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Odds & Ends on the Web: October 27th Edition

10/27/2012

6 Comments

 
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This week was a bit low on actual book news, so this edition of Odds & Ends will be heavy on links on various... random stuff.

The "big" news of the week is that, apparently, younger Americans still read and use libraries a lot, refuting all the criers who've been telling us that literature is dying, young people are not reading, ebooks are killing publishing, etc., etc.

The other news is not much of a news item, or rather, not publishing news many of us truly care about - Penguin and Random House are in talks of a merger. But it sure became an inspiration for a great book nerd memes - #RandomPenguin and slightly less popular #PenguinHouse.

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Image by Kameron Hurley
There is more random (and penguin) creativity here.

On a more serious note, you should check out these clever and thoughtful posts:

Dear Author has a great follow-up to the recent Jon Stock controversy, dissecting why the culture of authors stalking and intimidating reviewers in the name of "customer service" is wrong (yes, evidently this has to be explained again and again) - Ladysplaining the Value of A Literary Culture for Commercial Fiction.

Sarah at Clear Eyes, Full Shelves invites us to discuss the topic of the necessity of "new adult" category.


There is also a curious discussion going on in the world of fantasy lovers -Portal Fantasy: Threat or Menace?  (Portal fantasy - think Narnia, Alice in Wonderland, even Harry Potter where a character from the real world steps into a secondary fantasy world.) According to this post, literary agents participating in a panel claim that nobody accepts and publishes such stories anymore, that good portal fantasies haven't been in print for a decade.

"They explained that portal fantasies tend to have no stakes because they're not connected enough to our world. While in theory, a portal fantasy could have the fate of both our world and the other world at stake, in practice, the story is usually just about the fantasy world. The fate of the real world is not affected by the events of the story, and there is no reason for readers to care what happens to a fantasy world."

Really?! we want to exclaim, flipping through our copies of Daughter of Smoke and Bone, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making and even Dreamfever. Someone is out of touch. But read the discussion anyway. If nothing else it's a great insight of the minds of the agents.

And, speaking of literary agents, if you ever dreamed of becoming one, Pub(lishing) Crawl has advice for you - this week's How to Become an Agent, Part 1: The Way In and How to Become A Literary Agent in 2 Easy Steps. Good news: you don't have to have a fancy literary degree to become one. Bad news: prepare to work for free in the beginning.

And now, the warning of the week: Amazon or any e-reader manufacturer has every legal right to wipe out your purchased ebooks.
6 Comments
Vanessa C
10/27/2012 02:40:36 am

Wow, thanks for the warning. I spent so much money on ebooks and to know that I don't actually own them and they can be taken from me anytime...I think I'll be buying physcial copies from now on

Reply
Sarah link
10/27/2012 04:11:47 am

Thanks for sharing my post, ladies! :)

I do think it's interesting, re: the ebook ownership issue, that everyone points their fingers at the retailers, but really the responsibility for this problem rests with the publishers. They're the ones who push geo-restrictions (which is why the Norwegian woman had her books deleted); they're the ones who don't want anyone--including libraries--to actually own digital books; they're the ones who push DRM; they're the ones who limit device numbers, text-to-speech and sharing. But the narrative is always, "X Ebook Retailer is Evil!" The music industry has the same restrictions for digital content and it's done them no good--you'd think publishers would have learned some lessons. (I've been drafting a blog post about this for ages and ages, but I don't want it to sound anti-publisher, because I really believe that the publishing infrastructure is essential in order to have quality books on the market.) For what it's worth, I do urge people to research how to backup their ebook (and music) collections, even though that's a violation of the terms of service, because as the rights stand now, digital media can be wiped out by any number of license providers.

I also think it's interesting, re: the agent stories, that the agenting world relies on illegal unpaid internships (it's illegal to have "free work" as a gateway to a regular job or use unpaid interns to perform work normally done by regular employees--I used to manage interns for a government agency, so I'm pretty versed on the rules). I wonder if the agent world is likely worst off because of that model, as it limits their pool of people who can give a year or more to working for free?

(Apparently, I'm full of opinions this morning!)

Reply
Tatiana (The Readventurer) link
10/27/2012 06:50:18 am

Re: ebooks. I feel like answering with Buka's words. If publishers want to retain the ownership of ebooks and only "rent" us these books, they sure demand a pretty high price. You can rent movies for $1. All of this is a huge mess. But yes, everyone needs to back up.

As for internships, what I want to know is why the publishing industry is the one that depends on unpaid interns so much? Besides it and, apparently, art world (I've seen some "Gallery Girls" on Bravo), there are not that many places that demand this sort of sacrifice. And if you factor in that most of these jobs are in NYC, this sacrifice is pretty steep.

Reply
Buka
10/27/2012 05:54:39 am

Thank you for the post! It might be random but there is a lot of interesting stuff.

I always download books from Amazon on Kindle for PC and back them up in a different folder just in case. I knew it wasn't overly paranoid of me. :) And if, as they say, we should think of them as rentals, not purchases, man, that's one expensive rent!

It's interesting that in case of portal fantasy books, here in Russia bookshops' shelves are crammed full of portal fantasy by Russian writers. And while many of them might be not great, they must be selling like hotcakes, since it's been going on for years. I often wondered why such books weren't very popular in America but it seems nobody even gives them a chance now.
Publishing industry in USA does have some puzzling notions...

Reply
Tatiana (The Readventurer) link
10/27/2012 06:53:03 am

Buka, I am not even certain that there is a shortage of portal fantasy in US. Commenters on the linked post gave a ton of examples, especially in YA and MG. Maybe there is a lack of adult ones? But then I am not very familiar with adult fantasy, so it's hard for me to judge.

Reply
Buka
10/27/2012 06:24:07 pm

I can't think of a single adult portal fantasy published in recent years. And I couldn't find one on GR lists, such as, best fantasy books of the 21st century.

I skimmed through comments on the original post and there is an interesting discussion with another agent on the second page. Looks like for USA publishers portal fantasy is geared towards kids and teens while in Russia the target audience is bored office workers, students and so on.
I can see why there would be more bad books in portal fantasy submissions than in another sub-genre, but the original argument about no stakes still looks ridiculous to me.




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