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

In the realm of books, I think matter matters. Actual three dimensional matter affects people’s perceptions of price and value - it does for me anyway. Say there’s a new book out. The hardback could be $25, or $29. I rarely, for that reason, buy hardbacks. I think of all the other things I could buy with that money and I wait out the paperback or trek down to the library to borrow it. With the added weight of a hardback in my bag, and the fact that I read while commuting, paying more for something that adds to the overall heft of my purse is not, in my mind, value. I harbor a general dislike of hardbacks. Books are all about portability. I definitely hurt the local booksellers who stock mostly hardbacks, because I rarely if ever buy them. I think the last time I bought a hardback, it was a gift, probably for my dad. Unless it weighs eight pounds and comes with a free box of Doan’s Pills, my dad doesn’t consider it a real book.

So it would make sense that I’d be eager for eBooks. They are, of all things, portable. They weigh as much as the device itself: whether the device holds 100 or 2, it’s the same amount of heft.

So why do I dislike ebook buying? Because while I have no problems paying $5-$7 for a paperback book, I find myself affected by matter prejudice, because an ebook is physically nothing. I get a little shiver of “Damn that’s a lot” when I pay $5 for an ebook. I know, I know, I am making no sense. And my little shiver of “damn” is not going to stop me from buying ebooks, so fear not, epublishers. But the fact is, when I browse the Kindle-Aid store, and the newest books and the oldest ebooks, like Kinsale’s Midsummer Moon, are over $7.00 - $7.19 to be specific - I am startled. Now, $7.19 for a paperback of Midsummer Moon? I’m down. $7.19 for the ebook, and I have to overcome an internal sense of, ‘Oh, my gosh, that’s so much, it’s hardly a deal at all.’

If I think about it economically, $7.19 doesn’t make a lot of room for the author, the publisher, and the myriad of other people whose incomes are hooked into the publication of a book to get paid and paid fairly, let alone well. So I click and buy and enjoy my book. I do make the purchase. But I blink at the price.

Ray Bradbury is quoted in Italie’s article as saying during a speech last Friday, “There is no future for e-books because they are not books.... E-books smell like burned fuel.” I disagree with him there - I’d rather avoid spending the fuel to go to the bookstore, even the one that’s 3 miles from my house, because holy shit, gas is $3.75 a gallon in NJ, and we won’t even discuss Connecticut (well past $4.20, if you’re interested) or, and say this in a hushed whisper like you’re talking about something truly awful, gas prices in Manhattan. E-books don’t smell like burned fuel to me; they smell like fuel saved, especially since I shop digitally and don’t heft my booty out of my chair.

But I do question the future of ebooks for people like me who have to overcome (I’m working on it, srsly) a sense that similar prices for ebooks vs. paperbacks is unfair, because while $7 for the three-dimensional paper and matter of a paperback is ok in my mind, because of the tangible item I’ve purchased, $7 for the digital words that transmit through the ether and then get deleted from my device (though stored at Kindle-Aid Headquarters) seems too much.

That said, I’m fascinated that at the same convention, there’s Bezos hawking the revolution away from paper, while American Booksellers Association announced the “Literary Liberation” movement that will attempt to “build communities nationwide” by shipping “cards, stickers and other materials” (all made of ...wait for it… paper) to independent local booksellers. Cross purposes, perhaps? Is it possible to resurrect the paper bookstore and advance the ebook? I suspect so - though I ponder if more bookstores will have to become community centers - coffee, books, discussions, etc - in part to accommodate those who look for books and socializing, using the socialization to further additional sales. What do you think?

1. Obvious: the library. If you have a local library, the books are free, cheezy bread, free. Head on over, get yourself a library card, and gorge on the awesomeness.

My local library participates in a rather kickin’ program called ListenNJ, in which patrons can download and check out audio books for free, with a limit of five titles for a 10 day loan period. That’s kick ASS right there.

But what if library wonderment isn’t an option? Coupons and cheaper options ahoy!

2. Obvious, Part Deux: Used Bookstores Every now and again there’s a minor kerfuffle over used bookstores, with some authors loathing them and the lost profit, and some readers who can’t reach for the $9 paperback pricepoint loving every moment of their local used store’s hours of business. I’m personally a big fan of the local used store in my area, because it’s a treasure trove of cover snark, it’s bloody huge, it’s up the road from my favorite pet supply store, and it smells like Used Books, which is about as good as New Car and New Baby smells. So if you like to own, abuse, and drop your books in the bathtub without worrying over lost dollars, used stores rock. And seriously, the cover snark potential is just awesome.

And if you don’t like #1 and #2? Damn you’re picky.

#3: Start haunting your local bookstore’s rewards program. I work near a Borders, so I’ve got a Borders Rewards account, and every now and again I get a coupon for 20% off a purchase, or an opportunity to buy three books from a selected list, and get the fourth free. For my birthday, I received a 25%-off-one-item coupon, and I’d say I get at least a coupon a month, though I don’t necessarily use them all. Borders’ program is free to join.

Barnes and Noble also has a membership club, which offers bigger discounts on every purchase, but costs $25 to join. With their membership you get 40% hardcover bestsellers, 20% adult hardcovers (rwor!), and 10% off almost everything else. There are also member email newsletters with additional discounts. Personally, I don’t buy enough hardcover books that this is worth it for me, but I did learn something clever. A book club I know of signed up for a membership by pooling $5 a person. All you need to access the membership discount is the phone number of the member who joined. So if you round up a posse and join together, you can all access the membership benefits via one phone number.

Rounding out the big box book survey, Books a Million also has a discount club, which, for $15.00 a year, offers an additional 10% off every purchase.

If big box stores are not to your liking, and you prefer your local independent, try talking to the owner or manager about your book habit and see if there’s a discount they would be willing to offer you in exchange for goods or services you might provide. That might be a longshot since everyone is tightening the fiscal belt these days, but you never know if they might need some graphic design work, a newsletter template, some help at busy times, or what.

And what about publishers? Do they feel your pain? Oh, yes. Your inability to buy as much as you like is their pain, too. So keep your eye out for #4: Publisher Specials From package deals like Harlequin’s current buy three get the fourth free deal, to the one that caught my eye at my last trip to the store: Kensington’s Zebra Debut program.

You might have noticed the books on the shelf - they retail for $3.99 or $4.99, and are marketed as “tomorrow’s bestsellers at yesterday’s prices.” Yeah, if my local gas station had a sign like that, the line would stretch into Pennsylvania.

I asked Kate Duffy all kinds of nosy questions, and she said that the program “was the brainchild of the publisher, Laurie Parkin.  It was her idea of a possible way to build a bigger audience for a brand new author.It has been very successful.  Very. Sally MacKenzie was our first debut author to hit the USA Today list with her subsequent “Naked” titles.  But for every debut author, initial print orders were increased beyond what we used to experience.”

Historicals, Duffy says, in particular are doing well in that program, and the line is exclusively for authors who have never before been published. Their first book is priced at $3.99, and the second novel is priced at $4.99.

And what’s the very, very best kind of book? See #1 - the free book. Duffy has offered up the six June, July and August releases for the Zebra Debut program, including Dark and Dangerous by Jeanne Adams, Lord Scandal by Kalen Hughes (which I reviewed and gave away copies of in May), Her One Desire by Kimberly Killion, To Wed a Highlander by Michele Sinclair, Lost in You by Alix Rickloff, and A Rake’s Guide to Pleasure by Victoria Dahl.

I’ll do a random comment drawing here to select six lucky folks who will each receive a free book - woo! So drop a comment, and if you’re so inclined, share your secret for feeding your need to read when you’re short on green (or red or blue or whatever color your currency is). Comments are open for 24 hours starting now.

Of course, I can’t LINK to the article because Crains’ content is for subscribers only. So let me summarize a bit and explain. According to writer Matthew Flamm, “the Internet* is gaining ground as a marketing vehicle just as traditional outlets are pulling back.” He cites the demise of newspaper book review sections and the long-ago disappearance of the Today Show and GMA‘s book segments - to say nothing of Reading with Ripa, which has been gone since 2005, much to the disappointment of a few authors (two of whom set up a blog called “Stalking Kelly Ripa” that hasn’t seen a new entry since 2005, but was still a funny concept). Oprah chooses fewer books each year for her Book Club Of Massive Sales OMG HOLY SHIT Fire Up the Printing Press, and bookstores are charging publishers more for prime locations within the store. The market, it is shrinky-dinking.

*MUST we capitalize Internet?! STILL?! For fuck’s sake. And “Web page”?! PAH!

So publishers are looking right here on the saucy wench-wide web for “targeted sites, and pitching bloggers to review and discuss titles that jibe with their concerns and sensibilities.”

I have concerns and sensibilities? Y’all. I want something good to read that’s a romance. I don’t know if that’s a concern so much as a minimum daily requirement for general blissful Sarahtude.

M.J. Rose, founder of AuthorBuzz, calls the blog world “a million little Oprahs.” And we bloggers are efficient because we are inexpensive and damn near everywhere. Everyone who is everyone has a blog, and their blog probably has its own blog at this point. And a Facebook.

Fauzia Burke, president of another online book promotional firm, FSB Associates, agrees that the relative inexpensive ad prices online, coupled with the allure of a few million eyeballs, is a powerful draw for writer and publishers alike.

But one unnamed consultant says that “publishers haven’t made the seismic shift” to appreciating and fully understanding the Internet’s use and capacity for growth in terms of book sales: “You still have publicists...trying to get an author on Today.” Flamm’s article does say, though, that Web-savvy publicists and marketers are the most sought-after niew hires at publishing houses (so if you’re looking for a job, heads up, yo) and every publishing house is trying out new methods of web marketing.

The most obvious: the free ebook giveaway. The article cites Gaiman’s book American Gods as an example - sales reportedly rose 250% after HarperCollins made the book available online for free for a limited time.

Flamm also mentions podcast-to-book phenom The Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing as a web-promotional idea, because the publisher built a Web site around the book before the book was released. I’m not sure that’s a solid example of web marketing aside from the fact that her book was originally a frequently-downloaded podcast, except that now I want to read that book because it sounds cool.

(Note: Neither Crain’s New York, Grammar Girl, Holt, or any large sword-wielding figures coerced me into making that statement. I is a grammar nerd like woot and like whoa.)

What interests me is the end of the article where Bantam’s director of marketing, Betsy Hulsebosch, mentions that the more creative campaigns take more time than money, and cites a successful campaign on YouTube for Dean Koontz’s latest book (Does Dean Koontz need a YouTube campaign to sell his books?). Flamm continues:

The expensive efforts tend to involve brand-name authors, but executives say that eventually those tenchiques will also be used for lesser-known writers. Their hope lies with blogs for now, however.

Honest to biscuits, that sentence makes me say, eloquently, ‘Huh?’ Not that I have the least bit of experience with marketing, or consider myself an expert on building any kind of buzz or even a light flatulent noise, but… Huh? Expensive efforts will be used on the big-names, but blogs are ok for now for the rest of the author pack? I’m sure that there’s all kinds of mathematical marketing data to back up that opinion, but if the cost is time and not so much money, why not make a splash on a little-known author using a big online campaign? Why not try a four-episode 3:00 minute trivia game show Flash series linked to a book’s plot for one new release, while using a different method, such as a avatar-creating module with a selection of silly names and images for another book, both for new authors? Wouldn’t it be easier to quantify the results on a new product using new marketing techniques? Why save the big splash effort for the more likely sales? (Yes, yes, I know I sound really naive. I’m well aware.) If new web marketing techniques are indeed more about creativity (and, in my opinion, sincerity) than dollars and glitz, why not seize some of that creative power and use it to build the next big thing?

Note to self: there is a reason you are not in marketing. That paragraph right there is probably it.

I mentioned while I was reading the book earlier this month that Mohammed ruled and Aisha was a bit of an idiot. That opinion did not hold: Aisha remained an idiot, but Mohammed’s character became less heroic as the book continued.

Aisha in this novel is very young, starting from about age 6. For that reason, Aisha has a lot of growing up to do, which was completely understandable, but there were plenty of times I wanted to march into the desert and beat her with the wooden spoon of GetaClue because MY HOLY FREAKING COW could she act like a complete freaking idiot. She makes the same mistakes over and over and over again. Speaking without thought, putting herself first over everyone else, jumping to conclusions: name an immature behavior and it’ll be in there somewhere. I couldn’t figure out if I was holding her to a much higher standard given the life expectancy and relative age of maturity at the time, but she remained stubbornly doltish long after I’d expected her to at least wise up a bit.

The narrative begins with Aisha as a young child playing with friends, including the object of her youthful crush, Safwan, who even then was a completely selfish tool. She finds herself in purdah from age 6 as the intended wife of Mohammed, and is shut in her home from that day until her marriage. Then the story shifts after her marriage to her life as the second wife of Mohammed, as she grows up in his household, living in a very uncertain time as Mohammed’s teachings began to spread, and as his fame and prominence brought more wives to his household. Throughout the first two-thirds of the book, Aisha holds onto a fantasy of personal liberty, riding, fighting, and living the life a man would - without any explanation as to why she felt it could possibly be an option for her.

Aisha also spends much of the novel desperate to catch Mohammed’s attention. Despite a revelation from Allah that he only have four wives, he keeps marrying and demonstrating a marked tendency to let lust cloud his clear judgment, if the narration of Aisha and the comments of his other wives are to be believed. If Aisha’s status as a virgin is revealed within the household, she would lose her status as head wife and would suffer for it, to say nothing of the undermining of Mohammed’s alliance with her family. She loves him but is frustrated that he seems to see her only as a child. She is increasingly resistant to the requirements of Mohammed’s wives, which she views as increasing imprisonment, and thus she fantasizes about running away with Safwan. They’ll run to the Bedouin tribes, and she’ll be free - at least, she will in her imagination. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why she expected this raging freedom, when certainly as a runaway wife of a religious prophet with a slowly growing collection of followers, she’d be immensely vulnerable to any number of factions. Aisha, in short, spends a great deal of the story acting like a complete freaking bonehead, and her lack of ability to learn from her bad decisions made it increasingly difficult to root for her.

One part I missed and wished had been more thoroughly explicated, as it would have supported the integrity of Mohammed’s character, was the section wherein Mohammed teaches Aisha, starting nearly from the date of their wedding, how to defend herself with a sword. While later in the novel she and the other wives are ordered to be veiled in public and are required to be models of decorum and modesty, the idea of Mohammed teaching Aisha to be a master swordswoman is fascinating, and I wish it hadn’t been skipped in the narrative, particularly as it would have allowed a glimpse into Mohammed’s interaction with Aisha while she was married to him but still a child.

Mohammed’s nobility and honor suffer a good bit in this novel, and in my uneducated opinion, that element might be one point Muslim readers find most offensive. While Mohammed had several revelations from Allah in the course of his life, The Jewel of Medina only shows those which pertained to decisions that affected Aisha and the other wives, such as the requirement that they be veiled, or the establishment of Aisha’s innocence after returning to the caravan with Safwan. His revelations appear at very convenient times, allowing Mohammed to roll on the floor incoherent, then stand up and absolve himself of any responsibility, claiming that his next edict was the will of Allah. The use of revelations to limit the freedom of his wives underscored the degree to which women were subject to men at that time, and made Mohammed seem more of a shyster than a prophet. While in the beginning, his patient love for Aisha was rather wonderful to read about, Mohammed’s behavior reveals a character who could be interpreted as flawed, weak, potentially manipulative, and one whose honor may be suspect—not exactly what one wants in a religious leader. Using Allah’s revelations and his own reputation of faith to justify or strategically avoid consequences for poor choices does not a hero make. And the manner in which Mohammed’s revelations come about leaves a lot of room for doubt and misinterpretation.

The book disappointed me as a reader because it lacked the depth and nuance I expect from historical fiction, particularly historical fiction based on women in religion. The Red Tent is in my opinion a more sophisticated book that parallels current attitudes toward sex and autonomy, even though I know many readers who thought Diamant’s portrayal of Dinah was overwrought and utterly fluffy. The Jewel of Medina reads flatly and suffered from its lack of complexity, particularly as a vehicle for introducing readers to the foundation of Islam. Aisha doesn’t come across as a matriarch or a figure of female leadership - her leadership is barely exhibited. Instead, it’s a tale of a boneheaded girl who selfishly covets an iconoclastic fantasy life, and who wises up at the brink of “almost too late.”

Aisha realizes that by deliberately staying behind the caravan to run off with Safwan, she is setting up her family for ruin, and her husband for failure as a spiritual leader among very devoted followers. Her rashness, which she realizes literally inches from disaster, would cause her entire family to be in disgrace for the rest of their lives, and would mean her parents would have to pretend as if she were dead. Ultimately, it’s the realization that, if she did run away with Safwan and disgrace Muhammad, no one would revere the name “Aisha” after her death. Yet again, Aisha’s ego trumps her reason, even if this time her reasoning is finally, finally, omg FINALLY in the right direction.

The honorable aspects of Aisha’s history as discussed elsewhere in accounts of the founding of Islam reveal her skills as a leader in war, her role as a matriarch and as the most beloved of Mohammad’s wives. (I hesitate to use the word “harem” though the book does so, because I don’t believe it’s entirely correct in this context.) Those moments of leadership are not in this book, save for a very few, and when the narrative ends with Mohammed’s death, Aisha’s story ends as well. From what I’ve learned since the controversy of the book first appeared, Aisha’s status as one of the revered women of Islam is based on her life following the death of the prophet. The limited scope of the novel is therefore a disappointment because the depth of Aisha’s accomplishments are not realized in her role as Mohammed’s wife, but in what she does after Mohammed’s death. The book doesn’t mention any of her scholarship or her collection of the hadith’s of Mohammed, and the story itself lends little to the reader’s understanding of why Aisha is referred to as “the one who affirms the Truth.”

Ultimately, this is a story of a young woman thrust into extraordinary circumstances who gets in her own way as she struggles to grow the hell up already, and that story ends before the reader can truly ascertain that Aisha has indeed grown up. To answer Spellberg’s accusations that this was “soft-core pornography” and “deliberate misinterpretation of history,” I still think she ought to put a sock in it and send herself to the naughty and silent corner. It’s not porny, not by a long shot. It does, however, contain narrative flaws and a lack of depth and development of the characters that would have created a very satisfying read.  I kept reading to learn more about the setting, the time period, and the foundation of Islam, but not because the couple who featured so prominently in the narrative held my attention. Curiosity, not compulsion, drove me to finish the book. If the controversy didn’t surround this novel, it would have come and gone like Hoobastank: quiet and forgettable.

An author who asked to remain anonymous told me:

Walmart placed a HUGE order for my first book (68% of the print run). They returned 80% of their order almost immediately (aka 50% of my print run), meaning it’s likely those books never even saw the shelf (I lost my slot to a backlist title of a NYT best seller most likely). As far as I know they didn’t order book two at all (honestly, I just don’t want to know). Walmart basically trashed my career before I even had a chance. No amount of great reviews or awards is going to offset a 49% sell though (the book sold VERY WELL at book stores, for all the good that does me).

I asked her how she knew about the Wal Mart connection to her sales, and she replied that her info came straight from her editor:

My editor told me my numbers were “in the toilet”. Nice. I was surprised, since my agent had told me that my numbers were great (cue the lesson that Walmart doesn’t report to things like Bookscan, so your sales numbers can look fab when they’re not). I expressed this surprise and my editor said, “Let me poke around a bit and call you back. I remember something really wonky happening with your book and Walmart . . .”

Most authors check their sales figures by subscribing to Bookscan and calling the Ingrams’ number incessantly. These two sources get their info from actual sales (Ingrams from stores ordering from their warehouse and Bookscan from bookstores that report in their actual sales). These two numbers have historically been considered fairly reliable (kind of like polls). There are all sorts of formulas people use to get an idea of what those two numbers equate to in total sales (like triple your Bookscan total or multiple your Ingrams # by 6, etc.). But the idea was that if your Bookscan and Ingrams #s were healthy your book was doing well.

This is no longer the case. 

Book sales have begun to be heavily driven by big box stores (Walmart being the most important one apparently), and those stores don’t report to Bookscan. So if it’s true that something like 47% of all mass market fiction is sold ad big box stores (I think) and your book isn’t in said big box stores (because it wasn’t picked up, or like me, they trash you right out of the gate) you’re royally screwed. But you may not know you’re screwed until you get blindsided by your royalty statement and the fact that your publisher isn’t picking up your next contract.

Now, I know next to diddly about Bookscan and sales numbers, and how sales and success are quantified. So I asked an editor: What’s up with Wal Mart?

Does Wal Mart have that much power?

The answer: an unequivocal “Oh, holy shit, yes.”

Wal Mart is the single largest bookseller in the US. Period, full stop. Most books in this country for retail sales are sold to Wal Mart. And so they have the most power, according to my source.

The completely wonky part is that they don’t make as much money selling books as they do selling, say, tires or automotive supplies or groceries. Books are a very small part of their selection, and a small part of their profit margin.

But books at Wal Mart are a holy hopping damn huge part of of the profit margin of your average romance publishing establishment, because when Wal Mart orders a book, it is an order that often has many, many more zeroes in it than orders for all the other retailers combined. It is not far fetched for editors and marketing staff to ponder amongst themselves, ‘But how will this sell at Wal Mart?’ Selling to Wal Mart is crucial for any author, any publisher, and anyone who hopes to realize a profit in publishing romance, particularly as predictions of the financial future of publishing in general turn dire indeed. Wal Mart is the most powerful figure in romance publishing, bar none (after Dear Author and us, of course) (snort).

Some of the email I received regarding Gennita Low’s campaign thought that readers of romance should boycott Wal Mart in protest of their outrageous market power. This is not the first time I’ve heard anti Wal Mart sentiment. As the nations largest retailer, they have attracted more than one lawsuit for alleged discrimination against women.

In the Fall 08 issue of Bitch Magazine, there’s an article about Wal Mart’s latest marketing campaign, which asks if moms have “formed their ‘momtourage’ yet,” targeting female readers and television viewers as potential customers. This is troublesome to the article’s author, because

[t]he superstore is currently involved in the largest workplace gender-discrimination lawsuit in history, with more than 1.3 million female employees suing the retailer for failing to equally promote and pay women.... In one 2005 ruling, [Wal-Mart] was fined $188,000.00 by the California Fair Employment and Housing Commission for violating state law when it refused to reinstate a woman after she completed her maternity leave.

Now, personally, I don’t have a Wal Mart within driving distance, so I don’t shop there. I don’t know if I would had I the choice, given what I know colloquially of their labor practices from friends of mine who worked there while we were all in college.

But I also know that for a lot of people looking to mind their budgets and feed and clothe their families, Wal Mart is the only option in town. Literally.

And for those of us concerned with the health and continued viability of the romance book market? Wal Mart might as well be the only option in town as well. They are literally the most powerful, and books aren’t even their main source of income. How do you fight such a behemoth with that much power over an author’s career future? Is it even possible? Or do we have to play within that power structure to advance our cause - the continued availability of romance novels? According to those with whom I spoke, it’s not possible to circumvent Wal Mart and survive in the current market. They buy in such quantity and sell in such volume that it isn’t possible to go without them. There is simply no way to avoid them.

When I asked my editorial source what readers could do, the answer was immediate: shop there. “We should all get down on our knees and thank God for Wal Mart. They buy romance, we have jobs, you have books to read.” It might leave a sour taste in one’s mouth, but we should go out of our way to shop there, according to this editor, because if more people shop for romance there, and it becomes more of a profitable enterprise for them, then they’ll buy more. If they buy more, there’s room to publish more, and there’s more for us to read. Turning-page economics, if you will.

I’m not pretending I know the answer to this one, and for the time being shopping at Wal Mart or deciding not to isn’t a question I face. But I know a lot of our readers look to Wal Mart for their book needs. GrowlyCub mentioned recently in a comment to my review of Lori Borrill’s Unleashed that:

I went and read the excerpt at Amazon and holy smokes, I want to read that book now! Our local Walmart does not carry Blazes any longer, so that means either a trip 80 miles down the road or waiting till Bamm.com can deliver.

No Blazes in the Wal Mart means one reader waits for shipping, or goes without. Even in the isolated cases, that’s a lot of power for one store to wield.

What’s your take? Do you shop at Wal Mart for books? Or do you avoid it? And if the biggest of the big box stores has that much market power and control over the genre, will that ever change? And how?

Teh Winnah of the Videomo Contest will receive:

An Amazon Kindle
A $100 Gift Certificate to Amazon or the bookstore of Teh Winnah’s choice
A Laptop skin featuring The Ladies, the glamorous icon of Smart Bitches Trashy Books
The people’s ovation and fame forever.

Second place will win:

$50 at Amazon or the bookstore of choice
An iPod skin featuring The Ladies, the glamorous icon of Smart Bitches Trashy Books
A smaller but still sizable portion of the people’s ovation and fame forever

Contest Stuff:

All entries must be uploaded to You Tube by Thursday, January 1, 2009, midnight EST. If you make a Videomo for us while hung over from New Year’s Eve? Super Awesome!

Please use whatever you’d like to create your Videomo, from live action to visual puns to really, really bad poetry. BUT PLEASE: do not use anything that’s copyrighted or the property of someone else because, dude. Not Cool. If your Videomo features items that are not free for your, and therefore our, usage, your entry will be disqualified.

Videos will be showcased on Smart Bitches as Friday Videos, and visitors to the site and our YouTube channel are more than welcome to vote on the videos themselves using YouTube’s rating and comment system.

Winner will be chosen the week of 9 February 2009, and the winners will be announced on or within 48 hours after 14 February 2009. Happy Valentine’s Day - you can make love to a Kindle (ow).

International entries are welcome. We ship anywhere, except the space station. Sorry, folks on Mir.

Other Stuff:

Whichever video we select as Teh Winner becomes property of Smart Bitches Trashy Books LLC for use all up and down the internet. We may tattoo it on our buxom selves, even. Who knows? But please do feel free to place a credit for yourself at the end of the Videomo. Srsly.

The winning Videomo might be featured on the web site of our publisher, bookstores, who knows. So go wild. You don’t know where this thing will end up.

Need help? We’ll make book promotional materials available to anyone who asks for them, and we can answer questions and provide a big honking high-res version of our cover as well. Just email us at or , and put “Videomo” in the subject line.

We’re still finalizing the judging panel, but we’re looking to television and film production professionals, random people of awesomeness, and, of course, yours truly, the Smart Bitches, to select Teh Winnah. Our panel presently includes Jane from Dear Author, The Dynamic Duo behind RomanceNovel.tv, Marisa and Maria O’Neill, and Morgan Doremus from Miss Match Productions.

Any questions? Let us know. Have fun!

Wait, you want my love letter entry? Heh.

Back in college, before Hubby and I were officially an item, I met up with him at a New Year’s party during winter break of our freshman year. Hubby and I met in high school, and most of our mutual friends were at this party. I have no clear memory of writing a letter to him after that night, but at some point, I wrote a long, rambly, probably incoherent letter about how much I liked him and was attracted to him, and then, I mailed it. Seriously, this is not like me. I have no idea when I mailed it. But I did.

Surprise, surprise, Hubby wrote back. I received a printed out letter from him in Chicago (not handwritten; I’d never have been able to read it) when I returned back to school in South Carolina the following week. And while I don’t remember the specifics of the first paragraph, he admitted he really liked me too, he had always been attracted to me, but since we were 1000 miles apart, there wasn’t anything we could do about it anyway. Then came the memorable, romantic part, when he wrote:

“In other news, I’m going to change fonts. It’s really cold here. Today it was -40F with the wind chill. I almost froze my dick off.”

Ahh. Romance with Hubby. Nothing like it under the sun, or inside the wind chill.