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

Authors who go this route believe that the ebooks act as a form of advertising, arguing that the negative effects on sales from people reading it for free are offset by the word-of-mouth campaigns those same people will initiate. These creative commons evangelists also tend to point out that most readers don’t like long texts on a screen, a fact that may cause them to buy the print copy once they’ve sampled enough of the story online....

Every Tor author I spoke to for this article said they hoped the publisher would continue offering the ebooks even after the new site debut. When I asked them whether they would be willing to offer another book of theirs to the giveaway list there wasn’t a moment’s hesitation with their answers.

Romance readers seem like an ideal audience for the “Try a free ebook” giveaway program, since we are very much inclined to glom (nom nom nom) the backlist of an author whose books we enjoy. If Tor authors are reporting sales increases on books within a series after one of the books was offered for free, a similar model might work in romance. There are many romance whose series might experience a boost, especially series that are long as all hell, and therefore intimidating for those who are looking for new material but are hesitant to embark on a huge, lengthy series without taking the first book for a test drive.

Of course, Owens’ article does indicate that the free ebook giveaway from Tor is a temporary program that’s scheduled to end after the 20 July launch of their new site.

Note to Tor: Major Bummer, if it’s true. Free ebooks are brilliant! But even if Tor doesn’t keep up with the program, other publishers, I’ll bet, are getting in line to start doing free ebook offerings of their own, so you’ve definitely set a trend. 

Trouble is, when Tor launched their new site, there weren’t ebooks for sale. Some are available for the Kindle, but not all. The free books Tor had offered were often the first of a series, and there were a few vocal readers who were upset because they’d had a gulp of the sexy, sultry beverage that is ebooks, and they wanted to read the rest of the series in digital form. Tor doesn’t have much in the way of ebook offerings for those series, and folks are much disgruntled. Meadows’ gripe with Tor rests partially on frustration with Tor’s decision to pimp the ebooks without having the follow up novels ready in digital form, and partially on his personal frustration with Tor’s response to the online complaints.

It looks like Tor generated a heaping pile of interest in its ebooks, and at present isn’t able to fulfill the demand of that interest. Tor gave away ebooks to generate interest in their site and while plenty of the comments at that thread are thankful and giddy over the new books and new authors and new reading material oh glee, plenty more are not as into the idea of a new site as they are into the idea of the next book in the series in digital form… which isn’t necessarily available. So customers who sampled the series and are content with paper are happy. Customers who sampled the series and are curious about the publisher’s blog-format website are happy. But customers who sampled a series as an ebook and want to continue reading digitally are not happy. Commence comment flaming, general use of exclamation points and italics, requests that folks get thicker skin, and rogue flouncing.

Kerfuffle aside, I’m curious as to whether it’s a relatively small phenomenon, this cracktastic element to the ebook. Have you made the switch? Do you want all publishers to issue ebooks (oh, behold the wisdom of the Harlequin. Tor, seriously, take a look at the Harlequin. Take a goooood loooooong digital look. All books digital = MAJOR YUM of AWESOME SAUCE. Srsly.) and are they your preferred media for reading material? 

If she hadn’t flogged the old dead horse of romance, I would have really celebrated the following section of her review:

What we need for debate and discussion are accessible histories of all the key figures in Islamic history. As Muslims, instead of honouring these individuals blindly, we will accord them much more respect by opening our eyes to their achievements through critical re-examination of their lives. This cannot be done in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.

Agreed, ma’am. But while you make a very appropriate point, you do yourself a grave discredit by couching your argument with the weak analogy that it’s as “bad as a romance novel.”

[Thanks to Evaine for the link.]

Checking in with the romance craft world, we have a romance novel fragrance on Etsy, with a citrus/ginger top note and a base of sandalwood and musk, and embellishment tags made from old novels as well. And don’t tell KristieJ about this set of jewelry inspired by North and South.

Feeling crafty right now, and want to do something with your never-to-be-read-again pile of romances? You can make wallets or business card holders out of them. I have one of these, a gift from Heather at Tor - it’s adorable.

[Thanks to Kate for the link.]

And finally, want some catty reviewing… of a fragrance? Enjoy the New York Times’ Moment Blog review of Danielle Steel’s perfume, “Danielle.” The, ahem, money quote:

For the first four seconds it smelled sort of vaguely like a kind of flower that you get in a gallon of floral-scented laundry detergent, and then for five seconds it reminded you of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” Then it evaporated, like the prose in a novel by Danielle Steel evaporated from your memory the moment you read it.

I’m so finding a sample of that as fast as I can.

[Thanks to Jessica B. for the link.]