This week in the
publishing blogosphere...The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers published
their magazine with a chain mail bikini clad women on the front and an
interesting article which had a line promoting Barbie being a role
model for her quiet dignity. Women members of the association objected to
the tone of the articles and were immediately inundated with abusive
emails...comments on their blogs...twitter feeds...from their peers.
When they published
some of these responses...and detailed what it was like to be a women writing
in this genre... the response was shock. How could writers do this to other
writers...? And then it went viral.
Chuck Wendig wrote a great article about sexism and misogyny in writing and publishing. The next day
he had to write another dealing with the comments on the first. Then today he
had to follow that up, Why Men Should Speak Up About Sexism and Misogyny. The
issues of the first article have spilled over into the gaming community, which
has the worst instances of abuse to women working in this field. The abuse on
Twitter coming to Chuck is miniscule compared to the women writers who have lifted their heads above the parapet
to say what their experience is like from other writers, convention fans and
general male population who find out that they write Sci Fi.
I write Sci Fi. I read
Sci Fi. I enjoy Science and Researching ideas and thinking of possibilities. I
have friends who are scientists whom I talk geek with. I have never been abused
as some of these writers have been...however I have had the disparaging
comments on how ‘I’ (a woman/mother...) would know anything about that tech
subject.... I ignore it and delete that person from my,
consider-this-person’s-opinions-on-anything-valid, mental list. I quietly
treasure the time a Male Scientist put a disparaging idiot in his place
by agreeing with me. The look on that idiots face was something to behold. The abuse to these women writers,
coders and gamers is sustained, vitriolic and pervasive as trolls follow them
across all social media. The level of abuse is scary with death threats often
the least of the hate messages that spew out across the internet. It is an important issue. It is nice to
see male writers standing up to call out their peers who perpetuate these
sexist, misogynistic attitudes. (If you are a Male writer reading this and you
think this issue is over the top then read Ann’s Post and the first emails she
got in response...Think about getting this level of abuse all the time....)
And so onto the other
rants happening in publishing. The tendency of writers to not do their research
before writing big articles in which they name other writers has annoyed a few
people this week. Porter Anderson takes a look at the other big publishing firefight.
Publishing
Perspectives has an interesting article on Why Publishing Needs to Foster a Startup Economy. (I’m sometimes wondering if we aren’t time warping to the
1880’s with the beginnings of modern publishing houses.)
With the speed of the
publishing industry changes and the announcements in the last weeks of
publishers pulling out of NZ, The League Of Shattered Authors makes timely
reading. I have always promoted the idea of writer collectives...I think this
is the future. Time to start banding together folks.
Forbes looks at The Future of Self Publishing and Beth Hull looks at 7 Things The Writer Needs To Hear.
With the ongoing focus
on book covers Chuck asks what works...what doesn’t.... An interesting
discussion ensued...and a link to a Lousy Book Covers site.
In Craft,
Some GREAT links this
week.
Plotting made easy...This from is one of the websites to keep an eye on.
How to avoid trivial detail By Roz Morris on Jane Friedman’s site.
Victoria Mixon on Revising Wrong
Why Editors Focus On Page One...a great post on Jane Friedman’s site.
The fabulous K M
Weiland on the 15 steps she uses to revise her MS’s
In Marketing,
The Indie Recon Teamare doing a week of Marketing Seminars
The BookShelfMuse team on Foreign Rights Agents... Everything You Need To Know...This is interesting
as Emotional Thesaurus starts to go Global.
Top 5 Errors In Layout from Joel Friedlander. (I am studying this carefully as I work on interior
layout tweaking on a print book.)
Preplan your marketing as you write the novel...Interesting article!
To Finish,
How does a blog post go viral? The anatomy of a viral blog post tells you one example that worked. And
for all you budding filmmakers...Amazon has a new free app for you, Storyteller.
It takes your MS and storyboards it.
So you can go viral,
Be a Force For Good and Change The World!
maureen
