Rants

Racism in Japan: Missing the Point

Posted by Lora Maroney on April 18, 2012
Posted in: Rants. Tagged: , , . 18 comments

"JAPANESE ONLY" - Taken by me, outside a bar in Kobe (arguably one of the most internationalized cities in Japan)

 

Here are some things that happen to me, as a non-Japanese person living in Japan, on a regular basis:

1) I constantly have to watch what I say, do, wear, etc. when in public, because I know that if I’m not careful, people will judge my entire race by my actions.

When a Japanese person does something impolite in public, people say, “Wow, he’s a rude person”. If I do something impolite in public, people say, “Wow, foreigners are rude people”. The same thing goes with breaking a rule; if I disobey a rule, or trespass across culture lines, even unknowingly, people will assume that all foreigners are ignorant (at best) or completely lacking in manners. I dress more conservatively than I would normally, because otherwise people will make judgements about the moral qualities of foreigners. I dress more professionally than I might otherwise, in case people think I’m a criminal. But even so …

2) People think I’m a criminal.

For example, I volunteer at an orphanage, and last fall I asked the kids if they’d gone trick-or-treating. It’s not a thing in Japan, but a few kindergartens have started picking up the idea, and I thought that if they didn’t know, I could give them a fun culture lesson. They said no, because their teacher told them that foreigners put poison in Hallowe’en candy in order to kill Japanese kids. I asked if this had happened in the news recently; they said no, but their teacher told them it happened all the time. Or, if a news story breaks about a criminal act (a rape, murder, robbery), people watching will say “Ah, that was a foreigner, I bet”. If it is, the news will splash it all over the page; if it’s a Japanese person, no mention of race will make it into the article at all. If a foreigner is charged with a crime, they will be convicted, full stop, whether they did it or not.

3) People stare, or cross the street when they see me coming.

Self-explanatory, really. Little kids and elderly people do the most staring; the middle demographics tend to be a bit more internationalised and tend to take things in stride. But little kids will constantly whisper and poke their mothers and say things like “look, Mama, Mama look, a foreign person!”, and most of the time, if I’m on the train, even if it’s packed, there will be empty seats on either side of me. I’ve sat in crowded cafes where people are standing in order to drink their tea, but there are two empty chairs on each side of me.

4) I’ve been turned away by restaurants or hot springs that are “full”, even when they’re clearly empty.

This doesn’t happen much, but when it does, it’s always a shock. Sometimes it happens when I’m in a group, and the proprietor doesn’t want to deal with what he assumes will be a raucous crowd. Not always, though. I’ve had it happen when there were only two of us, and only one or two occupied seats. Each time the proprietor stands firm, even if I attempt to argue, and eventually I just have to leave. The rest of the day, no matter what happens, is automatically ruined.

Many hot springs in rural areas are even worse, as they display “no foreigners” signs right out in the open and don’t even pretend it’s about anything else. Many bars (especially in areas with American naval bases) have “Japanese only” signs on the door. If a foreign-born naturalised citizen enters, they will be told their citizenship doesn’t matter, just how they look. Sometimes it’s funny — my foreign friends and I joke that we always get the bath to ourselves, since as soon as we enter it every Japanese person gets up and leaves — but even then it isn’t, really.

5) People think I’m taking money from Japanese people.

I’m an English teacher on a contract position; I pay Japanese taxes, contribute to Japanese social security, pay into the national pension, and contribute to the national health insurance system. I buy Japanese goods, which supports the Japanese economy. Yet at the same time, people tell me that I am taking money from Japanese people (there’s actually a Japanese word for people like me that translates as ‘tax parasite’), and that all foreigners only come to Japan to siphon money out and to send it to family back home. The idea that foreigners might live here permanently and become a fixed part of the Japanese economy is a completely baffling one.

6) I won’t ever belong.

If I stayed in Japan permanently, and spent the time and money to attain citizenship, people would still ask me where I’m from, and when I’m going home, and how smart I am to know Japanese and be able to use chopsticks. If I had children here, said children would never be treated as Japanese, but merely the offspring of someone who doesn’t belong here. The first question anyone ever asks is “Where are you from?”, and that wouldn’t change even if the person was born in Japan.

7) The police can stop me on the street based on nothing but my skin colour.

Foreigners have to carry identification with them at all times (either a passport, for a traveller, or an alien registration card, for a resident). If we don’t, and we’re stopped by a police officer who asks for it, we will be arrested. This doesn’t happen to me (a white girl) as often as it does people of colour; one friend I know, who’s part Maori, got stopped at least once a week, often while his white friends didn’t. I brought this up in a discussion class and asked the students why; when they were stumped, the Japanese co-teacher prompted them, saying, “This is because Japanese police know that Japanese people are kind, while foreign people are often bad people, so it’s better to be suspicious”.

Foreigners who have become citizens of Japan do not have to carry said identification by law, but do anyway, because police do not believe them when they say they are citizens, and they’ll be arrested anyway until they can prove it. When this happens, the police will tell them that they should carry ID anyway, because they look suspicious, and it will save time.

 

I could go on, but I think you get the point. It can get pretty awful, and while it happens enough that it turns into something you learn to ignore, at times it bubbles to the surface like a giant vat of discouragement. When groups of foreigners who’ve lived here for a little while get together, inevitably this sort of thing gets tossed around. People share stories about being barred from hotels or hot springs, of passersby shouting racial epithets from sidewalks, of being ignored at service counters, of being told they can’t do this or that because they’re foreigners. Many foreigners (myself included) then launch into tirades about the ingrained racism or xenophobia of Japanese society.

But here’s the thing. These are things that visible minorities in privileged nations like the United States (and Canada, though we like to pretend we’re a ‘post-racism’ society) go through every day. The fact that I, a white person with a good economic background, have to go through them in a country that I choose to live and work in for a set period of time, is nothing compared to what people do in the place where they call home forever.

I realised this a while back during the height of the Trayvon Martin debacle, and I had to sit down. I’m ashamed that it took me so long to make that connection, but that’s what happens with privilege — you can’t see it because you’re inside it. My own lack of privilege in Japan was perfectly easy to spot, but as for what that meant back home, well, that took a little longer. Apologies to anyone, privileged or no, who might be rolling their eyes at how obvious this is.

Sometimes I think it would be a good thing for racists back home to come in Japan and see what it’s like, to have someone judge your worth by your skin colour. To see if it would jog them, like it did me, into realising what it’s like for people they usually don’t give a second thought about. For them to think, “Wow, they’re judging me just because of what I look like, and making assumptions about my entire race and culture, most of which are incorrect — and that doesn’t feel very nice. I wonder if that’s what it’s like to be a person of colour in Arizona.”

Except I know it wouldn’t actually work. They, like many of my friends, like me for the longest time, would just rant about how unfair it is, and never look to the larger implications. The only thing these people would take back home is how badly white people are treated abroad. Then they’d turn around and do the exact same thing all over again to minorities there, and not even think about it.

Racism in Japan is a very real, very deep-rooted problem. I’ve had students who happily chat with me tell me to my face that think foreigners should not be allowed to live and work in Japan — when I remind them who I am, they say they don’t mean me, they mean foreigners, but can’t unpack that statement if I challenge them. It affects foreign policy, it affects international relations, and now — as Japan is faced with an aging society yet refusing to bring in foreigners to fill in the gaps in their work force — it affects the economy.

But the answer for foreigners living here is not to stick it out, complain, then rush back to the racial utopia of our own countries, content that it’s so much better there. Because it isn’t, and we need to stop kidding ourselves.

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Rape is Okay if You Feed Her Strawberries: Distressing Trends in Reviews of WITHER

Posted by Lora Maroney on December 30, 2011
Posted in: Books, Rants, Writing. Tagged: , , , . 3 comments
Wither (DeStefano novel)

Image via Wikipedia

So I read WITHER (Chemical Gardens #1) by Lauren DeStefano, and … I didn’t like it. Maybe later I’ll do up a post about why, because the reasons are not restricted to DeStefano but rather endemic to the YA dystopia genre as a whole, but for now, I’ll say this: her writing is absolutely beautiful, her way with words something to be aspired to, so it’s a shame that her world-building is so unbelievably shoddy.

At any rate, I was perusing the reviews on Goodreads when I came across a trend that was, well, unsettling. Many reviewers disliked the main character, Rhine. Personally, I did not find Rhine compelling, so I was interested to see what other people had to say about her. What they said is that Rhine annoyed them because what’s the big deal? What the heck was she complaining about? Whereas most people live in abject poverty — Rhine and her brother once found an orphan frozen to death on their front stoop — Rhine now gets to live in a magical fairyland of beautiful clothes, exotic foods, and untold riches. Wah, wah, wah, poor little rich girl, the reviewers say; suck it up.

Fair enough, except Rhine is a 16-year-old child bride, kidnapped from her home and sold to a clueless wealthy man with two other girls, expected to bear his children and offer up sex whenever he wants it.

There’s a word for this, guys: marital rape. The only reason it isn’t statutory is because the laws have been changed to make 13 the age of consent.

There is no amount of strawberries, candies, bubble baths and diamond gowns that makes having to provide sex to anyone else okay. Several reviewers said they would be thrilled to be in her situation, and could not sympathize with her because she was dissatisfied. What’s so bad about having to put out a few times a week — especially when the guy is young and hot — when the alternative is scrounging for food in the ruins of Manhattan? Just lie back, spread ‘em, and enjoy the perks, for pete’s sake.

I don’t even know what to say to these people, except: gross, and ew, and no. It reminds me of the story of a Buffy fan who screamed at James Marsters that she would happily let him rape her — this leads me to believe that when it comes to sexual assault, a lot of people have no effing clue what they’re talking about.

This is a girl who was ripped from her home, who is a virgin, who is afraid, who desperately misses her twin brother, and who cannot be persuaded into thinking that wealth and comfort are an appropriate exchange for giving up her sexual autonomy. And people think she’s crazy.

Yes, this life could be a tantalizing alternative for someone living in poverty — but that doesn’t stop it from being icky, due to the tremendous imbalance of power and control in that situation. It’s even more icky when people think that the choice should be removed, that it’s unreasonable for a girl to not want to be a sex-slave. (This is the part where my inner monologue turns into Sassy Gay Friend: “What – what – what are you doing? Look at your life! Look at your choices!”)

It also ties into a larger social problem, which is this — “It’s not a problem for me, so I don’t see why it should be for anyone else.” Just because one person sees no problem in trading sex for luxury does not make that a valid choice for everyone. This is not an okay argument ever, but I see it all the time, in discussions of gender, or politics, or religion, or pretty much anywhere on the Internet.

These discussions raise huge red flags for issues of consent and sexual autonomy obligation in society that make me really uncomfortable. We are a sexually-liberated society (to an extent) and that is a good thing (sometimes). But do we really want to be in a place that shames a young, terrified girl for saying no to being coerced into sex? Do we want to belittle someone who is hesitant to hand over not just her virginity but the rights to her own body just because someone else gives her stuff? I sure don’t.

Sexual freedom is about the ability to say no, and to have that no be respected, just as much as it is about saying yes without shame.

It frightens me that people are willing to look at a book involving the wholesale trade and enslavement of young girls in exchange for wealth and privilege, and see no problem with it.  Maybe it’s “just a book”, but the people writing these reviews are real people who live in the real world, and I’m aghast to see this attitude spreading. I see it on the Internet, but also in scarier places like politics and law enforcement. Look what happens to prostitutes. Look what happens to rape victims (sorry, “rape accusers”).

The premise of this book is absolutely ridiculous, but the social rules are, apparently, all too plausible for many — and that, my friends, is terrifying.

The Allure of Fast-Track Publishing: Have a Little Respect

Posted by Lora Maroney on December 19, 2011
Posted in: Books, Indie Publishing, Rants, Writing. Tagged: , , . 7 comments

Editing? But what if I reread and find out my book sucks? Better send it off now!

I’d just like to start by saying I am not aiming fingers at any particular demographic. I have noticed this with self-publishing, POD publishing, and people who want to get into brick & mortar publishing as well. I’ve noticed it with writers and readers. It’s an epidemic, and it needs to stop. What am I talking about? This attitude:

Who cares about quality? It’s just an ebook. It’s what, 99c? Just be proud I had the guts to put my work out there. I’m published, and that’s what counts.

Say it with me, baby-Vader: NOOOOOOOOOO!

The problem is, we — readers, writers — don’t respect the art enough anymore. Yes, I know, I’m an elitist jerk who sits around in turtlenecks and drinks imported coffee while bemoaning whatever it is these people do (spoiler: I do none of these things). But honestly, we really, really don’t. In my previous posts on ‘sales over story’, I pointed out that discussions in the book industry are revolving a lot on who made it big, and not so much about whose stories are changing the world. As a spinoff of this, I’m noticing a rather worrisome trend that it doesn’t matter if it’s good, or if you’ve worked to make it the best it can be, or if you just let your cat walk all over the keyboard and exported to PDF — that doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s out there.

This is absolutely insane.

What I don’t understand, as someone who writes and edits and struggles with knowing when a book is good enough to send it out there, is how anyone can have so little respect for themselves and their work that they think this is okay. How anyone who calls themselves a writer, anyone who claims to love books (I am talking to YOU, million-copies-on-Amazon guy who I still refuse to name and give more press) can be happy with churning out what they know is a sub-standard product. Do people not have pride? Do people really think they can’t do any better? Do people not want to make their book a worthy addition to the already overflowing pool of literature, or do they just want to urinate over the side and say that counts? I don’t get it.

What does get my goat is that if I attempt to have this conversation with those people, their trump card is, “Yeah, but I’m published, and you’re not, so who cares what you think?”

This is wrong — so unbelievably, excruciatingly wrong. The idea that releasing a bad book online, and perhaps making a few dollars from it, somehow trumps taking time to create a good story, and being proud when it’s released, is hurtful.

Rushing out your unedited manuscript and saying quality doesn’t matter is like thinking the fastest possible orgasm is the best way to have sex.

Yes, I know that bad books will eventually fade into obscurity while good books will rise to the top. Unfortunately, I think this attitude gives those people too much slack. I’ve recently seen a spate of posts on various writing forums where people are directly uploading their unedited manuscripts into Smashwords or Amazon or wherever else, and demanding praise. Other writers are then applauding them for their ‘courage’, and praising their ‘effort’. If someone does try to bring a little realism to this party — that this isn’t publishing, this is making a photocopy and then tossing the pages over the side of an overpass into the street below and hoping someone else can make sense of the mess — then the original poster and the other hand-shakers pounce on that person, calling them a big ol’ meanie poop-face who just doesn’t want other people to taste success.

Because it’s not just about these writers; it’s about a general culture of approbation that’s developing. Readers are being conditioned to expect nothing from ebooks. No wonder readers don’t want to pay more than $3.99 for a book — they’re not going to read it again, or treasure it, and if it has typos and grammar errors, or myriad plot holes, or unbelievable characters, or a hackneyed plot, eh, whatever, it was just a dollar. Who cares?

What ends up happening is that writers will use this as an excuse for their bad writing — by saying, “I wrote this in 24 hours”, or “I didn’t edit this at all”, it’s as good as saying, “You’re buying this car as-is. If the transmission quits when you’re halfway down the street, don’t blame me!” It’s hiding behind obvious — fixable! — flaws so that anyone who points out said flaws must be some sort of jerkfaced pedant. This is not a good attitude for writers to have. It means they will accept no criticism, constructive or otherwise, because they “know” the work isn’t good. It means that other readers will leap in and say “It’s 99c, what did you expect? If you want quality, go find some elitistly-published elitist book, you elitist!”

When people leap over all the middle stuff — editing, revising, making a book better — in order to get the “I’m published!” badge, it shows disrespect to themselves and their work, but also to the readers — that readers deserve no better. When readers shrug and buy the book because, eh, whatever, they’re agreeing.

It’s offensive to me, it’s offensive to readers,  it’s offensive to every self-published author who worked their butt off to write a great book and get it out there, only for everyone else to compare them to these people, and it’s offensive to people who went through the soul-sucking process of querying and getting an agent. I don’t care if people publish with an agent and an editor and a publishing house, or if they print off the book at home, bind it by hand, and walk it over to every bookstore in town. I honestly don’t. What I care about is whether the book is good. Anyone who doesn’t is spitting in the face of everyone else who actually works to create something worth reading.

I know I sound like a raging traditionalist, and maybe I am, but I know way too many people who are genuinely talented, and who are working to get their books published — whether through brick & mortar or through other means — for me to be proud of someone who vomits up breakfast, dumps it on a plate, and calls themselves a chef.

EDIT: All right, this is funny –

u mad, bro?

Fantasy Writers: No, Really, Stop Raping Your Women!

Posted by Lora Maroney on December 10, 2011
Posted in: Books, Rants. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 22 comments

Trigger warnings, as indicated by the title.

This is a follow-up piece to this post, where I talked about my dislike of the “women in fantasy novels get raped a lot” trope. Look at the TV Trope page of Rape Tropes. It’s terrifying.

Women in fantasy don’t just get raped; they get raped badly. I’m not talking about the severity — I mean they get raped for reasons that dissatisfy me as a reader, and as a woman whose friends and family have suffered through that horrible experience.

Women in fantasy get raped because the author needs to show how evil a character is; because a female character is too competent/intimidating and therefore can’t be menaced in any other fashion (such as getting kidnapped) and rape is the only way to bring her down; because the character needs a Tragic Backstory (TM); because the author can’t think of any other way to have the hero and heroine fall in love — and for many, many other reasons. Some of them are legitimate; some authors write rape scenes in believable, understandable ways and deal with them properly. Or so I’ve been told — I’m still looking.

The post got picked up by two lovely book bloggers, Natalie of Coffee and a Book Chick and and Grace of Feeding My Book Addiction, and we had some interesting discussions. I decided to make a post about some of these conversations, rather than leave them scattered all over the place.

1.) Why focus your rants on rape in fantasy, rather than in historical fiction, or contemporary YA fiction, or anywhere else?

Simple: historical fiction, contemporary YA, mainstream, literary fiction, whatever all happen in real life. They are based on real-world Earth, in real-world Earth societies where rape was (and still is) a terrifying and important aspect. Historical fiction dealing with the past often includes rape because it was very, very present in those societies. YA often deals with rape because girls are raped all the time, every day, and very few people seem to notice or do anything about it. I don’t “pick on” those genres because it makes sense to be there.

Fantasy — or any speculative fiction genre — on the other hand, unless it’s based on alternate-history Earth, has no such excuse. It’s a made-up society in a made-up world, so it doesn’t have the same justification. If fantasy authors used rape in their novels as a means of deconstructing rape in real life — just as other races (dwarves, elves, what have you) are often used as commentary for race relations here — then I would have less of a problem, but they don’t. Characters are raped because rape happens.

2.) Rape in fantasy is realistic.

No. No it is not.

As I said above, rape in other genres gets — well, not a pass, but at least not an automatic ‘no’ from me — because it exists in a society where rape is unfortunately prevalent. People argue that this is the same in fantasy — but when they say “realistic”, what they mean is “consistent with the world-rules of this entirely made-up universe”, and that is not the same thing.

Rape in fantasy is not realistic because the author created the world. One of two things happened here: 1) the author chose to write a world where women get raped all the time and it’s no big deal, or 2) the author thinks of rape as no big deal and didn’t even consider that it shouldn’t have a place in their world. Both options are problematic to me. Authors create wonderfully stylized, complex, inordinately unique worlds — but they still can’t get over the idea that women don’t need to be raped every time the story needs to show that things are getting serious. Why is this?

“Rape is there because this society is brutal and horrible and this is an illustration of that” is not good enough — especially when the raped women are given little to no consideration by the author or any of the characters.

3.) It may be fantasy, but it’s based off medieval England, and that had rape, so it’s understandable.

But why? Why why why are white, male authors so obsessed with a point in time when white males were politically dominant, sexually violent, and unoppos — oh, I see. Never mind.

I’m half-kidding, but you see what I mean. It’s the same reason why I refuse to watch Mad Men or anything like it, where the writers use the smug veneer of ‘this was in the unenlightened past, and we know better now’ to be incredibly bigoted. Offended? You just don’t understand the context.

The medieval era has been done to death in historical fiction, and I despair when I find it being recreated in fantasy — especially when the one aspect that we choose to take away from it is the horrible gender (and race) relations. Is there a reason why fantasy couldn’t have the same warlike, brutal aspects (if that’s what knits your scarf), but still have women or people of colour as equal players?

Is it too much to ask that worlds with magic, dragons, wizards, elf-like races, and everything else not read like a 1950s ‘Stories for Boys’ collection?

People who tell me “no, that’s not realistic” are, quite frankly, drinking their own Kool-aid. It’s “not realistic” in-universe because the author chooses to make it so. End of story. I refuse to take that as an excuse anymore.

The best part is, it’s not even that realistic in our own history, either — authors have created this barbarian, white-male-sex-fantasy version of history where all the women did was get raped and killed a lot, when in history, women did flipping amazing things! Women ruled countries; they led armies; they brought down enemy nations; they united warring nations; they invented things, painted things, wrote things; they murdered hundreds of people. Yet the people who use this excuse seem to think they did nothing but wait around for their next kidnapping or rape encounter.

It’s also incredibly eurocentric, but that’s a post for another day.

In short: people can write what they want, and readers can read what they want. I have decided, on my own, that I will not read fantasy books with rape in them. If that means I’m missing out on yet another amazingly-written, misogynistic, racist, white-male-centric, euro-obsessed novel, well, so be it, I’m missing out. If that statement seems unfair, then I’m okay with that too — certainly these books have millions of fans, and I don’t think they’ll miss one reader they never had in the first place.

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Fantasy Writers: Stop Raping Your Women!

Posted by Lora Maroney on November 11, 2011
Posted in: Books, Rants, Writing. Tagged: , , , , . 21 comments

Want to play a game?

Ask someone to recommend you a good fantasy book. Let them list off a few titles, then say, “Oh, wait, I forgot — I want a fantasy book where no women are raped.” Watch what happens.

  1. “There’s not THAT much rape in fantasy! But, okay, there’s … uh. Hm. Uh… does attempted rape count? She gets aw– oh, wait, no, another doesn’t. Um. … Huh. Never noticed that before.”
  2. “What sort of question is that? Who cares?”
  3. “Oh god, are you a feminist?”
  4. “Oh, I know, I hate that too, but don’t worry, here’s a list –”

In my experience, #1 and #2 are the most common, with #3 following close behind if it’s a conversation on the Internet. Fortunately I have had #4 happen, and there I found fantastic books like THE STEERSWOMAN’S ROAD and David Drake’s RCN Series.

Disclaimer: I have never been raped, nor nearly raped, nor threatened with rape — facts for which I thank God, repeatedly. I do, however, have massive consent issues rising from the fear of being raped — because I have friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances who have been. When you’re 12 and your friend calls you in tears to finally admit to someone what her friend’s dad did to her when she was 9, that sticks with you.

People always freak out when I tell them I’ve never read anything by George R.R. Martin (or whatever, but him in particular), and then they’re appalled when I say I have no intention to do so. They usually get frustrated when I tell them it’s because I won’t read any fantasy book where a female character gets raped. Or nearly raped. Or is threatened with rape. Or is implied to be raped. Or gets pregnant through rape.

“But it’s so good!” they tell me.

“If it has rape, I don’t care,” I say. Then the conversation gets awkward and I change the topic. Because I guess it’s not cool to say rape is not okay.

I honestly don’t know why fantasy, in particular, lends itself to rape. I don’t know if it’s because a lot of fantasy writers are men (except female authors are not exempt from this), or because it’s part of the ‘fantasy bingo card’ and people will complain if it’s not there, or because authors don’t know what kind of conflict to give a female character and just use the rape fallback (kind of like ‘give them cancer’ in a sitcom Very Special Episode), or because strong female characters need to get taken down a peg or men won’t read the story and rape is the easiest way to do that. I’m pretty sure fantasy authors don’t go around thinking about raping women on the subway, so what gives?

The answer I get most is that it’s “realistic” to have rape — or, on the flip side, that it would be “unrealistic” for a fantasy story NOT to have rape. This is where I get my outraged Jesus on and start flipping tables, because say WHAT?

Kate Howard, in a guest post over at The Rejectionist, said this:

Too many people seem perfectly able to imagine an alt-history with wizards, but not an alt-history with women.

Kate was talking about the inclusion of female characters, period, but still — I wanted to shout it from the rooftops, because yes! This! This x10000! We can invent societies with magic, wizards, dragons, and entirely constructed histories, but strong female characters who don’t get ‘humanised’ by rape are a no-go? Stop the planet; I don’t want to live here anymore.

I started, a while back, to do a post complaining about rape in fantasy fiction, and thought I’d compile a list of all the fantasy books in which involve rape. A little while in I realised this would take forever, and it might be quicker to do a list of the ones that don’t have rape. I hit the Internet.

And then this happened:

did you mean, 'fantasy novels without rape'?

Thanks Google. Just what I needed.

No, Google. No I did not.

And, you know, I realised that people can whine about Tolkien’s “boy’s club” and Eowyn not really being a strong female character because she was in love (…?) all they want — he didn’t rape anybody, and that puts him miles above every “edgy” author since.

In conclusion: fantasy authors, stop raping your women. Seriously.

Dear readers, if you have any recommendations, I would seriously LOVE to hear them! :)

To the NaNoReMo Crowd, from a NaNoWriMo Veteran

Posted by Lora Maroney on November 4, 2011
Posted in: Editing, NaNoWriMo, Rants, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a Comment

For those who don’t know,  the NaNoReMo to which I’m referring is the smug elitist’s answer to NaNoWriMo (the write a novel in a month challenge). Some people use NaNoReMo to mean “National Novel Reading Month” — those people are fine. However, others use it to mean “National Novel Rejection Month” — aka, the month where agents and publishers the world over reject all the terrible NaNoWriMo novels submitted to them in December.

Look, I get that NaNoWriMo is scary. I get that people don’t want writing to be an accessible thing, that, as Syndrome says, if everyone is super, then no one will be. I get that writers are proud of how difficult writing is. I get that the idea of writing feverishly for one month and then not continuing for the rest of the year offends some true artistes. I get the idea that someone else coming into your playhouse for a month and thinking they own it can be upsetting. I get it. I also get that it’s fun to take people down a peg, to find someone genuinely excited about something and to walk up and tell them it’s pointless.

Every year, this snarky hashtag (or some variant) rears its ugly head, and I am asking — beseeching — people to stop it. NaNoWriMo writers do not submit their novels to publishers as soon as December hits. The official NaNoWriMo site in fact asks people not to. March is NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editing Month) for a reason. Novelists are encouraged to take a break for December, then come back and look at their manuscript with fresh eyes. The forums have an editing section, with resources, suggestions, and a place for people to find beta readers for their work. Every year, thousands of people use these features.

I have participated in NaNoWriMo since 2004, and am an avid forum-goer as well. Not once in the thousands of discussions of post-November plans have I seen someone submit their novel to a publisher right away. People aren’t stupid. People who have finished novels through a program designed to get them over their fear and hesitation, and to turn off the inner editor, they know they’re not holding publishable material. But they at least have something. Something they did not have on October 31st.

Some people put their novels away and never look at them again. THAT’S OKAY.

Some people send them out to crit groups and edit feverishly, then give up and never submit it anywhere. THAT’S OKAY.

Some people edit, work, submit, and end up getting their NaNoWriMo novel published and optioned for a film with Robert Pattinson, raising the hopes of everyone participating in NaNoWriMo who hopes to get published someday. THAT’S OKAY.

Some people finish the first draft, send it out immediately, and get a form rejection. THAT’S OKAY.

Some people complain that NaNoWriMo novelists plunk their books into Createspace on Amazon and think they’ve been “published’. THAT’S OKAY TOO.

The slush pile does not see a quantifiable increase during December because of NaNoWriMo — and even if it did, what does it matter? People write terrible novels and submit them every day. People who crafted for years, who painstakingly edit every single word, write terrible novels every day. Slush pile agents are who they are for a reason; they’re tough. They can survive.

The proper way to handle this fear of an influx of terrible first drafts is to remind people about the importance of editing. This is advice useful to everyone, no matter how insignificant or how important. A first-time NaNoWriMo novelist needs this just as much as J.K. Rowling did when she wrote that epilogue.

Acting like elitist crab apples and coming over to someone’s house just to urinate in their swimming pool helps no one. It discourages honest, creativity-loving people from continuing something that is designed to help them bypass their formidable inner critic. How does making snarky remarks about NaNoReMo solve anything? Does it make you a literary warrior, as some people seem to think? No. It’s the worst form of intellectual bullying, and it needs to stop.

The world of writing should be a place of community, not an excuse to tear other people down. So before chuckling and hitting  ‘retweet’ on those NaNoReMo missives, try taking a walk or playing with a puppy instead. Most NaNoWriMo novelists will never be published — who cares? Let them do what we all have in common: write, and love to do it.

Confessions of a Confused Tomboy – Gender Dysmorphia in Clothes

Posted by Lora Maroney on October 29, 2011
Posted in: Rants. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . 3 comments

I guess I was a tomboy as a kid, but I didn’t really think about it. Now, of course, I wear it like a badge of honour in feminist circles — “Yes, I was a TOMBOY, how GENDER PROGRESSIVE of me!” — but back then, I wore what I liked, and most of what I liked came from the hand-me-down pile I got from my dad’s friend’s son. It was there, it was easy to wear, and it didn’t rip when I climbed trees or made my church’s wheelchair ramp into an impromptu set of monkey bars.

I did get flak for it now and then — I remember a girl in 7th grade trying to give me a hard time for wearing camo khakis because “army isn’t popular anymore” — but I honestly didn’t care. I didn’t realise that clothes were an extension of self, not really, until high school. Besides, I did wear dresses sometimes — to church or weddings, on class picture day, and when I pretended I was an orphan (my favourite childhood game).

Somewhere around the middle of high school I became more conscious of gender identity, and made a personal choice to flaunt it. Girls were expected to wear makeup and spend time on their hair, so I did neither. (With thigh-length curls, this … was more difficult than you’d think.) Girls were supposed to wear clothes that set off their figure, so (smack-dab in the middle of a mild, puberty-related body dysmorphia crisis) I snatched my dad’s oversized t-shirts and wore those. I started wearing things I knew would annoy people (riding boots, cargo jumpsuits, an entire outfit based on Han Solo’s look in “A New Hope” complete with Corellian Bloodstripe down the slacks). Every time someone made a nasty comment about my clothes, I relished it.

At the same time I found the community of tomboys, and fell head-first into that. Tomboys didn’t wear dresses, at least, not unless they’re forced into it, so I made sure to complain loudly any time I had to wear something nice for special events. I got special dispensation from my voice teacher to wear pantsuits instead of dresses at concerts. I put aside my geeky desire for a green wedding dress (the tradition of Corellia — sound off if you knew that!) and vowed to get married in pants.

This is not, in case people are waiting for it, a post about how I later realised my silliness and returned to the world of skirts and girl-jeans. It might be easier if it was, but my own gender identity, as it relates to clothes, is more complicated.

Now I’m an adult (or so they tell me) — I’ve been out of schooling and working full-time for several years now, anyway. I’ve stopped wearing baggy jeans a million sizes too big, and attempting to hide my size-D chest under enormous t-shirts (spoilers: that doesn’t actually work!). I still own more guy-jeans than girls’, and my general wardrobe is made up of t-shirts from Thinkgeek or Threadless or Topatoco, with a smattering of cheap wife-beaters picked up from outlet stores. For special occasions I have snazzy suits and pantsuits, usually pinstriped, and I still refuse to wear makeup or do anything to my hair (now short) other than wash it and let it dry.

Dressing up, girl-style

What I dress like 90% of the time

Dressing up, normal-style (pose mocking the manniquin, mind)

 

 

 

However. For the first time since I was 8, I also have dresses and skirts in my closet; for the first time ever, I’m the one who bought them. Sometimes I’ll wear a dress and go outside — just for fun! This sounds like I’m being facetious, but it’s honestly a momentous change for me. Those close to me will know what I mean.

Every time I do, though, I face a huge internal struggle. I feel like I’m betraying my cultural identity as a tomboy, and by extension, someone who flouts gender expectations — which is still extremely important to me. I feel like I’m somehow letting feminism down. I feel like I’m dressing in drag — even though I am a woman — and that someone is going to jump out of the bushes and call me a fraud. Ever watch that Daria episode where she gets contacts? Her dilemma is pretty much mine in a nutshell, but with the added embarrassment that I’m not 17 anymore. I should be over this.

It would help if people didn’t make such a big deal out of it, but that’s partly my fault. In maintaining myself as a tomboy, I can’t expect to switch to girl clothes and NOT make a stir. It’s subverting of expectations. But what really gets me is the satisfaction in people’s responses. “See, I TOLD you …” or “Oh, good, you’re FINALLY dressing yourself!” or “I KNEW you’d change your mind about dresses one day!” The most dreaded are the “If you do this every day, you’ll get a boyfriend in no time!” because a.) not applicable and b.) pretty much affirms every one of my reasons not to dress in girl clothes in the FIRST place (that men will only want you if you’re a stereotypical girl — FALSE — and that this is a consideration you should take into account daily).

Sometimes I wish clothes weren’t so complicated. I wish we could just wear what we want, when we want to, as long as it’s vaguely appropriate for the situation. I wish that I could wear guy’s clothes without people telling me I’ll never find anyone that way (ha, WRONG, suckers!) or that I’d “look better” if I wore makeup and dresses. I wish I could wear a dress for a day, just because I feel like it, without people saying they KNEW I’d come to my senses one day.

This sort of fails as a blog post because I’m supposed to wrap it up with a thought-provoking solution, but I don’t have one. But I can’t be the only one with confused sartorial gender identity, so shout out! Let’s get some community up in the house!

Overcoming Stigma: Indie Publishing’s Biggest Mistakes, Part III – Word of Mouth Devaluation

Posted by Lora Maroney on October 26, 2011
Posted in: Books, Ebooks, Indie Publishing, Rants, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 9 comments

Part III in my series: Overcoming Stigma: Indie Publishing’s Biggest Mistakes.

Part II talked about the quantity-over-quality focus, and how in many cases it undercuts books and story in order to sell small chunks to easily-distracted readers. You can read it here.

The third thing indies need to do is change the nature of the community, because right now, it’s a snake eating its own tail.

Let me first say this: I enjoy being on the periphery of the indie author community, even if I want to be published traditionally myself. I enjoy talking with authors on Twitter, reading their blogs, engaging with them in discussions about writing on various social networking sites. I love the friends I’ve made in this community, and hesitated to post this series not because I thought it would explode the Internet (ha!) but because I didn’t want to lose those friendships. I’ve been unfollowed a few times already, and this makes me sad.

However.

The indie book community loves itself a little too much, and if it’s not careful, it’s going to go blind.

That’s not an off-colour joke, by the way (or, at least, not entirely). The indie book community, with its wonderful sense of inclusion and friendship and reciprocity, is doing something horrible every single day, and no one seems to see it:

5-star reviews.

Indie writers love their 5-star reviews, and indie writers love giving them to each other. If I peruse Goodreads, for example, a known haven for indie authors, I see a slough of indie books with ratings of 5 stars — checking the rating details will show a ratio of something like 35 5-star ratings, 15 4-stars, 2 3-stars, and no 2s or 1s. Checking the profiles of people who left those high ratings almost always reveals another indie author, complete with 5-star-rated books.

Indie authors love these reviews, and will post to their blogs or to twitter every time it happens. “I got a good review! Read it here!” And why shouldn’t they? 5-star-rated books have to mean the book is amazing, right? What a recommendation!

Not necessarily. Since I started noticing this phenomenon a few months ago, I started looking to see what indie authors rate other indie authors, and I have, not once, seen anything less than 5 stars. Not if they know each other.

The reviews and Twitter promotions are likewise gushing, even hyperbolic. I don’t know how many times I’ve been told a book will be THE BEST YOU READ ALL YEAR. THE BEST BOOK OF THE SUMMER. THE BEST BOOK OF 2011. THE MOST CHILLING HORROR YOU’LL EVER READ.

Now, when I see a book rated 5 stars on Goodreads, I think two things: 1) This book says nothing real, because otherwise it would attract negative opinions, or 2) This book was rated exclusively by the author’s friends and/or other indie authors. 5-star ratings are no longer an indicator of quality; they’re now expected, kind of like how even the most mediocre theatre performance will receive a standing ovation because audiences now feel like jerks if they don’t.

5-star ratings have become a devalued currency. Think of Syndrome from The Incredibles, and his plan to sell his superpowers to the public — “When everyone’s super? No one will be!” Or, if you want a more grown-up analogy, think of the photos of post-WWII Germany, where people lugged suitcases of money to the corner store to buy a loaf of bread.

Reviews aren’t much better. Where a good review delves deep into a book, talking honestly about its good points and its flaws and its impact on the reader, 5-star reviews often do nothing more than write a back-cover blurb of the book, with some marketing buzzwords — you get a summary, followed by some superlatives, and a promise that this book will BLOW YOUR MIND. It rarely does. In a climate where the quality of books is slowly decreasing — and is in fact encouraged to decrease, and to condition readers to expect that decrease — the praise of books is climbing dramatically to compensate.

The scary correlation to this relates specifically to indie YA,  a huge, booming industry at the moment. Unfortunately, many indie YA books are being bought, read, and reviewed by other indie YA authors, not by actual young adults. This is partly to do with the issues in Part I (many teens not having access to ebooks or Amazon), but also because the indie book industry hasn’t figured out how to market outside its own circle yet. Some writers have begun to discuss how to reach readers as well as writers, but not as many about how to reach teens.

And because of the stigma, indie authors can sometimes be defensive and attack ‘outsiders’ who ‘just don’t understand’, despite the fact that no one will understand if the circle doesn’t open. Indie authors often argue that the world of traditional publishing is an exclusive, gated community, but so, too, is the indie world.

Wrap-up:

I do think that the future of indie publishing is an exciting place, and I would like to see a time when books published through non-traditional means do not carry a stigma. I’m excited for a future where I can buy digital copies of any book to go along with my print copies, when ereaders and internet are not the hallmark of the economically privileged, when libraries carry ebooks and ereaders for people to borrow free of charge, when all authors are paid freely and fairly for their work, and when the biggest, most influential, most life-changing book of the decade comes from someone who published on their own.

Unfortunately, at this point, I think that the stigma on the community — not necessarily individuals, be that people or books, but the overall machine that is indie publishing — is partly justified. With the denial of privilege inherent in insisting on digital-only books, the focus on marketing over content, and the devaluation of honest feedback, the current indie book world still has a way to go.

I want to see indie publishing thrive, but not the way it is now. In order for it to survive, it needs to take a step back from the numbers and look, really look, at what it’s doing to the world of books that it professes to love so much.

Overcoming Stigma: Indie Publishing’s Biggest Mistakes, Part II – Sales over Story

Posted by Lora Maroney on October 23, 2011
Posted in: Books, Ebooks, Indie Publishing, Rants, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 16 comments

Part II in my series: Overcoming Stigma: Indie Publishing’s Biggest Mistakes.

The first looked at the problem of an industry that claims to be “the little guy”, while ignoring and discounting an economic class made of billions of people. You can read it here.

The second thing the indie industry needs to do if it really wants to take off is make a choice: either admit that it doesn’t care about telling stories, or actually mean it when it says it does.

Before I get flamed, this series is not pointing fingers at individuals. It’s not actually about individuals at all. It’s about trends I’ve noticed in indie publishing, which aren’t necessarily dominant, but which still need to be eradicated in order for the indie publishing world to be respected in its own right.

Here’s the thing. Something scary happens when writers become their own marketers and publicists: they often lose sight of the story.

In this post, Cat Valente makes an excellent argument about the current climate of indie publishing, and why this is a problem: discussions about indie books — particularly ebooks — are not about story, they’re about sales. Amanda Hocking is amazing not because she writes stories that work their way into people’s hearts and twist something inside them; she’s amazing because she’s made a million dollars. People freely admit that her writing is not that good, not that memorable, but they don’t care, because she stuck it to the big guys and made the world work for her, and THAT’S what’s important.

This is, I think, a byproduct of what happens when creation and publicity are under control of the same person; wires get crossed. I’ve scrolled through a few guides to being a success in the indie world, and they’re all about marketing, all about finding your brand, all about selling yourself — because then people won’t care what you write, they’ll want to buy you, buy your angle.

The emphasis is on quantity over quality — and anyone who speaks up against this is instantly branded an elitist. Well, call me elitist, because I think this is a problem. Writing should not be about churning out book after book so your name is constantly on everyone’s lips — not because you’re good, but because you’re constantly producing, and you wow them with your prolificness. “Wow, ANOTHER book? They must be really talented!”

Time and time again I have heard people say, “I could spend a year writing and editing one book, sure, but why do that when I could publish TWELVE?” Those twelve don’t have to be amazing — they just have to trick people into buying more. Write cliffhangers. Redefine “novel” to mean 40,000 words, so you can split your book in three, call it a trilogy, and sell more copies. The idea is that if you only publish one book a year, people will forget about you; you have to keep producing, constantly, so that they don’t.

Well, yes. If you only produce one mediocre book in a year, people will forget you — and they have every right to. But the idea that a good author, who writes good books, will be forgotten after twelve months is absolutely ridiculous. Fans are happy to wait a year, sometimes more, for the next book when they know the extra time guarantees extra quality — and in the meantime, they’re recruiting new people. “Her next book isn’t out for another eight months, but it will be worth it!”

Craft is important. Yes, output is, too — not everyone can be Harper Lee, set for life after writing To Kill a Mockingbird. But there’s a reason why indie publishing is still not taken seriously by many, many consumers, and it’s not because “legacy publishing” afficionados are elitist monsters who think the path to “author” should be gated, with a membership card signed in blood. It’s because indie publishing champions the notion of producing more over producing better — and openly derides those who think otherwise. A writer is often a failure in the indie world if he spends 10 years trying to write a book — even if it turns into The Lord of the Rings, he could have sold 100 not-bad, almost-amazing books in that time and made more money, made a name for himself.

People want lots of books, yes. But people also want good books. The indie idea is that writing one amazing book is fine, but if no one buys it, you’re a failure. I see the point. But the paragon of success in the indie world is a man who sold a million copies on Amazon of books he openly, freely, unashamedly admits are not good books. And this is what people are trying to emulate.

In a world this obsessed with sales and branding and constant production, there is no place for a new Tolkien, a new Tolstoy; no place for a new book that will tear its way into people’s hearts and minds. Only a desperate, scrabbling world where you have to produce, produce, produce or people will forget you — because you’ve given them nothing substantial to remember you by.

Traditional publishing, as everyone knows, is not the mecca of quality. I know this. Everyone knows this. Bad books get published every day, good ones get bypassed, and new authors feel pressure to start on their next novel in order to maintain buoancy in the publishing world. As the world of traditional publishing is much bigger, it’s terrifyingly easy for authors to get buried and sink into mediocrity, never earning back their advances. However, with traditional publishing, the idea still exists that an author can take time and write a long, substantial book.

The way the indie publishing industry is moving, it’s creating a world where books are the equivalent of a fast-food hamburger — satisfying enough for now, but ultimately forgettable, and leaving you craving something more within the hour. And because the 99c price tag of an indie book comes piggybacking on a $50/month Internet connection and $300-or-more ereader, they can’t even use fast food’s excuse of being cheap and accessible.

This may be the future of books, but I really, really hope it isn’t. I believe that the indie world has possibility, and a glorious one — but not like this.

Overcoming Stigma: Indie Publishing’s Biggest Mistakes, Part I – The War on Traditional Publishing

Posted by Lora Maroney on October 20, 2011
Posted in: Books, Ebooks, Indie Publishing, Rants, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . 20 comments

I’m going to commit the blogging equivalent of suicide: I’m taking on the indie book publishing industry. I have seen the future of books, of reading, writing and publishing as championed by this industry, and it is not a nice one. In fact, it’s one that I would like to run away from — very far, and very fast.

As a disclaimer, I would like to say that I believe in the future of indie publishing as an abstract concept, but I do not support it at this moment. That is, I support indie publishing, the idea, the possibility, and I support indie authors, but I am not in support of a few of what I see as the core principles of the indie book industry as it stands right now.

This is not a post about business acumen, or marketing, or the legitimisation of indie vs. traditional. I have no business schooling, and no real understanding of marketing; this is merely a collection of some of the issues that I have with the indie publishing world as I see it — as a writer, a reader, and social activist.

That said, I hope that everyone — indie, traditional, whatever — can stay civil. I have a small readership, but this is the Internet — it’s gotten ugly before with only three people (me included), so let’s just toss that out there.

There will be three posts in this series: essentially, three things I think the indie book industry needs to examine about itself before it can be a real contender in the world of books.

First, the indie book industry needs to stop calling itself the David to traditional publishing’s Goliath, and — more importantly — needs to stop extolling the death of the traditional publishing industry.

Indie book pundits love to bandy around this image of the great “dinosaurs” of publishing — brick-and-mortar publishers, bookstores, even libraries — falling to their knees and crumbling to death, while indie publishing — the future, the next stage in evolution, Charles — stands triumphant. This image drives me crazy.

There is no reason to create a dichotomy between traditional and indie publishing; both are two sides of the same coin, with benefits and detriments on both sides, depending on what people (authors, publishers, readers) want. Traditional publishing does not “need to die” or “make way” for digital publishing. Many things — including the way authors get paid, particularly for electronic rights of their books — need a serious revamp, but the answer is not for it to disappear.

The good thing about traditional publishing, from an author standpoint, is that authors get paid to write, they don’t pay to write. Money flows toward the author, not away. With indie publishing, an author must fund everything themselves — sure, you could just plunk your un-edited, bad photoshop-cover novel into Amazon and go for it, bang, no overhead, but you’re not going to sell anything because your book will be terrible. Indie publishing takes money, and it takes work — to make your book up to standards, and to promote it once you’ve written it.

People in low income brackets, who don’t have $300 to shell out on an editor, on a copywriter, on a cover artist, who work several jobs to feed their families and can’t afford to spend all their time marketing their books, who may not be able to afford the Internet at all… In traditional publishing, these people have the chance — not the guarantee, mind, but the chance — to spend no more than time and postage and get a book and solid advance out of the deal. In the indie industry, these people “just aren’t willing to put the work in” and don’t deserve success.

However, my main point is about the industry’s effect on readers. Frankly speaking, indie publishing cannot meet the needs that traditional publishing fills, because it is not about readers at all. Readers don’t benefit either way from traditional or indie published books — they buy, they read, they move on. Indie publishing is all about the author; the reader is a means to an end — a way to pay the bills, to get well-known — but indie publishing does not care about the reader.

I’m not saying that indie authors don’t — I’m saying the industry does not. If indie book publishing cared about the readers, it would not be calling for the death of brick-and-mortar publishing. It would not be celebrating smugly when Borders goes bankrupt, when libraries close, when new authors have trouble getting agents and book deals. Because indie publishing can only reach — and is only interested in reaching — the smallest, most infinitessimal fraction of possible readers. Until that changes, indie publishing should not — and does not deserve to be — the top dog, and definitely not the only dog. Especially when indie publishing actually hurts many, many potential readers.

No industry that ignores millions of readers and dismisses an entire economic class — that is, in fact, so steeped in its own privilege that it refuses to acknowledge these people exist, or are important — should be allowed to set itself up as “the little guy” up against evil corporations.

Indie publishing is a rich person’s enterprise. Every person who argues that indie publishing is the future has essentially spat on the face of anyone with a low income. Whenever I hear someone say “Traditional publishing should die — digital is the way of the future!”, all I hear is, “Poor kids don’t deserve to read.”

Because here’s the thing: you can’t read most indie books without an expensive ereader — whether it’s a Kindle, a nook, an iPad, or even just a laptop. You can’t buy indie books without the Internet and a credit card. Even most physical-copy indie books (a rarity) aren’t found in stores — you need to use Amazon or something similar. You can’t find most indie books in a library or second-hand store.

I asked someone, once, how indie YA hopes to reach teens when most don’t have access to credit cards. The response was a baffled, ‘I can’t believe you’re asking such a stupid question’, “They can borrow their parents’.” I had to leave before I started strangling things.

The indie book industry apparently has no idea how many people in the first world live without reliable Internet (or any Internet at all), without credit cards, without the luxury of “impulse buys”. How many people have to choose whether they want to live without electricity, heat, water, or food this month. How many kids live in homes where “borrow your parents’ credit card” could be in an alien language, for how relevant it is to them.

The indie book industry does not realise how many kids cannot afford to buy ebooks because they’d have nothing to read them on — even if they bought an ereader, they’d be afraid to use it because someone would steal it. It does not realise how many kids cannot buy books, period — how many parents cannot afford to buy books new from anywhere, even at what the indie community calls a “steal” ($3.99 plus shipping on Amazon).

The indie book industry has forgotten how many children live for libraries. I did not come from a poor family, but we were not well off — if my parents had credit cards I didn’t know about it, because they never used them to buy things for us. We had dial-up Internet because high speed was not available in that area — and still isn’t, in 2011. Yet our house was filled with books — books we got at Christmas, birthdays, and once a year, when our local library had its 10c sale.

The rest of the year, we went to the library and devoured the books there. My town was extremely small and had no malls, department stores, or clothing stores, but we expanded our library when I was 10 because the town understood its kids needed it. If our library had closed, we would have had nothing to read. There were no bookstores available for almost an hour’s drive in any direction.

I am not an isolated case. Millions of people got their start at libraries, which are populated by traditionally published, “dinosaur” methods. Without these books, without this industry, millions — literally millions, and I am not referring to the deeps of Africa here — of children would not have books to read.

The indie book industry, as it stands, would rather these children not read, because they can’t afford to buy indie books. It may protest, but if it honestly thinks that traditional publishing deserves to die, then this is what it’s really saying.

If the indie book industry actually does care about kids, then it needs to change its attitude, right now. When indie publishing can put book after book after book in the hands of kids who can’t afford to buy one, then we’ll talk about levelling the playing field. But right now, indie publishing has some very, very big shoes to fill, to match its too-small britches.