YABookgate

[Kari Kamiya]

Its almost as bad as reading any children's book other than frog and toad as an adult.

 

[Windows 10 Upgrade]

Dude knows how to write and sell the books his audience actually wants to read, the video of him revealing he has written like 5 new novels during pandemic is such a genius marketing move.

Brandos complete sales are equal to current Booktok queen Sarah J Maas, although accounting for number of books out there she does sell vastly more books per title than Sanderson.

Both are barely a third of Anne Rice's Vampire books, Hunger Games, tenth of Twilight, and a twentieth (even thirtieth) of Harry Potter, so you can see the cash registers clanging.

People are trying to push both into that stratosphere of the big names - even GRRM barely scrapes into the bottom. I think Maas is really getting a big push but like Sanderson I think she's probably filled the genre and will need something special to get beyond it - a viral book, not just a constant churn of books to a static audience.

 

[Ice Mountain]

Hey, not all children's books are too infantile for adults to enjoy. A lot of them are pretty timeless, plus there's nothing wrong with enjoying the occasional bout of whimsy at any age.
It's just... something tells me the people who made that list didn't have stuff like The Phantom Tollbooth or A Wrinkle in Time in mind when they did.

 

[6MillionCoofs]

Even the worst brando sando books are still better than booktok and most of YA. Dude knows how to write and sell the books his audience actually wants to read, the video of him revealing he has written like 5 new novels during pandemic is such a genius marketing move.

I’m always reminded of the time he mentioned he got on the plan with no story written and got off the plan 10-12 hours later with a novella fully penned.

Dude is a machine.

 

[Commissar Fuklaw]

Brando Sando has done it again, making Audible bend to his will to make things better for fellow authors.

Spoiler

Hey, all. Brandon here, with what I consider to be some pretty exciting news. Many of you may remember when I wrote last year about my worries regarding audiobook royalties (particularly for independent authors). You can read it HERE, but some of the main bullet points are as follows:

• I seriously worried about the opacity of reporting to authors about audio sales. We didn’t know what a sale meant, how much of an Audible credit was given to authors when a book sold via one, and how royalties were being accounted.
• I felt that the industry was taking advantage of authors because of their lack of powerful corporate interests to advocate for them. While video game creators and musicians get 70–80% (88%, in fact, on two major platforms) of a sale of their products in a digital platform, Audible was paying as low as 25%–with the high end being instead 40%.
• I felt I could have gotten a better deal for myself, but the entire state of this industry was seriously concerning to me. So, I made the difficult decision NOT to release the four Secret Projects on Audible, costing me a large number of sales, to instead try to bolster healthy competition in the space, highlighting some of the smaller Audible competitors.

I hoped this wake-up call would prompt change. I didn’t refuse to put my books on Audible out of retribution or to declare war; I did it because I wanted to shine as powerful a light as I knew how on a system that highly favored the audio distributors over the authors. I was convinced that the people at Audible really did love books and writers, and that with the right stand taken, I could encourage them toward positive change.

I’m happy to say that this stand has borne some fruit. I’ve spent this last year in contact with Audible and other audio distributors, and have pushed carefully–but forcefully–for them to step up. A few weeks ago, three key officers high in Audible’s structure flew to Dragonsteel offices and presented for us a new royalty structure they intend to offer to independent writers and smaller publishers.

This new structure doesn’t give everything I’ve wanted, and there is still work to do, but it is encouraging. They showed me new minimum royalty rates for authors–and they are, as per my suggestions, improved over the previous ones. Moreover, this structure will move to a system like I have requested: a system that pays more predictably on each credit spent, and that is more transparent for authors. Audible will be paying royalties monthly, instead of quarterly, and will provide a spreadsheet that better shows how they split up the money received with their authors.

This part looked really good to me, as I understand their decisions. I tried poking holes in the system, looking for ways it could be exploited, and found each issue I raised had already been considered. This doesn’t mean it’s going to be perfect, and people smarter than me might still find problems that I didn’t. However, I think everyone is going to agree the new system IS better. We will better be able to track, for example, how Audible is dividing money between books purchased with a credit and books listened to as part of their Audible Plus program.

It’s all very technical, but I have to say I’m impressed with the effort they have made. The people there listened to my complaints, and have tried to improve. I’m not at liberty to explain in its entirety their new structure right now, as they’re still tweaking it, but they did say I could announce its existence–and that I could promise new, improved royalties are on the horizon.

Now, before we go too far, I do anticipate a few continuing issues with the final product. I want to manage expectations by talking about those below.

• What I’ve seen doesn’t yet bring us to the 70% royalty I think is fair, and which other, similar industries get.
• Audible continues to reserve the best royalties for those authors who are exclusive to their platform, which I consider bad for consumers, as it stifles competition. In the new structure, both exclusive and non-exclusive authors will see an increase, but the gap is staying about the same.
• Authors continue to have very little (basically no) control over pricing. Whatever the “cover price” of books is largely doesn’t matter–books actually sell for the price of a credit in an Audible subscription. Authors can never raise prices alongside inflation. An Audible credit costs the same as it did almost two decades ago–with no incentive for Audible to raise it, lest it lose customers to other services willing to loss-lead to draw customers over.

These are things I’d love to see change. However, this deal IS a step forward, and IS an attempt to meet me partway. Indeed, even incremental changes can mean a lot. When I was new in this business, my agent spent months arguing for a two-percent change in one of my print royalties–because every little bit helps. These improvements are going to be larger than two-percent increases.

Because of this, I will be bringing the Secret Projects to Audible very soon. I consider Audible to again be a positive force for the industry, and I have decided to shake hands with them. Audible has promised to release their new royalty system for all authors sometime in 2024, though I should be testing it in the next month or so.

And…if you’ll allow me a moment, I’d like to say that this feels good. It isn’t what I wanted, but I’d begun to think that nothing would ever change–that even my voice, loud though it can be, wouldn’t be enough. Yet change IS possible.

I know that there are plenty of people out there who are tired of hearing about me and my works (I’m sorry–I do have quite the group of evangelists, and we can be an enthusiastic lot). However, for better or for worse, I am one of the bestselling authors in the world. Historically, one of the best ways to change things in my industry is for authors like myself to force it to happen.

Feeling this responsibility, when I was first talking to Audible about these issues in 2022, I made it very clear that I wasn’t just seeking some quiet deal that gave me an individual advantage. I wanted to see positive change for all authors. And while I don’t think I can take sole credit, I do feel like my efforts this year have had a significantly positive effect. Soon every independent author who publishes on Audible (and maybe, eventually, traditionally published authors with the huge publishers–depending on what New York decides) will be getting a larger cut of the profit, with more transparency about how that cut is allocated.

So, for those who have been waiting until Audible had the Secret Projects, you’ll get your chance soon. I hope you’ll support them, and support Audible for their decisions. And thank you to all of you who shared the news about my problems with the audio industry last year; I believe that pressure really did help. This is a victory for all of us, because happier authors able to make a better living (particularly those authors who are struggling in the midlist trenches) make for a more vibrant world for everyone.

He's doing this while diversity goblins are squabbling about Palestine and ruining the Hugos.

 

[6MillionCoofs]

I assume while he was having that meeting he somehow manged to write a book at the same timr?

There’s a reason he is one of my favorite authors, he actually cares about the craft, industry and artists as a whole all for the sake of producing better books.

The same cannot be said for most other authors.

 

[Second Missing Primarch]

Would you look at that. A popular and well-known author using their clout to improve things for everyone in the industry instead of clubbing competitors and wrongthinkers over the head with it until they kneel in bloody submission. It almost restores my faith in people.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

One could argue he was doing it for himself first-and-foremost, but he truly believes that if it makes his life easier, it should also make other authors' lives easier and it needs to be the norm. That's what it means to be selfless and thinking of others, something that many of these "authors" clearly lack because they're still of the mindset that critique is flaming.

 

[JJLiautaud]

One could argue he was doing it for himself first-and-foremost, but he truly believes that if it makes his life easier, it should also make other authors' lives easier and it needs to be the norm. That's what it means to be selfless and thinking of others, something that many of these "authors" clearly lack because they're still of the mindset that critique is flaming.

All the self-professed socialists I have met have been so greedy and selfish that they'd make Robber Barons blush.

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

Kind of interesting post I saw on Cuckerbook. I'm not so sure I agree completely with the sentiments expressed, but it is a little odd that an apparently psychopathic murderer is the heroic MC here. And a "half-siren."

Spoiler: text

Jared Michael Anjewierden

The new book that came in today for my library's teen section got me thinking on something I've been seeing more and more of, at least with the teen books.
'Protagonist Centered Morality'
Now, in this case I don't mean so much "if the protagonist is late it was becasue of X reason, if side character is late it is becasue they're a jerk, or even 'the protagonist cheating is understandable, but their SO cheating is unforgivable.'
No, I mean stuff much worse than that, things that objectively immoral and wrong.
In the book from today the protagonist and her parents (mom is now dead, but she absolutely participaed) make their living by intentionally luring ships close enough to the rocks that they wreck, and then swimming out and picking said wrecks clean of anything valuable.
Most of the book is about the teen girl trying to rescue her father (and later her love interest, who is also arrested) from being hung for his crimes.
She talks about how evil it is that the captain is going to hang them, how unjust he is for confiscating her (attempted) bribe of him on the grounds it is from one of the wrecks and therefore stolen property, and letting her go with a warning as a mercy, instead of hanging her too.
Just to be clear here, her, and her family, have *literally* been murdering people.
No joke, no evading it, no euphamisms, each time they lured a ship to its demise they murdered at least some of the crew, often all of them.
I can get her wanting to save him anyway, he's her father, but painting the captain whose goal is making the region safe for merchant ships and trade as some kind of unhinged villain is disgusting.
There have been a lot of similar stories of late, but one worth mentioning is the multiple books with teen witches in modern highschool who are *explicitly* using black magic, often to curse boys over stuff as petty as a breakup up through punishing all the boys because some of them are harassing (or worse) the girls. (Disproportionate is the word that comes to mind.)
Most of these books also have a witchhunter group, who is always painted as the badguy, without even a hint that maybe they have a point, given the teen girls are, again, explicitly using black magic to curse people.

Spoiler: text

Gail Deibler Finke
Top Contributor
That is insane! What's the name of this book?

Jared Michael Anjewierden
Author
Compass and Blade, Rachel Greenlaw
(blurb)
This world of sea and storm runs deep with bargains and blood.
On the remote isle of Rosevear, Mira, like her mother before her, is a wrecker, one of the seven on the rope who swim out to shipwrecks to plunder them. Mira’s job is to rescue survivors, if there are any. After all, she never feels the cold of the frigid ocean waters and the waves seem to sing to her soul. But the people of Rosevear never admit the truth: that they set the beacons themselves to lure ships into the rocks.
When the Council watch lays a trap to put an end to the wrecking, they arrest Mira’s father. Desperate to save him from the noose, Mira strikes a deal with an enigmatic wreck survivor guarding layers of secrets behind his captivating eyes, and sets off to find something her mother has left her, a family secret buried deep in the sea.
With just nine days to find what she needs to rescue her father, all Mira knows for certain is this: The sea gives. The sea takes. And it’s up to her to do what she must to save the ones she loves.

 

[6MillionCoofs]

MC Morality has been a thing for ages. Protagonists have always been able to frame doing absolutely horrid stuff as good and the people having an issue with that as bad.

I blame Twilight honestly. It’s where MC Morality got kicked into high gear in the way it’s currently done.

 

[Flexo]

MC Morality has been a thing for ages. Protagonists have always been able to frame doing absolutely horrid stuff as good and the people having an isdue with that as bad.

I blame Twilight honestly. It’s where MC Morality got kicked into high gear in the way it’s currently done.

True, and I've yelled at clouds for awhile about it too.

But I think some of it may actually go back to Harry Potter. Sure it's not THAT bad in those books and they do call him out a little bit - but I think it's easy to miss for some fans and usually the first infection point is a story/trope that wasn't TOO bad, but as imitations grow, the mutations do as well.

I dunno if I'm making any sense. I need some booze.

 

[Windows 10 Upgrade]

But I think some of it may actually go back to Harry Potter.

You're definitely correct. The trope was around for a while but the Harry Potter Fandom completely ratified the Draco In Leather Pants sympathy for the evil character.


OK - TIME FOR THE LATEST YA DRAMA.

So this comes a bit late and gay, and some of the tweets are now protected, so stay with me for some anecdotal reminiscing.

So a couple of months ago Cait Corrain went cray-cray and delulu over the other authors debuting at the same time she was. There's more details in this thread as well. Was everything she said pure jealousy? Well you know the saying... a stopped clock is correct twice a day.

So one of the books Cait took umbrige at was Molly X. Chang's TO GAZE UPON WICKED GODS which is yet more Reylo-Trope enemies to lovers, white people are bad but sexy, Draco in Leather Pants Asian fiction. Molly was given a cool $500,000 advance for this, probably 20 times more that Cait.


Anyway as is the prophecy, Molly leaned heavily into the poor simple magical POC being oppressed by white colonisers trope. Money rains from the sky! But uh-oh, in the real world, this shit was done by Asians to their own people.



Now if anyone knows Romancelandia, the biggest rage kerfulffles happen over Jew/Nazi romances and Black Woman/KKK romance.... so it didn't take long for people to work out Molly's done the fantasy version of this. And sometimes if you do clowning, the clown bites back.
So the reviewers mention this in their reviews.

But Molly has a Secret Weapon. She activates her Gondor Wrongthink distress beacon, and a goodly number of fans ride to her aid, doxxing the reviewer, and also review bombing the reviewer's sister who is also a debut writer.








The damage is effective. Too effective. It appears Molly is also an oppressor (in some Asian way i just can't be bothered in explaining but it's sort of like she is the English and the Other Asians are the Irish, or the Welsh). And the reviewer... here's the rub... was not white. Ruh roh!







Molly says she had nothing to do with it. A great impassioned plea was written. Twitter was protected. People are crying foul, and nasty reviewers lying!



And what does our favourite busy-body Xiran say about this drama?

NOTHING!?!

Because it appeared she gave a blurb early on (and probably didn't even read it, lol)

 

[6MillionCoofs]

True, and I've yelled at clouds for awhile about it too.

But I think some of it may actually go back to Harry Potter.

Oh you are right there due to Draco being popular. I use Twilight as my starting point because that’s the big mainstream instsnce where the protsgonist had the issue and it was loved by all the hacks writing today. But Draco in Leather Pants certainly did not help

…why am I unfortunate enough to know and remember Draco in Leather Pants? Where did I go wrong in life?

 

[Flexo]

Oh you are right there due to Draco being popular. I use Twilight as my starting point because that’s the big mainstream instsnce where the protsgonist had the issue and it was loved by all the hacks writing today. But Draco in Leather Pants certainly did not help

…why am I unfortunate enough to know and remember Draco in Leather Pants? Where did I go wrong in life?

lol We are right there with you, brother.

Though I'd back it up even further. I think the original story has a little bit of "it's ok when the hero does it." Now I understand that's not strictly true - there's motifs to these school stories and all - but you can see how easily less mature readers could take that lesson away from the story.

People's fondness for Draco in Leather Pants strikes me as the first mutation of this trope and the start of the outbreak of it getting out of control.

 

[Commissar Fuklaw]

Jesus, Cindy's gotten fat.



lol gottem

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

What's this I'm hearing about pedo/groomers/mods who run "adult" websites and assorted shenanigans around NaNoWriMo?

News to me, though I guess it has been discussed for months at this point. I also don't see any news articles covering it, but there is an entry on KnowYourMeme. ...

NaNoWriMo Grooming Allegations, also known as National Novel Writing Month ADBL Fetish Site Controversy, refers to discussions about a National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) moderator purportedly redirecting underage participants to an offsite adult diaper fetish forum in November 2023. Moderators on the NaNoWriMo website were accused of ignoring the accusations leveled against the moderator until further pressure was applied via backlash online, as well as controversy surrounding the deletion posts and threads discussing the issue on National Novel (NaNo) forums. Conflicting accounts of the issue were discussed on different parts of the internet, with users on a Christian writers' forum condemning the moderator and some users on the /r/ABDL (Adult Baby Diaper Lovers) subreddit defending the moderator, claiming the controversy to be an unfounded witch hunt.

Total witch hunt, /r/ABDL rides to the rescue? WTF?

Five minutes ago I had no clue this was going on. Or had gone on. Apparently it may sink NaNoWriMo completely.

Edit: This was the brilliant response from the NanoWriMo "team." Holy fuck.

Spoiler: text - formatting may be a bit wonky

To Our NaNoWriMo Community,
We’re reaching out to communicate our current thinking about resource planning moving forward. Feedback from our global community point to numerous issues we need to address:

• Implementing moderation and community management practices that rise to the needs of both youth and adult community members
• Putting controls in place to further a culture of belonging, with special priority around improving the experiences of those from historically marginalized groups
• Making programs and resources more accessible to all members of our community, regardless of ability
• Doing more to include and to serve our community members outside the U.S.; shifting our culture and operations to function as a truly global organization
• Taking a critical look at current programs and technical infrastructure in ways that better-serve authors
• Ensuring that our core offerings and any course-corrections we make are in service of our mission

We want folks to know that we’ve hired a consultant as an on-the-ground resource who will serve the organization over the next several months. The forums will remain closed until the aforementioned assessment is complete and until a path forward is decided upon.
Unfortunately, in recent days, the questions we’ve received via the forums have become increasingly granular. We’ve done our best to convey that there’s a tremendous amount that has yet to be decided and discussed. We’re reaching the conclusion that there’s not much more real information we can give folks at this point. We are also recognizing that our time is better spent deliberating on the issues at hand rather than being hyper-responsive. Monitoring our inboxes and forum questions has become a full-time job.
As a result, our plan is to close all current Board forum threads as well. We will respond to questions that have already been posted as time allows us. Folks can email us with questions and suggestions at [nanowrimoboard@gmail.com} but please bear with us around the expediency of our responses. Please know as well that we will be communicating our progress monthly to keep folks informed, via email channels.
We’ve received so many great ideas from all of you, that we are confident that we will emerge from this better and stronger. Most importantly, we realize that we can’t solve problems that we won’t acknowledge. Though it has been painful to face some of what we have been confronted with, we are committed to doing the work to make things right.
In Partnership,
The NaNoWriMo Board

​

Message from NaNoWriMo Board - January 2024 Update to the Community​

Official StuffNaNoWriMo Board





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NaNoWriMo_Board
Jan 23

Dear NaNoWriMo Community Members,
Thank you for reaching out to us with your inquiries about the forums, your support, offers to volunteer, and your legitimate concerns.
Our inbox has been flooded, and we appreciate all of the thoughtful responses from participants and volunteers who genuinely care about NaNoWriMo, our fellow writers and the community as we do. It is impossible to respond to each message individually, but we wanted to let you all know we are working with purpose and sincerity.
Please see below the breakdown of the work that has been done since we last shared an update with the community. Our intention is to keep you abreast of all we are doing to make NaNoWriMo a better, safer, place:

• We’ve overseen a full-scale review of business practices led by former Board Member, Kilby Blades, who has stepped in to assist the organization on an interim basis
• We’ve begun to implement new procedures around community safety
  • Full revision and legal review of our employee handbook and codes of conduct
  • Full revision and legal review of our Municipal Liaison(ML) agreement
  • Development of a formal contract agreement for all (non-ML) Volunteers
  • Development of a stricter vetting process for all volunteers (which includes identity verification and background checks, wherever necessary)
  • Licensing of a digital constituent management system that will enhance volunteer management capabilities
  • Comprehensive background checks for all current employees
  • Checks and balances to ensure that standards of conduct and ethics are adhered to (e.g., better leadership training, volunteer training, tech mechanisms, and active oversight)
• We’ve made staffing changes and revised our staffing plan
  • We have rescoped certain roles and initiated some staffing changes (however, certain employees who left the organization voluntarily are in pursuit of their next opportunities)
  • We believe that learning from this moment through addressing skill gaps in the organization is healthy and we will go through a hiring process to fill necessary gaps in open roles.
• We’ve listened to other community feedback and are still in listening mode
  • We’ve disabled the mechanism on the YWP website that allows users to self-identify as educators for the purpose of creating classrooms, and we are researching mechanisms that will allow us to verify adults as educators.
  • We’ve revised our technology roadmap to address usability issues and are hoping to introduce new features in 2024
  • We are midway through a deep dive on forums and forum moderation; this has included benchmarking with other organizations with similar challenges
  • In February, we will hold focus groups for continuing MLs. We are also thinking through the logistics of Town Hall meetings and other gatherings
  • We’ve processed dozens of pages of community member feedback and are integrating it into our thinking
• With the staffing changes mentioned above, we are open to hearing from those of you who have reached out with offers to help and/or be a part of the organization’s future. Here is a link 126 for anyone who wants to be notified of forthcoming opportunities

We are excited about the future, and expect it to be brighter! We hope you feel seen and heard, and that you will stick with us as we continue supporting the writing community and our organization.
Kind regards,
NaNoWriMo Board of Directors

tl;dr - It is a giant word salad that admits nothing and says nothing.

Note that this is forum with a password, hence unarchiveable.

 

[Commissar Fuklaw]

That explains that vague 'communication' email they sent out a couple months back. I'm not surprised though, I've always gotten the feeling even on their official forums they cultivate those weirdo freaks who invade and despoil writing groups and groups in general.

EDIT: Yeah, that thing. They emailed it to everyone as well.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

A mate's offspring is nearing highschool age and so far has still not been sold on Discworld so we were nattering about possible YA options for her since she's enjoyed the Potter stuff. As ever I chucked Tamora Pierce's name onto the list alongside Lord of the Rings (Hobbit's for primary school age) but was wondering if there's some actual good stuff out there for a teenage girl hitting the YA fiction but is still not quite at weightier books.

From the looks of this thread the field has only grown worse but curious if there's any actual good ones out there or at bare minimum ones to avoid like mad.

 

[neverendingmidi]

A mate's offspring is nearing highschool age and so far has still not been sold on Discworld so we were nattering about possible YA options for her since she's enjoyed the Potter stuff. As ever I chucked Tamora Pierce's name onto the list alongside Lord of the Rings (Hobbit's for primary school age) but was wondering if there's some actual good stuff out there for a teenage girl hitting the YA fiction but is still not quite at weightier books.

From the looks of this thread the field has only grown worse but curious if there's any actual good ones out there or at bare minimum ones to avoid like mad.

Valdemar series by Mercedes Lackey. Start with the Arrows trilogy. I was hooked to most of Lackey's books in high school, also Anne McCaffrey and Alan Dean Foster (his older stuff is more fun). Then again I was in high school before YA existed (or if it did it was all angst porn like Lurlene McDonald and Cynthia Voight) and went from the children's section right to wandering the adult shelves.