There are fireman romances…
There are policeman romances…
There are even NASCAR romances…
But run a search over at eHarlequin.com for “astronaut” and—nothing. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THIS COUNTRY???
Posts Tagged ‘books’
Why are there no astronaut romances?
Thursday, March 4th, 2010That vug really tied the book together
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010…in 1904, Theodor Seuss Geisel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. I think if I had to pick a favorite Dr. Seuss book—like, if I were tied to a chair with electrodes clamped to my nether-parts, and severe-looking men were slapping me repeatedly and with great gusto, snarling, “Tell us what your favorite Dr. Seuss book is!”—I would go with There’s a Wocket in my Pocket.
The brief Wikipedia entry for the book reveals, disturbingly, that: “The 1996 republish has been edited to remove some of the scarier creatures, including the vug under the rug.” Which, the atrocious use of “republish” as a noun notwithstanding, is just saddening and maddening. The vug was scary! It was also my favorite part of the book. I mean, the whole thing falls apart without the vug.
More ebooks stuff
Thursday, February 25th, 2010By way of bulicks, this post about author Yves Smith, who’s concerned about the Kindle edition of her new book getting bad reviews:
Her publisher, Palgrave, is part of Macmillan, which just won a fight to force Amazon to sell e-books at more than $10, but part of the fallout from that fight is that books which cost much more than that on the kindle often get one-star reviews on the basis of their pricing alone.
There’s a simple fix here, which is for Amazon to delete reviews that focus solely on a book’s price. Not that it’s in their interest to do so, because they want to keep their ebook prices low for now, to sell more Kindles, and they can point to such reviews as support for their stance. But if they did want to—I don’t know, what do you think? Price ought to be a factor in a review of any product, of course—the primary practical question a review is trying to answer is “Is this worth it?” But if the review is just a complaint about the price—which is really a complaint about the system as a whole, and not so much the specific book—is it right to let it stand?
This is hypothetical for Smith—her book isn’t out for another week, so there are no such reviews of it yet. And maybe there won’t be any—I just spent a few minutes trying to find one, and after scanning the very small handful of Kindle editions priced over $9.99 in the top 150 nonfiction and fiction titles, I couldn’t find such a one-star review. But mine wasn’t an in-depth search, and those reviews, they are out there: Author T.J. Stiles posted a response when his book received some (although they weren’t a result of the Macmillan flap; his post is from last May).
For Stiles, the issue was that the reviewers in question didn’t even seem to have read the book. I’d tend to absolutely side with him there: If you can’t (or don’t) speak to anything about a product besides its price, then the place for your complaint is not in the reviews. Again, price is a matter of context: To me, the Left Behind books are not worth a dollar, much less $6.49, based on what the reviews tell me about them; on the other hand, I’d happily pay $36 for this biography of Marshall McLuhan (even if it weren’t cheaper than the hardcover or paperback price), if the single review it’s received is at all accurate. (And this guy has a particularly excellent complaint. To which I would add: Part 3 is really where the series should have ended.)
Saying, “This isn’t worth more than $9.99 to me because of x, y, and z” makes sense. Saying, “This isn’t worth more than $9.99 to me simply because a book should never be more than $9.99″ is silly, and the sentiment is misplaced. If the $9.99 hardliners want to treat book-publishing economics like widget-making economics, despite the differences, then they have to ask: Would it be fair to review a car by saying, “Well, I don’t know anything about this car, but $25,000 is way too much for any car, so I’m giving it one star”? Or a dishwasher? Or a scratching post? (Yes, I have been reading scratching post reviews lately.)
Also note that since Stiles posted his response, the price of his Kindle edition has dropped—to $9.99. That’s the other thing: Prices aren’t static. And once they change, are one-star reviews that deal solely with dollar-cost serving any purpose besides possibly hurting the author’s sales? And if they’re not, shouldn’t Amazon delete them?
News about writers we love
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010Annalee Newitz, who’s in charge over at io9, has had her first short story published! It’s called “The Great Oxygen Race,” and there is some swearing in it (Annalee lives in San Francisco, remember—they are GODLESS there), and it is not a cheery story, but then neither is life, all the time. Anyway, READ IT.
And what a surprise it was to see Kelly O’Connor McNees’s name appear in my Google Reader yesterday, on author John Scalzi’s blog! We call her Kelly 2 around here—although usually we don’t call her at all, because most of the time she is IMing or Gmailing with Kelly 1, so it just makes more sense to type something at her, and saves on minutes too. Anyway, she’s gonna be doing a Big Idea post for Scalzi about her upcoming debut novel, The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott. You should BUY IT. (We already have a copy, because we are BAD-ASS.)
