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Your power in publishing

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

One of the things that has seen much debate in the last few days is a handful of sentences on the (now renamed) Harlequin Horizons website, which stated that editors would be watching products from the Harlequin Horizons line, with an eye towards inclusion in the “traditional” Harlequin imprints for manuscripts that enjoyed particular success. I can’t find that line on the new website of DellArte press, and much ink has been spilled (or rather, many pixels have been arranged?) into attacking that particular line, both as a positive (if it’s true, why not disclose it?) and as a negative (holding out hopes and dreams that are unlikely to be fulfilled).

I don’t want to talk about the pros and cons or whether it’s misleading or what have you. My reaction was slightly different, and it went like this: I was a little taken aback by the implication that someone would be doing you a favor for publishing you once you’d proven yourself a commercial success. Commercial publishing, like just about every other for-profit business, doesn’t generally make its money off of doing people favors.

New writers, I think, train themselves to think about publication as a gift from the gods, and so a statement along the lines of “if you prove your commercial success, we will include it in our traditional publishing program”–to a new writer, this signals the heavens opening up and glory shining down upon you. Someone might think that this is akin to a lowly worm being crowned.

But if you have a proven commercial success, no matter who you published it with, you are not in the position of beggar at the publishing industry’s table any longer. Whether you published originally with DellArte or Westbow Press; whether you release it for Kindle, or do it yourself entirely with Lightning Source, whether it is produced by Dorchester or Harlequin or Pocket–it really doesn’t matter. No traditional publisher is going to walk away from a commercially viable project that they believe will make money just because you self-published first with Lightning Source instead of LuLu. They care about the success, not the source.

(They may walk away from the project because no editor wants to champion it; or because it’s too similar to something else they have in the works; or because they don’t have the expertise to market that kind of work. But those are separate questions.)

And so my beef with that line is that it encourages people to continue to think of themselves as beggars after they’ve proven themselves to be businesspeople. Have you made a success of yourself with self-publishing? Have a little more chutzpah. You deserve it.

If you’ve proven your ability to be a commercial success, especially through the vagaries of self-publishing, you opened up the heavens, you found the glory, and yes, someone will want to publish you. Not as a gift or as a reward, and certainly not because the publishing industry likes wasting its crowns on worms, but for one reason only: they believe they can make a profit off of you. And you should not respond to positive overtures as if those offering them are strange and distant aliens come to uplift you to success; you should treat them as business partners, and you should choose to work with someone who you think will do the most to help expand your commercial success.

If you’re a commercial success, you’re not a beggar. You’re not a worm. You’re not beholden to anyone for their transcendent grace. (Neither are you a god descending from on high to grace them with your magnificent presence either; don’t get carried away.) Remember that it’s a symbiotic relationship, and if you’re a proven commercial success, you have as much to offer the publishing industry as it has to offer you.

Act like an equal, because you are one.

Posted in elsewhere on the web | 15 Comments »

Squishy feelings

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

So, for those of you who haven’t heard the news: Harlequin opened a self (vanity) publishing arm. In response, RWA knocked them out as an eligible publisher. This has all kinds of implications for me, as an author who writes for a Harlequin imprint, and for other authors, and for RWA, and for romance publishing, and so forth.

How do I feel about this?

I feel like my best friend just kicked my dog.

Posted in elsewhere on the web | 21 Comments »

All men: seriously?

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

When I lived in the South many, many years ago, I had a long discussion about race with an elderly southern gentleman, who happened to teach mathematics at a community college. He was not, he insisted, a racist–no, he had supported the civil rights movement in the 1960s. But, he added, he could unequivocally state what he believed was a politically incorrect, but true, statement: Black people, he told me, were just dumber than white people. His proof of that was that in 30 years of teaching, he had never, ever had a black person get an A in his class.

Now, I hope you are as dumbfounded and horrified as I am by that revelation. I really do believe this person honestly believed he wasn’t a racist. But I’m also positive that his belief that black people were less intelligent had a huge impact on his grading and treatment of black people. I suspect he gave black people less credit on exams for identical performance, because he was convinced they just didn’t get it, no matter what their paper showed; I’m sure he gave them less time and attention in and out of class.

And I’m damned sure, that he shortchanged 30 years of black students by his attitude. It’s just simply not possible that not one black student ever deserved an A in his class. And instead of asking himself, “What am I doing to cause this unconscionable disparity?” he looked at an entire population and found them wanting.

A similar phenomenon was observed in orchestra hiring. The conventional wisdom was that women had smaller technique, and less artistic ability than men. It had nothing to do with sexism, the conductors who did the hiring insisted; women just weren’t as good as men, and they were selecting for quality. Political correctness was pointless. Then someone decided to implement a drastic technique–initial auditions were conducted behind a screen, so the conductor couldn’t see who was playing as he judged the merits of the performance. Needless to say, female participation in orchestras increased rapidly.

So when Publisher’s Weekly defends their all-male top 10 list by explaining that they chose what they believed to be the best stand-out books out there, but that they chose without regard to “political correctness,” you’ll have to excuse my bored sigh. Been there. Done that. Got the irrelevant T-Shirt.

I understand the argument about quality, and I don’t want Publisher’s Weekly (or anyone else) to bless any book with an imprimatur that is undeserved simply in the name of political correctness or inclusiveness or diversity. But their conclusion that including women on the list would simply be a matter of “political correctness” suggests to me that they’re asking themselves the wrong question. It looks like they’re asking themselves, “Why should we bend our standards to include women?” when they should be asking themselves, “Do our standards exclude women, and if so, are they good standards, and if not, how can we fix them?”

Posted in elsewhere on the web | 39 Comments »

The Case Against Mandatory Disclosure

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

The main argument I’ve heard for the FTC guidelines so far is this: “It’s just disclosure. How hard is it to disclose where you receive a book? Just paste something on your sidebar and you will be okay.” I am a strong believer in openness and transparency. I also believe in disclosure—if you will note, when I talk about books, I have always tried to work my relationship with the person into the conversation. But although I think that disclosure is generally a good idea, I think there are clear instances where whatever value we might gain as a society from disclosure is swamped by the negative aspects of that disclosure.

So let me tell you what I mean by this. I’m going to start with a person who doesn’t exist—at least, she doesn’t exist precisely as I describe her.

But imagine there’s an anonymous book blogger who calls herself Ms. Revels. Ms. Revels reviews young adult books with a mission: She wants to highlight books that are fun and entertaining for young adults, while still being clean enough for the parents. Ms. Revels’ reviews range the gamut. She glows about Ally Carter’s DON’T JUDGE A GIRL BY HER COVER, because of its proactive, positive message. She completely trashes Suzanne Collins’s THE HUNGER GAMES because of its violence. She gives a so-so to Scott Westerfeld’s UGLIES, because while it is violent and scary, she thinks the message about being comfortable with your own body is important for teenagers to hear.

Ms. Revels, however, has a secret. She is also a young adult author. She does not review her own books; she considers that ethically suspect (and she is trying not to be suspect). But she receives regular checks from Simon & Schuster and Random House (she has written for both over time), is friendly with editors from all the major houses, and as a fairly prominent author herself, she regularly receives ARCs and manuscript copies for her blurb (or, just in case she reads it and maybe likes it). The vast majority of her reviews come from these free copies.

Ms. Revels has not disclosed that on her site. She has not done it for one very simple reason: She has lambasted books that her own editor worked on. She has called “dangerous” books that people who are her friends have written.

She does so, because she firmly believes that teens should be taught that “clean” activities can be fun. Now, you may not agree with Ms. Revels’s philosophy. You may not like her. But that’s the burden of the First Amendment: we let people speak, even if we think what they are saying is a load of crock.

The requirement of disclosure would sink Ms. Revels. In order to meet the FTC’s disclosure requirements, she would have to issue a statement that she had written books for Simon & Schuster and Random House, and that she receives ARCs from all major houses. And that disclosure would be tantamount to a revelation of identity, because there aren’t many people who would fit that bill.

There is some value to the consumer in having that information about Ms. Revels. But Ms. Revels’s speech is entirely burdened by the FTC’s disclosure requirements: She must either provide information that divulges her identity, or quit speaking altogether.

For people outside the U.S., it’s hard to understand why anonymous/pseudonymous speech is given such a privileged place in our system of laws. It is, however, a large part of our culture. A major event in the Revolutionary war involved anonymous persons dumping tea in Boston Harbor. Advocates for the Constitution wrote “the Federalist Papers” under the pseudonym “Publius.” In more recent history, the Supreme Court held in 1958 that members of the NAACP had a First Amendment right to keep its membership rolls private, because members of the NAACP, if disclosed, might be subjected to abuse, ranging from lynching to burning crosses.

Under the First Amendment, we protect people who voice unpopular opinions from disclosing their identity. We think the opinions they have to share are more important than the value the public gets from the disclosure. And it is this that makes me quail from the FTC guidelines: The disclosure the FTC seeks, in some cases, requires a person to leave a trail of informational breadcrumbs leading to her identity, as a precondition for engaging in speech that is both politically and culturally valuable.

Let me give a somewhat less abstract example: Moonrat.

Moonrat talks about books on her blog. She is in publishing, so presumably, she gets many of these books for free. More importantly, if she ever discussed a book produced by her house or one of its subsidiaries, she would have to disclose her interest, and that means she would have to disclose her house. If she discussed a book produced by a friend of hers, who bought her coffee, she would have to disclose that. And that means, of course, that if she talked about books at all, she would have to divulge information that would make her identity a foregone conclusion.

Moonrat is anonymous, and we all know why: Because if she were not, she would be deluged with people telling her to buy their novel. Also, her authors would tear their hair out, and people would take all her rejections personally. Moonrat nonetheless provides a very valuable service, and I would be sorry to see her go away, or to discover that Moonrat might not be able to talk about books.

The book publishing industry is small, intimate, and interconnected. Sometimes, the only way for insiders to speak harsh truths about books is under the veil of pseudonymity.

Posted in elsewhere on the web, Legalese | 2 Comments »

Monday, October 5th, 2009

The FTC released guidelines today governing blogging about books. In those guidelines, it makes it clear that it wants bloggers to disclose to consumers their relationships with the horrible companies that give them books for review. As far as I can tell upon perusal of the FTC guidelines, those “horrible companies” include me, and “book bloggers” includes you. Yes, you, reading on this blog. Have you ever talked about books you got for free online? This applies to you.

Apparently, my giving you books could be construed as an act of “sponsorship,” and the FTC thus thinks it can regulate the resulting speech. The regulations it has promulgated are actually more stringent than those applied to print magazines and newspapers.

Let’s be honest. We’re talking social media here. Even if there was no giving of books, reviewers choose to review things because of the social context in which they encounter them. Jane has posted on Dear Author that she read a book on my recommendation (or on others, e.g., SB Sarah). She usually posts the context in which a book comes to her attention. Some bloggers include context; others don’t.

It’s also not a surprise that my acting like an idiot could have an effect on reviews. If I started writing regular rants on this blog saying, “Jane Litte is a poopy-head! Smart Bitch Sarah makes really lousy baklava!” bloggers would start thinking I was crazy, and would be less likely to read my books and review them. Especially true if they thought there were reviews were going to be negative, and they didn’t want to have to keep deleting comments from me that said, “Yah!!! You poopy head!”

Blogging is a social world, and the currency of the social world is trust. Not money. Not even free books. The truth of the matter is, if I can get people to trust me, they are overwhelmingly more likely to give me a try, free book or no.

This effect is so strong that it completely overwhelms the simple question of, did the blogger pay for the book? It’s certainly true in my case. I regularly blog about books I think people should read. And here’s a secret: I read all those books for free. But you would have to be dumber than dirt to read my posts and think, somehow, that Tessa Dare “sponsored” me. Confession: Tessa bought me dinner a couple of times. Other confession: I have bought her dinner, too, even though one time I had to douse her in ice water first to grab the check. To try to characterize our relationship as one of commercial sponsorship is beyond ludicrous. I couldn’t even attempt to disclose what Tessa has given me, or for that matter, what I have given her. It’s called “friendship,” not “sponsorship.”

I also read an early copy of Victoria Dahl’s ONE WEEK AS LOVERS. Vicky is also a friend. She is a friend in part because I followed her around meeping piteously at her talent for years until she took pity on me. That’s not commercial either.

I’ve given people copies of my debut anthology for a number of reasons. Because they’re my friends. Because they won them in giveaways. Because I hope they will like it. Because I think they have fantabulous taste in books and respect that. To relegate this relationship to one of “commerce” or “sponsorship” is to do violence to the heart of social media. FTC, it’s called “social” for a reason.

So I am not going to add disclaimers to any of my discussions of books, either on my blog or on the website. It would be clearly stupid to do so, and while I am generally not a fan of scoffing at the law, I think that if the FTC conducts its case by case analysis and concludes there is any sort of sponsorship going on in my case, it is insane.

But if anyone was wondering, from here on out, every copy of a book I send out will contain the following disclaimer:

THE FTC MADE ME DO THIS

Under new FTC guidelines, bloggers and authors can be held liable for making statements without disclosing the existence of a “sponsoring” relationship. The FTC seems to think that under some circumstances, my giving you a free copy of this book could constitute “sponsorship.”

So let’s just make things clear for the FTC: This book is a gift. I do not expect or care whether you do anything with it.

You can give this away to a friend. You can use it to prop up the short leg on your desk. If you would like, you can even do something radical with it, like read it. If you read it, you can choose to mention it to other people, or not. You can choose to review it, or not. You can review it as harshly or as positively as you like. If you review it harshly, or you review it positively, or you do not review it all and instead use it as a mass-market doorstop, it doesn’t matter to me.

Posted in book recommendations, copyright thoughts, elsewhere on the web | 14 Comments »

Over at Carolyn Jewel’s

Monday, October 5th, 2009

Today, I am over at Carolyn Jewel’s blog, telling an inordinate number of lies about myself, and my release, “This Wicked Gift.” Come over and say hello, and try and identify which one of my statements are lies. There are more of them than you think.

By the way, Carolyn Jewel’s follow-up to the marvelous “Scandal” comes out tomorrow. I have been really looking forward to this book ever since I read the awesome excerpt on Carolyn’s website. Go and read it, and tell me it doesn’t make you shiver with longing for the book!

Posted in elsewhere on the web | 2 Comments »

Open letter to sellers of eBooks

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Dear sellers of eBooks,

You may have seen my script that automatically links to 9 print book e-tailers, given one ISBN (you can see it in action on my books page, here, or on the sidebar of my blog). The reason I can do that so simply is that all of those e-tailers, from Amazon to Barnes and Noble to Indiebound, all make it easy to link to an individual item by ISBN. That is, you can access the page for my Christmas anthology by clicking on a link that looks like this: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0373774273

Want a different book? Just change the ISBN. Having (mostly) conquered my online print book script, this last weekend I devoted some time to creating a similar thing for ebooks. It made sense. I like ebooks; I would like to make it easy for other people to buy ebooks from my website. But I discovered there was no way to set up anything similar. Why?

Here is how Books on Board lists its product page: http://www.booksonboard.com/index.php?BODY=viewbook&BOOK=513519

See that “BOOK=513519″ at the end? If I wanted to automate a link to Books on Board, I would have to figure out where that last number, 513519, comes from. The ISBN for the digital edition is: 9781426840616. And that appears to be related to the book by . . . absolutely nothing. I love Books on Board. They have a fantastic selection and great prices (also, full disclosure: at the Rogue Digital Conference, I won $200 in free books from them). But because they link to books using an entirely inscrutable number, it is hard for me to automate links. (I can’t even automate a search to BoB, because searching on ISBN yields no results.)

Here is another store I wish I could automate: eHarlequin. I love eHarlequin as a site. They have great deals, including free books, and hello, vintage eHarlequin releases this October? Yes, please. Also, Harlequin is my publisher. I would love to be able to automate a link to an eHarlequin eBook. This is the eHarlequin link to the eBook version of Gena Showalter’s The Darkest Whisper: http://ebooks.eharlequin.com/D9DBB432-4D08-410F-BD61-2C912A2A4748/10/126/en/ContentDetails.htm?ID=A19D6AFC-916A-4BB9-A9CE-B56411DB4427

If you snoop around a bit, you find that the first inscrutable number (and yes, a mixture of arabic numerals and letters from A-F is a number–just a hexadecimal one) is some sort of a web-tracking device. You can replace it with anything, and the website will continue to return a result. But that does leave us with the second inscrutable number, A19D6AFC-916A-4BB9-A9CE-B56411DB4427.

What is that thing? How can I generate it, without going to their website and looking it up? The Sony eBook store uses another inscrutable number, usually in the form of R-400000000000000169063.

Barnes and Noble gets this right. If you want to link to an eBook on B&N’s website, it’s simple. You just link to this: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=9780345516848

See how easy that is? The only inscrutable number they use is the actual inscrutable number that is attached to the electronic format.

Now, what does this mean, oh sellers of eBooks? Well, it means when I write my eBook script, I grumble. A lot. I have to choose a small number of eBook retailers to link to–there are more e-tailers out there than there is space to gracefully link to. So who am I going to choose? I’m going to link to eHarlequin, because they’re my publisher and they’re awesome. I’m going to link to Books on Board, because I like them. I’m going to link to the Sony store, because I think they have a beautiful eReader. I’m going to link to the Kindle version. I’m going to link to each of these places, even though it means I will have to go and search out an inscrutable number for every single one. I’m going to do all those things for my own books, because, well, I want people to buy my books from whatever outlet they buy books from.

But I’m also going to link to Barnes and Noble and Powell’s, an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, because they made it really easy for me to do so.

On a more than occasional basis, I link to other books. And it is far too much work for me to go in and look up five inscrutable numbers every time I link to another book. I am too lazy, and it takes too much time. So I wish you would make it easy for me to try and sell people your eBooks. If someone points me in the direction of an eBook store that allows me to easily link by ISBN, I will add them to my script. It takes almost zero work for me to do that. For those other books, I won’t link to Books on Board. I wish I could, but it takes too much work.

So, booksellers, if you implemented a simple redirect–given an ISBN as input, it spits out the single-item page as output, just like Barnes and Noble and Powells–I could automate my links to your site, and that means you would get more incoming links.

I want to link to you. You want me to link to you. Make it easy for me to do so, and I will link to you forever, with every book I mention on my website. And if I’m wrong–if you have made it easy to link to your site via ISBN, and all my snooping around hasn’t uncovered it–please shoot me an e-mail, and I’ll be happy to add you to my general script.

P.S. I do share my scripts–and in my copious spare time (namely, when I need a break from writing), I am actually working on a WordPress plugin to do the same. I value inclusiveness. I want to include you. Make it easy for me to do so.

Posted in elsewhere on the web | 5 Comments »

Read Between the Lines

Sunday, July 26th, 2009

There’s been a lot of discussion about Justine Larbalestier’s Liar. For those of you who don’t know, the cover of her book depicts a big-eyed white (some think Asian) girl with long hair, when the main character of her book is black with short hair. Naturally, she was upset. But I’ve seen several people say that if Larbalestier was so upset about the cover of Liar, she shouldn’t have said she liked it first.

I’m a teacher, so I’ve written letters of recommendation. For some students, I have no difficulty writing good things. But 66% of the people who have asked me for letters of recommendation have been in the bottom half of the class I’ve taught. Some never came to office hours or asked a question in class. “I’ll write you a letter,” I would say dubiously, “but is there anyone who could write you a more enthusiastic letter?” (sidenote: Every single one of those people said, “No, there isn’t. I need you to do it.” That sound you hear is my heart breaking.)

I have also read literally hundreds, if not thousands, of letters of recommendations. I have read only one letter that ever contained bad things about a student. (“John,” this extremely famous person wrote, “is a whiny baby. He makes appointments and never shows up to them. I told him I wouldn’t recommend him, but he listed me on a form and now career services keeps badgering me. I wish him ill.”)

The rest of them, though, are not necessarily helpful to the student. I know this, because I have written those letters. I am entirely positive. I am also entirely truthful. I tell people in advance that if they have other options, they should use them, and I will do my best… The letter may say good things, but when the good things it highlights are trivial (“I love Lisa’s hair ribbons! They brighten my class!”), it doesn’t do much to recommend the person’s intellectual capacity.

Authors, talking publicly about their covers, are the same way. An author cannot honestly say, “I hate my cover” in part because she doesn’t want to hurt sales and marketing’s feelings, and also in part because even if she hates her cover, she doesn’t want to point out the flaws in it to anyone who might otherwise buy the book. Saying “hate my cover” is akin to saying “Don’t buy my book.” So what an author does instead of voicing her discontent, if she is honest, is praise the hair ribbons. And that’s a significant tell.

Here is an enthusiastic recommendation of a cover: Justine Larbalestier talking about her Australian cover. Here is what Justine says about her Australian cover for Liar:

I love it more than I can say. It captures the book so perfectly. I asked for something spare, iconic, cool and dark. Possibly a typographical treatment. Bruno exceeded my expectations by miles. I keep staring at it cause it makes me so very happy.

Notice how three of those six sentences start with “I.” “I love it more than I can say.” “I keep staring at it cause it makes me so very happy.” The rest all talk about her feelings about the cover as well: “It captures the book so perfectly.” “Bruno exceeded my expectations.” This is a real, positive recommendation from an author. She loves it. She keeps staring at it.

Now let’s take Justine’s post on the U.S. cover. It’s a little longer, and needs a little more decoding, but notice what Justine never mentions:

This cover was so well received by sales and marketing at Bloomsbury that for the first time in my career a cover for one of my books became the image used for the front of the catalogue. Front of the catalogue! One of my books! Pretty cool, huh?

Translation: Sales likes it.

Apparently all the big booksellers went crazy for it. My agent says it was a huge hit in Bologna. And at TLA many librarians and teenagers told me they adore this cover. In fact one girl said she thinks the US cover of Liar is the best cover she’s ever seen! Wasn’t that sweet of her?

Translation: Other people besides sales like it.

It was designed by Danielle Delaney the genius responsible for the paperback cover of How To Ditch Your Fairy. Have I mentioned that’s my fave cover I’ve ever had?

Translation: I’ve liked other covers that this artist has done.

Here’s hoping this cover helps Liar fly off the shelves in North America!

Translation: I at least hope we get hair ribbons, because if this cover doesn’t sell books, it’s doing nothing for me.

Nowhere in this post does Justine say she likes the cover. What she says is very careful weasel-wording, disguised as an endorsement, when in fact she very carefully doesn’t say a word in support of the cover. Not one sentence begins with “I.” Instead, she mentions a lot of other people who like it. Next time an author talks about her cover, pay attention to what she doesn’t say. If she doesn’t say “I love it!” she probably doesn’t love it.

For the record: I love the covers for both my novella and my debut novel. This is not intended as self-referential in the slightest. I love my covers. When my publisher sent my cover for Proof, I printed it off and wrapped it around another book just to see what it would look like (Elizabeth Hoyt’s To Beguile A Beast, by the way, for good luck.) And it looked fabulous. I wanted to buy it right then and there.

Posted in elsewhere on the web, publishing | 6 Comments »

Automagic Multiple buy links

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

Apropos this lovely wordpress plugin, which generates multiple purchase links for blogs in a pop-up format, I am reminded that I came up with a somewhat similar implementation for my website. You can see it in action on my bookshelf page, right under the heading for “This Wicked Gift.”

Goal: Have links to a number of different websites so that users can purchase books from the vendor of their choice, instead of funneling them into one or two options.

Here’s how you can use the same thing on your website. Caveats: You need a website that runs PHP. (If your website can run wordpress, it can run PHP. These days, almost everything can.)

Here’s what you need to do (after the jump).

(more…)

Posted in elsewhere on the web, publishing | 7 Comments »

Twitter Book Club!

Monday, April 27th, 2009

The romance-review-o-sphere has been going fairly gaga over Jennifer Ashley‘s The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie.

I am heavily mired, in editing my second book right now, but I am going to take a break from the editing tonight to (a) attend my local RWA chapter meeting and (b) read the book–the blurb sounds amazing, and the excerpt looks incredible. And the buzz over on twitter has been incredible for this book.

Twitter, you say? What’s twitter? The basic idea is that it’s a microblogging platform. You can make 140-character posts. 140 characters is not a lot, and a lot of people make fun of the application saying that it basically allows you to post what you had for breakfast. Well, yes. It does. It also prevents you from being a pompous windbag. But the real value-added of twitter, of course, is not that it allows thousands of individuals to post 140-character descriptions of breakfast, but that it allows you to have lengthy, long-ranging conversations where information propagates extraordinarily quickly.

So when Diana Peterfreund suggested that we have a twitter book club about Lord Ian, I was all over that. A conversation about books? Yes, please.

There are some problems with a book club on twitter, namely, since the micro-blog is broadcast to everyone, you could inadvertently send spoilers to a bunch of people who have not yet read the book. Never fear; we have a solution to that. It’s called ROT-13 encoding, and it’s scarier than it sounds. The basic idea is this: ROT-13 encoding is one of the simplest cyphers you can imagine. It takes the alphabet, and it shifts it over by 13 characters. So if “A” is the first letter in the alphabet, “A” in ROT-13 is “N”–the 14th letter of the alphabet. “N” in ROT-13 is the 27th letter of the alphabet–and since the alphabet loops, that would be the first letter of the alphabet. So you can do is post spoilers in ROT-13, like this: Thrff jung! Crbcyr guvax Ybeq Vna vf znq!

And that way, people who don’t want to be spoiled can avoid reading anything they don’t want to read.

Of course, you probably want to be able to read the spoilers, if you’ve read the book. And so what you need is an easy way to encode/decode ROT-13 (if you paid careful attention to the description above, you’ll notice that encoding and decoding is identical). There are several ways to do that. The easiest is to use Firefox and install Leet Key, a plugin that (among other things) can decode ROT-13. Once you have the plugin installed (and you’ve restarted firefox), you can highlight text in ROT-13 (or the text you want to put into ROT-13), right click with your mouse, choose “Leet Key” then “Text Transformers” then “ROT-13.” If you don’t use FireFox, or don’t want to install another plugin, you can use this webpage instead.

So here’s how you participate.

1. Get a twitter account (if you don’t already have it)

2. To make sure people can find your tweets, mark your book-club discussion with the hashtag #lordian

3. You can use http://www.tweetchat.com to follow the #lordian hashtag, or search.twitter.com; alternately, Dear Author will have a #lordian hashtag discussion in the sidebar.

4. If you post a spoiler, you must encode it in ROT-13.

5. The fun starts tomorrow afternoon! Come join in!

Posted in book recommendations, elsewhere on the web | 5 Comments »