Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Teddy Pig, who I would love to call “my favorite shit stirrer” but someone will totally accuse me of being homophobic, has a majestically awesome article on his blog about website design for e-publishers. Not only does he name some of the most annoying habits of some epub sites - like changing the entire URL on a book when it’s released from a “coming soon” link to an entirely different, non-intuitive link. That has driven advertisers on our site crazy because they don’t know until the last friggin’ minute what the URL will be. Bad, bad bad!

But by far the most interesting, and the part I’ve dealt with the most, is this section about sight impaired linkage and code usage:

Are all cover pictures clearly text and alt labeled for sight impaired and also hyper-linked to the book’s sales page?

Did you know even Amazon fails at this? As I said, this is becoming a big thing and should be part of your companies presentation in a professional manner. I find the most dedicated eBook customers are those who are site impaired. Catch the clue and ride the wave.

After our redesign, I had an email asking that I remove the captcha (that would be the security word you enter to comment if you are not logged into the site, like wanker45 or booty99) from the comments page for users who are logged in because page readers do not read captchas. If the page reader software cannot read the captcha image, then the person using the software cannot leave a comment and participate in the discussion. The person who brought this to my attention was bashful about it, as if asking for this amendment to our design was somehow outrageous. I felt terrible that we were inadvertently excluding those who use page reading software to surf the web, and fixed it as soon as possible.

Speaking only for myself, I know that I don’t want to exclude those who are sight impaired, and while I know about alt tags and title tags for images, I’m sure there are parts of the sight impaired features that we miss, and we’re not even trying to be a marketplace. So what other features for the differently abled do you wish were on websites - not even this one, but any site out there?

And mad props to Teddy for taking on the issue of Fugtastic E-Pub Websites. 

Happy Mother’s Day to you, if it applies, and to your mother, because it’s fun to say “Your mother” and mean it in a nice way. My Mother’s Day started off with my going back to bed with a migraine (fucker) and then getting back up once I was firmly in the embrace of painkillers to enjoy having my children and husband make me breakfast and give me gifts.

One of my gifts, from Freebird: The Mommy Book, by Todd Parr: “Some mommies work at home. Some mommies work in big buildings. All mommies love to watch you sleep.” I love the Parr books, especially The Daddy Book, which we read all the time with Freebird. Baba O’Riley gave me a copy of The Family Book, which is terribly sweet and made me smile-cry with the pictures of families of different colors and sizes. My favorite part was the page about how some families look like each other, and some families look like their pets. If I look like our pets, we are so screwed. And hairy. Very very hairy.

Since my gifts were books - oh, how my family knows me! - I got to thinking, what are your favorite children’s books of the very-young-child variety? There are some that are incredibly old but stand up for repeated tellings even when they’re nearly 80. Ferdinand the Bull was published in 1936, and I remember having my own copy when I was a kid.

Other books that are mainstays of the home library are Goodnight Moon, Guess How Much I Love You (though thanks to The Sneeze I sometimes say, “little brown nut-hair,” which is awful and funny), and I Love You, Goodnight.

What about you, and your bookshelf? What books form the corners of your childhood memories? And what books do you pass along to children in your life?

Remember the high-stepping pink miniskirt lady? You know, she was over here, and she was over there, on sample covers from HarperCollins. Leg problems and romance, that flippy-skirt lady had them all.

And, it seems she has a new wardrobe, and possibly more stock options—stock photography options. From alert reader Becky comes a new link: The Girl’s Guide to Kicking Your Career into High Gear cover features similar legs in a similar pose.

My questions? Who is this lady that she kicks her career into high gear by wearing a very short trenchcoat and a very much shorter and thus invisible skirt underneath? Exactly what kind of career is she kicking here? And who ARE these women who can get away with heels and high-legged marching without stockings on? Do they never get blisters? And finally - is that in fact the same shot, with a different purse and a jacket Photoshopped over the pink tweed?

From my inbox comes news that Laura Kinsale’s books are being rereleased through Sourcebooks Casablanca, a small independent publisher. Midsummer Moon, Seize the Fire, and Prince of Midnight are being promoted as spring reads, and two of the books are available now via Amazon and Powells.

I am guessing the rerelease will bring a lot more historical romance readers to Kinsale’s stories, as some have been out of print and have been hard for me to find when I go looking.

That said, I have to mourn the old style covers, because, damn. They were full of Fabio-esque goodness and oddly-lit visible buttsecks. And, I think, Scarlett Johansson.

The New York Times is reporting that the United Nations has suspended relief supply to Myanmar because the military has seized the food and supplies that were delivered earlier this week.

Paul Risley, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program, said, “all the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated.” He said the World Food Program was suspending the few flights that the Myanmar authorities had so far allowed to enter the country until the matter was resolved.

Myanmar said it had turned back one relief flight because, in addition to disaster relief supplies, it carried disaster assessment experts and an unauthorized media group

As international aid organizations scramble to facilitate any aid that might possibly reach the people stranded and starving following the cyclone, the government in Myanmar will not process visa applications and turns away flights that contain aid that it says also contain unauthorized personnel.

In New York, United Nations officials all but demanded Thursday that the government open its doors.

“The situation is profoundly worrying,” said Mr. Holmes, the United Nations official in charge of the relief effort, speaking in unusually candid language for a diplomat. “They have simply not facilitated access in the way we have a right to expect.”

Mr. Holmes’s predecessor in that job, Jan Egeland, said, “children are going to die from diarrhea because of this government’s inaction.”

The military junta has said it is “grateful to the international community for its assistance — which has included 11 chartered planes loaded with aid supplies — but the best way to help was just to send in material rather than personnel.” One wonders what exactly the international aid community can expect the junta to do with that “material” in light of its inability to warn and care for its citizens.

I don’t have enough words for how angry and outraged I am. ETA: I can think of a few more super powers I’d like today.

Updated 2:00pm EST: NPR is reporting that the UN World Food Program will resume aid flights, though the first shipment of high energy biscuits are still confiscated and have not yet been released by the military junta controlling Myanmar: “[World Food Program spokesman Paul] Risley said that Myanmar’s refusal to allow international aid workers into the country was ‘unprecedented in modern humanitarian relief efforts.’” But storms are brewing - literally:

A U.N. weather agency is forecasting heavy rains next week in Myanmar.

The official death toll from Saturday’s cyclone and tidal surge stands at nearly 23,000. But officials fear it will go much higher, with the lack of safe food and water.

Like hot and humid weather following Katrina, the atmosphere compounds the problems made already untenable by government idiocy of intolerable levels. (Thanks to Lucinda Betts for the link)

ETA: Shiloh Walker is hosting a charity auction of a heaping pile of ARCs and signed books, the proceeds of which go to Save the Children. Bid early, bid often.