First, let me say I love the Melville House Books site (see sidebar), and many of their titles.
Here they report on Amazon's plan to stick advertising in your Kindle experience -- perhaps on the welcome screen, and perhaps even after you have paid for and been using a non-ad-infiltrated Kindle for years.
Interesting that an ad exec gets it that people won't like that, but I wonder if Bezos knows better. Of course we won't *want* to pay and then have to look at ads. Yet... cable TV gets away with it. At first, "pay TV" promised no ads, too. Now, the no ads channels are premium and even though we pay monthly for cable, we have to watch ads on most channels. Maybe Amazon is onto something akin to the frog in hot water thing -- if they introduce the ads gradually enough, they will slip by us. I don't own a Kindle, but I use the PC app. I'd uninstall it if it came to that, tho.
Showing posts with label publishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label publishing. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Women's Literary Fiction
After recently having a frustrating "discussion" with a male friend who insisted that "women don't write big books," this NY Times article from Meg Wolitzer points out not only that we do, but are not taken seriously, but that when men write "women's http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giffiction," they are taken much more seriously than women. Here she is on Thehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif Marriage Plot:
'If "The Marriage Plot," by Jeffrey Eugenides, had been written by a woman yet still had the same title and wedding ring on its cover, would it have received a great deal of serious literary attention? Or would this novel (which I loved) have been relegated to “Women’s Fiction,” that close-quartered lower shelf where books emphasizing relationships and the interior lives of women are often relegated? Certainly “The Marriage Plot,” Eugenides’s first novel since his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Middlesex,” was poised to receive tremendous literary interest regardless of subject matter, but the presence of a female protagonist, the gracefulness, the sometimes nostalgic tone and the relationship-heavy nature of the book only highlight the fact that many first-rate books by women and about women’s lives never find a way to escape “Women’s Fiction” and make the leap onto the upper shelf where certain books, most of them written by men (and, yes, some women — more about them later), are prominently displayed and admired.'
Later, on the subject of big-in-size books:
'My sense is that like most men, most women are writing at the length they want to write — but they’re not always getting the same reward. Men like Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes have written very short, highly regarded and widely read books in recent years. Yet if a woman writes something short these days, particularly if it’s about a woman, it risks being considered minor. (“Spare” is the oft-used word of faint praise.) Yet if, on the other hand, a woman writes a doorstop filled with free associations about life and love and childbirth and war, and jokes and recipes and maybe even a novel-within-a-novel, and anything else that will fit inside an endlessly elastic membrane, she risks being labeled undisciplined and self-indulgent.'
And on the timing:
'It seems no coincidence that some of the most esteemed women writing today — Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, Marilynne Robinson — came to prominence at an unusual moment in time when the women’s movement could be felt everywhere. Stories, long and short, and often about women’s lives, suddenly mattered to the cultural conversation. This period, the 1970s and to an extent the early ’80s, initially appeared to create an entirely different and permanent reality for female fiction writers. Men were actively interested in reading about the inner lives of women (or maybe some just pretended they were) and received moral kudos for doing so. Whereas before that a lone woman might be allowed on the so-called men’s team, literary women began achieving critical mass and becoming more than anomalies. But though this wave of prominent authors helped the women who followed, as time passed it seemed harder for literary women to go the distance. As Katha Pollitt, the poet and literary critic, says: “I think there’s always space for a Toni Morrison or a Mary McCarthy, but only one of them at a time. For every one woman, there’s room for three men.”'
Jane Smiley, on this phenomenon:
'Jane Smiley, who won a Pulitzer in 1992 for “A Thousand Acres,” said: “When I think about my own work, I think that it maybe falls between two stools, and sometimes this is good and sometimes it’s bad — not making the money that Jodi Picoult is making, not achieving the status of Franzen or Wallace. Nevertheless, one of the great things for our generation of women writers is the freedom we’ve felt to write about whatever subjects we wish to write about. Are we less innovative than the guys? I don’t see that. But if men aren’t much in the habit of reading women, then it doesn’t matter how innovative we are.”'
And the final, thought-provoking point:
'Recently, when the novelist Mary Gordon spoke at a boys’ school, she learned that the students weren’t reading the Brontës, Austen or Woolf. Their teachers defended this by saying they were looking for works that boys could relate to. But at the girls’ school across the street, Gordon said, “no one would have dreamed of removing ‘Huckleberry Finn’ or ‘Moby-Dick’ from the syllabus. As a woman writer, you get points if you include the ‘male’ world in your work, and you lose points if you omit it.”'
Earlier in the article, Wolitzer points out that a literary woman writer can do very well without male readers, because there are so many female readers. It's likely that publishers are pandering to male readers just as the teachers above pandered to their male students, believing, possibly correctly, that males, who have to be enticed to read at all, would rather not read books by women, whereas women like to read and will read anything. Maybe it's time to put women's books back on the syllabus, and make it clear, again, that we expect them to be read. Otherwise, publishers will continue to spend a lot of effort on a group of reluctant readers while taking for granted the majority of the audience for fiction.
My friend, who does read women's fiction but only recent work, not having read any of the "big" women's books I suggested, still stuck to his argument about women not writing big books. At least, let's understand that men make this argument on the basis not only of their own biased reading taste, but of a bias in publishing in the last 30 years.
'If "The Marriage Plot," by Jeffrey Eugenides, had been written by a woman yet still had the same title and wedding ring on its cover, would it have received a great deal of serious literary attention? Or would this novel (which I loved) have been relegated to “Women’s Fiction,” that close-quartered lower shelf where books emphasizing relationships and the interior lives of women are often relegated? Certainly “The Marriage Plot,” Eugenides’s first novel since his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Middlesex,” was poised to receive tremendous literary interest regardless of subject matter, but the presence of a female protagonist, the gracefulness, the sometimes nostalgic tone and the relationship-heavy nature of the book only highlight the fact that many first-rate books by women and about women’s lives never find a way to escape “Women’s Fiction” and make the leap onto the upper shelf where certain books, most of them written by men (and, yes, some women — more about them later), are prominently displayed and admired.'
Later, on the subject of big-in-size books:
'My sense is that like most men, most women are writing at the length they want to write — but they’re not always getting the same reward. Men like Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes have written very short, highly regarded and widely read books in recent years. Yet if a woman writes something short these days, particularly if it’s about a woman, it risks being considered minor. (“Spare” is the oft-used word of faint praise.) Yet if, on the other hand, a woman writes a doorstop filled with free associations about life and love and childbirth and war, and jokes and recipes and maybe even a novel-within-a-novel, and anything else that will fit inside an endlessly elastic membrane, she risks being labeled undisciplined and self-indulgent.'
And on the timing:
'It seems no coincidence that some of the most esteemed women writing today — Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, Marilynne Robinson — came to prominence at an unusual moment in time when the women’s movement could be felt everywhere. Stories, long and short, and often about women’s lives, suddenly mattered to the cultural conversation. This period, the 1970s and to an extent the early ’80s, initially appeared to create an entirely different and permanent reality for female fiction writers. Men were actively interested in reading about the inner lives of women (or maybe some just pretended they were) and received moral kudos for doing so. Whereas before that a lone woman might be allowed on the so-called men’s team, literary women began achieving critical mass and becoming more than anomalies. But though this wave of prominent authors helped the women who followed, as time passed it seemed harder for literary women to go the distance. As Katha Pollitt, the poet and literary critic, says: “I think there’s always space for a Toni Morrison or a Mary McCarthy, but only one of them at a time. For every one woman, there’s room for three men.”'
Jane Smiley, on this phenomenon:
'Jane Smiley, who won a Pulitzer in 1992 for “A Thousand Acres,” said: “When I think about my own work, I think that it maybe falls between two stools, and sometimes this is good and sometimes it’s bad — not making the money that Jodi Picoult is making, not achieving the status of Franzen or Wallace. Nevertheless, one of the great things for our generation of women writers is the freedom we’ve felt to write about whatever subjects we wish to write about. Are we less innovative than the guys? I don’t see that. But if men aren’t much in the habit of reading women, then it doesn’t matter how innovative we are.”'
And the final, thought-provoking point:
'Recently, when the novelist Mary Gordon spoke at a boys’ school, she learned that the students weren’t reading the Brontës, Austen or Woolf. Their teachers defended this by saying they were looking for works that boys could relate to. But at the girls’ school across the street, Gordon said, “no one would have dreamed of removing ‘Huckleberry Finn’ or ‘Moby-Dick’ from the syllabus. As a woman writer, you get points if you include the ‘male’ world in your work, and you lose points if you omit it.”'
Earlier in the article, Wolitzer points out that a literary woman writer can do very well without male readers, because there are so many female readers. It's likely that publishers are pandering to male readers just as the teachers above pandered to their male students, believing, possibly correctly, that males, who have to be enticed to read at all, would rather not read books by women, whereas women like to read and will read anything. Maybe it's time to put women's books back on the syllabus, and make it clear, again, that we expect them to be read. Otherwise, publishers will continue to spend a lot of effort on a group of reluctant readers while taking for granted the majority of the audience for fiction.
My friend, who does read women's fiction but only recent work, not having read any of the "big" women's books I suggested, still stuck to his argument about women not writing big books. At least, let's understand that men make this argument on the basis not only of their own biased reading taste, but of a bias in publishing in the last 30 years.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
No E-Books for You
Melville House reports that Penguin has stopped selling e-books to libraries, in the fear that borrowing them will become too "frictionless" and will cut into book sales.
I know the intent is to keep people buying actual books made of paper, but what will the effect be? With fewer bookstores, independent or otherwise, to introduce people to books, and with libraries unable to keep all the physical books in the world on hand for browsing, won't this just mean reduced access to books? Some libraries, like mine, participate in a network-lending system. I can borrow any book in the mid-Hudson system by requesting it, but they still don't have everything, and the books they tend to get rid of are the same older books that nobody is requesting any more. Will it amount to the same thing, sooner or later, or are the librarians putting their heads together to make sure there is at least one volume of each in the system? How much easier would it be to have them all as e-books?
"That means four out of the Big Six publishers — Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette, and now Penguin — have made their ebooks unavailable to libraries. HarperCollins makes its books available, but in a deal that restricts each ebook to 26 circulations — a deal that has been angrily criticized by librarians. Only Random House, with its own announcement last week, allows libraries unrestricted circulation of its ebooks."
I know the intent is to keep people buying actual books made of paper, but what will the effect be? With fewer bookstores, independent or otherwise, to introduce people to books, and with libraries unable to keep all the physical books in the world on hand for browsing, won't this just mean reduced access to books? Some libraries, like mine, participate in a network-lending system. I can borrow any book in the mid-Hudson system by requesting it, but they still don't have everything, and the books they tend to get rid of are the same older books that nobody is requesting any more. Will it amount to the same thing, sooner or later, or are the librarians putting their heads together to make sure there is at least one volume of each in the system? How much easier would it be to have them all as e-books?
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Retailers will boycott Amazon-published books
"Late Friday, just days after the country’s biggest brick-and-mortar chain, Barnes & Noble, announced it would not sell books published by Amazon because its “actions have undermined the industry as a whole” (see our earlier report), two more giant chains announced they were joining the boycott: the 200+ stores of the country’s second biggest bookseller chain, Books-A-Million (BAM), and Canada’s number one book retailer, Chapters Indigo." From Melville House Press.
I can understand why they want to do this, but somehow I doubt they will be successful at getting Amazon to back down. The time to take action is past. Amazon is now big enough to do whatever it wants, including opening retail stores to compete with Barnes and Noble and others. In fact, this boycott may push them to exactly that. We might wind up with ONE major source of books... A scary thought, however well-intentioned Amazon might be.
I can understand why they want to do this, but somehow I doubt they will be successful at getting Amazon to back down. The time to take action is past. Amazon is now big enough to do whatever it wants, including opening retail stores to compete with Barnes and Noble and others. In fact, this boycott may push them to exactly that. We might wind up with ONE major source of books... A scary thought, however well-intentioned Amazon might be.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Publishers Weekly... and crime
My mechanic recently reminded me of that scene in The Graduate when Benjamin is informed that the future is in plastics. I was paying with a different kind of plastic at the time.
The literary future, at least near the top of this list, seems to be in crime fiction:
HARDCOVER FICTION
1. "Explosive Eighteen" by Janet Evanovich (Bantam)
2. "11/22/63" by Stephen King (Scribner)
3. "The Litigators" by John Grisham (Doubleday)
4. "Kill Alex Cross" by James Patterson (Little, Brown)
5. "V Is for Vengeance" by Sue Grafton (Marian Wood)
6. "Micro: A Novel" by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston (Harper)
7. "The Best of Me" by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central Publishing)
8. "Zero Day" by David Baldacci (Grand Central Publishing)
9. "Devil's Gate" by Clive Cussler and Graham Brown (Putnam Adult)
10. "The Christmas Wedding" by James Patterson, Richard DiLallo (Little, Brown)
11. "IQ84" by Haruki Murakami (Knopf)
12. "The Sense of an Ending" by Julian Barnes (Knopf)
13. "A Dance with Dragons" by George R.R. Martin (Bantam)
14. "The Snow Angel" by Glenn Beck and Nicole Baart (Threshold Editions)
15. "The Marriage Plot: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux)
List from HuffPo.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Cultivating Vonnegut
Somehow, I thought he had that hair his whole life. Like Einstein.
New bio out, story at NY Observer.
"As the publication date drew near for Slaughterhouse-Five, on which Vonnegut had worked, fitfully, for 20 years, he brooded over his author photo. He was clean-cut, clean-shaven, a bit paunchy—in 1969, an unlikely candidate for cultural eminence. He decided “to cultivate the style of an author who was in.” “To meet the expectations of his audience was key,” Mr. Shields writes. “He lost weight, allowed his close-cropped hair to become curly and tousled, and grew a moustache. … He looked like an avant-garde artist and social critic now, not rumpled Dad-in-a-cardigan.” His upper lip would never reappear. Slaughterhouse-Five became a number-one New York Times best-seller, and its tousled (not rumpled) author became an icon of the counterculture."
New bio out, story at NY Observer.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Support Independent Bookstores! And Small Presses!
From Salon:
And, I'd like to add, consider books from smaller presses as well as those from big publishers. Lots of fascinating, hard-to-categorize books fall through the cracks because books often need to conform to genre categories or big publishers won't touch them. Smaller presses do a great job of keeping these books alive.
Poets and Writers magazine has a convenient database of small presses.
Books that have come from small presses include:
The Wind-Up Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade Books). I loved this book, set in a sodden, futuristic Bangkok.
Tinkers, by Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize winner (Bellevue Literary Press).
The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Europa Editions).
Out Stealing Horses (Graywolf Press).
"An independent bookstore brings a lot to a city or a town: a showroom for the latest literary releases, an auditorium where authors share their work and meet their fans, a bookish environment in which to sip coffee and a fun place to browse in the 20 minutes before the movie starts. But what’s less immediately visible is your local bookseller’s expertise and influence when it comes to introducing great books to your community and, ultimately, to the world."
And, I'd like to add, consider books from smaller presses as well as those from big publishers. Lots of fascinating, hard-to-categorize books fall through the cracks because books often need to conform to genre categories or big publishers won't touch them. Smaller presses do a great job of keeping these books alive.
Poets and Writers magazine has a convenient database of small presses.
Books that have come from small presses include:
The Wind-Up Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade Books). I loved this book, set in a sodden, futuristic Bangkok.
Tinkers, by Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize winner (Bellevue Literary Press).
The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Europa Editions).
Out Stealing Horses (Graywolf Press).
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Publishing is Not Dying
And the biggest surprise is adult fiction, the market for which has grown in the last couple of years. More adults are also reading YA fiction, which is fiction with young characters. It's often written more simply than adult fiction, which can mean it's an "easier" read, but can also mean it lacks the pretentious ambitions of "literary" fiction. Note that I'm not saying that ambition is wrong, just that pretentious attempts at originality are hard to read.
The article has inspired a rollicking discussion in the comments, with readers asserting things such as, they will not buy e-book readers until they have chosen "One App to Rule Them All"; that reading YA is like eating Snickers; that adults stopped reading deeply at age 12; that ebook readers may well go through the same technology changes as computer disks, and nobody can read 5 1/4" disks any more, so why not stick with real books unless for traveling light? That last is a good point. Current ebooks might be the 8-track tapes of the future.
“We’re seeing a resurgence, and we’re seeing it across all markets — trade, academic, professional,” said Tina Jordan, the vice president of the Association of American Publishers. “In each category we’re seeing growth. The printed word is alive and well whether it takes a paper delivery or digital delivery.”NY Times.
One of the strongest growth areas was adult fiction, which had a revenue increase of 8.8 percent over three years.
The article has inspired a rollicking discussion in the comments, with readers asserting things such as, they will not buy e-book readers until they have chosen "One App to Rule Them All"; that reading YA is like eating Snickers; that adults stopped reading deeply at age 12; that ebook readers may well go through the same technology changes as computer disks, and nobody can read 5 1/4" disks any more, so why not stick with real books unless for traveling light? That last is a good point. Current ebooks might be the 8-track tapes of the future.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Gatsby wasn't that difficult, was it?
There is, apparently, an "intermediate reader's" version of The Great Gatsby, the great, and short, novel by Fitzgerald.
Roger Ebert is incensed: "There is no purpose in 'reading' The Great Gatsby unless you actually read it. Fitzgerald's novel is not about a story. It is about how the story is told. Its poetry, its message, its evocation of Gatsby's lost American dream, is expressed in Fitzgerald's style--in the precise words he chose to write what some consider the great American novel. Unless you have read them, you have not read the book at all. You have been imprisoned in an educational system that cheats and insults you by inflicting a barbaric dumbing-down process. You are left with the impression of having read a book, and may never feel you need return for a closer look." The Chicago Sun Times blog.
And, "Any high-school student who cannot read The Great Gatsby in the original cannot read."
"When he later found out that the Tarner edition was actually for foreign students, he was unrepentant: 'Why not have ESL learners begin with Young Adult novels? Why not write books with a simplified vocabulary? Why eviscerate Fitzgerald? Why give a false impression of Jay Gatsby?'" From the Guardian.
I have to agree here. Of all books, it hardly seems that Gatsby needs to be simplified, even for ESL students. Just read slower. It's a short book. The vocabulary isn't obscure. They can always turn Infinite Jest into a Reader's Digest book, haha. Ebert makes the single point needed here, that unless you actually read the book, you have not read the book. So why pretend? Might as well read magazine articles or lit essays. What is the real goal here, other than making some money off a text in the public domain by creating one's own version of it as a textbook? I don't know how damaging it is to readers, I suspect not very, but it does seem pointless and dumb, and possibly barbaric, as Ebert says.
Incidentally, "barbaric" was originally used to describe people who did not speak the local language, but whose speech apparently sounded like "bar bar bar." I highly doubt that the ESL students involved actually wanted anyone to rewrite an English language classic in babytalk. So, the intermediate version would, in the original usage, be pandering to their presumptive barbarism, rather than actually barbaric.
Roger Ebert is incensed: "There is no purpose in 'reading' The Great Gatsby unless you actually read it. Fitzgerald's novel is not about a story. It is about how the story is told. Its poetry, its message, its evocation of Gatsby's lost American dream, is expressed in Fitzgerald's style--in the precise words he chose to write what some consider the great American novel. Unless you have read them, you have not read the book at all. You have been imprisoned in an educational system that cheats and insults you by inflicting a barbaric dumbing-down process. You are left with the impression of having read a book, and may never feel you need return for a closer look." The Chicago Sun Times blog.
And, "Any high-school student who cannot read The Great Gatsby in the original cannot read."
"When he later found out that the Tarner edition was actually for foreign students, he was unrepentant: 'Why not have ESL learners begin with Young Adult novels? Why not write books with a simplified vocabulary? Why eviscerate Fitzgerald? Why give a false impression of Jay Gatsby?'" From the Guardian.
I have to agree here. Of all books, it hardly seems that Gatsby needs to be simplified, even for ESL students. Just read slower. It's a short book. The vocabulary isn't obscure. They can always turn Infinite Jest into a Reader's Digest book, haha. Ebert makes the single point needed here, that unless you actually read the book, you have not read the book. So why pretend? Might as well read magazine articles or lit essays. What is the real goal here, other than making some money off a text in the public domain by creating one's own version of it as a textbook? I don't know how damaging it is to readers, I suspect not very, but it does seem pointless and dumb, and possibly barbaric, as Ebert says.
Incidentally, "barbaric" was originally used to describe people who did not speak the local language, but whose speech apparently sounded like "bar bar bar." I highly doubt that the ESL students involved actually wanted anyone to rewrite an English language classic in babytalk. So, the intermediate version would, in the original usage, be pandering to their presumptive barbarism, rather than actually barbaric.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Book Blurbs on Amazon
Amazon is offering extra promotion to authors who will blurb books from its imprints.
At the NY Observer.
Opinions are divided seemingly along the lines of those who benefit from this and those who don't, judging by the two agents quoted in the article. Have to see how it all turns out before deciding, but I think it may backfire on the books blurbed. People won't believe the blurbs, eventually. Kind of like the 5-star reviews on Amazon now, many of which seem written by authors' friends and relatives. I know some readers dismiss the 5-star reviews unless they are particularly in-depth.
Amazon Publishing has already shown little interest in industry traditions, and The Observer has now learned how Amazon is looking to revolutionize the process of getting author blurbs: provide a review for a book on an Amazon imprint and Amazon will give the reviewer — and his or her book — extra promotion as a thank you.
At the NY Observer.
Opinions are divided seemingly along the lines of those who benefit from this and those who don't, judging by the two agents quoted in the article. Have to see how it all turns out before deciding, but I think it may backfire on the books blurbed. People won't believe the blurbs, eventually. Kind of like the 5-star reviews on Amazon now, many of which seem written by authors' friends and relatives. I know some readers dismiss the 5-star reviews unless they are particularly in-depth.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Go the Fuck to Sleep
The "children's" book for tired parents became a bestseller a month before its release, thanks to a pirated PDF (which I read). It's also gotten a "significant" film deal, which I can't say I understand, but, whatever. The text consists of four-line poems ending with a variation of "Go the fuck to sleep." The illustrations are typical of childrens' books. One of publishing's little mysteries, I guess.
Read about it.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Keeping in Touch
I just renewed my domain name, ZenofWriting.com -- altho this blog is accessible also by zenofwriting.blogspot.com -- while wondering how the readership numbers compare with Facebook friends who actually read my (usually non-blog) posts.
Well, I'm trying to keep in touch. Soon, I'll have to put pages of my novel up on lampposts...oh, wait. Someone has already thought of that.
Well, I'm trying to keep in touch. Soon, I'll have to put pages of my novel up on lampposts...oh, wait. Someone has already thought of that.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Editors are Timid; Ebooks are Shorter; There is No E-reading in Cafes
The dystopian future is here.
Timid editors. And, I might add, most likely underpaid. Yet, "Books remain a pocket of air in an upturned boat." Jeanette Winterson, quoted in the article at the Guardian.
Are ebooks getting shorter because of smaller devices, or smaller attention spans? NY Times.
"Many indie New York City cafes now heavily restrict, or ban outright, the use of Kindles, Nooks and iPads." o rly? y is that? Does this make sense? Is it the love of books? The resistance to the spelling butchery that goes with texting? Can you even do that with a Nook? Also at the NY Times.
Timid editors. And, I might add, most likely underpaid. Yet, "Books remain a pocket of air in an upturned boat." Jeanette Winterson, quoted in the article at the Guardian.
Are ebooks getting shorter because of smaller devices, or smaller attention spans? NY Times.
"Many indie New York City cafes now heavily restrict, or ban outright, the use of Kindles, Nooks and iPads." o rly? y is that? Does this make sense? Is it the love of books? The resistance to the spelling butchery that goes with texting? Can you even do that with a Nook? Also at the NY Times.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Responses re; Women Writing and Getting Published
Responses are flying in. It's good to see this topic generate such a flurry of articles and discussions. My writing group is abuzz.
Here is Katha Pollitt, at Slate.
"As in those studies that show men overestimate the number of women in a group—one-third feels like half, half feels like a majority—a big piece by a woman two years ago feels like it was published last week, and one or two pieces by women feels like half the magazine."
Kind of like how racist whites feel about blacks moving into the the neighborhood, eh? If you look at the weak rebuttal in Tin House, the argument there, that they had a women's issue in 2007 -- over three years ago -- fits perfectly with Pollitt's argument.
Here is Percival Everett on The Great American Novel.
"I do not believe that apparent authoritative literary voices of validation would ever make such a grand claim about a novel written by a woman. I say this because I believe there are many novels by women that are about the same sort of world as presented in Freedom. Sadly, the culture usually calls these books domestic or family sagas. Are the novels of Anne Tyler, Marilynne Robinson and Mona Simpson any less white and middle “American” than Franzen’s? They are certainly at least every bit as literary and arguably better written, whatever that means. And they do not suffer the needless verbosity of Freedom. Were a woman to use so many additional words, the prose would be called floral or poetic or maybe even excessive."
Here is Katha Pollitt, at Slate.
"As in those studies that show men overestimate the number of women in a group—one-third feels like half, half feels like a majority—a big piece by a woman two years ago feels like it was published last week, and one or two pieces by women feels like half the magazine."
Kind of like how racist whites feel about blacks moving into the the neighborhood, eh? If you look at the weak rebuttal in Tin House, the argument there, that they had a women's issue in 2007 -- over three years ago -- fits perfectly with Pollitt's argument.
Here is Percival Everett on The Great American Novel.
"I do not believe that apparent authoritative literary voices of validation would ever make such a grand claim about a novel written by a woman. I say this because I believe there are many novels by women that are about the same sort of world as presented in Freedom. Sadly, the culture usually calls these books domestic or family sagas. Are the novels of Anne Tyler, Marilynne Robinson and Mona Simpson any less white and middle “American” than Franzen’s? They are certainly at least every bit as literary and arguably better written, whatever that means. And they do not suffer the needless verbosity of Freedom. Were a woman to use so many additional words, the prose would be called floral or poetic or maybe even excessive."
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Dark, Smelly Bedroom
Of adolescence. Article about the darker side of YA fiction. I keep wondering what young adult readers see in the stuff when they can just as easily read adult fiction. A lot of the attraction is that it's fantasy, but also, according to this author, the obvious: young adult protagonists. Oh, makes sense then.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Email, Privacy, Social Networking and Copyright Protection
Am I right in seeing a connection between Google obnoxiously signing up all its email users for Buzz without asking and the German teen author who thinks plagiarism is cool?
I think the answer really is that if there is the technology to do something, there is the likelihood that it will be done. Teens have always wanted music to be free, e.g., and once DVDs came out, movies, too. We only start to respect the idea of copyright protection when we have to pay our own bills and can identify with not being paid fairly for our work. Realizing this may not end violations, but we all understand that it is wrong/illegal. The German author is arguing that it's not wrong at all: "'There's no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity,' Hegemann pronounced in a statement to the press." She goes on to state, disingenuously, that she meant it to be a collaboration, but, oops, forgot to mention the other author. Oddly, the jury of the Leipzig Book Fair doesn't see anything wrong, either.
In the same way, Google is perfectly capable of signing everyone up for Buzz, so they figure, why not? Maybe it's wrong, maybe it's not. They can always backtrack, which they are now doing, adding opt-outs after the fact, just as Hegemann is claiming collaborative intent. Fortunately, technology has also given us the ability to search text for plagiarism much more easily than before, and Google can make global changes to its gmail network in a matter of days. Scary, isn't it?
I think the answer really is that if there is the technology to do something, there is the likelihood that it will be done. Teens have always wanted music to be free, e.g., and once DVDs came out, movies, too. We only start to respect the idea of copyright protection when we have to pay our own bills and can identify with not being paid fairly for our work. Realizing this may not end violations, but we all understand that it is wrong/illegal. The German author is arguing that it's not wrong at all: "'There's no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity,' Hegemann pronounced in a statement to the press." She goes on to state, disingenuously, that she meant it to be a collaboration, but, oops, forgot to mention the other author. Oddly, the jury of the Leipzig Book Fair doesn't see anything wrong, either.
In the same way, Google is perfectly capable of signing everyone up for Buzz, so they figure, why not? Maybe it's wrong, maybe it's not. They can always backtrack, which they are now doing, adding opt-outs after the fact, just as Hegemann is claiming collaborative intent. Fortunately, technology has also given us the ability to search text for plagiarism much more easily than before, and Google can make global changes to its gmail network in a matter of days. Scary, isn't it?
Thursday, February 4, 2010
And take that.
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) removes Amazon buttons after Amazon's removal of Macmillan's buy buttons. Their goal is not retaliation, but to keep members' books available for purchase. If Amazon refuses to sell them, then links must, of course, go somewhere else -- indiebound.org, Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, and Borders, which I thought was owned by Amazon, but apparently still has its own online storefront and identity.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Amazon goes to the mattresses.
A bitter pricing row between Amazon and the publishing industry intensified this weekend as the online retailer stripped books from Macmillan, including Hilary Mantel's Man Booker prizewinner, Wolf Hall, from its website in the US.
The drastic move, which could be followed around the world including in the UK, followed tense talks between the two parties over the price of ebooks last week. Fresh from a deal to become one of a handful of publishers in Apple's new iBookstore, Macmillan sharpened its demands on Amazon to help ensure the "long-term viability and stability of the digital book market".
The world's biggest online retailer and home of the Kindle ebook store and reading device has long been under attack from publishers for selling digital books at $9.99 (£6.25) a title, which they argue risks undermining hard copies. Apple, which is potentially providing Amazon's biggest ebook challenge yet with the iPad, is expected to allow publishers more freedom to set their own prices.
From the Guardian.
More coverage at the NY Times blogs.
There seems to be a lot of concern about the e-book pricing strategy. Some, including perhaps Macmillan, are arguing that Amazon is making so much money from its Kindle reader that it can afford to lose money on books, whereas publishers like Macmillan obviously can't. So Amazon is striking back by removing buy buttons from new products (but allowing people to buy the books used, which gives the publisher no income).
Q: What price does an 800-lb gorilla charge for e-books?
A: Any price he wants to.
Would this be a good time to point out that Barnes and Noble online is now offering all buyers its members' discount?
The drastic move, which could be followed around the world including in the UK, followed tense talks between the two parties over the price of ebooks last week. Fresh from a deal to become one of a handful of publishers in Apple's new iBookstore, Macmillan sharpened its demands on Amazon to help ensure the "long-term viability and stability of the digital book market".
The world's biggest online retailer and home of the Kindle ebook store and reading device has long been under attack from publishers for selling digital books at $9.99 (£6.25) a title, which they argue risks undermining hard copies. Apple, which is potentially providing Amazon's biggest ebook challenge yet with the iPad, is expected to allow publishers more freedom to set their own prices.
From the Guardian.
More coverage at the NY Times blogs.
There seems to be a lot of concern about the e-book pricing strategy. Some, including perhaps Macmillan, are arguing that Amazon is making so much money from its Kindle reader that it can afford to lose money on books, whereas publishers like Macmillan obviously can't. So Amazon is striking back by removing buy buttons from new products (but allowing people to buy the books used, which gives the publisher no income).
Q: What price does an 800-lb gorilla charge for e-books?
A: Any price he wants to.
Would this be a good time to point out that Barnes and Noble online is now offering all buyers its members' discount?
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