Disqus - Latest Comments for debbsmith

Re: Pat Sajak ‘Mea Culpa’: ‘I was the person who introduced Keith Olbermann to America’ - TVNewser

debbsmith — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 16:35:41 -0000

Who knew? Pat Sajak: right wing apologist.

Rock on, Keith.

Re: KFA for the USA

debbsmith — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:11:13 -0000

We must return to the Truthiness that made America what it is today! Where can I buy the t-shirt???

Re: Do Literary Writers Deserve More Review Coverage Than Bestselling Authors? - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

debbsmith — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:57:44 -0000

Book review sections operate on a bizarre logic applied no where else in media coverage of culture and entertainment. Does the sports section give 90 percent of coverage to obscure games of chess and tiddlywinks because they are esoteric and under funded? Does the movie reviewer ignore the new Will Ferrell comedy because it isn't an art house film? Does the music reviewer only cover the symphony? Yet book reviewers capriciously dismiss 90 percent of pop fiction simply because, well, "because." The argument that "those" books don't need publicity is elitist B.S. There are many many many lovely, well-crafted, deserving pop fiction books that don't get the (much deserved) budget of a bestseller like Jen Weiner or Jodi Picoult. The good news? Major book reviewers have slowly but surely become irrelevant to millions of readers by ignoring a diverse array of books that don't meet their sniff test.

Re: How to Impress Booksellers - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

debbsmith — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:33:03 -0000

As an author (20 years and counting) and small press publisher (10 years and counting) I've dealt with booksellers from several angles. And while there are exceptional, personable, highly motivated booksellers out there, for the most part I've encountered a "What can you do for me?" attitude that is arrogant, apathetic, unwilling to work with any wholesale system except on the most traditional Big Pub terms, and more concerned about ther perks the publisher provides than the quality of the books and authors. I've given away tons of promo books, taken booksellers to lunch and drinks, jumped through hoops to grease the wheels to their specs re: booksignings and review copies, and yet rarely does a bookseller return the favor. Now they're actively battling (or attempting to ignore) the new world of ebooks and online retailers. Maybe if they stocked more small press titles, expressed an active and gracious interest in supporting their fellow indie businesspeople, and treated authors and publishers as partners rather than supplicants, we all might benefit.

Re: Amazon Kindle 'Bestseller' List to Split - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

debbsmith — Wed, 12 May 2010 16:45:38 -0000

P.S. from BelleBooks

We think the value of the giveaways will remain regardless of the lists being separated. Anything that gets readers to try a small press title is fine by us. We get a constant stream of emails from readers saying "I can't believe I never heard of this author before. I'm so glad I downloaded the free book."

Re: Amazon Kindle 'Bestseller' List to Split - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

debbsmith — Wed, 12 May 2010 16:42:53 -0000

Hey from BelleBooks! An update: Since December we have continued to put selected titles on Amazon Kindle for free, and the results continue to be very significant upturns in sales both on the promoted titles and related backlist. Our YA fantasy author, Parker Blue, got such a boost for her "Demon Underground" series with a March giveaway of the serie's first title that the series continues to hang in the top tiers of its category niches. Humor/advice author Haywood Smith's TWELVE SACRED TRADITIONS OF MAGNIFICENT MOTHERHOOD only recently dropped out of the high numbers in both print and ebook sales, after a promotion phase in early April. All other titles we've promoted have scored lots of great reviews and sales, and have stayed in the top ranks long after the promo ended. Currently our women's fiction novel, TENDER GRACES, (Kat Magendie) is in the top 5; we'll see how that success plays out over the next two months of increased sales; side benefits of the promotions (beside our author Gayle Trent getting picked up by Pocket Books, as reported in Galley Cat) now include a lucrative foreign rights sale, mentions of our books in major media, and established agents sending us proposals. Giving away a few books on Kindle has given us results we could NEVER have afforded via traditional publicity. We're total advocates for the program and will continue offering titles for free each month.

Re: Featured Book of Color - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

debbsmith — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:56:28 -0000

Jeff clearly doesn't read much romance. He pretty much described the characters, style and plot issues of most contemporary romances going back ten-to-twenty years. Yet he seems to think he's happened onto an extraordinarily unusual (i.e. "grown folks") romance novel. Maybe y'all can find a reviewer who actually reads in the genre before smirking at it?

Re: Honor Moore Combats "Male Approval Desire" - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

debbsmith — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:36:13 -0000

LOL
As a feminist and a veteran author of romance novels, I'd like Ms. Moore to know she's coming to this party a little late. Romance novelists, almost exclusively women, have been pushing the boundaries of conventional female sexuality for decades. Ms. Moore and her friends should read a few good (romance) books.

Re: Kindle Ownership an Unreliable Marker of Literary Self-Importance - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

debbsmith — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:42:42 -0000

Once again the literati are completely out of touch with the real world of readers. Genre fans, particularly romance readers, have been a key force behind the rise of ebooks, and all indications are that huge numbers of genre readers immediately embraced the Kindle. I just confabbed with a pal who proudly showed me her new Kindle -- which she has already begun filling with sword-and-sorcery novels. So this notion that the Kindle caters to a self-proclained literary elite intent on reading the ebook edition of Proust is ridiculous.

Re: Former Newspaper Man Warns Publishers - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

debbsmith — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:26:13 -0000

Good questions. Any answers?
I fear it's as simple as this: An entire generation of Internet users thinks content should be free. They see publishers and authors as nothing more than greedy "thems" who want to force victimized readers to pay for reading -- a habit the Internet-raised babies see as their sacred right, not an information and entertainment service for which they should pay a reasonable free. And thus it will be very hard for any author to receive a decent amount of compensation for publishing a book. Unless authors are supported by foundations, trust funds or rich spouses, they can forget about earning a living.

Re: Is AP violating Bill Clinton's intellectual property rights?

debbsmith — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 19:01:07 -0000

The people who pay the costs and do the work to create articles and take photos deserve to protect those properties and benefit from their use by others. Too many people think everything they read and see on-line is magically created out of thin air and should be free, free, free to steal, I mean, er, use as they see fit. How would you like it if your neighbor decided your front yard belongs to them because hey, it's out there in public where anyone can see it.

Re: Amazon Customers Boycotting eBooks over $9.99 - GalleyCat

debbsmith — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:34:22 -0000

Dear Tinbox
I also publish ebook editions of my titles, including for Kindle. I'm a big proponent of ebooks. This isn't, as I said previously, about how much it costs to print a book. It's about how much it costs to produce and market the content, regardless of format. Also, as another poster noted, Amazon is playing this loss-leader game for reasons that have nothing to do with the value of the content they sell, but as a move to build control of the broader industry. All hail our new overlord. The Wal-Mart of publishing. A world in which all members of the book-production chain will have to cut prices at all levels in order to serve the biggest retailer. Maybe we can outsource the author jobs to China, where factory writers can turn out bestsellers for mere pennies a book.

Re: Amazon Customers Boycotting eBooks over $9.99 - GalleyCat

debbsmith — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:37:53 -0000

Someone please explain to these boycotters that if Amazon and other distributors would stop taking half the retail price from publishers and authors, the price of ebooks could come down significantly. Also explain that authors and publishers still have to pay their bills, that there are costs like advertising, design, insurance and etc. that do not go away, and that, golly, authors have this funny thing where, when they spend a year writing a novel or nonfiction book, they sort of expect to be compensated by the readers who claim to support their work.

Re: Georgia Newspaper Drops “Books” from Arts Section Title - GalleyCat

debbsmith — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:48:03 -0000

My hometown paper, The AJC, hasn't given much coverage to books *ever,* so this change will have little impact on "loyal" readers. During her reign as editor Teresa Weaver ignored virutally all genres of popular fiction, focusing instead on her own narrow taste for trendy and obscure titles. Readers and authors such as myself stopped perusing the paper's book section and turned to the Internet for book reviews and discussion. On another note, the AJC seems to be spiraling downhill in general. It's specialty sections have dwindled markedly in the past year, and just this week the paper announced that it will no longer deliver papers for retail sale in a host of rural areas around Atlanta. Such a cutback in the state's largest and best-known paper seems unthinkable, and can't bode well for its future.

Re: Facebook bans breastfeeding photos

debbsmith — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:21:27 -0000

I absolutely support breast-feeding, but like any bodily function, it's primarily a private and discreet matter generally not meant to be shared with strangers. Using the logic of the pro-photo crowd, no one should protest if, say, men want to post snapshots on their Facebook pages of themselves ejaculating or, to use a closer analogy, parents might post graphic genital photos of their naked infants during diaper changes. At what point does a natural human process become exploitive? After all, it's all natural and normal, right? Yep, but not when thrust into the face of your fellow citizens in the public square.

Re: CNET Executive Editor Defends Self-Publishing - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

debbsmith — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:33:32 -0000

Hurray for David! Small press publishing and self-publishing are easy and cheap thanks to ebooks and POD, but, as always, the vast chasm that separates success from failure is not in *how* the book is published, but how well the marketing and distribution efforts work. And them's the hard parts. Deb Smith, publisher, author, BelleBooks at www.bellebooks.com

Re: CNN is beaming in their correspondents as holograms

debbsmith — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:12:40 -0000

Gimmick. My journalism prof predicted holographic news images 30 years ago, which sounded cool, but tonight I kept waiting for the correspondent to say "Help me, Obi wan Kenobe."

Re: The Novel Hannah Tinti "Didn't Want to Write" Is Now a Hit - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

debbsmith — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:19:16 -0000

I'm guessing that the many fine, talented YA authors who write classic fiction enjoyed by adults as well as kids might take a teensy bit of offense at the proposition that some books "are too good to be YA."

Re: The Future of Digital Book Review Sites - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

debbsmith — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:29:47 -0000

As a small press publisher I heartily agree that having more online review sites would be great. I'd be happy to see a comprehensive site that gathers and organizes online reviews from the vast multitudes of bloggers out there now reviewing books of all genres. I'm tracking down appropriate genre bloggers and getting cordial welcomes from them and lots of coverage for my titles. If only there were a kind of clearing-house site for these things . .. .

Re: Book Publishing Is SO Dying, Insists Reader! - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

debbsmith — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:21:32 -0000

Maybe a better conclusion is that the Manhattan-based book publishing industry is not long for this life. Book publishing is no longer confined to the highrise giants of the big apple nor the tiny cabal of high-profile authors whose successes (and failures) are routinely assumed to have any real meaning to the diverse world of readers. Out here in the trenches, small presses are blooming along the information superhighways faster than tough dandelions. Thousands of authors are cultivating modest but loyal audiences, and niche publishing is doing very well, thank you. Out here, invisibile to the radar of New York, a vast assortment of small-time bloggers are reviewing books, discussing books, and turning other readers on to their favorite authors. Out here, all is well.

Re: "A Perfect Storm of Problems" - mediabistro.com: TVNewser

debbsmith — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:08:30 -0000

The big joke here is that the mainstream media considers itself unbiased compared to Olberman et al. But what I see is little better than corporate propaganda on all counts. I'll take an overt opinion, either left or rightwing, over a slyly disguised op-ed intended to lull the masses into accepting whatever the Big Boys think is best for them.

Re: What's That Weather Guy Doing At John King's Wall? - mediabistro.com: TVNewser

debbsmith — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:16:51 -0000

LOL
I said the same thing. "Now they've got the weather guy doing it too!" It's simplistic and cartoonish but effective, I suppose. Excuse me now, while I go watch the movie "Network" again and see how much that creepy prediction of modern news as entertainment has come true.

Re: When The Tide Turned At MSNBC - mediabistro.com: TVNewser

debbsmith — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:12:48 -0000

If the traditional media did a decent job of investigating and reporting instead of soft-balling their coverage to stay cozy with Washington and the corporations, Olbermann wouldn't have such a loyal audience. When Brokaw, Mitchell et al focus on frivolous subjects or (worse) tackle serious subjects in a superficial way designed to impart only half-assed information (the surge is working! the surge is working!) it drives more Americans to the Olbermanns, Hannitys etc. seeking some glimmer of truth, no matter how opinionated.

Re: “Little By Little, The Slippery Slope Lost its Ground” - TVNewser

debbsmith — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:51:52 -0000

Olbermann may be over the top but he's one of the few calling B.S. on the politics of the rightwing, something the supposed pro journalists ignore. I've lost a lot of respect for NBC and other MSM over the past eight years, starting with the free pass they gave Bush and Co. re: the war. So their chest-beating bleats about being respectable news organizations comes across as a joke. At least with Olbermann we get something other than the RNC talking points.

Re: What's An Aspiring Writer To Do? - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

debbsmith — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:38:03 -0000

Self-publishing is very do-able but takes an enormous commitment that most authors refuse to make. What resources do even small presses have that authors don't? Years of networking with subrights agents, plus relationships with wholesalers, booksellers and reviewers. An author who intends to self-publish needs to understand there is far, far, far more to it than getting the book printed, setting up a website, etc. The author has to devote him or herself to a longterm plan to build a reputation and a brand.