Smart Bitches, Trashy Books | Romance Novel Reviews | Come for the Dominican Bitches, Stay for the Man Titty

by SB Sarah • Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 03:45 AM

What, more links? Why, yes, indeed!

James Patterson discusses his new book, a “romance” with the Palm Beach Daily News, and says that romances are “hard to do,” though he cautions that this isn’t a “real romance novel” (What does that mean, precisely, no sex?) Mysteries, for Patterson, are “easy.”

Now, what struck me is his accounting of his collaborative process:

Sundays at Tiffany’s was written with North Carolina-based children’s author Gabrielle Charbonnet in the collaborative style that Patterson developed about 10 years ago. It has been a key element in his increasingly prolific output.

“We’re hung up in this country about individualism,” said Patterson, who compares his collaborative process for writing novels to the traditionally accepted manner in which film and television writers develop their products. “Why can’t a book be created this way?”

Of course, with his celebrated status and reputation for enormous sales, it’s also a means for Patterson to give a lesser-known or aspiring writer an opportunity to break into the best-seller league — and earn what he describes as a “nice” amount of money....

When the decision is made to do a book with a co-writer, Patterson takes the general idea for the story and develops a detailed outline, which lays out the content and action of each chapter.

“It’s like screenplay for the novel,” he said. “One of my agents told me that when they saw the outline they said, ‘With this, I could write the book.’”

The co-writer then does a first draft based on the outline.

“I take it from there,” he said,

It’s like an updated version of the Sweet Valley High books, or the latter-day book package concepts, only with one dude at the helm.

Patterson is also lending his name and image to marketing campaigns for the very sexy Sony Reader, which comes complete with a copy of Patterson’s latest, The Women’s Murder Club. (And if the Sony Reader doesn’t blow your skirt up, the Kindle is back in stock. ).

And completely unrelated but still cool: Lori Devoti is part of a badass panel at WisCon, coming soon to the Wisconsin near you, about Being the Heroine of a Romance Novel Doesn’t Make Me Weak . Now that is something I want to see - a bunch of feminist fantasy ladies discussing empowerment of romance heroines and their strength, narratives, and sexuality. Word up. Something tells me that panel won’t be “your grandmother’s romance,” or “Patterson’s romance” either!

40 comments •

Categories: General Bitching • The Link-O-Lator
Tags: james patterson, kindle, lori devoti, sony reader

by SB Sarah • Sunday, May 25, 2008 at 01:00 AM

Over at Dear Author, I’m reviewing the Kindle, which I own, and now owns .39% of my soul and counting. Here’s a sample of my review:

My present option for ebook reading was my Blackberry screen, which was all of this big --> . My external reader options included hacking an iPhone should I buy one (oh, how I lust for thee, sweet iPhone) or an eBook reader. But like the VHS/Beta debate, eBook reader manufacturers can’t seem to nail a format any better than ebook publishers can nail good cover art that depicts people nailing one another, and I’m left with a six-to-eight step process to get one ebook on my Blackberry. Used to be I was happy to hack my way through multiple steps. Now, I don’t have that kind of time.

This is where the Kindle excels. Yes, I am aware I am tying myself to Amazon and giving them a measure of control over my purchasing, my ebook ownership, and my choice of formats - in that I don’t have a choice of formats. The Amazon integration with the Kindle unit is so fan fucking tastic I am happy to give up that measure of control, just like I’m happy to strip naked and walk through security control at Newark Airport if it’ll just get me there quicker oh, my God, this line is six years long. It’s all about expediency and efficiency; the Kindle drop kicks awesome through the goal posts of life.

33 comments •

Categories: General Bitching
Tags: dear author, ebooks, epubs, kindle

by SB Sarah • Friday, June 06, 2008 at 07:16 AM

It’s hot in the northeast, freakishly stormy in the plains, and just plain summer just about everywhere else. So, what better thing to do that read free ebooks?

If you’ve been thinking about trying Julia Spencer-Fleming’s highly lauded series in the Rev. Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne mystery series (known in my brain as Rev. Kickypants and Detective Angsty Thundershorts), which, in June, reaches book #6, here’s your chance.

In a move that is rather awesome in its simple brilliance, Macmillan is offering the first two books of the series from today until 12 June for free. Yes! Free! So if you’ve wanted to start the series and the prospect of buying six books and reading through is a little financially daunting, the publisher made it very sweet and easy to get hooked on Rev. Kickypants.

My understanding is that Kickypants and Thundershorts have some hot growing and sustained attraction, you know, in addition to that whole solving crime thing. However, I haven’t read the series, so I’m going on what other folks have said.

Signing up (which probably adds you to their mailing list) yields PDFs of the two books but if you’re like me and you’ve already filled your pitcher with the Kindle-Aid, you can download In the Bleak Midwinter and A Fountain Filled with Blood Kindle editions for the lovely price of $0.00.

27 comments •

Categories: General Bitching • The Link-O-Lator
Tags: ebooks, julia spencer fleming, kindle

by SB Sarah • Saturday, June 07, 2008 at 01:46 AM

In a Friday Op-Ed in the NY Times, Paul Krugman examines technology and the profitability of the ancillary market for publishing in light of the advancing market share of the ebook.

He cites the the predictions of Esther Dyson, who in 1994 predicted that digital content itself would not be the source of profit for emerging companies; instead, services and support surrounding the content would be the actual revenue-generating aspect of business. Comparing technology and software distrubution to the Grateful Dead business model, in which “enough of the people who copy and listen to Grateful Dead tapes end up paying for hats, T-shirts and performance tickets,” Krugman states that there’s a need for publishing to prepare itself for the coming market change, brought about partially by ebooks and their popularity.

Once again the industry of books and music are compared to one another - which is always a rocking good time, because while they have some finer points in common, among them being structurally bugfuck crazy, the two models are very, very different. However, ancillary market profit might be one of the areas that the two medias come to share. The question is, how?

Music sales from “touring, merchandising, and licensing” are becoming mainstays of band profit as “downloads… steadily undermin[e] record sales.”

So, what about books? BEA was all about eBooks, baby, and ebooks are the new market for books. Touting the Kindle-Aid, Krugman draws a parallel between downloaded music and downloaded, aka pirated, books.

How will this affect the publishing business? Right now, publishers make as much from a Kindle download as they do from the sale of a physical book. But the experience of the music industry suggests that this won’t last: once digital downloads of books become standard, it will be hard for publishers to keep charging traditional prices.

I wrote recently about the price tag of ebooks but my problem with the price has nothing to do with the comparative $0.00 sale price of ebooks from pirate sites. For one thing, I like good reading and know that snagging a free book means one less byte of good writing for me in the long run. For another, the formatting is often atrocious, the quality crap, and did I mention the immediate satisfaction vs. future quality reading thing? Yeah. Threaten me with the absence of good books from talented authors, and I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll even clean the sink trap (*ew ew ew ew*).

Krugman points out that newspaper attempts to profit by ancillary subscriptions for content they otherwise give away have backfired - and that free vs. subscription prejudice from consumers works both ways. Count me among those who get very ornery when a magazine I subscribe to prevents me from reading that same content I already paid for on the publication’s web site. (Consumer Reports, are your ears burning? The only reason I pay twice is because you’re a non-profit and your recommendations never fail me).

However, with publishing attempts to market books in innovate ways, the free ebook is making many, many consumers happy, and if it’s working appropriately, then one free download that’s professionally sanctioned (and professionally formatted, please, kthxbye) can make a world of difference in creating new fans and new customers of an author’s backlist of product.

But here’s the part that really made me stop and ponder:

Indeed, if e-books become the norm, the publishing industry as we know it may wither away. Books may end up serving mainly as promotional material for authors’ other activities, such as live readings with paid admission. Well, if it was good enough for Charles Dickens, I guess it’s good enough for me.

This is the part where I wonder, “Hmm. Do romance readers figure into dire predictions of the death of publishing as we know it?” How many readers here and at other sites swear by paper books, the tactile experience of them, and the pleasure of shopping for them, trading them, borrowing them, and keeping them for rereads?

Books as promotional materials for other activities? I’m confused. I’m still rather startled at the degree to which authors are asked to make themselves in to celebrity representatives for the sales of their own books, and that they allow greater access to themselves for the sake of a voracious readership that wants more, more, more between the issue of each new book.

If you’re a reader like me, you read fast and eagerly, and the finish of one excellent book is a sad event soothed only by the anticipation of the next adventure in a new book, with luck also a good one. Reading is among my very favorite activities (right up there with sleeping, eating pastry, and drinking wine). So whether I’m reading an ebook, or a print book, I’m still after the book, not the promotional reading. I’m a solitary person by nature; I don’t have any desire to sit in a room with other people to listen to my reading. I want to read by myself in the quiet. I’m not after the author and I’m not after the experience of reading-as-interaction. I just want the reading of the book, in any form. And while I do blink at the equal price of ebooks, I still buy the ebook or the paper, because I want to read.

I agree with Krugman that the markets that intend to profit from digital media will have to alter themselves mightily to create new functioning models that account for the sizable difference between pages and bytes. But am I alone in thinking that so long as there are books to be read, there will be folks like me paying for them?

Thanks to SonomaLass for the link.

49 comments •

Categories: Random Musings • The Link-O-Lator
Tags: bea, ebooks, kindle, pastry

by SB Sarah • Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 09:34 AM

Now that the price of a gallon of gas in the US is creeping nearer and nearer to the price of gas in the rest of the world, people are paying more attention to what they spend and how much they drive. I live in New Jersey and work in Manhattan, so I cross two types of driving cultures in my day. In Manhattan, there’s about fourteen bazillion different types of mass transportation I could choose, from subways to trains to cabs to pedi-cab bikes to buses—to helicopters if I’m feeling really frisky. Most people don’t own cars, because it costs as much as the car itself is worth to park that car for a day. Or an hour.

In New Jersey, it’s the land of the big box store and the land of driving pretty much everywhere. I once received some mass email that told me, and no word as to whether this is true or not, at any given moment, no matter where you are in New Jersey, you are never more than 15 miles from a mall. That’s a lot of malls. And a lot of mall hair.

But I have a feeling that the time of shopping as entertainment and driving to a mall to do so is rapidly coming to an end - not that I spend much time shopping as a form of joyful enterprise. There are some things, however, which I will always shop for, and which are not entertainment purchases or miscellaneous items in my budget. Up there with items like “mortgage,” “health care,” “food,” and “more food, oh my God with the EATING,” is an immovable entry: books.

No matter how high the price of gas, by hook or by crook, I will buy me some books. Maybe they will be digital Kindle books, or maybe they will be paper books, but there will be books. It’s not optional.

So what do folks like us do when the price of a gallon of gas is nearly the price of a paperback? Good question. Here are some options:

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.

Commenting is disabled, kids. Read the existing comments

Categories: General Bitching • Go Ahead, Win Some Shit • The Link-O-Lator
Tags: bookstores, kindle, shopping, zebra

by SB Sarah • Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 06:26 AM

Thanks to Sandia for the heads up: Kenyon’s Seize the Night is free for the Kindle today. Click early, click often.

Now I have to try to figure out with my under-caffeinated brain how to ask Amazon to inform me which books are free, cheezy bread, free, so I can clickity click and load up the Kindle-Aid.

21 comments •

Categories: General Bitching • The Link-O-Lator
Tags: amazon, kindle, sherrilyn kenyon

by SB Sarah • Tuesday, July 08, 2008 at 04:24 AM

On my way home from work one day, a woman sitting next to me most apologetically interrupted my reading to ask me about the Kindle. She’d never seen one, and she didn’t know much about the ebook readers on the market, but she was completely on board with the idea of carrying a stack of books in one lightweight device, to say nothing of the integration between book browsing and book buying using the wireless connection.

Of course, and I do grit my teeth when I write this, the Kindle is now available for $359, which makes it a tad more attractive, though I don’t think it’ll really take off in terms of ubiquity until it goes below $300, or even $250, if that ever happens. Meanwhile, I’m trying not to think of all the things I could have purchased with that $40 extra. Amazon, I am giving you a finger. Guess which one. My fellow commuter is probably buying one, because she completely agreed with me about how crap it is to run out of reading on the bus ride home. Invariably, it’s the day you get stuck in traffic for an hour.

If you’re still wondering about the Kindle, and its potential uses as a reading device, read on. Thanks to Jill F., who sent me a link, you can check out NPR’s Lynn Neary as she reports on how the Kindle holds up on the beach and at the pool. It’s relatively durable, sayeth the experts, compared to, say, a cell phone. But don’t toss it in the water, for God’s sake. I know of one Kindle-Aid drinker who puts hers in a clear Ziploc bag for trips to dangerous locations where there may be sunscreen, sand, and water. Low-tech is often best, especially since the included Kindle-case blows Chunkys.

I’m going to be road tripping next weekend - fun fun fun in West Virginia (no, seriously, I love West Virginia) - and the Kindle shall be coming with me. This may be the first vacation where I am guaranteed not to run out of things to read (which has happened before, and yea, it doth blow Chunky as well) but there’s no way in hell I’m bringing it near a pool, not without two Ziplocs, minimum.

43 comments •

Categories: The Link-O-Lator
Tags: amazon, kindle

by SB Sarah • Tuesday, July 15, 2008 at 06:09 AM

Samhain Publishing is offering free books through Amazon for the Kindle, starting with Nate by Beth Williamson. The book is available for the ever-lovely $0.00 from today until 20 July, so if you’re interested in some heroes on horseback, have at it.

2 comments •

Categories: General Bitching • The Link-O-Lator
Tags: amazon, ebooks, heroes, kindle

by SB Sarah • Wednesday, July 16, 2008 at 09:12 AM

Bitchery reader Elinyx gave me a heads up about a neat-o offer from a new site called ”BookRabbit." In what appears to be a merging of Flickr-style photo labeling and Shelfari or Library Thing book-based social networking, BookRabbit is building their site community by giving away 1000 free books. Open to UK folks only, the setup is simple. Upload and tag five books, and they’ll hand pick a free title for you. Elinyx tried it, and she says that their choices are based on what you’ve uploaded already, so you’re going to get an autobiography when your tastes run to science fiction. BookRabbit sent her a copy of Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, and while it’s not romance, Elinyx says it is similar to her uploaded selection of books.

Elinyx pointed out that a lot of the Free Kindle books are not available to the UK segment of our readership - which sucks, I agree - so if you’ve got a hankering for free books, you’re in the UK, and you want to upload and tag a picture of your bookshelf, have at it and let me know how it works for you.

But I have to say, if I had to pick 5 books that represented my bookshelf, I don’t know what I’d pick.

7 comments •

Categories: General Bitching • The Link-O-Lator
Tags: free stuff, kindle, shelfari

by SB Sarah • Tuesday, July 22, 2008 at 10:07 AM

Thanks to Verilees for the heads up: FeedBooks has a whole page dedicated to step by step instructions on downloading books in the public domain to the Kindle via RSS. Yay! Free! Yay! Public Domain! Yay, overloading my poor eyes with Things to read!

7 comments •

Categories: General Bitching • The Link-O-Lator
Tags: ebooks, kindle

by SB Sarah • Friday, August 08, 2008 at 08:12 AM

eBooks have received a big boost from iTunes. iTunes now allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to purchase and download eBooks directly to their iPhones. According to Teddy Pig, users can purchase books directly from iTunes and add the book to the iPhone using the “Apps” tab in iTunes.

Each book then appears in the iPhone as its own app. With the increasing number of iPhone users, this could be a huge boost for eBooks. No word yet on which publishers are appearing in the iTunes eBook store (THAT IS A LOT OF VOWELS YO) since all the books currently available are public domain. Teddy mentioned he’d just purchased a Frank Baum book and was reading it on his phone today. From the menu of available books, it seems most, if not all, are public domain, like Ulysses, On The Origin of the Species (great subway reading, that one), and Pride and Prejudice. Some are free, some are .99 cents, and some are a big fat $1.99.

Publisher iPulp Fiction has a iTunes library that they are advertising on their own site, but I don’t see any word as to which romance novel publishers will make it easier for Lazy Sarah to Download Books. If romance novels appear on the Apps menu, the iPhone and the Kindle might have a rumble in my handbag for literary dominance. Harlequin, I hope, will jump on this one like damn because it would be freaking awesome if I could drop a category on my iPhone before heading out the door.

As far as eye comfort goes, the iPhone is not bad at all. I’ve read books on the iPhone on BookShelf and the scrolling is a bit more responsive, at least in BookShelf, than the turn-the-page flicker on eBooks readers like the Kindle and the Sony Reader. But either way, eBooks on the iPhone?

iI iam iall iover ithat.

Thanks to Teddy Pig for the heads up.

19 comments •

Categories: General Bitching • The Link-O-Lator
Tags: ebooks, iphone, kindle

by SB Sarah • Saturday, August 09, 2008 at 06:23 PM

Ooops! I am still catching up with the email in the inbox from the Conference weekend, so if you emailed me, I’m getting there. Holy cow, inbox.

Anyway, I nearly missed this one, and you know how I’m all about the free Kindle-Ade: Samhain is giving away Giving Chase by Lauren Dane until tomorrow, 10 August. Click early, click often. And let me know, if you download it, what you think.

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