I started keeping an eye on the Amazon-Macmillan school playground bullying fest when Jay Lake and John Scalzi mentioned it on their blogs. (If you want to get into the detailed meat of it,Tobias Bucknell does a good job of explaining it.) [Edit to add 1 Feb: John Scalzi has hilarious final words on this issue, but I warn you - salty language alert.]
Readers want affordable e-books. Authors want a reasonable income from the effort they've put into their writing, which hopefully would be boosted a bit now that e-books are becoming more and more popular (if you think writers make pots of money writing books and don't need day jobs...um, no; the J.K. Rowlings of the world are aberrations, not standards). Macmillan, as do other publishers I'm sure, wants more control over e-book pricing now that Apple has said it will give them more control over pricing in the iBooks store. Ideally, they want an e-book pricing structure similar to that for hardcovers, trade paperbacks, and mass market paperbacks. I'm not clear on whether the quality of the electronic file would reflect this type of price structure. Amazon wants more people to use the Kindle, especially now when there's a formidable competitor in the wings that will be released to the masses soon, so lower-priced e-books would help them do this.
Obviously, Macmillan and Amazon are engaging in this match for profit reasons. I doubt that the effect this has on readers and authors is top of mind for either company, despite Amazon caving. Here's why:
If e-book pricing was the issue, fine. Suspend the e-books only until it's worked out. However, Amazon suspended sale of print books by Macmillan authors as well (ie, directing people to third-party sellers). Pricing for print books by Macmillan authors was never the issue, so the print books should have been left alone. That Amazon started this on a Friday when it might have been less noticeable and, so far as I know, hasn't said why the print books were included in this suspension smells mighty funky. [Edit to add 1 Feb: apparently, Amazon also removed Macmillan e-books and print books from people's wish lists.]
I wonder if this makes self-publishing look like a better option to aspiring-to-be-published writers like me. Does anyone know if the self-publishing houses get involved in stuff like this? Or what about the smaller publishing houses? Are they/will they be addressing this issue?
It's certainly turned me off from buying e-books for awhile until I see how this plays out in the long run. At least the print books on my bookshelves are mine, and publishers and sellers can't mess with them.
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I spent most of yesterday afternoon on the couch, under blankets, with a pot of tea and a fireplace put to good use nearby, reading Angel Time, Anne Rice's new novel. Rice is active on Facebook and Twitter, owing somewhat to poor health, which doesn't allow her to get out and about as much anymore, so social media help her keep in touch with readers directly. That's the main thing I love about social media - you can hear from people directly, rather than through the filter of journalism, which more and more has a bad habit of skewing things way out of context. Anyway. it was through her Facebook page that I first heard about Angel Time as well as more about her return to Catholicism after being an atheist for decades.
I've been a fan of her books since I was 17, when I first read The Witching Hour and was enthralled with the history of the thirteen witches in the Mayfair family (and I'd love to work for something like the Talamasca). She's a mistress of atmosphere - her writing is thoughtful, luscious, decadent, dark, and packed with historical detail (she's underrated as an historical scholar - she researches the hell out of topics for her stories). Her books are not fast reads, and she takes her time moving the story forward. I don't mind that a bit. I'd sooner meander through a good story than race through it and miss something.
Judging from the comments she gets on her Facebook page, Anne Rice writing Christian fiction has caused explosions all over the place. I don't know if it's because religion is such a touchy subject in the modern day or because it's her writing it, given what she's written before now. Could be both.
I was intrigued when I first read that she'd returned to the church, and also relieved that she wasn't going around shoving dogma down everyone's throat or shaking her finger at non-Christians and lecturing that everyone was going to Hell. Nothing turns me off faster than an arrogant, self-righteous, pompous attitude, especially when it comes to religion. Thankfully, Rice doesn't have that. She's not renounced her previous books, and hopes people will still enjoy them, particularly now that vampires are in fashion again (Interview with the Vampire was published nearly three decades before Twilight).
I've read little to no Christian fiction. I'm not against it as a genre. If I see a book on a shelf and it looks interesting, I pick it up to read the synopsis and flip to pages at random to read some of the story. If I like enough to buy it, I do. I certainly gravitate to certain genres, but that doesn't make others off limits. So when I've picked up Christian fiction books in a bookstore and gone through the above routine, the synopsis more often than not hasn't interested me, so I've not bought the book. This was not the case with Angel Time.
I like that Rice isn't shying away from darkness in her Christian writing. Toby O'Dare has a doozy of a past, as dark and complicated as any of her vampires had, so it's not surprising that he'd become a contract killer. He prays angrily and sarcastically for help. And he is answered. An angel gives him a choice, an opportunity to change things for himself and be of worthy service to others. Which isn't to say that things will be easier for him, but the despairing voice that's plagued him for years will have no more power over him. That in particular resonated with me. As one who has a history of depression and anxiety, I know that voice. It's an annoying and yet alluring little bastard. The way Rice describes it rings true.
Toby's not going in for conversion easily, however. There would be no story if he did. He doesn't believe in the angel at first. He thinks it's his own madness. He doesn't think he deserves to be saved - he's a contract killer, for crying out loud. He doubts. He questions. You're halfway through the book before Toby accepts what the angel is and what he has to do to begin to redeem himself. To get Toby to believe and to give the reader Toby's back story so that you understand his motivation, the angel reviews Toby's life. Rice manages what could have been tricky. When Toby and the angel first meet, the angel can read Toby's mind, so when the angel narrates Toby's life, he/she/it can describe what Toby thought and felt. Clever.
Angel time is very like traveling with the Doctor. There is no past, present, or future the way we think of it. All time is present time as soon as you are in it. Everything is happening at once from the divine perspective. When the angel takes Toby into 13th century Norwich, we are in classic Anne Rice territory - an historical setting for an adventure, which is always fun. And there's certainly tension and conflict and danger in Toby's first mission. The parallels in this adventure to Toby's own life are there to see if you look for them, and I'm not ready to leave off reading about him, which shows the success of the story if the reader can find sympathy for a former contract killer struggling with his own soul and conscience, so the set-up for the next book is satisfying and not surprising. I look forward to reading it.
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