The serialized publication/value price of Eden  actually relates to this post.  As I was working on edits yesterday, I clicked over to Google News – my home page for Internet Explorer.  I’ve customized my version to show certain types of stories, and yesterday up popped a Bloomberg Businessweek story of all things.  Naturally, I got distracted from my work and had to read the piece right away.  The romance genre meriting a piece on a prominant business site was worthy of notice, and its worthy of mention here.

The piece was titled:  Romance Fiction:  Getting Dirty In Dutch Country. It focused on how romance fiction is – even in this Friday the 13th of economies – on the rise.  The story mentioned the writer’s opinion that  the many and varied categories of romance, including Amish, knitting and paranormal specifically, helped keep romance climbing towards the top.  I don’t really disagree with the piece, I just don’t think the writer attributed the rise to all the right factors. 

  According to the article, publishers say that book sales declined by 1.9 percent in 2009 after a 3 percent drop the previous year and books appear to be “suffering a slow and rather boring death.”  The article doesn’t talk about ebooks, which have been undergoing dramatic growth. 

The piece notes that despite declining sales in books overall, one genre has been experiencing “steady and unusual growth.”  Yeah, that’s right, ROMANCE.  The Romance genre increased to $1.4 billion, up by $100 million, or 7.7% from the prior year.  In a down market and a down economy people are buying more romances than ever.  Well, duh.  When have we ever, ever needed to believe in happy endings more than today?

Mysteries can get your mind working on a puzzle instead of the Citibank bill.  Thrillers can tingle your spine and make you forget the debt collectors who keep jingling your phone.  Women’s fiction can remind you that you should spend more time hugging your friends and less worrying about the bank balance that won’t cover your bills.  Nonfiction can teach you to love yourself and to ignore the wolf at the door.  But only Romance can remind you that the heart matters more than the bottom line.  Only Romance guarantees that you’re plunking down those scarce dollars for a happy ending.  And more and more, if readers are going to spend money, they’re going to do it for work that lets them curl up and take a trip that’s going to end in a good way.  There won’t be a wierdo in a Freddy Kruger mask – unless the characters are into that sort of thing. 

It all reminds me of a conversation I had with a cousin who is a big used car dealer.  He had recently sold the new car dealership and was back to his real line of work.  I asked if he was worried about business in the current economy.  He tilted back in his chair and said, “Slick (that was his nickname for me), when the economy is good, the used car business is good.  And when the economy is bad, the used car business is great.” 

And just this week, my boss and I were talking to a Claims Rep for one of our insurance companies, who was worried about a hotel owner/insured.  His business had been going through some tough times but my boss had talked to him and things were going better.  That’s true all over the Grand Strand region of South Carolina this year.  The Myrtle Beach International Airport has said that just about each month this season has broken the record set the month before.  I can tell you that judging by traffic jams and lines at restaurants, business in Myrtle is booming. 

Our good fortune in Myrtle is partly due to the bad fortune of our brothers and sisters along the Gulf Coast.  And I see license tags of many, many other states were I’d bet the folks would normally be vacationing along the Gulf beaches.  And we sympathize for the owners in those states that were already suffering and are now suffering more.  But Myrtle’s growth is due to much more than just fortunate geography. 

Myrtle Beach has always been one of the cheapest family friendly places to vacation.  But even so, last year, business was down in Myrtle.  I think its that after such a long stretch of stress, people need a break.  They can’t afford Vegas or Atlantic City.  The pricey beaches of Florida and the Mouse that requires a golden budget or the rich folk areas of Florida are beyond too many budgets.  But a vacation in Myrtle?  It’s an affordable splurge. 

Used cars do good in good years and great in bad years.  Everyone has to have a car to get to work.  In good years, many folks will trade the three year old car they bought new for another new car.  In the present year, which is not just bad, but is the worst year I can ever, ever, recall, most people will drive their car until it just won’t go anymore.  Then, they’ll get the best deal they can on an older model in the best condition they can afford.

But we’ll all still look at the Mercedes, or the Ferrari or the restored to cherry condition Vette or Mustang.  And we’ll sometimes weave fantasies about the guy driving that car.  A writer might build a whole book around those fantasies.   In other genres, the car might be hot and police might be looking for the driver, who just killed his business partner.  It might be driven by a man whose identity was just stolen as part of an elaborate plot to overthrow the government or to control some imporant part of a big buisness.  It might be driven by a killer who washed away every trace of blood before he garbed himself in a designer suit to look for his next victim.

But if the reader is very, very, lucky, the writer who spotted the bad ride was a romance novelist.  Then the driver will be a bad boy billionaire who can buy everything he could possibly need and most of what he wants.  He believes he can buy everything but he’s about to be taught a lesson in love by……his secretary, or his ward, or his best friend’s little sister.  No matter what smart lady teaches the rogue that the one thing he can’t live without doesn’t have a price tag, the story WILL have a happy ending. 

And just like Myrtle Beach’s gain may be another resort’s loss, the romance writer’s gain is more and more another genre writer’s loss.  But that’s okay.  Romance writers are a friendly bunch and there’s always room for new converts.  The Bloomberg piece talked about suspense writer Kelly Irvin who’s new book is…………..yeah, you guessed it………..a Romance. 

In these bad times, the romance genre is the Myrtle Beach vacation that more and more readers are plunking down their hard earned dollars for and getting in their used car to drive to, but that’s okay……… a happy ending is just around the corner!!!

Most of the articles trying to “explain” women’s love of the romance genre make me want to throw something at my computer screen.   The other Mary Anne’s piece didn’t make me mad so much as it made me pity the author.  First of all, as a researcher, she should have known she couldn’t base an understanding of a vast and complex genre like romance on one atypical type of book of the genre.  It makes all her conclusions laughably wrong. For example, based on her study of Harlequins, Fisher decides that romance novels are too short and characters are therefore too underdeveloped.  Certain types of Harlequins are intended to be short fast reads that get the reader in and out fast.  But not all Harlequins are short – some of the publisher’s imprints are long, slow, luscious reads.  So Dr. Fisher bases her conclusions one type of one imprint from one publishing house.  I hope she does a better job with the psychological research she gets paid for.

Fisher concludes that romance novels are “candy for women’s brains.”   She concludes that they allow the reader to live vicariously through the heroine and fall in love with the hero but without any of the consequences.  Of course, she also thinks that the plots revolve around the woman trying to decide if the hero is “Mr. Right.” So, at least Fisher is consistently wrong.

Romance novels are, in fact, many different things and a reader will reach for a novel based on the experience she’s looking for.  Some may be brain candy but others are hot chocolate for the soul or salt and pepper, salsa or onions and peppers to season a slice of life.  And lets not forget the ones that are just dessert – a big old slice of strawberry cheesecake.  Romances are intimate experiences where a writer takes a reader on a journey that the reader will paint with the flavor of her life and her outlook. 

No, Dr. Fisher, not all romance novels provide skimpy descriptions of the heroine and detailed descriptions of the hero because the reader will imagine herself in the heroine’s place. Some romances, like mine, will provide a few general details about the descriptions of the hero and the heroine because we want the reader to draw the character in her mind the way she imagines him or her. 

My basic problem with the other Mary Anne’s piece is that she imagines herself as being so very much smarter than the writers and the readers that she can profile all of them.  She can’t just acknowledge that much of the genre is so far beyond her understanding that she’ll never get it.  People who think they’re smarter than everyone else like to do that.  If they encounter something they don’t get, then they’ll pull out one tiny piece of it, label it, and pronounce that one size fits all.  Who among us doesn’t know that one size NEVER fits all? 

But Dr. Fisher’s piece got me to thinking about the flip side of her query.  I know that the reasons readers read romance are as varied as the way writers write the books.  No, based on an experience I’m having with a novel, I wonder – what makes us put the book down and close it without finishing? Perhaps that’s as varied as the reader and the writer too.

A while back I got a bad review for my book, Brotherly Love, on Amazon.  That reader found that there were few decent characters and felt the book was written so that it made her feel guilty for wanting the main characters to end up together.  She thought the book contained some “unnecessarily graphic” rape scenes and advised readers not to “bother” with the book.   Bad reviews are always tough for writers, including me, even though we should know better.  Mentally, I know that I’m not writing “pablum” so for some people my books won’t digest well. 

I wonder if that reader finished the book?  When a book doesn’t connect for me I know I can’t finish it.  And sometimes, it doesn’t connect for a particular reader even if the author is very talented and wrote a hell of a book.  That’s happened to me with one I’m reading now and have just decided to close and walk away from. And when I tell you about the book many of you will have read it, will have possibly read some of the author’s other work and enjoyed it all very much. 

The book I’m about to put away without finishing is by a fellow South Carolinian – Dorothea Benton Frank, who seems to be a fine writer.  It’s called Bulls Island and is about characters from Charleston, a community right down the road from my home in Myrtle Beach.  My family and I love Charleston, so I thought I’d love the book.  But the story is about a girl who’s been dating the scion of a rich Charleston family for many years.  When they finish college they decide to marry and bring her family to have dinner with his because historically, there’s been bad blood between the families. 

At the dinner the hero’s mother acts so vile and nasty that the heroine’s parents leave suddenly, in the middle of a pouring rain storm.  The mother dies in a car accident caused by the bad weather.  The heroine leaves the area and the hero and moves to New York because she can never marry into that woman’s family.  That woman killed the heroine’s mother, or so she thinks.  The heroine moves to New York without a word to the hero and has a baby she never tells the him about.  The hero lets his mama play puppetmaster and ends up diddling some female bait she waves in front of him and so marries the girl.  The hero and the bait have no children and the bait turns out to be a spineless alcoholic. 

The heroine rears her son in New York and doesn’t even tell her father or sister about the kid.  She tells her son that his father died in a car wreck with both of her parents.  I haven’t read what, if anything, she told the kid about his father’s parents.   Anyway, the heroine gets a big deal job involving real estate projects and financing and one day gets called into her boss’s office and told she’s going back to Charleston to manage a project developing “Bulls Island” with a local real estate family.  (Yes, the hero’s family). 

While that’s going on, back in Charleston, the hero’s wife is falling further into the bottle.  He learns that the heroine is coming back to work with him on the Bulls Island project. On the same night that  his daddy has a heart attack he finds out that his mama has been having an affair with his daddy’s business partner for years.  He wonders if that means he can have an affair with the heroine.  

While the heroine is dealing with having to go back to Charleston and face all of her lies, she also dealing with her son going away to college. She picks this time to start dating an Italian guy she describes like a mafia prince, considers to be a joke, and finds way, way beneath her socially and intellectually.  Yet the heroine ends up bedding Mr. Mafia who sends her 4 or 5 dozen roses after each mattress mambo and reaches the point where she intends to kiss him off.  After all, she was just playing. 

Okay.  That was the breaking point for me.  It was the stupidity that was just too much.  Got to put the book down, which is a shame.  I wanted to read the writer’s descriptions of Charleston but never got back there with the heroine.  These people are all too stupid and self centered for me to tolerate.

I had trouble right from the get go.  The dinner and death of the heroine’s mama was hard for me to take.  Why didn’t the hero stand up, tell mama she was being a prize bitch and she could stop right now and apologize or he’d walk away?  Even if the hero didn’t do that voluntarily, why didn’t the heroine put him to the test?  They’d been together for 8 years.  She should have stood up at the dinner table and told the hero to handle mama or he wouldn’t be handling her anymore. 

And the heroine flits off the New York without ever sitting down with the hero and telling him about her feelings, the whole situation and especially the baby.  Yeah, his family’s been in Charleston for years and he would be walking away from generations of legacy.  But if they were so much in love, she should have given him the choice.  The heroine never even tells her own family about the kid and she lies to her son about his family.  She walks away from her father and sister just when they lose her mama.  To top it all off, the heroine treats the Italian like the hero’s mama treated her family.  Enough is enough. 

But it’s only enough for me.  Like that reviewer who didn’t like Brotherly, my life and my experiences make it impossible for me to like – or even to finish - Bulls Island.   I find the hero to be a wiener, the heroine to be a self-centered bitch and all of them to be terminally stupid.  I could have even tolerated the dinner and death with something akin to mild indigestion and finished the book if the heroine had pushed the hero to choose and then he chose wrong.  I can tolerate the hero being a prick, but I can’t tolerate the heroine being a stupid, self-centered liar. 

Back to Ms. Fisher’s piece - maybe she did get some of it right.  Women generally expect men to behave like they’re motivated by their egos.  We get that.   But we expect more from our heroines because we expect more from ourselves. I can deal with the improbable — I adore the improbable – but I can’t deal with the pathetic. 

So yeah, Dr. Fisher, I’m fine with the hero being a cad as long as the heroine is woman enough to teach him a lesson.

How strange this is coming from a computer guy, right? 24 years in the industry. I was there at the birth of both the home computer and the publicly accessible Internet. You know what I never witnessed? The promise of a truly easy-to-use computer interface being fulfilled. If you’ve ever had to read instructions on how to simply make the computer do what it was designed for, then the computer isn’t really easy to use.

You don’t need to read a set of different instructions every year to operate a car. Even different makes and models of cars. They all work pretty much the same. They have practically the same interface.

How about other electronics? CD and DVD players work the same way, with the same sort of buttons coded in a universal fashion to tell the user how to operate the machine.

Before the smartphone, plain old phones all worked the same way. You input the unique number of the person you want to talk to, their phone makes a noise indicating that someone wants to talk to them, they pick up the phone and put it to their ears and mouths and you talk to them. This didn’t change for over 100 years.

Now, hold on, you’re probably saying “But AOFM, computers are open-ended devices! They’re not designed with just one thing in mind! They can do ANYTHING!”

Well that’s the problem in a nutshell. It’s a machine that emulates other machines. To do this, a programmer must either utilize the most commonly attached devices – the keyboard, mouse, monitor, and printer – or propose an entirely new device – another machine to be bought, attached, and configured.

Add to this the respective intellectual property rights of all the hardware and software AND the “freedom” of giving the user at least four different (but all as unintuitive as Chinese algebra) ways to accomplish a single task, and you land straight into machine hell, where you burn in hair-tearing, eye-bleeding, screaming frustation.

I visit that hell often, but I was in a particularly hot section the other night when I wanted to watch a DVD on my computer. Blade Runner Director’s Cut, to be exact.

I had a functional DVD drive in my computer; it copied data beautifully. I had fully upgraded Windows XP installed, works like a charm. At one time in the past, I had been able to just pop a DVD in the drive, and it would play just like it was in a dedicated DVD player.

But not that night, oh HELL no.

I had been swapping out DVD drives to fix a problem with my oldest son’s computer a few weeks before. I never got his problem sorted out, but I decided to keep the drives in their new locations and load the appropriate software to let mine play DVDs. Because hey, that’s what a DVD drive does, it… plays… DVDs!

But not that night, oh HELL no.

I tried everything I knew to fix the software. I uninstalled all DVD related software and reinstalled only the program that I thought would work, which I had actually paid for as opposed to the limited programs that came with the drive. I tried downloading free programs that specifically promised to play DVDs, which they didn’t. Finally I remembered a free program from my workplace that everyone seemed to have, VLC Player. I loaded it up, put the DVD into the drive, and it just worked.

This excursion into the fiery depths of digital Hades made me realize why the e-book readers were so popular, and why computers as personal devices are on their way out. E-readers have a consistent interface where you can accomplish a task in only one way, and with few exceptions they just work, dammit.

And that’s all you really need.

“Digital publishing and digital book selling will soon become the most explosive development in the history of our industry and will sweep aside those who aren’t participating,” Leonard Riggio, B&N’s founder and chairman, said during a recent presentation highlighting the company’s expanding forray into the digital market. 

The e-reader market is in the midst of a price war that is putting more and more of the devices into the hands of the book-buying American public.  Fewer readers visit the brick and mortar bookstores as more readers demand that the bookstores come to them, via their PCs, Macs, e-readers, iPods and cell phones.  Via America’s strong and ever expanding wireless networks ebooks get delivered to readers instantly. 

When American publishers lost control of the distribution system, they lost control of the readers and the writers.  Today authors like Joe Konrath have chosen to forego offered publishing contracts for some books, electing to get them out in print and ebook format on their own, thank you very much.  Books of writers doing it their way are, more and more,  transitioning readers to expect stories undiluted by editorial changes demanded by publishers.  An American indie book or ebook is becoming an intimate experience shared only by the writer and the reader.    

But even in the present economic downturn, America’s companies invested the time and resources to build the pipelines that allowed the Indie Revolt to succeed.   Those pipelines are being strengthened as demand encourages more investment.  Our writers can now write their books, publish them, sell them to readers and get paid via those same magic pipelines that funnel money directly into their bank accounts. 

In the heady atmosphere of power and possibility now held by the creators themselves, it becomes rather easy to forget that America’s Indie Revolt is not yet the world’s.  Imagine an American publisher today saying the following:  “Everyone knows that almost all publishers cheat their authors on their royalty payments, and there’s ­nothing the authors can do about it.”

Attitudes like that may have prevailed amongst that publisher’s American colleagues a few years ago, but they should be long gone today.  Because today, in our country, there’s a lot the authors can do about it – even aside from having an eagle-eyed agent.  In our country, the authors can punish the publishers by taking business directly to the people.  In the e-age, who needs the middleman?

The above quote is from a piece in The Herald/Herald Scotland about 4 young Italian writers who have joined forces to fight the ”predatory practices of the Italian publishing industry.”  In a month, their Writers In Litigation website got the support of over 50 authors to warn writers of industry practices and help them guard against “fraudulent royalty payments.”

The Italian group notes that their publishers cultivate “the impression that they are bestowing a privilege by ­agreeing to publish their works, rather than entering into a straightforward business deal.”  Sergio Nazzaro, one of the group’s founders, published a fictionalized account of a meeting with the editor that reflects prevailing attitudes of those in the country’s publishing companies.  In the fictional meeting, the editor tells the author that he pays low royalties and no advance because “There are lots of writers ­willing to write and to pay to get published, and many of them are very good. This is the cultural mass: there are more people who write than who read. And they’ll pay to write.” 

That attitude is precisely the sentiment that led to the downfall of America’s publishing royals.  The attitude infuriated indie authors for years but, like their Italian counterparts, they could do little about it in reality. It took technology and the rise of the wireless society to provide American writers the tools to change a theoretical insurgency to a new literary marketplace.   Borders, laws, and the realities that technology in other places hasn’t kept pace with America’s advances all combine to make it difficult for foreign  writers to publish and distribute with the ease that we in the U.S. now enjoy.

Reading the piece reminded me of a couple of things.  First, I don’t know if I’ve ever expressed how grateful I am to companies like Amazon and Smashwords for making e-publishing easy and profitable.  I also appreciate Amazon’s affiliate, CreateSpace and its new distribution system for making it easy to get paper copies of my book out on the digital shelves of nearly every major bookstore.  Someday soon, I hope, CS will have a returns policy in place that allows the stores to shelve the books in their brick and mortar locations.  I also owe a big thank you to Smashwords retail partners who carry my ebooks – Sony, Apple’s iBookstore, Kobo, and B&N.  SW’s partner Kobo is now distributing to Borders and some SW author’s books have also appeared there.  Not mine – yet – but maybe soon.  More shelf space always means more sales. 

Thinking of the Italian author’s struggle reminds me, also, of how petty some of our concerns are.  Authors on Kindle worry and gripe about Amazon’s new TOS that accompanied the e-tailers rolling out of 70% royalties to authors rather than the former 35%.  Sure, there are some issues with the new system but complaining about it is like complaining that our caviar isn’t Beluga.  Wouldn’t our Italian comrades like to have their largest complaint be about rules they have to meet to get a 70% royalty?

Frankly, I DON’T OFTEN SYMPATHIZE WITH ANYONE ITALIAN, but I realize that – perhaps – I’ve been unfairly blaming the nation for the fact that an Italian company downsized my programmer/analyst hubby a couple of years ago.  The economy went to pot in those intervening years and my tough times have, I fear, fertilized my tendency to paint with too broad a brush.  The Italians who downsized hubby were definitely in the same “haves” category as the Italian publishing company – family castle and all. And in considering the Italian manufacturing families’ attitudes, I begin to have a greater respect for the plight of the Italian authors. 

To my Italian brothers and sisters who also toil away at keyboards, I hope that the Indie Revolution hits your shores soon.  Please know that it is coming and prepare yourselves.  Soon the day will arrive when you will be your own publisher and your own editor.  It will not bring large up front advances, but it will bring independence and creative freedom. 

And to all those companies that made America’s Indie Revolt the new literary reality I say - thank you.  I hope that I and my fellow indie authors make you more than proud – I hope we make you rich.

Nothing will take the Indie Revolution to every nation on earth as fast as the bottom line.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

–  An excerpt from the second paragraph of the United States of America’s Declaration of Independence from the British Crown.

Happy Birthday, America!

Also, this.

Click for larger image

I feel soooooooooo dirty. I think I need to loofah my entire body with a Black & Decker belt sander now.

So, lets say you are better off than most of us (me, especially) and you decide that this is the time to buy a house.  You hire a realtor and she drives you out to Neighborhood A to see a traditional ranch.   It turns out to be too traditional for you, but on your way to Neighborhood B to see the next house on the realtor’s list you pass a cunning little craftsman with a “For Sale” sign in the yard.  It has charm and character and doesn’t look turned out of a cookie cutter. 

So you draw your realtor’s attention to it and tell her you want to see that house.  She hems and haws and tries to evade but when you insist, the realtor finally gives you an answer.  “No,” the realtor says, “you can’t see that house. ”  She’s already met with the committee at the office.  They reviewed who you were and what you would like and dislike and composed a list of acceptable houses.  The craftsman wasn’t on the list so it’s not for you. 

In reality, that scenario may not have happened to you on a house hunt, but in the past it happened every single time a reader walked into a bookstore.  All of the books on the shelves had been screened for the readers by the publishing royals – agents, editors and publishing companies.  The royals decided what readers should want and only put the acceptable books out there for the bookstores to stock and sell.  So if a reader wanted a book, he or she had to buy one of those in the store.  And when the sale was made, the royals patted each other on the shoulder and said, “See, we were right again.”

Traditionally published author and Salon writer/co-founder Laura Miller wrote a piece recently that said all of us talking about the indie revolution have been focusing too much on what it means to “the reviled gatekeepers” in traditional publishing rather than to the readers.  Ms. Miller says that what the revolution has done, in reality, is to outsource the agents and publishers’ slush pile to the readers.  And, she wonders, what will happen when all of those “previously rejected” manuscripts “hit the marketplace,” swelling “the ranks of 99-cent Kindle and i-book offerings by the millions. Is the public prepared to meet the slush pile?”

Ms. Miller’s piece says the public has “no inkling of two awful facts:  1) just how much slush is out there and 2) how really, really, really, really terrible the vast majority of it is.”  Well, gosh, she gave it 4 reallies.  So it must be bad, right?  Well then, readers must be much better off under the traditional system where the Royals screen the choices.  They’d be much happier with the traditional ranch instead of the craftsman – whether they knew it or not.   Why put the readers through the “awful” process of deciding for themselves?

Why?  Because the world is not full of cookie-cutter people.  And because THERE IS NO SLUSH.   The so-called slush pile is just the insulting term for all of the books that the Royals decided didn’t suit their vision of what people should be reading.  Wasn’t the world a better place when no matter what readers chose, it would be an ”acceptable” choice?  The Royals and Ms. Miller certainly think so, but I disagree.  I think most readers and surely most American readers would have rebelled against being force-fed years ago – except that most of them never realized the system existed.  Most of them never knew that there were piles of amazing books in every genre that they’d never be allowed to choose. 

Readers were not better off in the days when piles of writer’s visions and dreams were locked away in an “acceptable” version of a Nazi death camp.  Readers were not better served in the days when the Royals kept the work that was too different locked away until the writers surrendered and their dreams died.  Only the publishers were better off when they held the keys to the kingdom.

What does the Indie Revolution mean to readers?  Whatever they want it to mean; whatever they allow it to mean.  The vast variety of new work out there now and coming soon is as wide and varied and different as the people who will choose to buy and read it.  It means that the marketplace of ideas is wide open and writers can create what serves their vision.  No longer do writers have to try to fit their work into a pigeonhole that a traditional publisher might find acceptable.  It means writers can be as different and daring and original as the folks who will buy their work and take their journey to make it their own. 

The destruction of the slush pile created a new world for writers, but it created a new one for readers too.  The idea of that new world likely terrifies the former traditional publishing empire because it surely scares the stuffing out of Ms. Miller.  Her piece says that to date people hadn’t seen “the vast majority of what didn’t get published” which is a good thing.  Because ”it’s enough to make your blood run cold, thinking about that stuff being introduced into the general population.”   

Ms. Miller, like the traditional publishing world from which she hails, disdains the new indie world just as surely as the publishers have for years discounted the readers who will nurture the indie world, fertilize it and make it grow.  Contrary to popular belief in the circles of the literary elite, the “general population” is composed of some pretty bright, pretty discerning readers.  With the indie books, just like with the traditional ones, they’ll read the cover blurb and flip through the book before they ever decide to plunk down their hard-earned dollars.  For the ebooks, they’ll read the free excerpt and get a pretty good idea of the voice of the author before they hit the buy button. 

When all of “that stuff” gets introduced to the readers, they’ll have all of “that stuff” and the regular stuff from which to choose.  And that reality only scares the old world order, the traditional publishing royalty.  It means that the power has passed from their hands to the hands of the “general public.”  It means that the value of the stamp of a traditional publishing house decreases as readers pick their purchases based on the author’s voice and the author’s vision. 

When the slush pile gets outsourced a magical thing happens – it disappears.  Today the work can only get labeled “slush” if the authors choose to allow it to be insulted and denigrated.  It gets locked away only if the writers give away their power.  More and more, writers are choosing to take their work directly to their audience.  On the real or virtual shelf, it’s not slush.  It’s a choice that the readers wouldn’t have had just a couple of years ago. 

Yes, readers who find themselves in a real or virtual bookstore now face two paths that diverge. Some of them will continue to take the well-traveled one blazed by the traditional publishing Royals. But others will take the new path and enjoy a new journey where no agents or editors exist to filter or distill the voice and vision of the author.  Those who travel the new road will enter a new place.  It may be more raw, more bold, and more dramatic.  But that’s okay.  Some readers are like that too.

It’s not a traditional ranch world anymore.

If you haven’t heard about it yet, there is a huge price war going on among companies that sell e-reader devices. It seems that the Apple cart (via the iPad) has upset a bunch of people, mainly those people who thought they had the e-book and e-reader device market cornered.

I knew that the $400 price tags on Kindles wouldn’t last long, because even though it put many different technologies together in a synergistic fashion, it was still a device with a singular purpose (as are its immediate competitors like the Nook) – in essence, a digital book.

The iPad, like the Amazon Kindle, didn’t introduce any radical new technology; it assembled existing technologies into a neat little package that ends up being greater than the sum of its parts.

Tablet computers were conceptualized back in the days before GUIs were even invented, so Apple didn’t invent the idea of a tablet computer.

Tablet computers, with varying degrees of interaction, had been manufactured by other companies since the early 1990s, so Apple didn’t invent the form of a tablet computer.

But Apple did make a computer that utilized a number of robust interdependent technologies, and that computer had the right form and was introduced at the right time to break the collective inertia of the buying public.

And even though the competing devices may someday add other functions besides downloading and displaying e-books, the public perception of them is already set. The perception is that the Kindle, Nook, etc., are one-trick ponies whereas the iPad has no boundaries.

And, fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be, perception is reality.

 Okay, get your mind off of all the weirdness of MJ’s latter years.  As for the criminal charges, don’t go there.  Think about the music and the performances.  Get yourself in that mind space.  Maybe it’ll help if you squeal “Ooh” and “I’m Bad” three or four times.  Okay, focused now? 

 His death was tragic. Having a creative force like his snuffed out so quickly, so needlessly has deprived the world of years of music and magic.  So while it’s certainly his tragedy, his family’s tragedy, it’s also a loss for everyone who ever turned on a radio or downloaded music.  In the wake of the sudden loss there were many retrospectives and tributes.

As one of those tributes Fox re-broadcast the first American Idol finalist show of this season featuring the top 13 performing Michael Jackson songs.  I watch American Idol and enjoy seeing the group working and growing into music professionals.  It’s always fun to see someone working to make their dream come true.  But I’d forgotten about that MJ show because, at the time, it was just another show.  Too bad it wasn’t done later in the season with the gloved one giving the finalists performance critiques and suggestions. 

My favorite contestant of this past season was Adam Lambert.  We all recall that he finished second.  My only explanation for that is that Kris Allen was everyman — the one more like the average American watching on the sofa at home.  Adam has too much creative force to be contained or labeled in any one genre or tradition.  Adam will never be anyone’s everyman — but neither is Elton John and, of course, neither was Michael Jackson. 

As one of the last performances of the show, Adam Lambert did MJ’s “Black or White.”  Adam nailed it, standing out from the others like Sir Elton at a High School talent contest.  His performance impressed the judges too, including Simon Cowell, the one we love to hate and hate to love.  Simon’s comments made me think and inspired this post.  Simon said Adam nailed it because (and I’m paraphrasing here because I didn’t watch the episode with pen in hand) - To make a MJ song work , a performer has to be totally comfortable on stage, and he has to perform the song like Michael – over the top.

Why did that resonate with me? When Adam and MJ perform, they do it over the top.  When I write romance, I write it over the top.  For a writer or performer to succeed, he or she has to do it the way it comes naturally.  If Kris Allen tried to perform MJ over the top, it wouldn’t work for him at all.  It worked for Lambert because that’s how his art speaks to him.  It’s the same for a romance novelist.  You can only write romance over the top and have it carry the reader along if that’s how the story and the characters speak to the writer.  I understand MJ’s approach to music because I know it must have come as naturally to him as my stories come to me. 

I write romance over the top, bigger than life, because that’s how the characters in my books insist on behaving.  Does my over the top style communicate to readers?  I had a comment on Amazon from a lovely lady who’d read A Faerie Fated Forever.  She said the book was written over the top but she hadn’t been able to put it down.  Over the top done right will take the reader out of this reality and into one where love is instant, lust is imminent, seduction is inevitable and happily ever after is not just possible and plausable – it’s necessary. 

With Michael, his song lyrics were intense, almost driven.  His performances took that intensity, that drive, and multiplied them many times over.  The way he acted, sang, danced and performed carried the songs over the top and took his audience along for the ride.  Other artists performing those songs, save for the rare exception like Adam Lambert, generally come off like glass trying to imitate a diamond.  Not many performers, even very polished singers who’ve sold in the multiple millions, could do Michael and have it come off as a tribute instead of a poor imitation.  I’d love to see Elton John and Cher performing some Michael Jackson tunes,  separately and together as a duet.  I’ll bet you a re-fried frog that would be a tribute that carried the soul, the spirit and the vibrance of MJ.

Over the top can, too often, come across as parody.  It will only capture and carry the audience if it first captured and inspired the writer or artist.  As Simon commented on Adam’s performance, it has to be comfortable before it can be convincing.  When it’s done right, the view from over the top can change the way readers and audiences view parts of their lives long after the last word or the last note.  Who could experience MJ performing Man In The Mirror without examining their own choices and actions? 

I’ll never be the MJ of the literary world.  His shoes are too big, his legacy too inspiring for anyone to attempt to claim.  But if you enjoy MJ’s music, perhaps you’d enjoy some of the work of a romance novelist who writes over the top.  Brotherly Love, A Faerie Fated Forever, A Golden Forever- and my soon to be released A Sixth Sense of Forever are all over the top historicals, and E-mail Enticement is a bigger than life contemporary.  If you enjoy Michael Jackson’s music, you might find a bit of that same spirit in my writing. 

Over the top takes reality to the max.  Then, it takes it further.  It makes extreme seem normal.  In today’s world where reality is too often bad news, where too many talented folks have lost their livlihoods and must re-invent themselves to survive, over the top can be both inspiration and escape. 

Put on a MJ album and pick up an over the top romance and life can look a little brighter, goals can seem more achievable.  If you take it over the top, there is nothing you can’t do, be or accomplish.  Taking it over the top has never been harder than now when so much negativity and hardship surrounds us all.  Did some of that affect MJ as he rehearsed for his London performances?  Did the thought of trying to carry with him over the top so many folks that were so heavy with loss stress MJ beyond bearing? 

Not that there would ever have been a good time, but this was a particularly bad time to lose Michael.  He was an American original and we are lucky that his legacy lives on. 

Romance novels weren’t Michael’s medium, but if they had been, I think he’d have written them a lot like mine, but better of course.  If you’re a MJ fan, you might check out some romance novels that will take you over the top. 

Michael Jackson, I thank you for your musical legacy.  It will show many generations to come the view from over the top. MJ, Rest in Peace, at least for a bit, before you get ready for your duet with Elvis.

So I rarely hope anybody else has their tailhook at their desk over a weekend, especially a holiday weekend.  Rarely.  But this weekend is an exception.   This weekend every darned programmer and web guru in the Amazonian Kingdom best be chained to their desks – including the fathers in the group.   At least one of ‘em deserves to be chained, and with a big new system change-over coming at the end of June where the whole staff is most likely working on bits and pieces of the new system, someone supervising the chain-deserving code monkey didn’t do his or her job.  Somebody screwed up royally. 

Amazon’s DTP Platform publishes Kindle pieces from indie authors and includes a dashboard to monitor sales.  The numbers don’t go backwards unless there was a return or two OR unless a code monkey didn’t do his job right.  Early Thursday evening (June 17th) over about a two hour span, the DTP numbers of indie authors went backwards without any returns.  Sales disappeared. 

For many hours, nothing was heard but the weeping and gnashing of teeth of authors roaring their displeasure on the Kindle forum.    Oh – and the growling.  Don’t forget the growling.  Amongst the indie authors are many folks, like me, who’ve found the “hope”  hopeless and who’ve had enough ”change”  to destroy their world.  For us, every dollar counts and we don’t appreciate seeing them swallowed by the great Amazon giant. 

I sent Amazon an email.  As the hours stretched without a reply, I sent another.  Judging from the Kindle forums, I wasn’t alone.  Enough of us may have sent emails to fill up the big, bad, Amazon mailbox.  And all of us started to weave grand conspiracy theories.  Nobody can do conspiracy like a bunch of writers.   Finally, all the commotion got the Great One’s attention.  Either that or they wanted to get us to stop emailing.

Amazon posted the following on the forums: 

Posted By: dtpadmin

Created in: System: Global Announcement

Posted: Jun 18, 2010 2:59 PM

Dear Publishers,

We are currently experiencing a reporting issue that is affecting the display of sales information on the “my reports” page of our site. While recent sales may not be displayed correctly, we have verified sales are being recorded. Our engineers are working to have this corrected as soon as possible.

We will post a follow up once we have confirmation this reporting issue has been remedied.

Note the date and time.  The FUBAR Monster ate sales about 6 pm on Thursday, June 17th.  Not a peep was heard from DTP until almost 3 pm on June 18th.  And we’ve been peepless since June 18th - Friday afternoon.  Today is Sunday, June 20th and the system has been down since early Thursday night.  For nearly three days it’s been broken and as I type, it remains broken. 

What do I want them to post?  First, I’d like an explanation that’s better (and more HONEST) than “glitch.”   If it had been a “glitch,” it would have been fixed by Thursday night.  A glitch is a little bump in the road that has to be either smoothed over or navigated around.  It doesn’t take 3 days to fix a glitch.  Somebody made a mammoth error – a FUBAR Gigantus.  So I’d like Amazon to respect the writers enough to realize that most of us are quite bright.  If they’ll give an honest explanation of what the Mammoth Error was and how it occurred we’ll understand the process.  If they’ll tell us what they were trying to do or achieve at the time, we might even be able to summon a little understanding and tolerance. 

I’d also like Amazon to post details about what they’re doing — exactly and not generally –  to fix the error.  We’ve got enough computer geeks on the forum that they might be able to contribute helpful ideas and suggestions.  I’ve got a geek in my house and if Amazon would post details, Mr. Quack could probably help them navigate around their Everest Error. 

Most helpful of all would be pictures or real time video SHOWING that the entire programming staff at Amazon is at their desks, working like the Dickens’ and won’t be allowed to leave until they get it right.  I want to know that when there is a crisis that the staff was not allowed to walk out on Friday afternoon and say they’d be right on top of it – first thing Monday.  Why?  Because I can’t do that and I expect you can’t do that either.  At my law firm, when there is a deadline or a problem we have to work until the job is done, regardless of whether it’s a Saturday or a Sunday. 

Finally, I’d like them to post something showing a little bit of a sense of humor.  Print a picture of Paul chained to his desk and sitting on a potty chair.  Say – this is Code Monkey Paul.  He had a small tweak to make to the system that he should have made in the test environment.  He should then have debugged it and run data through until it was right and he knew it was right.  ONLY THEN should it have been moved to the live environment.  But Paul had an important poker game with the boys on Thursday night and he wanted to get out.  It was already 6 o’clock so he said, screw it, and moved the code over without testing it properly.   Paul is paying for that choice now.  Paul will be here, on the job, around the clock until he gets it right. 

Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE CODE MONKEYS.  I’m married to a code monkey.  My hubby can make an IBM AS400 stand up and say ”Who’s Your Daddy?”  But these days he’s working hard at a part time job in a PC environment that doesn’t involve what he’s been trained to do.  His current part time gig does nothing to remind him of how damned good he is at what he does.  He’s one of the best RPG Code Monkeys in the jungle, but right now there are too many code monkeys chasing the jobs.  So he’s surviving.  He’s taking a certification course that in August will allow him to get out there and get the kind of good job he should have had all along.  He’s working hard for his family, trying to get skills that in a couple of months will get him a good job and take some of the stress off of me and that will hopefully help us get back on track.   Mr. Quack is a survivor and in today’s market, that’s what you damned well have to be.

What my hubby is going through, and what many other talented computer folks out there are going through is a mental image that never leaves my mind as I think about Amazon’s FUBAR.  All of the Code Monkeys like Mr. Quack are the reason that I want proof that Amazon’s pack of monkeys know how incredibly lucky they are to have their jobs and that they have been there every single second since 6 pm on Thursday working to get it right.

Yeah – throw Paul the Code Monkey a box of bananas every now and then, but keep him right there at his desk doing his job until it’s done.  Because on this Father’s Day there are too many Fathers who are older, experienced professionals who would be right there until they got it right.  Unfortunately, in this job market work ethic has become as lost as hiring the experienced professionals who’d have gotten it right the first time. 

So yeah, Amazon, you’d best be working around the clock to fix the FUBAR.  It best not “magically” adjust on Monday morning.  To the Senior Staff at the internet giant, I say, look very carefully at what happened, how it happened and how hard your team is working to fix it.  Because if we get a Monday morning miracle, Amazon’s HR folks should be posting “help wanted” notices saying they’re looking for seasoned, experienced professionals – not young, low cost wanna bes who have pretty pieces of paper. 

Happy Father’s day to my Code Monkey.  I hope he remembers that he’s the best monkey in the forest.  I’ll toss him a banana any time!!