(I myself have been told I’m reminiscent of Esther Friesner and Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters in some ways, which means quite a bit more to me than some random meme, so hey!

But what I’d really like is to be told ‘you write like somebody we’d like to publish, here, have a contract to get you into print!’)

Which is to say, objections to the iPad on the grounds that it’s intended for people who want it to consume content, rather than create it.

And with all due respect, folks, I have to call bullshit on this on two grounds.

The first is that I’ve already heard people who’ve bought iPads geeking out about starting to write and do other creative tasks on them; , for example, I saw saying something about getting a wireless keyboard talking to hers. Related to this, speaking as someone who’s done a fair bit of writing on her iPhone, I can say right now without even having touched an actual iPad myself that I could write on one, too, if I wanted to. Sure, it’s being marketed with the overall idea of “look at how many shiny things you can watch or read on this, ain’t that neat?” But the point is, anybody who puts their mind to it can probably very quickly figure out how to make the device let them get some work done on it. Maybe not up to the same standards they could on other devices–and maybe those other devices let them get the job done better, which is why they prefer them. That’s fine, that’s not the part I take issue with.

Which leads me to my second point.

More than once I’ve seen this notion of “oh, the device is only meant to consume content, not create it”, presented in such a way that it somehow implies that consuming content is bad. This too is bullshit, and here’s why: there’s not a one of us who isn’t a consumer of content at some point. Every last one of us. We fling links to YouTube videos around. We all read blogs and online news. We laugh ourselves silly at pictures of funny cats. Even those of us who ostensibly fall into the “creative” camp gobble up our share of the content, and we all have our days when we’re consuming more content than we’re actually creating.

You know what, though? I think a lot of us creative types sometimes forget that the “consumers” are in fact the ones that we want buying our content. It’s easy to sneer at a device that’s only intended to let its user watch or read, but what about when the material being watched and read is something created by you?

“But Anna,” I hear you saying, “we’re only sneering at the people who let the content passively come to them and don’t let their imaginations be sparked by it!”

Again I say, bullshit. How can we know who’s going to be reading our books or listening to our songs at any given time? How can we predict how our work will engage them? What if a reader is a very quiet and private person who doesn’t feel the need to share with others how our work may have affected them, and just wants to keep the couple of hours of pleasure we may have given them to themselves, as a nice little experience they have to savor? Not everybody is an extroverted fan who will feel up to writing fanfic about our work, or composing filk, or jumping onto every forum or mailing list they’re on and gushing all about how awesome we are. Not everybody has the same creative spark we do.

And I really, seriously think that we creative types need to remember that. We need to remember that it’s okay if someone just wants to kick back for an hour or two and enjoy the content we’ve created without any expectations of how they should engage with it. We are, after all, hoping to entertain them. Let’s let them be entertained, okay?

And let’s let them do it on any devices they damn well please. If anybody out there is reading Faerie Blood or Defiance on an iPad, more power to you, and I thank you for your support!

• Watts’ direct account of the matter
• John Scalzi’s post at the Whatever
• Post at Making Light

I’d previously downloaded the four Creative Commons copies of Peter’s novels from his site, and have elected to send him a Paypal donation for roughly the amount I’d have paid for these books if I’d bought them in paperback in a store. If like me you are deeply appalled that this happened to him, I would encourage you to consider sending him whatever you can spare as he gets a defense fund together.

More formal efforts to get something organized for him are underway, but in the meantime, he has a Paypal donation button here. If you use it, please also send him a separate note specifying that you’re donating to his legal fund since the button was originally set up for veterinary bills for his cats.

Thanks, folks. Let’s hope this works out for the best.

ETA 12/12/09 11:47am: Peter has posted again with an update, specifically touching on how a Michigan newspaper story on the incident is telling a version of events that contradicts what he said happened. He’s clearing up a couple other points as well, and voicing his thanks to folks who have given him support.

I posted earlier this week about another new Harlequin venture, Carina Press. Which I thought was pretty awesome. Harlequin’s new vanity imprint? Not so much.

Here are a whole bunch of links expounding on the brouhaha:

• Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware (which you should be reading if you’re not already) gives an overview of the situation and why it’s of deep concern
• Pub Rants, the blog of agent Kristin Nelson, brings the news of the Romance Writers of America issuing a very strong statement against this, and what they’re going to do about it
• Making Light chimes in with news of the RWA statement and much discussion in the comments
• Smart Bitches Trashy Books addresses the issue, and a whole heckuva lot of heat about self-publishing vs. vanity publishing can be found in the comments
• Author Jackie Kessler does a breakdown of the concept of Harlequin Horizons and explains exactly why the various stunts they’re trying to pull are bad
• Writer Beware posts a statement in from the Mystery Writers of America, also strongly against this development
• Kristin Nelson breaks the news that Harlequin is now backpedaling on the “Harlequin Horizons” brand name on the imprint but no word yet about whether further retractions will occur
• Most relevant to my interests as an SF/F author, SFWA weighs in with a very, very strong statement of their own
• Inevitably, Fandom Wank has put up a post since there’s some sideshow wankery involved, featuring a flamewar in the abovementioned SB thread, and a very snarky article from the New Yorker

My take on the matter? Well, initially I was going to say that I didn’t really have a horse in this race, since I’m an SF/F author, not a romance author–but pointed out and quite correctly that actually, any writer of fiction has a horse in this race. The reason for this is that if Harlequin actually pulls off doing this imprint of theirs, it’s highly likely that other big NY-based publishers will follow suit. As Writer Beware calls out, a couple already have, although they’ve apparently taken pains to be less obvious about it in their branding.

And, the big sticking point for me is that according to the spin that was going around the Smart Bitches thread from a Harlequin rep, they will be including in standard rejection letters an upsell to the vanity imprint. Which essentially means that an author who comes to Harlequin via traditional publishing routes and who gets rejected would be getting told “we don’t think your book is good enough to be a Real Book, but if you pay us enough money, we’ll humor you and print it anyway!”

This goes against the unshakeable law of writing: money flows to the author. Always.

So yeah, this is huge and the furor is still ongoing. I’ll be very, very interested to see what Harlequin does now that they have not one, not two, but three professional writers’ organizations angry with them.

1. It’s nice that Amazon did acknowledge their error, although from scattered reports I’m picking up, not everybody has had their previous sales rankings restored. I have not yet been able to confirm any specific de-ranked books that haven’t been restored, myself.
2. It’s not nice that Amazon hasn’t actually come right out and said “we’re really, really sorry about this, yes, this was a screwup of the highest order”. I’ve seen at least one author outright demanding an apology since her writing is her only source of income, and Amazon screwing this up therefore adversely affected her.
3. It’s also not nice that the mechanism for hiding items globally is there to begin with. Charles Stross ably expressed concerns about this over here.

I’m of two minds about it in general, myself. One, having worked for places with large web-facing databases that can blow up in spectacular fashions if you look at them funny, I have every sympathy for the thought that some hapless employee somewhere might simply have blown something up. Also, based on my own workplace experience, it makes sense to me that even if Amazon’s quickly re-ranked all the de-ranked books, it’ll take a bit for all the fixes to re-populate out into the system. They are dealing with massive numbers of parallel servers, and massive amounts of data that all needs to get sent out to the server clusters. This takes time.

On the other hand, like Mr. Stross, I’m bothered by the fact that the capability to unilaterally hide anything tagged “adult” is there to begin with, as well as the fact that this got unilaterally applied to so many thousands of books that should never had been thusly tagged.

Long and short of it for me is, I’m not looking for the heads of Amazon execs on pikes at this point, but I do remain in a state of concern. The initial cranky mail I’d thought of sending, and which I held back until such time as we got a statement out of them, shall I think turn into an expression of deep concern. I’ll have to think about what to say.

Tonight’s further reading on the topic:

http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/amazons-response-bad/
http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/14/why-amazons-explanation-is-none-at-all/
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/04/14/amazonfail-followup/

And of especial note, pulled out of the comments on the Scalzi post, is this one:

http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2009/04/some_thoughts_on_amazonfail.php

This one, though, is personal. They’re calling it #amazonfail on Twitter, and here’s the sitch: apparently Amazon has started de-ranking books on “adult” topics. This has the effective result of making books so quantified very, very hard to find on the site; it’s the equivalent of pulling them off the shelves in a physical bookstore and forcing people to go to the Customer Service desk to ask for copies.

The problem? By “adult”, they’re including a whole host of GBLT-themed books, many of which aren’t “adult” in theme at all, such as Heather Has Two Mommies and John Barrowman’s autobiography. To add insult to injury, if you search for “homosexuality” on Amazon right now, the top hit is something called A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. Books of similar nature also show up in the top ten search results.

And this hits me where it hurts. Those of you who have read Faerie Blood know that two of the second-tier characters are a male couple, and should I get to write Books 2 and 3, chances are good that a couple of the other second-tier, female characters will form a couple as well. So if this policy of Amazon’s remains in place by the time Faerie Blood comes out, it’s certainly possible that you’d have a hard time finding the book there.

While I respect the principle of needing to be careful with adult content on a site that can be searched by minors, I am deeply offended that what’s getting called “adult” in this case is so blatantly discriminatory. I’ll be telling them as much, and I’ll be prepared to take my business elsewhere if this policy does not reverse itself pronto.

Pertinent links I’ve found so far include:

http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/11369.html
http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/12/amazon-censors-its-rankings-search-results-to-protect-us-against-glbt-books/
http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/12/amazon-rank/
http://markprobst.livejournal.com/15293.html
http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/amazon-rank/

For those of you on Twitter, follow the #amazonfail hashtag. There’s also a petition you can sign if you choose to here.

ETA: Since I’ve been asked on Facebook, here’s a quote from dearauthor.com about how to express your opinion on this matter to Amazon:

Amazon executive customer service email is: ecr@amazon.com and the customer service phone number is 1-800-201-7575.