Comments on: ARRC09 Round-up (Part 2)

By: Productivity Commission expected to recommend open market for books - Book Thingo

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 01:42:48 +0000

[...] St store to Amazon is misleading. But comparing Dymocks online to Booktopia makes more sense, and when I asked Booktopia about its opinion on PIR, I was told it didn’t even matter. Why does it matter so much to [...]

By: Book Bizzo #14 The post-petition edition - Book Thingo

Book Bizzo #14 The post-petition edition - Book Thingo — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 05:18:25 +0000

[...] fiction expectations while reading a literary novel (per Stephanie Laurens’s speech here), so some of his criticisms about the prose are probably a little [...]

By: Coalition for Cheaper Books: 10 reasons why I won’t be signing your petition - Book Thingo

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:37:38 +0000

[...] me for not believing that booksellers are in the business of lowering their prices. And in my chat with Tony from Booktopia at the Australian Romance Readers Convention, I asked point blank if he had a position on parallel [...]

By: Allison

Allison — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:06:42 +0000

Unfortunately they didn’t get “This one time, at band camp”, where they talked about where their ideas came from. For some reason, that one didn’t record :(

I wanted to go to the ones you outlined, but I couldn’t pass up Paranormal and Romantic Suspense.

By: Kat

Kat — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:54:48 +0000

Marg, I kind of made a joke about it to one of the authors when I spoke briefly with her at the signing, and she said something to the effect that it wasn’t all bloggers. I get that, but anyone who actually understood the comment about champagne flutes and Bennett’s review knew which blog they were talking about, and I think on the whole that blog has published more positive articles than negative ones. The authors seemed to forget the regular reviews that never generate any controversy.

Allison, I’m looking forward to listening to the audio. I missed all the famous US author speeches/panels, except for the Q&A with Sherrilyn and Dianna at the end of ARRC.

By: Allison

Allison — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 11:45:07 +0000

MJ was hilarious! She poked fun at just about everyone and everything to do with getting published. The subject was Why Writing Sucks. Because:

* You get blamed for things outside your control, like cover art.
* People feel free to criticise anything you put out there. MJ’s favourite criticism of her work is “MaryJanice is smart enough to have written a better book.” To which her response was, “No, I’m not! You’re wrong, and if you’re wrong about that, what else are you wrong about, beeyotch?”
* Some people take the books too seriously, like, “Where was the cat for the last few books? It’s disgraceful that the author would lose track of a character like that.”
* Years of rejections and the crappy day jobs you take to support yourself until you do get published.

But at the end of it, despite all the reasons why writing sucks, writers do it because they have to or their heads would explode. Her advice was to write what you know (which is why she writes about tall ex-secretaries) and never to give up.

By: Marg

Marg — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:01:39 +0000

I felt uncomfortable when bloggers were mentioned as well. I know that they were talking about accuracy and how readers somehow correct something that isn’t actually wrong, but it did feel very negative about bloggers as a whole. I wanted to jump up and say something about not all bloggers being about controversies but it didn’t feel like the right moment!