by SB Sarah • Monday, May 26, 2008 at 05:22 AM
Every Sunday I have to go to the grocery store, usually to buy giant containers of Lactaid, some yogurt, and whatever heatable food items I can find for weeknight dinners (we haven’t had a kitchen since January and oh my holy mother of asparagus does it SUCK). I usually don’t allow myself much time in the book aisle because one, both, or all three men who are with me usually protest the delay within the first 2 minutes of my browsing. But! The A&P got tricky on me and has moved the book section, so it’s now adjacent to the cereal - which means more than five minutes of browsing! WOO!
So check out what I found: you know what’s shelved higher than Nora Roberts, Dean Koontz, and Clive Cussler? Black romance, that’s what. Granted, this is a tiny tiny shelf in a suburban grocery store, but damn, Carmen Green, Adrienne Byrd, Brenda Jackson and Donna Hill got some prime real estate at the A&P. Sweet! Now I want to go meet the book buyer who serves my A&P.
by SB Sarah • Monday, May 19, 2008 at 09:40 AM
Thanks to Bitchery reader KS Augustin for the following link, which was all over the new Urban Baby alternative, YouBeMom discussion boards this weekend: according to Scientific American, which is examining the intricacies of that heavenly moment, that little death, women are emotionless during orgasm. No, seriously. Beginning with a discussion of what women find arousing as compared to men, the article reveals research findings regarding what goes on in women’s brains during orgasm. We’ve talked about the language romance novels use to describe that Big O - and I’m still, for the record, not over the whole “burst like a ripe melon” bit because omg, ew and yuck. There’s no shortage of purple prose describing orgasms: the waves, the stars, the peaks, the flying away, the exploding, the shattering, the inflation like a hot air balloon, that sound you hear when you pull a fruit roll-up from its plastic cellophane.
But according to the neuroscientists quoted in the article, orgasm from a brain scan perspective looks like complete cessation of brain function:
To find out whether orgasm looks similar in the female brain, Holstege’s team asked the male partners of 12 women to stimulate their partner’s clitoris—the site whose excitation most easily leads to orgasm—until she climaxed, again inside a PET scanner. Not surprisingly, the team reported in 2006, clitoral stimulation by itself led to activation in areas of the brain involved in receiving and perceiving sensory signals from that part of the body and in describing a body sensation—for instance, labeling it “sexual.”
But when a woman reached orgasm, something unexpected happened: much of her brain went silent.... [Neuroscientist Gert Holstege of the University of Groningen] went so far as to declare at the 2005 meeting of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Development: “At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings.”
Dude. No wai. Not that you wanted to know this much about me, but there are times with the big O has made me laugh out loud, which poor Hubby is never sure how to interpret.
While the article also mentions the pharmaceutical efforts being made to restore libido in women, I’m fascinated by the idea that my brain goes quiet and I have no emotions when I soar past the highest peak to bust open a melon in the sky. Augustin, in her email, asked a very salient question: “Is intense pleasure an emotion? Is the French term for orgasm “le petit mort” actually correct, in that there is no emotion in death, as in orgasm?”
Excellent question. I’m curious what you think - and also, I am fully expecting the next round of erotic romances to focus on the orgasm zombies.
by SB Sarah • Thursday, May 15, 2008 at 01:00 PM
Carrie Lofty forwarded me a link to a YouTube book trailer (that is OMG NSFW) for Chuck Palahniuk’s new novel, Snuff. Only the trailer, instead of being directly about the book, is a fake movie trailer for a fake porno called The Wizard of Ass, starring “Cassie Wright, star of ‘Chitty Chitty Gang Bang’ and ‘The Twilight Bone’.” Seems the “movie” “book” “porny” promo link is being passed around, though Lofty wonders, if it is going viral, whether it’s due to some curiosity or buzz, or more of a “WTF” factor. And who knows if “WTF” sells books.
In a marvelous bit of coincidence, in this week’s Crain’s New York Business, a publication I love about a subject I know nothing about, there’s an article by Tina Traster which I found hilarious for it’s unselfconscious absurdity. Of course I can’t link to it because Crain’s content online is for subscribers online but I shall give you a summary of the article, titled “7 tips for healthy viral marketing campaigns.”
Hmm, I think to myself. Perhaps the first viral marketing campaign tip I can come up with: realize that nothing is viral or even remotely organic in its exponential dissemination if it is featured in “Crain’s New York Business.” Much like the first rule of fight club is there is no fight club, viral marketing, to my understanding, hides it’s marketing so well you don’t really know you’re being used as a marketing tool—and if you do realize, you agree implicitly because the content is so strange, so amusing, so titillating, so outrageous, or even innovative and seductive that you pass it along to people you know willingly and eagerly. I’ve never passed along anything - a link, a book, a recommendation for a diaper brand or a YouTube video - because I was compelled out of a sense of marketing pressure.
Oddly, my first tip isn’t among the seven - because that would be a short and meaningless article indeed. The actual Tip 1: Build an e-Network. Citing mythological “sociologists” who say that everyone has a network of 8-12 people, the article recommends anyone looking to virally market something tap into blogs, forums, social networking sites and podcasts. Specifically the article mentions LinkedIn.
Specifically, Sarah has to go lie down with the weight of the flannel-suited well-intentioned-but-out-of-touch blitheness that has obviously missed the entire point of viral marketing. Again: emphasis on viral, hiding the marketing. Nothing comes across as more insincere when I’m reading email than a barely-hidden request for marketing. “Your readers will love this!” Or, messages from people I don’t know that read, “OMG, did you see this?” and then a link to something that clearly comes from the same URL as the sender. My reaction is usually, “OMG do you think I am dumb?”GalleyCat has another example of asking people to behave insincerely for marketing purposes: “Review my book on Amazon, and if it’s posted, I’ll give you $50.” Niiiiice.
In a nutshell: Marketing is by nature insincere. Viral publicity contains the sincerity that marketing lacks - it’s one person saying to another, “Dude, WTF, this cracked me up, awesome, check it out.” It’s a dose of personal endorsement, which in the internet age carries a lot of weight, and it’s about the message more than the product being carried by that message.
Next tip: Convert customers into marketers. Make clients an offer to incentivize their carrying your message with them. Yeah, no thanks. The only time this article comes close to actually Getting It is: “Simply offer such a good deal or exceptional service that customers will reflexively want to tell others about it.”
YES. THAT. Sincerity sells. Sincerity is often viral.
Tip 3: Go where the eyeballs are. Find sites with traffic to “generate buzz.”
Oh, for God’s sake. That’s not viral. That’s plain old everyday smart marketing.
But, but, but! The viral element in that section of the article isn’t fully highlighted in the “tip” text. The example provided is rather savvy: companies like Sweetriot Inc. use their MySpace page to link customers and invite them to submit artwork for packaging purposes. Brilliant. Imagine that for an author and publisher, where readers are invited to submit a cover design or art for a promotional postcard to publicize a book. But that’s not just going where the eyeballs are; that’s using MySpace’s strengths to allow customers a sense of ownership in a product they love. Cultivating personal investment - another dose of sincerity - through social networking.
Tips 4-7 are really not rocket science: make the message interesting, simple, and targeted towards the interests of the audience. Yeah. I’m bowled over by the brilliance. Add a few quotes from random business people about “getting their name out there” and other empty-nouned phrases of no consequence, and that’s the rest of the article. Game, set, yawn.
So why am I wanking on about this? Because one thing I’ve learned in the few years I’ve been here is that authors have a majestic uphill battle to publicize their books, and a very short window in which to do it. Thus my first thought was, “How do authors create viral marketing campaigns? Is it possible?”
Maybe. Sincerity and viral marketing seems to be often spontaneous, and because it is, there are conditions under which its likely, and there are ways to make that elusive viral campaign more likely, but there is no set formula. That said, what seems to nudge the viral into blisters of popularity, aside from sincerity? In my opinion it’s a twinset of enticements:
1. Entertainment.
2. A good deal.
First: entertainment. Absurd & funny, silly & sexy. As I think about the book trailers I’ve seen, among the most successful and hilarious was Sherry Thomas’ video trailer for Private Arrangements. Before I’d heard about the book or even the plot, I heard about the trailer, which operated on simplicity and hilarity. I wasn’t even sure the plot was one I’d like but dude, that video cracked me up.
And viral marketing doesn’t even have to be a trailer - because damn, standing out in the sea of book trailers seems an incredibly difficult task right now. Consider Janet Mullany’s hilarious “Top ten things no one would ever say in a Regency-set historical romance” which was mentioned and teased in reviews and in non-romance blogs as being particularly hilarious - and it was a back-of-the-book Easter egg for readers who picked up a copy of The Rules of Gentility. Funny, silly, and absurd or sexy spreads faster than slick and overprocessed every time in my experience.
And second, the allure of a good deal. Jane at Dear Author has a poll up asking for the preferred promotional giveaway - ARCs, Published books, or gift certificates. Wise question - anything that’s something for little or something for nothing spreads online. Bloggers doing giveaways, big or small - and there are some big ticket givers out there, tend to attract traffic. One method of viral giveaways that seems to work, but likely because it’s new, is the method used by Jane and by Ann Aguirre in which if you win a book from them, you commit to blogging about it either there or at your own site. Granted, if you’re an author, postage get get way expensive, but asking for a word in exchange for free reading material isn’t such a stiff request. At least, I haven’t heard anyone complain.
What marketing tools work for you - or what techniques have you seen that were so great, you wish you’d thought of them yourself?
Stay tuned - as soon as my scanner and I are back on speaking terms, I have a whole collection of promo material and giveaways from the RT Gauntlet of Promo Hall that are so over the top with awesome and holyshit for your collective perusal.
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by SB Sarah • Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 08:39 AM
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?
by SB Sarah • Thursday, May 08, 2008 at 03:51 AM
I went a Google-hunting for a few links to Black romance reviews until I find find time on my tuffet to write some myself, and I found a very interesting article by Gwendolyn Osborne, aka “The Word Diva,” on AALBC.com. In her examination of Black romance, It’s All About Love, Osborne examines the stereotypes and issues facing romance, but more specifically, Black romance and the Black readers of romance novels. In short, Black romance fights the preconceptions about romance, as well as preconceptions and prejudices about Black women, and Black relationships. Note: I don’t know when this article was written, so if these quotes are profoundly out of date, I apologize.
Drawing from quotes from authors like Beverly Jenkins as well as from romance readers, Osborne examines the growth of the Black romance subgenre, and the social realities faced both by readers and by the characters within the novels:
[Renee A. Redd, director of Northwestern University’s Women’s Center, says] “They [romance novels] offer a substitute for those who have resigned to never really being able to find a fulfilling love in their actual lives. The reality of a dearth of available straight Black men for straight Black women is a disconcerting and painful issue before us. For a long time we have lived with the idea of the strong Black woman, who by implication can do without a romantic relationship if she must, but the truth is that she would rather not.”
This acknowledgement the social reality of the lack of marriageable African American men denotes the difference between sister-girl fiction and romance fiction, says second-generation romance reader Jean Dalton of New York City. “In Waiting to Exhale, four educated and successful Black women sat around complaining about Black men who were unable to commit, preferred white women, unemployed, incarcerated, gay, adulterous or sexually inadequate, etc. African-American romance heroines are more in charge of their futures. They aren’t sitting around waiting to exhale.”
Black romance heroines are located within a unique - and important - social and political culture, both in the fiction worlds they inhabit, and as part of the world inhabited by their readers.
While the theme of many contemporary romances relies heavily on the self-actualization of the heroine, Black romances also navigate a minefield as they struggle to portray Black protagonists that are very, very different from the majority of images of Black relationships portrayed in popular entertainment media:
As Emma Rodgers of Dallas’ Black Images Book Bazaar says, “African-American romance novels are so popular because they reflect the values of the majority of the Black community [better] than most other types of media. The men and women are educated professionals, gainfully employed . . . or are entrepreneurs, upwardly mobile. The women are independent, career-minded with goals. Both are law-abiding citizens. Readers seldom see these images reflected on the evening news or in the daily paper.”
But soft! What criticism from scholars through yonder window breaks? It is the critics, and they don’t like the sex. No, seriously: the idea of sexual content in a Black romance is a target of some sharp criticism, because the “the open sexual expression in romance novels can only reinforce negative stereotypes about Black women’s sexuality. Renee Redd says, ‘I think most Black women still believe that the sexual expressiveness allowed the women in romance novels and to women of other races is not equally extended to Black women.’”
Plus, there’s that lovely old romance=porn accusation, which of course raises it’s engorged and stupid head everywhere it goes. Hooray for Shareta Caldwell who, like many readers of romance, can actually tell the difference between romance novels and pornography: “Romances portray love, romance, and sensuality in an positive adult manner. In romance novels, a man puts a woman’s pleasure first. This is not the case in pornography.”
Jennifer Coates of Chicago enjoys the committed relationships depicted in African-American romances. “In other media, we see intimate relationships being treated casually—like a handshake, but not that personal. The romance, the courting, the mystery seems to have disappeared from contemporary literature.” Coates cites Beverly Jenkins’ Night Song among her favorites because the interaction between the hero and heroine “demonstrates their appreciation and love for one another and solidified their relationship for me, elevating their sharing and mutual respect from a by-product, to the backbone of their intimate exchanges.”
Osborne’s article also examines cover art - a graceful curtsey to Ms. Osborne because, well, that’s just plain awesome and important. Boy howdy, is it important. Black romances not only face criticism as to their content, but also the cover art - whether it’s “Black enough” or “too Black.” One article cited featured a quote from an unnamed magazine publisher who stated that romance covers featuring Black characters in “Afrocentric styles” might make white readers uncomfortable. This same publisher said that covers without people would be preferable.
(White reader Sarah says: “What a bunch of unmitigated poppycock.")
Readers cited in the article disagree: “Shareta Caldwell says, ‘I like it when there are Black faces on the books, especially if the cover is an accurate portrait of the character in the book. That is the reason I picked up Beverly Jenkins’ Indigo. I loved the picture. And I don’t like the idea of fooling people by not having real Black people on the front. If White readers can’t get past the braids, locks, bald-heads, and Black skin on the cover, then how are they going to get through the book?’”
Osborne’s examination of Black romance ends with an assessment that the genre is evolving as more authors publish in mainstream fiction, and as new authors enter the genre. But the various influences entering Black romance concerned one reader, who is unwilling to see what she views as a more courtship-and-commitment focused narrative become more influenced by “hip-hop values:” “Courtship, marriage, commitment and sex are definitely seen differently by this generation,” says reader Jeanette Cogdell who, according to the article, reviews books at Romance In Color.
Which generation, I wonder. Osborne’s final statement, that “Readers are drawn to the romance genre because the stories provide an escape and are devoid of racial conflict, gratuitous sex and profanity,” undermines and contradicts some of the statements made by readers and writers in the article itself, especially that the stories are devoid of sex or acknowledgment of racial conflict. But Osborne’s examination brought my attention to elements of Black romance that I hadn’t known about. The evolving image of Black in American popular culture is an issue that’s been examined with greater focus, it seems, in the past few years, but is the idea of books focusing on female sexual experience going to underscore or somehow validate negative sexual stereotypes of Black women? If scholars and critics distrust Black romance for its focus on Black female sexuality, what would the appropriate venue be for an exploration of the topic? Already erotica received a big boost in it’s turgid longevity by the strength and backlist of writers like Noire and Zane - I wonder what those same scholars and critics would say about the influence of those writers on the erotica market as a whole.
