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Odds & Ends On the Web: June 16th Edition

6/16/2012

11 Comments

 
Readventurer Odds and Ends logo
As a logical follow-up to last week's BEA and specifically BEA "Blogger" Conference with its heavy emphasis on how bloggers can serve publishers and Jennifer Weiner's "Sprinkling Fairy Dust" speech (as reported by various trusted bloggers whose links you can find in our last week's O&E), there is an understandable push back against the Review Only Positively message. AnimeJune over at Gossamer Obsessions argues very eloquently that book bloggers, contrary to what publishers believe, are critics, not promoters, a statement with which we wholeheartedly agree.

Gav Reads has some interesting thoughts on why reviewers don't want to read self-published books. We don't agree with every point made by the author of the post, for example, potential number of hits NEVER motivates our reading choices or blog posts. But we are generally skeptical about the quality of self-published books offered to us for a review, and especially when these books don't fit in any genre we enjoy reading.

We spoke briefly about "New Adult" fiction in our group review of Holier Than Thou a few days ago. This week Megan Burke wrote comprehensively about the topic, examining how "New Adult" fiction can be a well-needed category, but at the same time it can be just a marketing ploy to take advantage of existing "Young Adult" readers. Based on the various responses to this topic we've seen, it appears that it is mostly authors who write about college-age characters and face a lot of rejection from publishers who are unsure how to market such books, who  campaign most vigorously for defining this new category. The readers' opinions towards this category are mixed.

The ladies at Some Day My Printz Will Come who report extensively on how the Printz committee works lamented that 2012 has much fewer quality YA fiction this year, at least so far. Sadly, we tend to agree. Genre and commercial fiction are printed in bulk, but Printz-worthy books are hard to come by this year. Do you feel like YA is getting worse in general? Or is it only us, The Readventurers, who are getting weary of teen lit?

Mainstream media is known not to do any research before writing about books, particularly if they write about 50 Shades, genre fiction or YA (you know, as "serious" publications, they only care about "serious" Booker and Pulitzer lit), but this week The Wall Street Journal published a surprisingly coherent and even informative article about the growing power of fan fiction, even though they did title it The Weird World of Fan Fiction.

Picture
And speaking of weird, 50 Shades' influence over the world is endless, apparently. Now it is about to inspire publication of not only erotica and bondage fiction, but this sort of lit too - Fifty Shades of Louisa May: A Memoir of Transcendental Sex and Jane Eyre Laid Bare. WHY?!

To round things up and going with the theme of erotica and WTH, here are our last couple of "notable" links:

Try to guess if an erotic scene is written by a male of female author here. (Hint: "cave" is actually a giveaway)

And for your entertainment, some old skool WTH covers.

11 Comments
Jo [Wear the Old Coat] link
6/16/2012 03:32:55 am

This comment is my official way of asking you ladies to invite me to a readalong of MINDPUMP.

Just letting you know.

Also, is that guy on the cover the guy from Saved By the Bell?

Reply
Tatiana (The Readventurer) link
6/16/2012 11:59:04 am

Honestly, I was more intrigued by "Anybody Can Be Cool... But Awesome Takes Practice," because it was written by the author of "If God Loves Me, Why Can't I Get My Locker Open?" I am sure both are hidden gems.

Reply
Maja link
6/16/2012 03:57:28 am

Oh, god, seeing those covers is the best thing that happened to me in the last month or so! My only problem is that I now HAVE to have The Big Coloring Book of Vaginas. No price is too high.

Reply
Tatiana (The Readventurer) link
6/16/2012 12:00:58 pm

What I want to know is how many pages are in this coloring book. Am I underestimating the variety of its subject(s)?

Reply
Kara Malinczak link
6/16/2012 05:02:32 am

Thank you for all the informative links, ladies. I look forward to this post every week.

Reply
Tatiana (The Readventurer) link
6/16/2012 12:01:54 pm

Glad you enjoy these posts:)

Reply
VeganYANerds link
6/16/2012 10:04:24 am

Great round up of links, as always! I enjoyed the post about bloggers being critics, not promoters. I guess it's easy to forget this and sometimes if we love a book, we want to promote it, so things get a bit blurred.

Reply
Catie (The Readventurer) link
6/16/2012 10:55:00 am

I don't think there's anything wrong with promoting books and authors that we love and want to bring attention to. I just don't think that's our sole purpose. We're here to advise readers, and sometimes that inadvertently means that we get to publicize books to readers. It also means that we will sometimes criticize books to readers. It's a tricky relationship that we have with publishers and authors for sure, because we interact with them sometimes (by choice - we don't have to) but we don't write with them in mind. We write for other readers. There's a lot to consider with this issue for sure! I loved that post though.

Reply
Tatiana (The Reaventurer) link
6/16/2012 12:05:13 pm

I am with Catie on this. We definitely promote books we love here. But we are not PR machines who exist solely to positively review and promote everything that publishers throw our way. Surely you have seen blogs that serve exclusively as marketing platforms, blogs with non-existent reviews or critical content?

Reply
Pocketful of Books link
6/17/2012 04:32:06 am

Pahaha that quiz. Some seriously questionable sex scenes going on there...I had a good giggle! Thanks for sharing it!

I enjoyed reading that post about self-published novels because sometimes I wonder why so many bloggers' 'Review Policy' section says they won't read self-published books. I think you have to be selective about which review copies you accept, but I have read quite a few self-pubbed novels this year and loved them! I do understand some of the reasons he gives, but I think it's nice if bloggers can give some attention to good self-pubbed novels sometimes too!

Great post- you gave me lots of things to read! x

Reply
Catie (The Readventurer) link
6/17/2012 04:41:49 am

I really don't have a problem with self-pubs, it's just that there are literally thousands (if not millions) of them and I have no idea how to separate the ones I would like from the ones I wouldn't. Self-pub authors seem to pitch their books very indiscriminately, which I think worsens the problem. It's hard to read through all of these pitches when 99% of them are not directed at us in any way. I know it must be difficult to find readers but there has to be a better way. Someone should make a netgalley-type website for self-pubs, where we can request copies of the ones that we are genuinely interested in and the authors don't even need to contact us individually.

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