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sswslitinmotion:

Fascinating article about Eloisa James, who in real life is Mary Bly, professor.  What’s funny: I want to hear more about her life as a Shakespeare/Renaissance studies professor at Fordham University (who doesn’t love Shakespeare?). I’m totally reading her romance novels out of order as it is.

This is super cool and makes me like her even more. I met and chatted with her, albeit very briefly, at the RWA literacy signing event this evening. 

With zero judgment towards the author or content of the book, I think this kind of proves the point I’ve been making about outmoded business models in the publishing industry. I read at least one of the Times reviews of Goulian’s book, and although it’s an interesting idea for a memoir and could very well be a great book, is it really one worth a six-figure advance, Random House? The original Page Six story the Awl quotes from says the book has sold less than 1,000 copies in its first month, and would have to sell 200,000 copies to be profitable—200,000 is a long shot for any book. (Not quite, like, JK Rowling or Stephanie Meyer numbers, but 200,000 copies is solid bestseller territory; Goulian never cracked the bestseller list. Keep in mind that books don’t sell consistently over time; most sales happen when the book is first released. And if there are a lot of bookstore returns? Fugeddaboudit.) So, basically, the Big Six are still shelling out gigantic advances they can’t possibly hope to recoup, and this is a good business strategy? (I mean, other factors, etc.—if, say, the book goes to auction and the author has a good agent, it means he gets the huge advance or he goes to another publisher, and that’s why publishers throw a lot of money at books—but I still think this is how the big publishers do themselves in. We won’t even talk about how poorly the agency pricing model undermines the big houses where ebooks are concerned. That’s another post.)

This is one of the better articles I’ve read recently on digital-first publishing and the economics of that way of doing business. It’s a profile of Angela James, the executive editor of Carina Press (Harlequin’s digital-first imprint) and there’s a lot of discussion here of what I think is a segment of publishing that is so often left out of the “legacy publishing” (*groan*) vs. self-publishing debate. 

In other words, small, digital-first publishers—who publish primarily ebooks but some print as well, and who work on a model of small or no advances but much higher royalty rates, and are often smaller operations with a mostly-freelance staff—are thriving, at least in romance. That’s nothing to sneeze at, though, since romance represents a huge portion of the book market. The article makes a good case for this model being a good way of doing business, and it’ll be interesting to see if more publishers shift or establish imprints that follow it in the future.

Caveat: A lot of epubs have popped up in recent years, and I do think they are going to take up a bigger share of the market, but not all of them are good. I can see getting into ebook publishing because it seems cheaper than the old print route, and it is insofar as you don’t have to pay for paper, but you DO still have to pay for editors and designers, and this is where some of the second-tier epubs are cutting corners. I think readers will catch on and stop buying from publishers with shoddy editing, comically bad cover art, or that consistently put out ebooks laden with formatting errors. So hopefully the cream rises to the top in that respect, and the epubs that are doing their jobs well are gaining recognition and loyal readers while the ones doing a disservice to authors and books will fold. Time will tell, I suppose.

And in hyperbolic headlines, the Telegraph thinks Pottermore is <a href=”http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/8593935/JK-Rowlings-Pottermore-is-a-landmark-for-digital-publishing.html”>”a landmark for digital publishing.”</a> *sigh* I… doubt that.

chrysilla:

You are welcome.

These are pretty awesome.

This got reblogged a lot and I cut out a bunch of other responses, but here’s the interesting stat:

Are you more knowledgeable than the average citizen? The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%. Can you do better?

Why, yes, as it happens: “You answered 30 out of 33 correctly — 90.91 %”

Of the 3 I missed, two were about economics, which seems about right, because finance and I do not understand each other. (Not for lack of effort, I should make clear; I don’t think there’s much to admire in willful ignorance, I just have a really, really difficult time understanding economics/finance/complicated money things.)

Anyway, insert the requisite sturm und drang about how ignorant Americans are here. Actually, what surprises me is that a lot of elected officials know less about history and civics than I do. I know I’m a nerd, but if you care enough to run for office, shouldn’t you—you know what? I’m not gonna even ask. We’re doomed, etc.

Once more with feeling, this time on Salon: a thriller writer sold his 1 millionth ebook (*Dr. Evil voice*) and so everyone’s like, “So self-publishing, that’s a thing!” This coupled with the NY Times story about Amanda Hocking over the weekend has everyone talking again.

I’ve said it before, but: I’m personally really fascinated by these self-publishing phenomena, but this new guy, the unlikely named John Locke (who is neither a reincarnation of the 17th-century writer nor the character from Lost, sadly) is selling a Kindle book called How I Sold 1 Million eBooks, which superficially seems to delight in being a thing any amateur can do (despite the fact only 9 authors have done it, according to Salon). Salon had the forethought to at least add in some quotes from self-publishing critics that are all, “Editors are important!” and a long section of Hocking’s blog post from March in which she explained that self-publishing is a shit-ton of work. 

I feel like I keep seeing the same article over and over again, though. Are people still laboring under the delusion that they can spend a weekend writing a novel with a popular trope and sell a million copies the next week? Well, probably those people won’t be reading my tumblr anyway.

fuckyeahfeminists:

“After 10 long years, a final decision has been handed down in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, the largest class-action lawsuit in our nation’s history. It’s not good. Today, a Supreme Court majority ruled against women by siding with the country’s largest employment discriminator, saying Wal-Mart, essentially, is too big to sue. The brave women, led by Betty Dukes, who stood up to Wal-Mart at great personal sacrifice, were told simply they’re on their own.” ..what in the actual fuck? so basically if you want to legally oppress people you have to make sure you’re a huge corporation or a member of the government. awesome country I live in.

*sigh* I call myself a feminist, but I get kind of itchy at this kind of knee-jerk response, and although I obviously side against sexism, the above is not accurate. Let’s break it down.

The actual Supreme Court ruling had nothing to do with the substance of the case, but whether all of the female employees of Wal-Mart since 1998 (something like 1.5 million women) can be considered a “class” in a class-action suit. Wal-Mart didn’t really “win” the suit; the court merely ruled that a group of women who might have had vastly different experiences at the hands of different individual managers at different Wal-Mart stores cannot be considered a class. The plaintiffs, if still seeking justice, can bring individual claims against Wal-Mart, which, while not addressing the pervasiveness of discriminatory policy among Wal-Mart managers, might at least do some good. (I thought Salon broke it down pretty well.)

That is, the ruling sucks, particularly for the women trying to bring down a whole corporate culture that systematically treats its male employees better, but it’s not an example of sexism per se on the part of the court, nor is it a ruling that really favors sexism, it’s a ruling that says the women who brought suit have to seek another avenue for justice.

According to Salon:

For the plaintiffs in the Dukes case, the decision is huge blow. The individuals seeking damages for discrimination could now file individually, but even if individual filings were successful, they would not challenge the pervading discrimination pointed to in the Dukes case.  Ginsburg wrote in her decision: “Women fill 70% of the hourly jobs in the retailer’s stores, but make up only 33% of the management employees… The higher one looks in the organization, the lower the percentage of women.” Individual damages claims will not address this.

The ramifications for U.S. workers may be more troubling. In decertifying this class, the Supreme Court has set a difficult standard for any future large-scale class actions. The Supreme Court’s decision is another in a long line of rulings by the Roberts Court that side with corporate interests, a trend Dan Manatt noted on the HuffPo last year. And, crucially, the decision could undermine class actions as a vital means to challenge pervasive biases in big companies.

So the ruling is problematic, to put it mildly, especially given the pro-corporate leanings of the court. But can we maybe consider the implications of what the decision actually says instead of being all “the court ruled for Wal-Mart, sexism triumphs, grar!”