 4
6:48 pm
RE: the inspys (is that like the ESPYs?)
I looked into writing inspys for awhile, but all three of the guidelines I checked had *serious* rules about physical contact. One of the houses even said, and I quote “no physical touch above the elbow and below the neck”. Another one said no kissing until at least halfway through the book. Another one said absolutely no nudity, and no sexual language, etc. They even told you to end the story before the wedding (I’m assuming so you can’t write a sex scene in there anywhere). It was intense.
Suffice to say, I am not writing inspys. Or ESPYs…
Jill Sorenson
January 4
6:49 pm
And here I thought nothing interesting had been going on for the past few weeks! Obviously, I don’t know where to look for kerfluffles.
About m/m: While I can see the point about the exploitation factor, I’m not convinced that there’s anything wrong with straight female authors cashing in on m/m fantasies. Even the most explicit m/m seems pretty harmless to me. I feel the same way about f/f stories in men’s mags. Who is it hurting? Does enjoying this kind of material encourage the reader to treat real gay people as sex objects, or think less of them?
Yes, there are chauvenist homophobes who think lesbians are hawt. But are there right-wing m/m authors who think God hates gays? I doubt it. Maybe girl-on-girl porn encourages some men to disrespect women and lesbians. I don’t see the reverse happening with m/m.
I guess I would have to hear more opinions from the GLBT community to be convinced. And I tend to think of women authors as having good motives, in general. : )
Shiloh Walker
January 4
8:55 pm
I’m taking a brief brain here so I’m only commenting on the Amazon/#s thing.
I can you flat out-my Amazon #s aren’t jack. I sell more ebooks with my epubs than I do with my New York pubs-the digital market w/Sony and Amazon is still moving slow. I think it will change, slowly, but right now, it’s sluggish.
K. Z. Snow
January 4
10:56 pm
I believe Jill has the correct take on women writing m/m romance.
If you’re interested in what another m/m author has to say on this topic — me, of course (what, you think I’m going to pimp someone else’s post?) — drop in HERE tomorrow or Wednesday. I’m not sure which day I’m up, but it’s one of the two.
Comments more than welcome!
anneD
January 5
3:02 am
As posted at The Naughty Bits:
We all knew I was going to count count the whole fucking lot, didn’t we….
The whole count. Not a sampling.
Using the All Books page. 46 Pages/18 to a page bar the final page (2).
(Give me a leeway of 5 ( I already know I missed two somewhere along the way) – and that mainly on the MF and MMF/MFM side as sometimes the blurbs/covers didn’t reflect menage. MM covers were obvious.)
MF = 393 = 48%
MMF/MFM/MFF = 135 = 16%
MM = 275 = 33%
FF = 5
NonF = 1
So roughly 1/3 of the Loose Id catalogue is straight (lol) MM.
Edie
January 5
3:10 am
I don’t know, straight males obsession with FF has made a lot of misconceptions of Lesbians common “fact”, and IMO had a negative impact on how Lesbians are viewed and accepted in general.
I think I would be a little more accepting of the activist argument if it included a broader spectrum, instead of the “hot” gay male. In past threads on this topic, I have seen both writers and readers of MM do the squick thing on FF. Which I find a bit disturbing.
Edie
January 5
3:12 am
Disturbing is the wrong word – I guess I mean that to me that then goes against the activist argument.
kirsten saell
January 5
8:48 am
@ Edie: It does go against the activist argument. It’s homophobic–it’s just less likely to be called out as such because we’re women and we’re above that kind of thing, don’t you know.
It’s not that they’re pro-gay. It’s that they’re pro-gay as long as it’s their way. Which is not really pro-gay at all, when you think about it.
And I have no problem really with people who are made uncomfortable with f/f sensuality. I just have a problem with the ones who advocate for mainstreaming m/m into the general romance section but want to keep f/f or f/f/m ghettoized in the GLBT section because it’s “just gross”. Who the fuck are they to take a whole group of people–les and bi women–and declare their sex lives disgusting? Especially when they so often proclaim–when pushing m/m–that “love is beautiful no matter the gender”.
I’d think that for the small group of readers who read m/m exclusively, gender is the single defining characteristic of their reading preference. And that makes it a kink, not open-mindedness or tolerance.
Activists? True LGBTQ activists would be open to any book, no matter the gender configuration. They might prefer one type over another, but they certainly wouldn’t be grossed out of existence by a well-written, insightful f/f romance–or a trans romance, or a f/m/f, or any other combination. It might not rock their socks off, but it wouldn’t make them want to puke either.
Hell, even my ex–and he’s a piece of work, believe me–didn’t fast forward through the m/m bits in the porn we watched together. His dick certainly wilted, but he sat through it and didn’t freak out or go on and on about how vile it was…
Karen Scott
January 5
10:30 am
Well done for counting the whole thing Anne, and yes much better than samplings, however, I think it backs up my perception rather well, because, although straight MM may only make up 33%, which I still think is a large amount, when you couple it with the MMF, MFMs etc, it means that GLBT books make up half the stock. And this isn’t event taking into consideration that their MM line seem to have grown significantly in the last few years. Like I said, when I used to regularly shop at Loose Id, there were the odd smattering of MM, but certainly not as much as there is now.
So, yes, my perception still remains, Loose-Id are mostly a GLBT publisher these days.
Well I’m an equal opportunity reader, and I avoid both FF and MM books equally. But I get your point, because I have seen quite a few MM readers shudder at the thought of reading an FF book, so I’m not convinced that these people are reading MMs for anything else other than sheer boy-on-boy-sexing entertainment.
Of course, rather than admit that, there’s a whole lot of talk about the emotional connection of the characters.
Teddy talks about the fact that EC and others do have their own load of MM books, but that’s just it, they may have a shitload of GLBT books in stock, but I’ve never felt that they were the overwhelming majority, and the same can’t be said for Loose-Id.
If anybody’s interested, there are currently 3MMs,1MMF and 1 straight MF romance up at Loose Id today. Perception trumps reality.
Unless I start seeing 3 MFs to 1MM, for the next few months, that perception is unlikely to change, after all, my perception of LI as a mostly MM publisher didn’t happen overnight, it took countless visits over the course of two years for my perception to shift.
Of course, I’m not asking Treva Harte to stop publishing as many MM books, after all, there are plenty of other places where I can buy straight MF romances. Besides, MM obviously sells extremely well at LI, otherwise they wouldn’t publish as many.
Karen Scott
January 5
10:39 am
I meant to add that one thing that does impress me about Loose-Id is their willingness to publish IR and multi-cultural books. With their meagre IR offerings, EC seem to have failed on that score altogether.
Teddypig
January 5
11:07 am
EC is at a low point on my buying eBooks these days. I have not even been very tempted with their Straight Romance which they used to publish gobs of traditional Western and Werewolf Romance that I loved. That has been taken over by Samhain or Liquid Silver.
anneD
January 5
2:59 pm
Well that does depend on if your a person who thinks MMF/MFM/MFF actually belongs in the GLBT section. Many MM readers don’t. Tune into a GLBT day on any of the loops and see who turns up. Menage authors will be few and far between if seen at all.
AztecLady
January 5
3:05 pm
I think this is where you, Karen (and DA Jane) and Ms Douglas have a different perspective.
For the record, I think that perception is reality, particularly in marketing. Isn’t that why companies engage in marketing campaigns, to whitewash/improve how they are perceived by the public? A positive change in image usually translates into increased sales for companies, after all.
So whether Loose Id catalogue is less than 50% LGBT is irrelevant where the perception is otherwise–and all the hard numbers in the universe won’t affect that perception one whit, as long as cursory glances at the front page back that perception.
Jill Sorenson
January 5
4:56 pm
Good points, Kirsten and Edie. Any m/m author who claims to be a gay advocate should think very carefully before making negative comments about f/f.
Jane
January 5
5:02 pm
@KarenKnowsBest – I associate MMF with gay romance fiction too just like I associate MFM with straight romance fiction. It’s odd that readers are required to hang out on loops during GLBT day (What the heck is that anyway) to read threads on what is considered true gay romance and not gay romance in order to shape their perceptions.
kirsten saell
January 5
5:39 pm
@Karen:
I think it does too. ~40% of all the books they’ve published have two men in them. If they were publishing less m/m, m/m/f, m/f/m two years ago than now, that would mean they’re at this point trending towards two men per book rather than one. And frankly, even looking at the overall numbers, 51% of all their books are LGBTQ or alt lifestyle (menage).
I don’t think this is a bad thing. Perceptions can be good or bad. The problem (if there is one) is that the perception of some (many?) customers may not reflect the one the publisher wants to give. And yes, as an author, the perception of customers would make a huge impact on whether I’d sub to a publisher–I certainly would think long and hard about sending a f/f/m romance to a publisher that has only m/f books listed, even if they welcomed it in their guidelines. Because their customers are very likely going to them because they publish a lot of m/f. The ones who want f/f/m might not even bother going there.
@Anne:
Um, any m/m/f or f/f/m romance is going to be by definition bisexual. m/f/m and f/m/f are “straight”–although some pubs complicate things by listing a book as “f/m/f with some f/f interaction”, gah!
I don’t think you can take lack of participation on LGBT lists and loops as a denial of a book’s bisexual content, either. Bisexuals are the pariahs of the LGBT community (bi-women even more so than bi-men)–and the straight community, too, lol. Just go on any number of dating sites that are supposedly LGBT-friendly. You have two choices: “woman seeking man”, or “woman seeking woman”. There are only a couple that give you the option of “woman seeking man or woman” or refine your profile and searches based on being open to either gender.
All four of my books have bisexual content and/or main characters (m/f+f, f/f/m and m/m/f), and I don’t participate on any LGBT promo lists. Part of that is laziness, and part of it is just not being sure of the welcome I’d find there.
@Jill:
Yes, they should. There’s a world of difference between saying “It doesn’t do it for me” or “Not my cuppa tea” or “I don’t find it compelling” and “Ewwww, gross!” or “I just don’t want to even have to look at it” or “What if I accidentally bought one? *shudder*”. I mean, I sometimes feel like I need a decon shower after sitting through a Girls Gone Wild commercial, but stories about women falling in love or women exploring f/f sensuality because they want to are a completely different beast. I’m willing to accept that some of the negative reaction to coming across an f/f scene may be carried over from being exposed to skeezy f/f porn, but IMO a lot of it really is homophobia.
cs
January 5
5:55 pm
I associate Samhain with publishing mainly just straight and menage books, and I rarely ever shop there because of it. Please don’t hit me with book percentages. The only time I ever go to Samhain, is when K.A. Mitchell releases a book.
I only read gay fiction or “M-M” books and whilst half the books I read at Loose Id grate on my nerves, that IS where I go to get my daily dose of gay fiction. Frankly I see the publisher to be one of the publishers who gives everything an equal hand. Straight, gay and menage.
I can see why it may annoy some authors about the whole I perceive notion, because if the people who don’t read M-M are getting opinions on the publisher that the place is mostly catered to gay fiction, then as an author who writes straight-romance (or whatever genre) it’ll probably trump your sales. However, I figure if your promote your book well enough and get people interested in it. It won’t matter if one person said they perceived a publisher as being a mainly M-M output factory .
Karen Scott
January 5
7:02 pm
@cs
And that’s exactly my point. People may argue to the hilt that Samhain publishes huggings of MM books, it matters not, because as far as you’re concerned, they seem to mostly publish MF or straight menage, which isn’t really your cuppa.
So you go to Loose-Id specially for your gay fiction? Now don’t that beat all? 🙂
Angelia Sparrow
January 6
10:05 pm
GLBT. LGBT. QLTBG (pronounced Quiltbag) it’s all good.
I think Alex has an important point about “you can’t squee over m/m, then go our and vote against real gay people.” Mrs. Giggles and I have been around about the activism thing. I see the writing as one small part of my overall Activist Dyke Mom persona. The rest includes money and time donations locally, writing letters, taking in thrown-out kids, etc. Those are much bigger and more immediate, but the writing is like dripping water on stone, it wears away bigotry slowly.
My inspy has lot and LOTS of sex. Then again, it’s a pagan inspy and the guy worships a fertility god. Christians aren’t the only ones with faith.
cs
January 7
10:22 pm
Totally. Every week I go there most of the time they’ll only ever be one M/M book – and honestly I don’t tend to dig the M/M books at Samhain anyway. But most of the time it’s het books. Fair enough, they’re plenty of another publishers who cater a lot or everything to M/M publishing. So it’s not like I’m losing out.
That’s the first place I ago, even against LGTBQ publishers such as Torquere and Dreamspinner for example. In all honesty they have been publishing more and more M/M and guess what I’m pleased because it’s the genre that I read. However I can understand why non M/M readers would start shopping there less; cause I do that with Samhain.