Crain’s New York Business (Sarah’s tagline: a newspaper I love about a subject I know nothing about) has an article this week about blogs and podcasts driving sales of books. The headline blasts that the Web has become the “vehicle to create best-sellers,” noting that we bloggers (lest you forget, the sock puppets of evil) are “replacing traditional marketing.”
My first question: do we bloggers know that? I have said in my presentations to RWA chapters and groups that successfully building a blog rests partially on two elements that draw an audience: consistency and credibility. If your blog is consistent in content and style, and your credibility is based on that consistency, audiences will react favorably. But any deviation in one will damage the other. Credibility, at least, in my opinion for my site, is damaged if I’m shilling for a particular publisher or promoting a particular author without revealing my reasons for doing so. Most of the time, I write about X because I like X, or I have something to say about X, or because X has buxom, buttery man-titty. Exceptions so far include when someone wins a contest or a donated auction item, and there’s an interview or a guest review included as part of that prize - and I like to think I’m up-front about that.
I’m not saying that I’m a bastion of consistency - I’m also really damn forgetful. But I do value any credibility our site has earned, and I try to stay conscious of my own set of codes, as Jane called them in an email exchange we had about this article, because as bloggers we’re basically really loud words-of-mouth. Or words-of-screen. Recommendations that are based on some form of compensation, speaking solely from my own experience, are better received (by me at least!) when I know the scope of the compensation that goes on behind the scenes, if there is any. It’s weird to look at my site from the perspective of a blogger and a reader of blogs, but this article creates an opportunity for me to do so, because it discusses how bloggers are a new marketing tool for publishers.
Lois McMaster Bujold gave a Writer Guest of Honor Speech at Denvention 3 on 8 August about her experience as a writer crossing multiple genres, and it was full of awesome, puppies, win, and rainbow ponies. Her experiences with The Sharing Knife and her impressions of how romance and sf play nicely together and compliment one another are fascinating because her perspective is one from which we don’t necessarily see a lot of analysis:
Romance and SF seemed to occupy two different focal planes, to steal another metaphor, this time from photography. For any plot to stay central, nothing else in the book can be allowed to be more important. So romance books carefully control the scope of any attending plot, so as not to overshadow its central concern, that of building a relationship between the key couple, one that will stand the test of time and be, in whatever sense, fruitful. This also explains some SF’s addiction to various end-of-the-world plots, for surely nothing could be more important than that, which conveniently allows the book to dismiss all other possible concerns, social, personal, or other. (Nice card trick, that, but now I’ve seen it slipped up the sleeve I don’t think it’ll work on me anymore.)
In fact, if romances are fantasies of love, and mysteries are fantasies of justice, I would now describe much SF as fantasies of political agency.
I was also taken with this part:
...I once fancied a metaphor of genres as blood types, in which mystery was the universal donor, equivalent to blood type O, and science fiction and fantasy the universal receivers, equivalent to type AB. I’d also dipped more cautiously into our other neighboring genre of Romance—although I’ve not decided on its blood type—but I had never made it central to a tale the way I’ve used the mystery model. (Ask me later about my metaphor of genres as dog breeds.)
Ok, what’s our blood type? I think we’re AB - universal recipient - all genres play nicely with romance, pretty much. Well played, Ms. Bujold. Well played.
Thanks to Rene S for the link.
Several people have emailed me about Gaia online, which Jennifer says is like “mangagied Second Life game for tweens.” Already I am mystified and sure that my description will get something wrong, so feel free to correct me.
Seems their August promotion, or collectible, is all about romance novels. Old skool romances, with all the accompanying tropes and stereotypes therein. If you’re a Gaia participant, you can star in your own romance novel with their ‘Lusty Scoundrel:’ Stand in front of a beautiful sunset with a swooning hunk or maiden by your side, then butter yourself up so that every muscle and curve glistens in the light. So you can be either the chick or the dude, which ought to send those who focus on the question of which character readers identify with most into spasms of joy.
In their newsletter announcing the new options, they include excerpts from “Lusty Scoundrel,” and another “novel,” “War of the Warlords.” The Lusty excerpt is kind of a hoot:
She slapped Beresford hard across the face, her gloved hand breaking like a velvet wave upon his violently outcropping cheekbone. “But what of Rodrigo? What of my marriage, my family, my delicately perfumed bosom?” Beresford’s baritone laughter echoed through the masculine caverns of his barrel-like chest. “Forget Rodrigo,” he commanded, clutching Heloise even tighter against his glistening, rippled thorax. “Rodrigo may be rich and almost equally as handsome as I, but there’s one thing he can never give you.” Slowly, Beresford’s rugged, stable-worn hands began to palpate the blushing flesh of Heloise’s shoulders. “Really good backrubs,” he bellowed; “I got a certificate from the city college!”
What the...?
From Lucinda Betts comes an article I reread a few times: The Future of Reading - digital or print? It examines the different types of reading that young folks (whippersnappers! oh, wait...) do these days - and they don’t mean ebooks, either. Digital reading is different from print reading, and there’s not really a sufficient methodology to examine, quantify or even include it as a different element of literacy:
Her mother, Deborah Konyk, would prefer that Nadia, who gets A’s and B’s at school, read books for a change. But at this point, Konyk said, “I’m just pleased that she reads something anymore.”
Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among education policymakers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association.
As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.
But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.
The example the article focuses on mostly is this young woman who is into reading and writing fanfic - and whether her activities are equal to reading, and all the benefits and superlative statistics thereunto pertaining.
Sidenote: That’s big enough of a question, but I have one more, which the article doesn’t really get into: what is it about fan fiction that is so alluring to so many people? Is it the community of active writers who are still involved in the narrative? Is it the participation in a group world that’s evolving and changing with each new text? Is it the critique and instant feedback from readers?
But dude, at what point does fanfic start earning some modicum of respect? Because gee whiz, the girl is reading and writing fiction, actively creating, you know, words and stuff, and that’s not quantifiable literacy? Damn.
Back when I was learning to cook, I had an absolute monster file of shortcut recipes for The Poor Student Cook (that would be me). Honestly, I look back, and I don’t know how Hubby and I survived my cooking, which wasn’t so much about actual culinary skill but about embracing the mathematical answer to the question, “How much sodium can one person ingest in one meal?”
Slather chicken with condensed soup? Oh yeah. Slather more chicken with other processed goop? Yup. Save extra goop to put on the Lipton side, which consisted of noodles and sodium? Yeah. I’m embarrassed.
But back before I knew better, that was cooking. And I was so proud to be in my kitchen, my apartment, mine mine mine, that I cooked and cooked and cooked… using processed ingredients and all kinds of narst.
Little did I know, I could have been famous. Do you know Sandra Lee? Creator of the “Semi-Homemade” empire, which those who dislike her call “Semi-Ho?” Her entire schtick is to create “semi-homemade” meals using prepared ingredients that have been scooped, reconstituted, seasoned, and beaten into a shadow of their former sodium-laden selves. The hallmarks of her show are her habit of tilting forward Giada-style into the camera boobs-first, the massive, absolutely happy-hour-worthy cocktail pitcher she’ll make in every episode, and the “tablescape,” which looks like Michael’s Crafts and the Rag Shop did the hunky chunky together and in their moment of passion burst into flame and exploded, kind of like the couple at the end of Like Water For chocolate only much more explodey, and with a mother ton of tschotskes.
There’s a Sandra Lee drinking game, for heaven’s sake. Have a look at Sandra’s alcohol-drenched Christmas tree. From scooping out pre-made pumpkin pies to pouring 90% of a bottle of vodka in a pitcher and splashing it with a tablespoon of Sprite. If you really feel like working out your abs, find Heather Osborn and ask her about Sandra Lee. Lee is hilarious and horrific: hilarious because it cannot possibly be real - and horrific because, oh, yes, it is.
A website that reviews romance novels from a couple of smart bitches who will always give it to you straight. No bullshit. No gushing--unless the author really deserves it.
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Give him our snarkworthy favourite “Decadence”. I want to know what he’d do with the immortal “I’m in her ass, saving her life” line..
old63: that smartbitches review never gets old, even if I’ve read it more than…
Definitely Sandra Hill’s Viking II series. I have read all of them. Off the wall funny. Not for everyone I’d say, as humor is so subjective. But for those who have enjoyed Hill’s other Viking series, this one is a…
..frozen semen can be mixed with syrup and shaved ice to make yummy ice cones
Snowballs!
From All I Can Say Is...
The Dinosaur Shapeshifting Nugget Love story in the next Harlequin Luna release
Believe it or not, there’s already a series of dinosaur shapeshifter romances…
Here’s the first one.
From Bid Early Bid Often
I’m going to have to agree with most of the posters above.
I’ve spent time on both sides of the issue. It was my parents who did the “nagging” about my weight. I love them and I know…
From Everything I Need to Know: Everyday Heroes and Heroines
This is a two-part Semi-Homemade improvement. Dump two cans of Manwich on your angel-food cake plot. First, always have a threesome, or a manwich, wherein the heroine gets smushed between two men. It doesn’t matter who the other dude is. He might be an ancillary character. He might be some guy who is glued to the wall in a priapic state who exists merely for the manwich purposes. He might not be a he—he might be a pole in the ground. Doesn’t matter. Not only does the heroine need to take it in the two-hole for it to cross the border into erotic romance, she needs a double-stuffing for that erotic romance to float the boats of today’s discerning crowd.
Your Brand-name Manwich angel food cake erotic romance plot needs scent. All these alpha predatory male heroes, man, are sniffing up her skirt, scenting her essence, and generally remarking on the whiff eau heroine, man. This is particularly true for paranormals, because it’s not an erotic paranormal romance unless the animal-esque hero ruminates upon the smell of her arousal at least three or four times. Get it? He’s part-animal, that sexy man-beast, and his sense of smell is fourteen thousand times more sensitive than everyone else’s, and so you have no secrets every time you’re hot to trot. There’s nothing more erotic than being turned on and having the dude who turned you on inform you that he could tell each and every time you were turned on in the past four years since you moved into the apartment next door, and what is it about QVC that gets your love honey flowing, anyway? Is it the Quacker Factory?
After you’ve covered your angel food cake plot with Manwich, threesomes, some additional scent, and enough name brand references to choke a shopaholic, there’s just one more thing you need to make a Semi-Homemade Erotic Romance: “baby.”
