STATUS: Popped in on a Saturday to finish up a few things. This afternoon Chutney and I are heading into the mountains for a nice long hike.
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? THE MORE I SEE YOU by Michael Buble
Kudos to blog reader and commenter Elizabeth who manned up and explained the appeal of 50 Shades of Grey. Just in case you didn't catch her comment in that section, I'm including Elizabeth's post in its entirety.
I'll man up. I read the hell out of it. All three installments in two and a half days. 800,000 words. BOOM. Just like that. I think I gave it four stars on Goodreads or something.
And here's why:
I couldn't put it down.
True, it's technically a mess. It's randomly punctuated. The dialogue is all over the place. The characters are bipolar. The sex is vanilla. Typos abound (at one point Christian stared at Ana like "a bacon in the night" which made a weird sort of sense, actually). Ana has this really weird habit of doing figure skating jumps off gymnastics apparatuses. And it started out as fanfic, which I get the impression I'm supposed to be all up in arms about. But holy cow. Do you know the last time I read that many words in such a short period of time? Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Here's what I think people don't understand: Good hardly ever factors into popular or entertaining. People aren't going to youtube, for example, to watch someone do something meaningful or profound. They're going to watch some guy stick a lit firecracker up his bum. I would rather see Sharktopus than The English Patient. That's just how I roll.
So there's something to be said for things that are a little bit campy. I'm a little bit campy. So are my friends. When I got to the point in the book where I realized it was going to be one THOSE stories (I didn't see a lot of Twilight in 50 Shades, but it totally read like "crack-fic" fan-fiction), the first thing I did was go on Facebook and tell two of my friends, "Hey, you have to read this." Because it was absolutely the kind of book they would love. And they did love it.
Nine copies sold between the three of us. We all felt like we got our money's worth. Not because it was good, remember, but because it spoke that little spot in our hearts that loves those kinds of stories. The fact that it was kind of poorly written just made it that much better.
And I can't explain why that is. I don't know why this book, with its myriad of flaws, the least of which being its word count, held me captive in a way that other, arguably "better" books didn't.
I loved that she was willing to simply be honest and put her reaction to the book out there. For me, I'm thinking this book is kind of like trends that happen in other mediums. There's no easy or clear explanation. It just happens and something becomes wildly popular. For example, the phenom of Ugg Boots (which are not particularly attractive) or croc shoes for that matter. The youtube phenom for Randall's narration of National Geographic footage: The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger.
There's a spark. It taps into some zeitgeist. There's no explaining it and quite frankly, I don't think we have to. It is what it is.
For me, I'm not sure I would recognize it under all the flaws. I couldn't get past the writing and a lot of groan worthy dialogue. But in the end, who cares what I think. The public has spoken and in the end, that's the opinion that matters.
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Blog: Pub Rants (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: movies, Hollywood, trends, deals, publishers, books to film, Add a tag
Blog: Pub Rants (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: movies, Hollywood, trends, deals, publishers, books to film, Add a tag
STATUS: Just finished our first Pub Rants Video Webinar. I had a blast. We definitely need to tweak some things for next one though. If you were there, thank you for being our first guinea pigs!
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? SHOW ME THE MEANING OF BEING LONELY by Backstreet Boys
While on the train to Venice (and boy do I like saying a statement like that--makes me sound so cosmopolitan) Simone Elkeles's friend Nanci had a copy of 50 Shades of Grey.
You'd have to be living under a rock not to have heard about this title. But just in case you have been, here is a link to get you up to speed. It's been in all the publishing news as of late. It's an erotica novel that started life as Twilight fan fiction and then went viral a couple of weeks ago. So there was a big publishing deal and then the movie rights sold just this week.
If something is getting that much attention, it's probably worth an hour of my time to give it a look so I asked Nanci if I could borrow her copy. I read several chapters and I have to admit, I'm not getting it. To be honest, if it had come in via our slush pile, I would have passed on it without requesting a full. I didn't connect with the characters or find myself enmeshed in the writing. Now granted, this genre is not my bailiwick so that's going to be a factor.
Still, it's obviously tapping into some cultural zeitgeist and on that point, I'm curious. It obviously works for a lot of other people so I'd like to know why.
So blog readers, if you read and liked it, share with me because I'm genuinely curious to know.
Blog: Pub Rants (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: news, movies, young adult, Hollywood, client books, books to film, Add a tag
Status: RWA. Day Final. Tomorrow I go home to Denver. Squee
What’s Playing on the XM or iPod right now? JOHNNY B. GOODE by Chuck Berry
We’ve known for months but couldn't say anything. I guess if Hollywood Reporter is going blast it out there (with nary a heads up I might add), I’m going to shine a spotlight on it.
Congrats Ally on having Drew Barrymore attached to direct HEIST SOCIETY and even more fabulous?
Having the sequel, UNCOMMON CRIMINALS, debut at #3 on the New York Times Children’s Bestseller list this week!!!
Blog: Pub Rants (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: books to film, film, Hollywood, Add a tag
STATUS: I “ignored” email for two days so I could catch up on some royalty statement reviews and contract issues. If the email wasn’t imperative, I waited until the end of the day to start responding. Unfortunately, it’s easy to get behind in a big hurry.
What’s playing on the iPod right now? PRIVATE DANCER by Tina Turner
There’s no such thing as a free lunch, right? I wish Hollywood would understand that there should be no such thing as a free option.
Now in talking to my film co-agents, I do know that Hollywood has also gotten hit hard by the downturn in the economy. That finding money is tougher now than it has been in years. I get that.
But I’m also sensing an interesting trend as of late. I am actually getting more inquiries about the film rights availability for a lot of my client’s projects than I have in years past.
I can’t be the only agent who has gotten a slew of interest lately only to discover when push comes to shove (as in do you have money to option said project), the interested parties say they were hoping for a free option—that they would like to “test the waters” or “shop it around” or “try to get it set up somewhere.”
And then on top of a free option they want an exclusive to boot!
Uh-huh. And I’d like to win the Powerball lotto or inherit the Hope diamond too.
Blog: Pub Rants (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: film, Hollywood, books to film, Add a tag
STATUS: Feeling re-energized after the long weekend.
What’s playing on the iPod right now? YOU CAN LEAVEYOUR HAT ON by Joe Cocker
On Thursday night, as the holiday weekend was beginning, I met up with two girlfriends for dinner. Once ensconced at our table, one friend said she was dying to see the movie My Sister’s Keeper and were we game?
As much as I love movies, it’s rare for me to get my act together enough to actually see a film while it’s in theaters. I tend to rely on Netflix or the DVR if something is on cable. So when given an opportunity to see a book-to-film movie, I’m going to say yes (despite knowing this one was going to be a Kleenex fest).
Sheesh. What a way to kick off the holiday weekend.
(Disclaimer: I cry at movies. Doesn’t matter the movie. If it has a hint of sadness, I’ll cry. My husband has never let me live it down that I cried at the end of Terminator III. Hey, in my defense, Claire Danes as Kate just lost her pet and her entire family—I thought that was pretty sad.)
So My Sister’s Keeper was designed to be a real tear-jerker and I’m happy to say that I used plenty of Kleenex. As I had read the book several years ago, I was most interested to see how the film would handle the ending—as there was a lot of discussion around the ending of that book. (No spoiler here so I won’t comment further.)
But here’s what I found most interesting and hence the point of this entry, all the previews shown before the movie were all book-to-film projects. I wish I could remember all the trailers I saw but only Julie/and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously comes to mind (which looked pretty hilarious).
So very interesting. I don’t remember such a high percentage in previous years but that may be because I don’t get to the theaters often enough.
Blog: Bookfinder.com Journal (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Bookish, Oscars, 1920s books, Benjamin Button, books to film, out of print books, Add a tag
I am by no means what one might call a film buff, but to my un-trained eye I did find this year’s Oscar nominations to be a bit lopsided. I'm not sure if it's just my memory but it seems that each year fewer and fewer films are actually recognized, meaning the bulk of the nominations are stacked on an ever shrinking set of films.
My wife suggested that perhaps studios are just pushing more and more of their overall budget into trying to create a bigger blockbuster than the next studio (all eggs, one basket) and so all of the best performances come from the same films, however I think that there are just less good scripts being written and adapted leaving the judges to pick the couple gems out of the dregs.
I sometimes feel the same way about publishing, in that the bulk of the books I want to read were written decades ago. Why publishers keep pumping out half baked memoirs when there are so many cool out of print books in their back lists that could be whisked back onto the shelves for the poor souls who have not yet found BookFinder. I'm not suggesting a kybosh on new books but I KNOW there are some very cool old tales that could happily be retold.
What got me on this rant was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It leads the way in Oscar nominations, and was first written in the 1920s. It was first published in Colliers magazine and subsequently in the AnthologyTales of the Jazz Age which came out in 1922 and then fall out of print (in English) until 1991 when Eastern Press published a collector’s edition.
This little tidbit of information prompted me to issue my highly personal, mostly random, list of ten books from the 1920s that would be better than most new books.
Adam's Daughter by John Carruthers
Cover alone would sell the tale of this young girl trying to right the wrongs of her activities
Gabriel Samara Peacemaker by E. Phillips Oppenheim
A novel about Russian immigrants who are living in New York and plotting about how to make Russia a republic. Oppenheim has written somewhere near 150 novels, and even graced the cover of Time in 1927. Stir in a little star power and this has blockbuster written all over it.
The House of the Three Ganders by Irving Bacheller
Bacheller was a writer and journalist who was responsible for bringing the likes of Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle to American readers though his Syndicate that provided articles to Sunday papers around the US. (Only OOP in the US)
Right off the Map by C.E. Montague
Montague was Guardian journalist before writing this Science Fiction Novel involving a dystopic future in England.
On Doing What One Likes by Alec Waugh
Alec has been credited with inventing the cocktail party, offering his guests rum swizzles rather than tea, acts like that make me think I should read what this man has to say. Alec is elder brother of the better-known Evelyn Waugh.
Sweard's Folly by Edison Marshall
He wrote The Vikings, Yankee Pasha and Treasure of the Golden Condor but Seward`s Folly has been out of print since 1924.
This book is about the interactions of several upper class Brits staying at a hotel on the Italian Riviera in the 1920s, the hotel did come back into print for a time in 2003 in the UK but has once again fallen out.
The Diamond Necklace by Fred Jackson
Jackson was best known as a screen writer. This was his first mystery novel, which has been out of print since 1929.
Dark Hester by Anne Douglas Sedgwick
Story of two women in the English Countryside dealing with love, suffering and the like...
The Girl From Hollywood by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Since Tarzan has been pretty much beaten to death, it would be nice to have someone look at some of Burroughs' other work
I highly encourage you to submit any out-of-print gems that you think could trump current blockbusters.
Back when self publishing was brand spanking new, I picked up plenty of it. I found some gems: great story and characters, mediocre execution and no editing. I recognized its flaws while enjoying the heck out of it.
Then I started writing and participating in critique groups and, lastly, working with editors. At this point it's almost impossible to ignore big errors, even for a good story. I consider this a loss for me. I'm the one who doesn't get to enjoy them.
The online publishing folks have been giving 50 Shades a lot of grief, but we were always the wrong audience.
Here's my question about 50 Shades, and its viability. If there's nearly 90% similarity between 50 shades and the original fanfiction, then how is the publisher going to handle the download issue.
Fanfiction is archived where anyone can access and read it at will, for free. Master of the Universe is still available in fanfiction archives. The author's publisher can't prosecute for "illegal" downloads of a book that's fanfiction of a property owned by another publisher. So, readers can take a copy of the free fanfiction, search/replace the names and location, and they've got an instant copy of 50 Shades without pirating it.
Curious Writer: yep, you can do that. But people are still buying the books regardless. Money = nobody cares.
I think the writer has taken down MOTU, I was trying to check out the fan fiction.
Although I have not read 50 Shades Of Grey I am in a writing zone in which in order to learn and grow as a writer I feel reading books that are well written will further help me develop my skills,situations like FSOG stump me, because if plenty of people like something then poor writing, editing is forgivable. =o/
I can't enjoy badly-written books. Maybe that means I miss out on some good stories, but typos, awkward dialogue, fatty sentences, and all the rest pull me out of the book. They make me painfully aware what I am reading is a book, not a world.
To me it is appalling--and heartbreaking--that this utterly unreadable bilge has been picked up by publishers and Hollywood, for enormous amounts of money. Not because it's erotica or porn, but because it is BAD. I get that sometimes you just want junk food. But this is junk food that is spoiled and moldy, and it doesn't excuse anything to say, "Yes, but never mind--it's so spicy you won't taste the mold." I wonder whether those who claim that they've read the whole thing really read every word, or, like me with the excerpts on Amazon, began very rapidly skimming after the first chapter, looking for the hot spots among the drivel (there aren't any in the excerpts).
Because of all the money thrown at this, hundreds of vastly better books (of whatever genre) will never be published. To publishers who'll think that readers can't tell when something stinks, or that readers don't care, and will rush to pump out more works like this--well, knock yourselves out. But I won't be buying it.
The author may have taken down MotU, but the nature of fanfiction is that it's shared and archived places the author has no ability to remove it.
It's not my cuppa, but MotU is definitely still out there, in full.
To each their own and I give props to the commenters who can own their guilty pleasures.
But as a writer, I don't strive to write popular. I strive to write quality. Of course, my goal is to be read but I'd rather leave a quality piece of writing that lives on to select few after I'm dead than write a madly popular piece of pop culture.
But again, to each their own. There is plenty of room on the book shelves for more than our individual tastes.
As Keylocke said, we don't write to follow the popular trend. We don't write to be like everything else. We write to put forth OUR visions. We write to share OUR ideas. And, all to often, we get cast adrift because we don't follow the current fad. But we don't give up, as doisheartening as it gets, we continue.
Get over the fad, get over the idea of following the trend like a lemming. Be the writer within YOU.
I haven't read the book, but I have been struggling with questions like these for years. Why does one horribly flawed artist / musician / writer find success when superior craftsmen do not? It could be that there is a market for this kind of thing, or that the universe is ultimately random and unfair. Or, it could be that what she does right turned out to be more important than what she does wrong.
Look, no writing is perfect. We all have our flaws. The best we can hope for is that our strengths overpower our weaknesses. Unfortunately, the reading public sometimes surprises us with the strengths they choose to value.
For years, the best selling jazz single on iTunes was "What a wonderful world" sung by Louis Armstrong. Armstrong was a jazz legend as a band leader. But as a vocalist? Pure glottal fry. He did everything wrong as far as vocal technique was concerned. But there is something special about the way he sang that makes you want to smile. Maybe it was his enthusiasm, his honesty, or his complete lack of pretense. I don't know what it was, but it is still selling records today. Thousands of well trained classical singers can't match that.
I'm not comparing this writer to Lois Armstrong. Judging by the comments, that may not be appropriate. But, it's evident that she did something right somewhere.
I enjoyed reading all the comments and reactions. Great topic. And LOL on Ugg boots. My hubby thinks they're ugly. Yet they never seem yo go out of style do they?
Ugg boots are the best things in winter. They look shit-house and they get damn smelly, but it's all worth it for how warm your toes are kept. I guess that's what Elizabeth means when she's talking about that book. It looks bad but it's worth it for the entertainment.
A couple of things:
I think some of the reasons people are upset about this is because we're thinking about it wrong. There seems to be a lot of response of the "oh no! How could the publishers publish such a horrible thing?" And that, in my mind, is a little foolish. Publishers are not a moral authority. When they try to be a moral authority, that's when we get censorship. Publishing is a business, and if they think they can make money off of a book, why not? It's not like they're making money hand over fist these days.
"50 Shades of Grey is trash thus Fanfiction is trash and vice versa." I'm not going to talk about the legality of fanfiction, because that's not my business, not being an IP lawyer, but the culture of fanfiction is what's really interesting. Fanfiction is what I see when I see the self-publishing boom taking off. Fanfiction.net is colloquially known as the 'pit of voles' because it is a pit, filled with obsessive people and terrible stories (and me). It is also a great place to get people to read your work, to share the thing you enjoyed writing and get more enjoyment knowing that other people liked it too. And that is the only payment you get.
There's no way to market a fic. Maybe posting in some places you get more readers. Word of mouth works really well. But unless people like it, people don't comment, and the comment is ready cash to the fic writer.
My point is that fanfiction may be poorly written, utterly unedited, sloppy, inexperienced, (and don't make me talk about the inevitable high-school AU), but it's written because the writer enjoyed it, and often that enjoyment transmits itself straight to the reader. So honestly, I'm happy for 'Icy,' because she did something she enjoyed and was a success.
Isn't that what we all want, to do something we enjoy and be successful? When we start to get bitter and upset and shrill and admittedly jealous, that enjoyment gets corrupted. And who wants to read a story that the author didn't enjoy writing? Not me, but then clearly I have no standards, because I read fanfiction.
I didn't read the book, not for any lofty reason, just wasn't interested. My to-be-read list is a mile long so if something doesn't grab me it doesn't get read.
I would however counter the argument that because this book was published other more deserving books weren't. It could be argued the opposite. This book will earn big cash for the publisher. Money they can use to invest in other projects. To me it's like when Snooki writes a book. (and by write here I'm assuming writes a check for a ghost writer to do the actual writing) That book will sell. I wish it wouldn't. I wish people were more interested in other books by less well known people, but the truth is they aren't. Sales of that book can pay for other books to be written.
Then I harbour the hope that someone who doesn't think of themselves as a reader, picks up a junk food book, decides they like it and then moves on to reading other things.
One man's trash is another man's treasure. It is that simple. Some of the most talented musicians in the world have never made a dime while lesser talents are mega rich. I have not read this novel, but from every synopsis, article, blog I have read, it has no appeal for me. I am not going to disown someone if they think it is the cat's meow.
That all being said, Kristin, love reading your blogs and how you have so many great links on here. I wish you continued success!
Things that make you go AGH!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/us/young-writers-find-a-devoted-publisher-thanks-mom-and-dad.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120401
Readers read faster than writers write. One book's popularity does not hurt sales of other writer's books. If anything, it helps all book sales, because very few readers will read ONLY one author's work. If a novel makes people excited about reading, all writers should be glad.
That said, yes it's discouraging to struggle with improving my skills, only to see sloppy, bloated drivel catch fire with the public. Nobody said life was fair.
"It is what it is" almost always means, "It sucks."
That book would definitely not interest me, but I understand when she says she likes campy things. I liked the movie Lost in Space, which astonished people, because I liked the kitschiness of it.
There are many wonderful books being published today. However, I have to wonder why many don't finish books they purchase, especially fiction. Many of the books I purchase I end up not finishing because the story just doesn't seem to grab me. I also must be honest and say that is the case with fiction over nonfiction. It's probably a matter of my personal taste but this is something I hear from many readers ragarding the books they read. My point in mentioning this is only to confirm the implication (in the post) that it is the reading public that really matters.
Still, we have to trust agents and others in the industry on their instincts since they know what sells based on various patterns.