So you’re a blogger (hi there!). And you’ve registered for RWA in San Francisco. And you’re nervous about what to expect. Don’t be. It’s fun.
Samantha Graves said to me on the last day of RWA in Dallas, quoting, I believe, Mary Jo Putney, that the convention on the whole is a few thousand introverts pretending to be extroverts for four days. And at the end of the conference, expect to be exhausted. I was.
Now, last year, when I went, I was 8 months pregnant. I gave birth six weeks later. I was, to put it mildly, as big as the sun. So there were a lot of events I missed because I was focused on three things: finding a place to sit, finding food to eat, and finding (ahem) the ladies rooms. Since that’s the basis of my conference experience, I’ll start there.
Suppose you’re curious about what the posse of bloggers have to say at RWA this year, but don’t remember who all is going, much less what the URLs are? Jane from DearAuthor kicked ass and took names and came up with Blog Nationals.com a blog that will scoop the RWA-related content from about 11 or so different sites and compile it in one convenient reading location.
This was all Jane’s idea, and I think it’s spiffy. I contributed two itty bitty things, but the rest is another example of how Jane can make a label maker weep with fear due to her l33t skillz of organization. Yay, Jane!
So once the conference is in full swing, check out the site. We’ll have other stuff going on at our own sites, obviously, but if you’ve got an itchy hankering for RWA Conference news, take a look. And if that itching continues, see a doctor.
ETA: Whoa! The site got hacked! How utterly lame. I’ll let you know when the site is active again.
ETA2: I think we’re back. And utterly badass as usual.
A list in no particular order to illustrate what happens with a bunch of romance fans, bloggers, readers and authors descend upon a Times Square BBQ place with big honking holy shit huge drinks.
1. I arrive late because I went home, took care of the fam, then drove back into Manhattan. This was bad idea jeans, because a few hundred other people had the same idea at the same time and I was taunted by sitting on the helix into the Lincoln Tunnel looking at New York but unable to get there. And, to make matters more embarrassing for me, the restaurant wouldn’t seat the party until we were all there. What the crap?!
Now I’m one embarrassed person. Sorry, y’all.
2. The drinks were huge.
3. No, really. The drinks were huge.
4. DO YOU SEE THE SIZE of the FISHBOWLS they serve the DRINKS in?!
5. See #1 re: driving. Hence I drank barely a quarter of the fishbowl, chugged water (which did NOT come in the fishbowl, damn them) and donated the rest of my margarita to a worthy cause: the inebriation of someone who didn’t have a drink. Yay!
6. I don’t go out much, really, which makes me lame, but I forget how funny it is that a table of 15 people with one major genre in common will always find something to talk about, and will undoubtedly have a kicking time. It’s like a book club on crack. With margaritas.Or beer. In fish bowls.
7. There are funny pictures of me circulating out there. I promise I am about 200% more funny-looking in real life.
8. Ann Aguirre was angelic and very cool, and if you ask her how she met her husband, the story will make you wet yourself with laughter.
9. We talked about any and all of the following: writing, books we’re reading, Magic Hoo-hoos, San Francisco, juicy pink velvet things, Twitter, and dial up modems. Also books. But you guessed that.
10. My camera phone takes grainy ass pictures in low light, but that doesn’t mean I can’t caption them. Enjoy - and thanks to everyone who came for creating a kickass evening.
I am terrible and boring at entries where I tell everything that I did, because it becomes one long string of ‘And then… and then.... and then...’ and your eyes would glaze over. So here’s a small-paragraph recap in no particular order of The First 36 Hours Of RWA.
So tomorrow AM the Today Show segment will air and I’m hoping they use all of us, because Marcella, Kassia, and Jane were outstanding. Marcella batted that interview right out of the park.
Funny part! During the literacy signing, which raised nearly $60,000 in one night, I was walking around with two authors when the film crew from The Today Show approached us. They were looking for two people to pose and gaze up at the ceiling as if they were thinking of George Clooney and Patrick Dempsey. I happened to be standing with, count ‘em one, two people. So if the Today Show airs the segment with two people posing as if they were dreaming of celebrities, one will be Barb Ferrer and the other will be Lisa Kleypas. They were totally good sports about it, and I hope that Today’s uses the segment, because, awesome!
Seems this article in the Huffington Post about how blogs cannot possibly replace book reviews in newspapers made KatieBabs’ head spin around on her neck. (With anger, not because she’s possessed by the spirit of Col. Bimbo or anything). Bloggers cannot possibly replace book reviewers in newspapers, cries the author. Oh, they are so solipsistic and self-absorbed, and they use “I” too much.
So would it be snide of me to point out that if newspapers paid attention to the more profitable market share of fiction - that would be romance, folks - and reviewed books such as Kresley Cole’s, Nora Roberts’, or Nalini Singh’s recent novels, they might not necessarily be facing such dire financial straits? What, my economics has flaws? Please. My math skills bring all the boys to the yard, but mostly because they doesn’t don’t make any sense on this planet and thus are entertaining.
Yes, that’s a simplistic analysis and certainly one review of a romance novel would not turn the mothership of the economy around for any given newspaper, but while I try not to pay too much attention to analysis of blogs as writing formats, the bemoaning of the bloggers as the heiresses apparent to the now-dying review pages of newspapers bugs the crapola out of me:
I think book reviews on blogs—particularly those of the Blogspot variety—tend to be self-indulgent. Book reviewing bloggers need to move away from opinion in favor of judgment. How does the book compare to—and fit in with—the author’s previous work? What’s the book’s place in the genre? The canon? Does the writer succeed in doing what he or she set out to do—meaning, is it the book they meant it to be? Whether it’s the book the blogger wanted it to be is of much less importance to me, frankly.
We review romance because no one else in print did so consistently. I hold the books I read to any number of measuring standards as I write a review. Self-indulgent reflections on romance? Try: neglected as a genre too long. Put that in your newspaper and smoke it.
From the “Holy Shit” Department comes an article that was highlighted in today’s Publisher’s Lunch and dispatched to me by TeddyPig (Hi Teddy!): the Wall Street Journal reports that Random House is stopping publication of The Jewel of Medina and giving the rights back to the author, six days before the publication date out of fear of fallout from the Muslim community over the book’s content.
The book by Sherry Jones is a work of historical fiction based on the life of Aisha, one of the wives of the prophet Mohammed. Random House paid a $100k advance for the work but when UT Professor Denise Spellberg read an ARC, she denounced the book as a “very ugly, stupid piece of work” (note to authors: Don’t ask her for a cover quote. Ever.) and said, “I don’t have a problem with historical fiction. I do have a problem with the deliberate misinterpretation of history. You can’t play with a sacred history and turn it into soft core pornography.”
Wait, wait, before you pound your head on your desk, there’s more. Ms. Spellberg alerted Shahed Amunullah, a guest lecturer and editor of altmuslim.com, who spread the word to a listserv of Muslim graduate students. From there that email appeared the website “Hussaini Youth,” and within three hours, a person published “a seven-point strategy to ensure ‘the writer withdraws this book from the stores and apologise all the muslims across the world.’”
Now you can bang your head.
After Ms. Spellberg had a conversation with an editor at Knopf, an imprint of Random House with whom Spellberg has a book contract, alarm was raised within the company that the book, the author, and the employees of the publisher could be the victims of “widespread violence.” Spellberg followed up the conversation with a letter from her attorney stating that Spellberg would sue if her name were associated with the novel.
The story has set the internet on fire, pretty much, from Galley Cat to political bloggers weighing in. I’m trying to find an excerpt, a copy, anything about this book, because six days before publication must mean somewhere, somehow, someone has a copy and I have an eBay account. You have a copy? Let’s talk.
I must also note that according to the WSJ article, Sherry Jones has signed a termination agreement and her agent can shop the book to other publishers. I hope another publisher brings the book out, and soon, because one hissyfit and the threat of terrorist action should not block anything, let alone a historical fiction novel.
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.
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. To find out more, read all about us or check out our minty-fresh and funkadelic FAQ section.
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