tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50511580790044610082010-03-25T03:02:19.475-07:00Lost in the MistCatherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-80681459051028929992010-03-25T03:02:00.001-07:002010-03-25T03:02:19.488-07:00This blog has moved<br /> This blog is now located at http://blog.catherinemwilson.com/.<br /> You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click <a href='http://blog.catherinemwilson.com/'>here</a>.<br /><br /> For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to<br /> http://blog.catherinemwilson.com/feeds/posts/default.<br /> <div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-8068145905102892999?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-28914502225265108422010-03-25T02:50:00.000-07:002010-03-25T03:00:01.997-07:00When Women Were Warriors Book I is a quarterfinalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel AwardToday Amazon.com announced the 250 quarterfinalists in the General Fiction category for the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Book I of my trilogy made the cut!<br /><br />Here's the <a href="http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/books/ABNA/2010/abna_2010_general_fiction_qf_entries_3_23.pdf">announcement.</a><br /><br />They gave it a nice little <a href="http://www.amazon.com/When-Women-Were-Warriors-ebook/dp/B003CV7RS2/ref=sr_1_39?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269508247&sr=1-39">review.</a><br /><br />And two weeks ago the same book won an <a href="http://www.epicauthors.com/epicwinners2010.html">EPPIE!</a> That's an EPIC ebook award. In the Mainstream category.<br /><br />I must admit to feeling a bit stunned.<br /><br />And lately I've had some lovely emails from folks who have read my books and liked them a lot and said some very nice things about them.<br /><br />So I'm just going to enjoy all of this awhile. And maybe gloat a little.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-2891450222526510842?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-66496434192919240102010-02-27T16:34:00.000-08:002010-02-27T16:40:09.415-08:00Amazon fails again (more about the Macmillan flap)I was going to comment more extensively about the Macmillan flap, specifically about Amazon's "ham-fisted" (their word) tactics, but the price of ebooks is much more interesting to me at the moment. I will mention, briefly, that Amazon retaliated against Macmillan by delisting from their site every title published by Macmillan and Macmillan's imprints, approximately one-sixth of Amazon's inventory. Not just ebooks. ALL their books.<br /><br />Did it hurt Macmillan? A little bit. Did it hurt Amazon? Plenty. Did it hurt Macmillan's authors? Yes, a great deal.<br /><br />Here's an excellent (and quite funny) blog post on how Amazon managed to totally piss off authors and their readers once again.<br /><br /><a href="http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/02/01/all-the-many-ways-amazon-so-very-failed-the-weekend/">Amazon pisses off their customers</a><br /><br />Here's a short quote from that post, to get you started:<br /><br />Note to Amazon: Real people do not give a shit about your fight with Macmillan. Real people want to buy things. When your store takes them to a product page on which they cannot buy the thing on the page, they will not say to themselves, “Hmm, I wonder if Amazon is having a behind-the-scenes struggle with the publisher of this title, of which this is the fallout. I shall sympathize with them in this byzantine struggle of corporate titans.” What they will say is “why can’t I buy this fucking book?”<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-6649643419291924010?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-27344741414900166752010-02-06T16:22:00.000-08:002010-02-06T17:52:12.790-08:00Macmillan and Amazon: more about the price of ebooksThere's a new dust-up over the price of ebooks, and it could be very good news for small, independent publishers, although not such good news for consumers.<br /><br />The short version is that Macmillan, one of the 'big six' traditional publishers, wants Amazon to price their ebooks using an "agency model." That means that Macmillan sets the price the book sells for on Amazon, and Amazon gets 30%, with 70% going to the publisher. Under the existing model, Amazon pays Macmillan 50% of the retail price, but Amazon is free to sell the book for whatever price they want.<br /><br />Amazon charges $9.99 for most best-sellers in order to promote their Kindle, and they take a loss on most of those books. Macmillan wants the ebook price to be closer to $15. They say that if Amazon won't adopt an agency model, they will delay the publication of the ebook by seven months after the publication of the hardcover.<br /><br />Macmillan has a good reason for doing this. They're afraid that a $10 ebook will steal sales from the $25 hardcover. As I've noted in earlier posts, traditional publishers have lots of expenses to recoup. They have the author's advance, the cost of editing, book design, cover design, and marketing, plus they have to print books, warehouse them, ship them to distributors, and be prepared to accept returns. True, some of those costs don't apply to ebooks, but the creation of a book, print or digital, is expensive, and when Macmillan puts out a new book, they want the same profit for the ebook that they get for the hardcover, and they don't want the expensive hardcover to have to compete with a cheap ebook.<br /><br />Recently Hachette and Harper Collins have joined Macmillan in demanding an agency model from Amazon.<br /><br />Why is this happening now? The Apple iBookstore, which will open soon to provide books for the Apple iPad, uses the agency model. Now that publishers have a viable alternative to Amazon's Kindle, they can demand better terms from Amazon.<br /><br />Kindle owners tend to resist spending more than $9.99 for an ebook, and as I am also a Kindle owner, I understand why. When I buy a paperback (I don't buy hardcovers), I can pass it along to friends or family, or sell it online or to a bookstore, or donate it to the library. If the ebook and the paperback are about the same price, I'll buy the paperback. It's all about value, what the book is worth to me.<br /><br />I have on occasion bought the $9.99 ebook edition of a new release that was only available in hardcover, but I very much doubt I will ever pay more than that. I'll wait the 6-8 months until the paperback is available, or until the price of the ebook drops.<br /><br />That's the consumer's point of view, and as a consumer, I won't be paying Macmillan their $15.<br /><br />As an author/publisher, however, I'm ecstatic! My books, priced at $9.99 (with Book I at just 99 cents), will be that much more attractive, compared to new releases from traditional publishers.<br /><br />But the best news is that Amazon is going to be offering a new contract to publishers starting in June. Right now I receive just 35% of the retail price of Kindle books. The new deal will offer me 70% of retail, less delivery costs of 15 cents per MB. There are a few conditions. The book must sell for between $2.99 and $9.99 retail. Aha! There's that $9.99 price point. Also, the ebook must be priced at least 20% less than the paperback price.<br /><br />I will have no problem meeting those conditions, and that means that in June, I may be able to lower the price of my Kindle books. The meager 35% I get now means that I make over $1 less on ebooks than paperbacks. Because I sell 3 or 4 ebooks for every paperback, it's a reasonable trade-off, but it also means that I've been reluctant to price the ebooks at less than $9.99, especially given the very low cost of Book I.<br /><br />We have Apple, Macmillan, and the agency model to thank for Amazon's new terms, because Amazon would never have done it without the competition. If you have read my <a href="http://www.catherine-m-wilson.com/blogger/2009/07/more-about-amazon-kindle-and-price-of.html">earlier posts</a>, you will remember that I have stated more than once that when Amazon wasn't the only game in town, they would have to give authors and publishers a better deal, but I didn't expect it to happen this soon.<br /><br />There are more issues to discuss here, and I will be blogging about them in the next few days, so stay tuned.<br /><br />Meanwhile, here are some interesting links.<br /><br />An overview:<br /><a href="http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/01/amazon-macmillan-an-outsiders.html">Amazon, Macmillan: an outsider's guide to the fight</a><br /><br />Amazon's "new deal" for publishers:<br /><a href="http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/publishers_who_play_ball_amazon%E2%80%99s_kindle_will_get_70_royalty_rate">Publishers Who Play Ball with Amazon's Kindle Will Get 70% Royalty Rate</a><br /><br />Apple's iPad's effect on the publishing industry:<br /><a href="http://www.9to5mac.com/Amazon_hatchette_job_459999">Hachette joins Macmillan's iPad Amazon pricing crusade</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-2734474141490016675?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-31706880683301637292010-01-13T02:33:00.000-08:002010-01-13T03:00:25.135-08:00Ebooks and SmashwordsA remarkable thing happened on Christmas day. Amazon.com sold more e-books than physical books, which means there must have been a lot of Kindles under the tree.<br /><br />Barnes & Noble sold out of their Nook e-book reader well before Christmas and more e-readers are being announced every day. Not only that, but now you can read ebooks on other devices, like your cell phone.<br /><br />I love ebooks. They're usually cheaper than the paperback, I can download them instantly to my Kindle, and they don't overflow my bookshelves. As an author, I'm convinced that ebooks will become a large and important part of the publishing industry. I already sell 3 ebooks for each paperback. I have had my books available for Kindle for a year now, but getting distribution in online ebookstores other than Amazon is difficult. Most, like Fictionwise, don't contract with small fry like me.<br /><br />But Smashwords contracts with all those ebookstores that won't contract with me, so I've made all three books of my trilogy available there. Smashwords has a premium catalog that distributes ebooks to Barnes & Noble, Fictionwise, Books On Board, and many other ebookstores. Smashwords also makes each book available in multiple formats, including html (for reading online), JavaScript, ePub, PDF, RTF, LRF for the Sony reader, PDB for anything running Palm OS, and plain text.<br /><br />Smashwords doesn't use DRM, which is very good for the consumer. You can download any book you buy in multiple formats and install it on multiple devices. And as a consumer I really like that. As an author, however, I'm a bit nervous about watching the books I labored 10 years to write become Napsterized, but I'm hoping that the increased distribution will more than make up for the books that people share with their friends.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=catherine+m+wilson">Link to When Women Were Warriors on Smashwords</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-3170688068330163729?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-32539218235247688112009-10-25T22:09:00.000-07:002009-10-25T22:47:27.126-07:00The divine mind of the infiniteA week ago, Nicola Griffith blogged about something that happened to a lesbian couple in Miami. You can read all about it here:<br /><a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2009/10/trembling-with-rage.html">Trembling with rage</a><br /><br />For those of you who didn't read it, it's about a woman who died alone in a Miami hospital, while her life partner and their children were kept from her by hospital staff.<br /><br />Colleen Lindsay read Nicola's blog and blogged about it here:<br /><a href="http://theswivet.blogspot.com/2009/10/when-compassion-dies-we-are-all.html">The Swivet: When Compassion Dies</a><br /><br />Here's a comment from that blog, posted by Fawn Neun:<br /><br /><em>I'm just a straight chick, what do I know, except I know what's right. Love is love, people are people, nature creates us as we are meant to be and anyone who thinks they know better than millions of years of evolution or the divine mind of the infinite probably needs to check their ego at the door of reality. </em><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-3253921823524768811?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-64092820362744038122009-10-12T19:54:00.001-07:002009-10-12T20:07:50.922-07:00A lovely new reviewI'm delighted to let all my faithful readers know that RedAdept has posted an excellent review of Book I of <em>When Women Were Warriors</em> on her <em>Kindle Book Review Blog</em>. She has an unusual and very effective method of writing reviews. She gives an overall number of stars, and also gives stars for Plot/Storyline, Character Development, Writing Style, and Editing/Formatting. She also gives the author an opportunity to say a few words about the book, using questions that pretty much cover anything the author might want to say about it. The whole package provides a comprehensive, in-depth look at the book while giving nothing away in terms of plot twists or anything that would spoil the story for the reader. A very professional job, I think, and I would think so even if she hadn't given me 4 1/2 stars.<br /><br />I wrote a response to the review, clarifying some of the points she brought up, and posted it as a comment on her blog.<br /><br />Here's the link to the review:<br /><a href="http://redadept.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/when-women-were-warriors-book-1-by-catherine-m-wilson/">When Women Were Warriors Book I review by RedAdept</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-6409282036274403812?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-89933240580694401062009-09-21T18:44:00.001-07:002009-09-21T19:17:24.605-07:00A Short WhineI had just about made up my mind to make Books II and III of my trilogy available as DRM-free e-books when I noticed that someone had searched Google for "free ebook download women were warriors book ii"<br /><br />Granted, this was just one person out of the several hundred who go to my site every month to download a free copy of Book I. But it was discouraging.<br /><br />And of course the ultimate nightmare of writers and publishers of e-books is that once a book is out there in cyberspace unprotected, people will be e-mailing free copies to all their friends and relations and offering it from their own websites. The irony of course is that an author's work may become wildly popular and the writer receive not one penny for it.<br /><br />Then, to add injury to insult, someone reviewed Book I on Amazon.com and, while she acknowledged that "This 'book' was inexpensive so I cannot complain about the price for this volume," she then proceeded to complain that "The others are being offered at complete book prices which feels to me like the publisher is trying to milk all the money they can get."<br /><br />I'm assuming that this reviewer is referring to the Kindle edition of Book I, which costs 99 cents from Amazon and is free from my website. Why she would resent the fact that Books II and III, both of which are full-length books (over 300 pages each in paperback edition), are priced as "complete books" is beyond me.<br /><br />And to make it worse, the little she said about Book I leads me to believe that she enjoyed it. So if you score a free (or very cheap) book, and you enjoy it, and you think that you will probably enjoy the next two, why do you resent paying the author for her work? Why would you feel ripped off? Books II and III are priced at $9.99 each for the Kindle editions. That makes the cost of all 3 books under $21, which is about $7 each.<br /><br />Well I guess this whine isn't as short as I anticipated, and I will probably delete it from my blog in a week or two, but once again I'd like to encourage those of you who are avid readers to support the authors whose work you like by reviewing their books on Amazon, on Goodreads, on your blog, or anywhere else where you gather in cyberspace to talk about books.<br /><br />Dr. Phil often says that it takes a thousand "Atta girl"s to counter one "you suck," or words to that effect.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-8993324058069440106?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-5068383828548009912009-08-12T18:36:00.000-07:002009-08-12T18:57:14.892-07:00More about genre and literatureI've had a few more thoughts about genre since I blogged last, and one of them is, why is genre so popular? It seems obvious to me that it's because genre helps people find the kinds of books they like.<br /><br />If you like, for example, mysteries, you will probably find other books in the mystery section of the bookstore that you will also enjoy. Genre makes it easy to find more of the same.<br /><br />So what's the downside of genre? Well, sameness, but sameness that isn't quite the same.<br /><br />Let's say you read a book and you really liked it, so you think, I want to read another book just like the one I just read, and you choose another book of the same genre, and it seems to have a lot of things in common with the book you liked, but it doesn't really do it for you. It seems the same on the surface, but it isn't as satisfying on a deeper level.<br /><br />So then you seek out more books by the author of the book you liked, and if you're lucky, all of that author's work is similar. Now if you're that author, and you have a following, do you want to surprise your faithful readers with something very different? Probably not. But what if you're sick of writing the same old thing, or you've said all you really had to say about it, but your readers expect more of the same, so you grind out more. You see what I'm getting at here. After awhile your heart just isn't in it anymore and your readers will know that (most of them) and they will complain. Of course they'll also complain if you give them an unpleasant surprise by writing something very different from your usual. But if they're going to complain anyway, you might as well write what you want.<br /><br />Which reminds me of a dream I had a few years ago, and I know I digress, but hey! it's my blog to blather in. One night, after a particularly unpleasant experience with an "expert" in the publishing industry who told me I would never find a publisher, a voice came to me in a dream. It said: "You're f*cked anyway, so you might as well write what you want." And so I did.<br /><br />But back to genre...<br /><br />When I was young and impressionable, I read Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. It remained my very favorite book for decades, and I reread it half a dozen times at least. But when I went looking for more books like that one, I was frustrated. I read a lot of fantasy books, and they were OK, but it seemed that so many of them just threw in a few ogres and trolls and elves and wizards and thought that was enough. But Lord of the Rings had something that none of the others did, and I still can't articulate just what that was, except to say that it had soul. It touched something very deep, and it took me on a journey that taught me things I wasn't conscious of learning at the time. It was a book I loved walking around in.<br /><br />What grabbed me and wouldn't let go was the message of the book, and by message I don't mean something you can define in 25 words or less. Part of it is meaning. Part of it is the emotional journey. If a book takes you somewhere and you return to your everyday world moved, enlightened, renewed, with new ideas, new perspectives, and a new appreciation of life, you've found a great book, and it has nothing to do with ogres and trolls.<br /><br />So how do you find <span style="font-style: italic;">those </span>books? Very difficult. Genre books may contain all the trimmings of a book you loved--ogres and trolls, a hero's journey, a central love story, a space adventure--but have none of the heart.<br /><br />Some people believe that to find heart, you have to read literature, but I have read a lot of so-called literary fiction, and some of it has heart, and some of it doesn't. People say that literature is "difficult," which means, I suppose, that the meaning isn't spelled out for you, that you may have to work at it a little. Which is fine if there really is meaning there and the author understands it enough to make it accessible. But so much literary fiction, at least what I've read, is more about obfuscation than clarity--an Emperor's New Clothes thing. If you don't see the deep meaning in this abstruse work, it's because you're not "refined" enough to perceive it. To which I say, Nope, the Emperor is buck nekkid!<br /><br />I tend to plug away at genre because, at the very least it's entertaining, and sometimes I do run across a genre story that has that deep undercurrent. I know right away when that happens, because I become engrossed in the book, when I'm not reading it I'm still thinking about it, and I mull it over and revisit it after I've finished it. Sometimes it's just because the world the author has made in that book is fun to be in, and sometimes it's because I enjoy hangin' with the characters, but it's also because on some level that book is doing me good.<br /><br />And that's why I read in the first place.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-506838382854800991?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-39315653057786928632009-07-29T17:29:00.000-07:002009-07-29T18:02:23.094-07:00More about Amazon, Kindle, and the price of ebooksEric Hammel, in his blog on Goodreads, posted about Amazon's Kindle strategy and why selling an e-book for $9.99 just doesn't make sense for traditional publishers. It's well worth reading.<br /><br />Here's the link:<br /><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2991405.Eric_Hammel/blog/115843-kindle-is-a%5C-reverse-razorblade">http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2991405.Eric_Hammel/blog/115843-kindle-is-a%5C-reverse-razorblade</a><br /><br />Did you read it? You really should. In it he explains how publisher and author compensation has to come out of the paltry 35% of retail ($3.50 for a book that sells at $9.99 retail) that Amazon sends to the publisher (not the author!). He also points out that to make a middle-class income of $60,000 a year, a writer has to sell over 34,000 copies of a Kindle book. And that's assuming that the writer completed his or her novel in a year.<br /><br />Hammel's arithmetic goes a long way toward explaining why authors and especially publishers aren't rushing to make their books available on Kindle.<br /><br />It seems that what the digital publishing revolution is giving authors with one hand it is taking away with the other, because the distribution is still done by gatekeepers like Amazon who set the terms.<br /><br />I, however, am more hopeful. The Kindle may be the bully on the block right now, but more e-reader devices are on the way, and if they will give authors and publishers better terms than Amazon, we'll go there. And if they also give better terms to the customers, readers will go there.<br /><br />In the meantime, Kindle has made it possible for me to sell many more e-books than paperbacks, and as I am both author and publisher, I get to keep the whole $3.50. Not quite the<br />profit I make on a paperback, but I'm happy with it. Of course I also have a day job.<br /><br />And that's the thing. I took many years off from working a day job to write my trilogy. I depleted my savings, including my retirement savings, to do it. It was a labor of love, and I don't regret it.<br /><br />BUT<br /><br />Am I writing now? No. I'm trying to earn back enough of my savings so I can retire someday, and I am already past the age when most people retire.<br /><br />Do I have more ideas, more things to write about? Not a day goes by that I don't jot down a thing or two to pursue when I have more time. I have lots of ideas. I would love to write the books that could come from those ideas. But I can't afford to take the time right now.<br /><br />Maybe, in my 70s or 80s, if I should live so long and my mind holds out, I will get around to writing that YA novel about family secrets, about a young girl who becomes a real-life sleuth to uncover the truth about a mysterious person from her past she just barely remembers but knows in her deepest heart of hearts matters just as much to her as the family she grew up in. Or maybe it will be the story that keeps flitting through my head about two women whose paths keep crossing through their youth and middle age, but who keep just missing each other, until...<br /><br />But all of that is on hold for now, while I dig myself out of the financial hole that writing my trilogy dug for me.<br /><br />So if you are a reader, and if you like a particular author, please--tell people! Post a review on Amazon. On Goodreads. Blog about it. Let people know that you read this great book, or discovered this fantastic author. Give books as gifts, especially to young people. Because if an author can't afford to write, you may never know what you'll be missing.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-3931565305778692863?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-9194639478156131972009-06-20T14:27:00.000-07:002009-06-21T01:14:25.924-07:00And now for something completely different: Genre vs LiteratureHow lovely to have something new to talk about.<br /><br />Sonya Chung (a literary writer) has a post at <a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/06/slinging-stones-at-genre-goliath.html">The Millions</a>, a site described as "offering coverage on books, arts, and culture," about genre vs literary fiction and how to persuade readers of genre to upgrade to something more literary.<br /><br />Sonya characterizes literary fiction as "difficult pleasure" and "complex meaning" and genre as "mindless escape" and "convention-driven predictability." She states that her "ultimate mission" is "to convert the unbelieving to the (crucial, soul-shaping) fact that you needn't ingest bad or 'not that bad' writing in order to be entertained and/or absorbed by a book."<br /><br />I recently read somewhere (and now I can't think where--a blog post maybe) the statement that the current convention is for literary fiction to end unhappily, or at least messily, with no neat "tie it up with a bow" ending that people might find comforting. Because real life is messy and complicated, and hardly anything gets tied up with a bow.<br /><br />And that's why I more often prefer genre fiction to literary fiction. I'm not a big fan of unhappy endings. I already know thousands of ways to screw things up. What I ask of fiction is: tell me how to do it right! Show me how to navigate this messy life with a little more success. Above all, leave me with a positive feeling.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.jennycrusie.com/">Jennifer Crusie</a> (a romance writer) wrote an essay called "<a href="http://www.jennycrusie.com/for-writers/essays/let-us-now-praise-scribbling-women/">Let Us Now Praise Scribbling Women</a>," in which she says many insightful things about genre fiction. Among them, she states that fairy tales, and genre in general, promise a just universe. She says, "Mystery fiction promises a morally just universe, and speculative fiction promises an intellectually just universe, but romance trumps all of these because...it promises...an emotionally just universe."<br /><br />I think most of us understand that the universe isn't all that just, and that even if we do everything "right" disaster can still ensue, but in books we may be able to experience life as it should be, and that may encourage us to try to achieve "life as it should be" in our own lives. And at the very least, it may offer us a moment of respite while we are experiencing "life as it shouldn't be."<br /><br />I hate to come to the end of a book and think, <em>Ah yes, just as I suspected, life is endlessly tragic and nothing ever works out well, and dismal, dismal, dismal, I might as well shoot myself.</em><br /><br />A few "literary" novels I've read recently (I won't condemn them here) left me with that feeling. One of them redeemed itself a little bit by allowing me to enjoy a bit of vicarious revenge, not an emotion I really want to enjoy, and another just left me puzzled about what really happened, which I found out when I saw the movie.<br /><br />That said, I agree with much of what Sonya Chung says in her post, but I have two mild disagreements with her basic assumptions. First, bad writing is not confined to genre fiction. Second, she implies that being "entertained" by a book somehow isn't enough.<br /><br />Here's my take on "bad writing." I've read some genre fiction that was very badly written, usually self-published, with typos, grammatical mistakes, and many of the faults that are common with so-called amateur writers, and I managed to overlook those thing and enjoy the book because it told a good story. That's what it's all about for me. Tell me a good story!<br /><br />I've read literary fiction that was so "literary" I didn't have any idea what was going on. Sometimes it worked, and I was left with an <em>impression</em> of what was going on. But mostly I find it annoying.<br /><br />And now that bit about "entertainment" not being enough. I believe that each of us has a sense of what is good for us. We seek out things that bring us enjoyment and pleasure, and we avoid things that bring us pain, either physical or emotional. Perhaps some of us haven't been offered enough choices, and the better being the enemy of the best, we stick to what we know we will like and find rewarding. So I do agree with Sonya Chung that venturing out of one's comfort zone could be as good a thing in choosing a book as it often is in real life.<br /><br />But I don't think we should be ashamed of liking what we like. I would rather experience pleasant emotions vicariously than unpleasant ones, and for me, the best books (genre or not) take me on an enjoyable emotional ride. A little bit of fear, sadness, and dread are fine, but if a book doesn't resolve those feelings with a satisfying ending, I don't want to go there.<br /><br />And now a word about my own books. The first page of my publisher website, <a href="http://www.shieldmaidenpress.com/">Shield Maiden Press</a>, contains an interview with myself in which I try to convey that <em>When Women Were Warriors</em> doesn't really fit nicely into any genre. I've always hesitated to call it literary fiction, because its literary quality is not for me to judge, but it doesn't slot neatly into romance (although it contains romantic/sexual relationships), or fantasy (no glowing sword of specialness, as one reviewer noted), or speculative fiction (although it does speculate on one central question: if women were in power in the real world, what would that be like?). It does seem to appeal, however, to readers of all these genres, because the promise I make to my readers is this: <b>Bad things may happen here, but it will all come right in the end, and the journey will be about how my characters achieved that ending.</b><br /><br />I wonder if Sonya Chung has read much genre fiction...<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-919463947815613197?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-70682337732073906642009-06-16T11:59:00.000-07:002009-06-16T12:52:29.043-07:00New York Times article about DOMAIt's been awhile since I've blogged, because I spent the last 5 weeks attending, then recovering from, a 4-week class on Drupal, which is a whole 'nother conversation.<br /><br />But I had to point out the New York Times article, <em>A Bad Call on Gay Rights</em>. The text of the article is here: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/opinion/16tue1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion">http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/opinion</a><br /><br />I do sometimes get tired of hearing myself drone on and on about gay civil rights, but the subject just won't go away. And of course we won't go away either, so all the people who are trying to stuff us back into that nasty closet are just sh*t out of luck!<br /><br />I wonder if the people who hate us (yes, that's what it feels like) and even the people who don't care one way or the other, ever stop to contemplate the price <em>they</em> are paying for treating gay people like we don't matter.<br /><br />Let me mention, first, that you just might have a gay relative, a nephew or niece, a brother or sister, or even a parent, who has been keeping a humongous secret from you all this time because they think they will lose your respect and/or love if they tell you the truth about themselves. Even if you have never expressed a negative opinion of gay people. You might even have a gay child, and to appreciate the consequences of disregarding that possibility, you should read <em>Prayers for Bobby</em>, a heartbreaking book by a mother whose son killed himself because he couldn't obey her demand to change.<br /><br />But the everyday costs of believing that gay civil rights have nothing to do with you, though less dramatic, are also steep.<br /><br />Think about this. If you believe marriage should be denied to same-sex couples, you must also believe that life should be harder for people in same-sex relationships, because that is a direct consequence of the ban on gay marriage. You are also implying that there is something wrong with gay relationships, and therefore there is something wrong with gay people. It means you think we're not as good as you, not as worthy of a peaceful and productive life, not as worthy of love.<br /><br />What good do you expect to reap from creating a marginalized class of people who always feel that their lives are in danger and their relationships are in jeopardy?<br /><br />Gay people spend a tremendous amount of energy coping with the difficulties of being gay in America. And being gay in America is orders of magnitude easier today than it was even ten years ago. And all of that is wasted energy, and worse than wasted, because people on the fringes don't contribute all they have to offer, either because their circumstances make that difficult or impossible, or because of their resentment of being regarded as "less than" by the society they live in.<br /><br />There are countless examples of the price society pays for discrimination. And all discrimination sends the same message: you're not equal, you're not worthy, you're not <em>us</em>.<br /><br />Is that really what you mean to say?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-7068233773207390664?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-58397074345156157712009-05-18T18:25:00.000-07:002009-05-18T18:51:06.057-07:00Amazon: A History of Homophobia?Pat Holt, in her <a href="http://www.holtuncensored.com/hu/homophobia-at-amazon/">Holt Uncensored</a> blog, had some interesting things to say about a court case from ten years ago. You may recall that Amazon Bookstore, a feminist bookstore in Minneapolis, sued Amazon.com because of the name confusion. Oddly enough, it seems that the lawyers for Amazon.com thought that repeatedly asking about the sexual orientation of Amazon Bookstore's owners was an appropriate line of questioning in a trademark infringement case.<br /><br />This reminder combined with another issue to make me even more annoyed with Amazon.com.<br /><br />Someone e-mailed me complaining about the price of my ebooks. I do give Book I of the trilogy away for free in multiple ebook formats (see <a href="http://www.catherinemwilson.com/free-ebook.html">this page</a>), but she felt that, at $9.99 each for Books II and III, I was charging too much.<br /><br />But here's the catch. When I listed my books on Amazon.com's Kindle site, I agreed to their terms. One of their terms is that I can't sell the books anywhere else for less than the retail price I set with Amazon.com. And since Amazon.com takes 65% of the retail price, that means that at $9.99, I receive over a dollar less for an ebook than I receive for a paperback.<br /><br />I am reluctant to charge more than $9.99 for an ebook, because most ebook readers, especially Kindle readers, expect to pay no more than that. But when I list the ebooks in other formats on other sites, I have to charge the full $9.99 retail price. Most of these ebookstores offer the publisher more generous terms than Amazon does. Many of them even allow the publisher to set the discount amount.<br /><br />I could lower the price of my ebooks on non-Amazon sites and still make a reasonable profit on the books, but Amazon's terms prevent me from doing so. And if I lower my retail price, I lose too much on the Kindle sales, which are the vast majority of my ebook sales. It's a real double-bind. And it disturbs me that Amazon has so much power to set prices in the marketplace because of the popularity of their ereader device.<br /><br />Maybe in a few years, when more (and cheaper) ereader devices are available and other ebookstores can compete effectively with Amazon.com, the price of ebooks will come down.<br /><br />I hope consumers come to realize that Amazon's virtual monopoly is not a good thing for readers or writers.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-5839707434515615771?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-31347862101431435572009-05-06T19:09:00.000-07:002009-05-06T20:33:27.115-07:00My gay agenda -- Item #2[Aside:]<br />I never realized how difficult it would be to have an agenda. How does one come up with an agenda? It's one thing to have an idea of how you'd like the world to be, but quite another to suggest ways of achieving change. Especially when it comes to changing other people.<br /><br />[However:]<br />I did manage to come up with Item #2 for my gay agenda:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I want someone in AUTHORITY (Congress, The President, the Supreme Court) to remind the American People why our Constitution protects our right to Freedom of Religion, which also protects our right to Freedom </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">from</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> Religion.</span><br /><br />Perhaps a little history lesson is in order:<br />After centuries of religious wars in Europe, in which Christians of various sects maimed and killed each other over whose brand of Christianity was the right one, people began to realize that no one was ever going to win, and that maybe all that killing and maiming might just be a little <span style="font-style: italic;">un-</span>Christian.<br /><br />And guess who came to America? People who were being persecuted for their religious beliefs.<br /><br />What amazes me is that most Americans can easily criticize the Taliban and other Muslim extremists for imposing the harsh penalties prescribed by their religion (cutting off the hands of thieves, for example, or stoning to death a woman who has been raped, and therefore has technically committed adultery), yet few stop to think that, by insisting that our laws conform to their religious beliefs, they are doing pretty much the same thing.<br /><br />What no one really seems to come to grips with is that, while it may be possible to compel behavior, it is impossible to compel belief. You can force me at gunpoint to go to church, and maybe you can insist rather forcefully that I mouthe certain prayers or credos, but you can't change what is in my mind or in my heart. That's the best reason not to force a religion or set of religious beliefs on anyone. It simply doesn't work.<br /><br />And of course when you protect my right to believe and worship (or not worship) as I see fit, you protect your own right to do the same. If my rights can be abrogated, so can yours.<br /><br />So keeping all that in mind, let's contemplate gay marriage. Or how about we just contemplate marriage, because I think we haven't given sufficient thought to what marriage is.<br /><br />When a man and a woman marry in the religious tradition of their choice, they presumably make a commitment to found a family according to the beliefs of their religion about what constitutes a family, and what the rights, duties, and obligations of the spouses are. As a bonus, the state also agrees to recognize the new couple as a family.<br /><br />Believe it or not, there are religious institutions that perform same-sex marriages, but so far only a few states (and not the federal government) acknowledge that two men or two women can form a family.<br /><br />Prop 8 in California (which denies same-sex couples the right to marry) would never have been passed if not for the massive support of churches. Why do religious people feel they have the right to impose their religious beliefs on others?<br /><br />It has been suggested that the state scrap marriage altogether, and just recognize civil unions between two people. So any male-female couple can have all the rights we now accord to married couples, but they won't have a marriage license, they'll have a civil union license, and if they want, their religious institution can provide a marriage license, just as they now provide a certificate of baptism, which is not the same thing as a birth certificate.<br /><br />Because it seems it's the word "marriage" that gets folks all steamed up. And I don't think most gay people care what you call it, as long as their relationships are accorded the same respect as the relationships of the majority.<br /><br />The Supreme Court of the State of California said:<br />retaining the traditional definition of marriage and affording same-sex couples only a separate and differently named family relationship will, as a realistic matter, impose appreciable harm on same-sex couples and their children, because denying such couples access to the familiar and highly favored designation of marriage is likely to cast doubt on whether the official family relationship of same-sex couples enjoys dignity equal to that of opposite-sex couples.<br /><br />Here's the entire text of the decision:<br /><a href="http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/archive/S147999.PDF">http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/archive/S147999.PDF</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-3134786210143143557?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-68527960306184423072009-05-02T22:53:00.001-07:002009-05-03T00:04:03.888-07:00My gay agenda -- Item #1Since I am so often accused of having an agenda, I thought I might as well come up with one.<br /><br />Coming up with an agenda, though, is a bit of a head-scratcher, because I really don't want to rule the world. Just my little part of it. And not rule it, exactly, but maybe <em>influence</em> it a little, to make it a bit more comfy. Like plumping up sofa cushions.<br /><br />So here's something that would make me <em>much</em> more comfy.<br /><br />My gay agenda item #1:<br /><em><br />I wish I would never again hear anyone speak of the way I love as if it were something dirty.<br /></em><br /><br />Let's consider my experience of the past few weeks. First Amazon.com removed my books from their searches because they considered the content "adult." And then the West Bend, Wisconsin, County Council wanted to toss my books out of the public library.<br /><br />The cause of both these incidents was neither a glitch nor a vast rightwing conspiracy. It was <strong>ignorance</strong>. And what is the cure for ignorance? Information. Information that we find in things like, oh, books, which we obtain from places like, oh, Amazon.com and the public library.<br /><br />These ignorant people don't want anyone, especially the young, to see a book that might depict the lives of gay people in a non-negative way. Amazon did not remove from searches <em>A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality</em>. Once the other gay books were gone, that one came up #1 in searches on homosexuality. (It still does, along with several others that are clearly anti-gay.) And I doubt the West Bend County Council would object to keeping books like <em>You Don't Have To Be Gay</em> in the YA section.<br /><br />Being old, I am long past being upset by things like this, but being old, I tire easily, and this is one battle I'm tired of fighting.<br /><br />So let me witness here that all those ignorant efforts are in vain. I grew up in the 1950s, when homosexuality was all but completely invisible, and I was still gay, even then. I grew up in a society that was overwhelmingly heterosexual, and I never knew (or knew I knew) anyone who was gay until I was well into my 20s, and I was still gay. Before I was 25, I never read a book, saw a movie or TV show, went to a play, or heard a song on the radio that suggested that maybe a girl might fall in love with a girl, but I did anyway.<br /><br />Seeing ignorant people trying to make us disappear doesn't hurt my feelings anymore, but it does make me feel their disrespect--disrespect for who I am, for what I've accomplished in my life, and for the one thing that makes our lives worth living: love.<br /><br />To anyone who would say to me, <em>You will go to hell for sins against nature</em>, my reply will always be, <em>If you believe in hell, which I do not, you may find yourself there one day for sins against love</em>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-6852796030618442307?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-4892937178140641562009-04-29T17:01:00.000-07:002009-04-29T17:27:17.063-07:00West Bend, Wisconsin, follows amazonfailAccording to <a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6654956.html?nid=2286&source=title&rid=1678401760">Publishers Weekly</a>, the County Council of West Bend, Wisconsin, dismissed four members of the library board because they refused to remove "controversial" books (i.e. books about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues) from the public library system.<br /><br />GLBT? Gee, where have we heard that before?<br /><br />It seems two library patrons complained about glbt books in the YA section of the library. Hey! That's the section where young people questioning their sexuality might discover that they don't have to off themselves! The patrons accused the library of promoting "the overt indoctrination of the gay agenda in our community."<br /><br />The library board members refused to remove the books and they were fired.<br /><br />Was it only a few blog posts ago when I relegated job discrimination to the dim past? I guess you can't be fired for <em>being</em> gay, but you <em>can</em> be fired for being <em>pro-gay</em>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-489293717814064156?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-63073556867341392142009-04-24T16:54:00.001-07:002009-04-24T16:57:28.587-07:00Why I'll read anything Nicola Griffith writesNicola Griffith had her own choice words to say about the Amazon "glitch."<br /><br />Check out her <a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2009/04/google-bomb-amazonfail-and-little.html">blog post</a> about it.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-6307355686734139214?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-55900030989979519862009-04-22T17:33:00.000-07:002009-04-22T19:31:34.556-07:00Amazon and the F-wordAmong the categories of books disappeared by Amazon while in the throes of its "glitch," feminist and feminism seem to have joined gay, lesbian, bisexual, homosexual, transgender, sex, sexuality, and erotica as subjects considered "adult."<br /><br />I can see how someone with limited exposure to literature might consider the glbt categories as "adult," but in what way is feminism something that should be hidden from children? This smacks less of excessive prudishness than of excessive right-wingishness.<br /><br />And while I was puzzling over the inclusion of feminism in the list of suspects, I remembered something a knowledgeable publishing person told me about marketing my novel:<br /><br />"Never, ever use the word 'feminist' in describing the story or characters. It's a terrific word, but it's as loaded as 'Communist' was in the '50s."<br /><br />That sentence stunned me, and I hastened to look up the definition of "feminist" in case some lapse in my formal education had prevented me from appreciating its dark side.<br /><br />Feminist (n):<br />a) a person who believes that women should have political, economic, and social rights equal to those of men.<br />b) one who believes the implementation of feminist principles will create a more humane type of political power.<br /><br />WOW!!! I don't see how any reasonable person can argue with a), but b) blew me away. That's exactly what my book is about!<br /><br />While I wrestled with the advice of the publishing guru quoted above, I wrote a defense of myself and my work that I can now make a place for here:<br /><br />~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br /><br />How is it that the f-word inspires such terror and contempt that a woman who writes a book about women who are the equals of men is enjoined never to speak it?<br /><br />It seems to me that women and men are equal, but not the same, and that the patriarchal societies in which humanity has lived for the last few thousand years are neither wrong nor evil, but simply out of balance. At one time there may have been survival value in the patriarchal organization of society, but I believe we have entered an age in which the old model will work against our survival and that the time has come to imagine the world differently.<br /><br />In a world where men's values are deemed right and noble, women's values must be condemned as weak and dangerous. If the "rationality" of men is extolled, the "emotionality" of women must be trivialized with words like sentimental, frivolous, hysterical.<br /><br />When the hearts of women are accorded equal respect with the minds of men, and when women are acknowledged to have minds and men are permitted to acknowledge their own hearts, we may be able to create a society that supports the expression of the full range of our humanity.<br /><br />~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br /><br />One way of undermining the credibility of an idea is to join it to an unpopular or discredited idea. That's how universal healthcare becomes socialized medicine, and how any liberal social program becomes a communist plot. That's how the right wing made "liberal" a dirty word. Say anything with enough contempt, and the contempt is what people perceive and remember.<br /><br />By lumping feminism in with glbt, the author of Amazon's "glitch" let slip that he or she holds a bias that exceeds simple homophobia, which is all the more reason for Amazon to reveal the algorithm or human error that resulted in the de-ranking of 57,000 books.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-5590003098997951986?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-41050453735855233952009-04-19T16:43:00.000-07:002009-04-19T19:13:26.434-07:00Amazon's "glitch", a personal perspective<a href="http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/04/the-failure-of-amazonfail/">Clay Shirky</a> claims that #amazonfail failed.<br /><br /><a href="http://fagadget.blogspot.com/2009/04/amazonfail-success.html">Fagadget</a> claims that #amazonfail was a great success.<br /><br />Both make excellent points.<br /><br />Clay Shirky portrays the outrage felt by many as something like a lynch mob, carried away by emotion and feelings of self-righteousness, and what if everyone was wrong about Amazon and we rushed to judgment?<br /><br />Fagadget points out that Amazon had had many complaints before the issue achieved critical mass on twitter and provoked the storm of outrage. If Amazon had paid attention to the authors' individual complaints, they might not have suffered the outrage of the mob when the rest of the world caught on.<br /><br />I'd like to address this issue from my very personal point of view.<br /><br />I noticed that my Amazon sales rank was gone on Friday, April 10th. I assumed it was a glitch. Yep, I did.<br /><br />I figured Amazon was doing some site maintenance and that my sales ranks would soon re-appear. A few of the publishers' groups I subscribe to mentioned that sales ranks had vanished from books categorized as erotica, but as that label certainly didn't apply to my books, I gave it no more than a passing thought.<br /><br />Only when I learned about sales ranks disappearing from books with lgbt content did I catch on. <span style="font-style: italic;">They were aiming at <span style="font-weight: bold;">me!<br /></span></span><br />Worse, the sales ranks of books that are anti-lgbt people, like <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Parents-Guide-Preventing-Homosexuality/dp/0830823794">A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality</a>, still had their sales ranks.<br /><br />Maybe if you're not a member of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspect_class">suspect class</a> (defined by the Supreme Court as a class of people likely to be discriminated against) you can't imagine what it feels like to be singled out. Especially to be singled out to be invisible. As in, you don't exist. It's a very small step from <span style="font-style: italic;">"you don't exist"</span> to <span style="font-style: italic;">"you have no right to exist."</span><br /><br />I might just be a little touchy right now, because I watched the movie <span style="font-style: italic;">Milk</span> last night. I was in San Francisco when Harvey Milk was assassinated, and the movie really put me back there, when the idea that a gay or lesbian person might be teaching your children was enough to strip an entire class of people of their civil rights. I'm not talking the right to marry here. I'm talking about the right to keep your job or your apartment, the right not to be fired or evicted just because someone finds out you're gay.<br /><br />In the movie, the people who believe gay people should be discriminated against in jobs and housing look like silly bigots. Who could possibly believe the drivel they were spewing? But in those days, people did believe them, and gay people who wanted to keep their jobs and apartments had to keep their private lives a secret.<br /><br />Prop. 8? Oh, let's not go there.<br /><br />Oh, OK, let's.<br /><br />Allowing gay people to marry takes no rights away from heterosexuals except the right to regard their relationships as superior to ours. To keep that right, they would actively cause real harm to others. I just don't understand it. After Prop. 8 passed, I had brought home to me again that a majority of the people who live where I live hate me and actively desire my unhappiness.<br /><br />So when Amazon decides that just because my books include loving relationships between women they should be hidden from, not only children, but from everybody, I get that creepy feeling again that I'm going to be excluded, that I don't belong, that there is no place in this country or in this world for me. And that creepy feeling kills queer kids every day.<br /><br />On the one hand, what Amazon did scares me, but on the other hand, what the power of the crowd did encourages me. Most people don't want anyone else to control what they have access to, either for information or entertainment. And plenty of people don't want me shut out of the national conversation. So I have my voice back, and I have a vocal group of outraged people to thank for it.<br /><br />THANK YOU!!!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-4105045373585523395?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-35901815336497607572009-04-17T16:43:00.000-07:002009-04-17T16:52:21.621-07:00Curiouser and curiouser, AmazonJust as the uproar begins to die down, other shady dealings come to light.<br /><br />It seems that censorship of Kindle books categorized as gay/lesbian has been going on since January of 2008.<a href="http://www.afterellen.com/node/48877"> Francine Saint Marie</a> claims her "novels have been aggressively censored by Amazon since ... they were first released as Kindle editions." She also tells how she rigged the game in her own favor by hiding her lesbian tags when she uploaded her books as new and added the tags back in later.<br /><br />Check out her story in her own words at the <a href="http://www.afterellen.com/node/48877">AfterEllen website.</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-3590181533649760757?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-23290393698171391362009-04-15T19:49:00.000-07:002009-04-16T01:16:07.287-07:00Good Timing, AmazonJust as I launch this new blog, Amazon.com steps in it. I'm talking about what so many people have been <a href="http://leslirichardson.blogspot.com/2009/04/amazonfail-glitchmyass.html">twittering</a> about--the fact that Amazon.com stripped the sales ranks from lots and lots of books, many of which were tagged gay/lesbian/bi/transgender/homosexual ... and like that.<br /><br />If you haven't heard about the bruhaha, google <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22amazon+gay+lesbian+sales+ranks%22&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=">"amazon gay lesbian sales ranks"</a> for endless articles and blogs on the subject.<br /><br />If you have heard about it, I won't bore you here. But I would like to draw your attention to an excellent <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/14/guest-post-why-amazon-didnt-just-have-a-glitch/">article</a> by a techni-geek who understands what an algorithm is. While Amazon blames a computer glitch, she with great scholarly-ness explains that computers run on algorithms (an algorithm is essentially a recipe) and SOMEBODY (not a computer) chose those tags.<br /><br />Here's my story:<br />On Thursday evening (4/9) I had sales ranks on the trade paperback editions of my books.<br />On Friday afternoon (4/10), I didn't.<br />But my Kindle books still had their sales ranks. I guess they hadn't gotten around to de-ranking Kindle books yet.<br /><br />The problem with losing sales ranks is that unranked books don't show up in searches. So when I searched on my books, even by exact title, the Kindle editions showed up but the trade paperbacks didn't. So nobody would ever be able to find my books on Amazon. And that is where almost all of my sales come from. So Amazon could have put me out of business. Just like that!<br /><br />I soon learned about the sh*tstorm on twitter about Amazon discriminating against glbt books, and that explained why my books had been de-ranked. My books are categorized as 1) historical fiction, 2) women's fiction, and 3) lesbian fiction.<br /><br />Oh, the dreaded L-word.<br /><br />My books have also been tagged by Amazon's own customers as lesbian, lesbian romance, and lesbian fiction.<br /><br />My books have also been tagged as the other L-word, literature, but that evidently wasn't enough to save them.<br /><br />Actually my books were in very good company--Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Randy Shilts, E. Lynn Harris, Andrew Holleran, Dorothy Allison, Sarah Waters, James Baldwin, and many other distinguished, award-winning authors were de-ranked too.<br /><br />On Monday the 13th, I called Amazon. Actually I had them call me. There's a nifty feature where you can enter your phone number into a box and submit it and they will call you back. Immediately. You still have to wait on hold a little while, but I was soon able to speak to someone who couldn't apologize enough and who assured me that my books would soon have their sales ranks back.<br /><br />My sales ranks were back by late Monday night.<br /><br />So is that the end of the story? I'm still unsettled by all this.<br /><br />Customers have tagged my books with other things that someone might find offensive, like witchcraft, paganism, feminism, women, goddess worship, magic. Suddenly something that was supposed to help people find my books can be used to make sure that nobody finds them.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-2329039369817139136?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5051158079004461008.post-32102656451515075142009-04-12T21:30:00.000-07:002009-04-12T21:31:15.153-07:00New blogHey, check this out! I have a blog! I have no idea what I'll find to blather on about, but if anyone stumbles across this and wants to make a comment, feel free.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051158079004461008-3210265645151507514?l=www.catherine-m-wilson.com%2Fblogger%2Flost-in-the-mist.html' alt='' /></div>Catherine M. Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06608939444087196123noreply@blogger.com0