Reading Rage Tuesday: Your clever writing slays me. Literally, I am dying.

Uh-oh. Did you miss this week’s reading rage? FEAR NOT. I wrote one. But it’s been posted over at our new blog, along with a new review that went up just today. Pop on over–we won’t bite. Much.

The Future of Publishing? Know Your Publisher, vol. VI: Red Lemonade

Before I dig in to this post, I must leave (yet another) a reminder that IB is moving to a new site starting March 5. We will no longer be posting here at our WordPress.com blog. If you want to stay subscribed and keep receiving content from our blog, please hop over to the new site (which is already up!) and subscribe in the sidebar or update your RSS feeds! Thank you!

Publisher: Red Lemonade

Location: Brooklyn, NY

Founded: 2011 by Richard Nash of Soft Skull Press

Distributor: Publishers Group West

Notable Authors/Works: Zazen by Vanessa Veselka; Lynne Tillman; Follow Me Down by Kio Stark

Open Submissions: Absolutely, sort of. More about this when you read on.

Kindle/e-reader available: Yes

Publishes Periodicals/Quarterlies: No

General Information: Today’s Know Your Publisher edition includes an interview. This is the first interview I have conducted for IB, and I don’t think I could have picked a better first interview topic than Red Lemonade, a press that some have called the future of publishing.

Red Lemonade is the product of Cursor, which is the brainchild of Richard Nash. Cursor provides a platform that approaches publishing in a new way–what has come to be known as crowdsourcing, a user-driven application where large groups of people are called to participate in achieving an end result. Red Lemonade does not just have a website where you go and buy the books they have to offer; the website hosts a writing community, where writers and readers alike participate in creation. A writer uploads a work, and other community members comment on the work, offering praise and criticism both; the works that get the most positive buzz over time have the best potential to be tapped for publication. The idea behind Cursor seems to be to create different presses with differently-themed communities, all powered by one platform; Red Lemonade leans toward “edgier, adult literary fiction”, but another Cursor-powered press may deal with science fiction, or even more specific topics.

I interviewed Brian McFarland, the community manager at Red Lemonade.

Susie: Some people perceive writers as being a bit . . . sensitive . . . about their work. How has the experience been with exchanging feedback between readers and writers?

Brian: It is an ongoing point of discussion, a fascinating type of writing workshop, a new way to experience literature and a bit of a conundrum (in a riddle, in an enigma) all in one. Feedback and suggestions are often perceptive and the writer can respond, make changes, or explanations.  Works that get more comments ‘bubble up’, so to speak, and it’s great that there is a focused community that is part of the review process.  On the Red Lemonade site, you can select a specific line or word, highlight it and then comment on specific parts of the text, which is really cool and interesting to follow.

Susie: I noticed when I went to look at Zazen that the online copy had a ton of annotations. I think I could have spent the whole day reading them if I’d had time.

Brian: Indeed. The work we are publishing in April, Matthew Battles’ Sovereignties of Invention, generated many responses as well.

Susie: Do the books remain available to read online after they’re tapped for publication?

Brian: Yes, you can read both books online for free at this very moment. And yet, people are tweeting, commenting, adding to reading list the Zazen physical book.

Susie: There’s an ebook controversy raging right now (what’s new, right?). What are your thoughts on ebooks?

Brian: There is so much focus on the means of delivery, and not enough on what is being delivered–the rough and tumble heartfelt and intellectual surprises that readers experience and writers love to create. That feeling you get when you talk to your best friend about your favorite authors, or someone suggests a new book to you, or you find a good author who loves another author and you follow that reading trail to worlds and words you never knew of before.

Susie: Does most of the editing happen organically through the community, or is there a separate, more thorough process that the work undergoes once you decide to publish it?

Brian: It’s a workshop not solely designed to be just a part of the selection process; it’s opening up the whole culture of the book. It’s Penn and Teller creating a plexiglass Chinese Box; the magic is still there but everyone is part of it, no need to climb the skyscrapers, so to speak. But yes, an editorial sense, vision, awareness of context and history with a certain approach to writing, that is part of the whole shebang, too. Readers contribute, writers talk to writers, the interns lend a hand, the editor has their say. The Hybrid Beasts submissions are this process going on right now and it’s exciting to see.

Molly Gaudry of the LitPub is our editor [for Hybrid Beasts]; it is her vision which helps define what works we are looking for and will contribute to the final selections and styles of the works.

Red Lemonade has a keen appreciation of language, words, the act of translations, other languages, dolphin speak. The whole culture of the word. Another aspect, and Zazen really touches on this, is a strong cultural awareness, battle reports from the field received long before they are received by sailing ship.

Susie: I don’t want to take up all of your time today ^_^ but I’d like to get any other  information that you wanted to share before I go. Any events coming up?

Brian: Richard Melo–whose novel Happy Talk will be published this summer–is going to hold an online class [tentatively in early summer], working as a writing facilitator/coach about approaches to writing a novel. The class will be five sessions of exploring writing approaches and methodologies. Another aspect of publishing that we see as part of our community.

//

Thank to Brian for having a chat with me about Red Lemonade. If you’re curious to find out more about what the crowdsourcing method of publishing looks like, pop on over to their website and sign up for a free account. Their library contains complete published and unpublished manuscripts to read for free; you can not only read the works, but join in on the conversation about them, highlighting and commenting on your favorite passages and talking to others who liked the same parts you like. (If you’re a writer, know that the site is still in Beta, and you must contact the publisher to be allowed to upload a work of your own.) Who knows? You could help publish a book!

You can also find out more about Richard Nash and Red Lemonade at The Next Best Book Blog.

What do you guys think? Is this the future of publishing? Are you guys interested in being part of the process, or would you rather stick to works that have already been through someone else’s wringer? Have you had personal experience using Red Lemonade? Let us know in the comments!

Reading Rage Tuesday: Ebooktroversy!

Before I dig in to this week’s Reading Rage, I must leave a reminder that IB is moving to a new site starting March 5. We will no longer be posting here at our WordPress.com blog. If you want to stay subscribed and keep receiving content from our blog, please hop over to the new site (which is already up!) and subscribe in the sidebar or update your RSS feeds! Thank you!

Today’s reading rage covers a topic that annoys not only me, but just about everyone in the book industry. Even before the recent scuffle between Amazon and IPG (Independent Publishers Group), the price of ebooks has been a hotly contested issue among publishers, authors, retailers, and readers. Dramatized, it might go something like this:

Publishers: Do you have any idea how much money we don’t make? Our profit margins are so narrow they would make a supermodel feel fat.

Authors: Do you know how much time I spent writing that book, and you want to sell it for ninety-nine cents? Are you mad? I poured my soul and life into this work. Also, I’m pretty broke because I’m a starving artist and whatnot, and I’d like to get paid, please.

Retailers: Um, hey, you guys, I’m really sorry that you haven’t figured out how to make money yet, but we’re kind of doing really well making money and we think you should sell ebooks cheaper so you can sell more of them. Also, we’re kind of selling these e-readers that people need to read your books at a loss so people will buy more of them, and thus, more of these ebooks. Just sayin’.

Readers: You guys know the library still has free books, right? And what have you done for me lately? [Great article over at Dear Author that I highly suggest you read, if you haven't already.]

IPG has posted a statement on their website that explains the costs of ebook production relative to the cost of trade paperbacks. It all looks really good for them and bad for Amazon, of course. There is, as always, more to the story, though.

Amazon used to buy ebooks and sell them far cheaper than cost, which made the publishers a bit miffed. Steve Jobs, who wanted to get in on the ebook trade with Apple’s iBooks, said that Amazon  had “screwed up” its business model by selling books so cheaply. What he, of course, really meant was that Amazon had screwed things up for its competitors: Amazon sells a little bit of everything, and using the Kindle and ebooks as loss leaders, they bring customers to their site more frequently to buy more books and more everything else that Amazon sells. Amazon also has always known that people don’t want to pay as much for ebooks as they do for treebooks. Treebooks have more intrinsic value, since you can sell them (or buy them used), or repurpose or recycle the materials, or even donate them to a library; since treebooks are tangible, they also have a greater perceived value to many readers. In order to make iBooks more competitive, Steve Jobs gave Amazon the run-around and destroyed their business model, at least insofar as the major publishers go (perhaps this is why we’re seeing Amazon dipping into the publishing realm, too?):

Jobs solution was ruthless and brilliant. He told the publishers that Apple would “go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30%, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that’s what you want anyway.”

This made the publishers happy, but it didn’t solve the problem of Amazon undercutting the iBooks store on price.

To solve this, Jobs negotiated an agreement from the publishers to allow Apple to sell the books at a lower price if any other vendor began selling them in ebook form cheaper than Apple was.

This effectively turned the publishers into Apple’s crow bar, gaining them leverage against Amazon. As Jobs explains it, “they went to Amazon and said, “You’re going to sign an agency contract or we’re not going to give you the books.” — from an article on The Next Web

In a post on their site, IPG talks about their inability to force Amazon to stick to the agency model:

Only the six biggest publishing companies have had the market power to compel Amazon to accept the Agency Model, which allows the publisher to keep 70% of the e-book list price. Independent publishers have had to accept the Wholesale Model, which has let us keep only about 50% of the suggested price. That is a 20% difference. — IPG website

First, off, thanks for the math lesson, Einstein. I never could have figured out that 70-50=20.

Secondly, I find this a little fishy, for several reasons.

When you produce a product out in the real world, and you sell it to huge distributors like Amazon, based on what I know from various business classes, it doesn’t seem like you really get to keep a full 70% of the retail price of your product. You make up for this by selling in bulk; bulk sales are the reason that resellers get access to this discount price and Joe-off-the-street doesn’t. The reason for this seems to be that if someone is willing to buy a crapload of your product off of you all at once, it’s generally smart to sell it to them, even if you make less money per unit, because you gots to get paid–especially since the longer it takes you to make back the money you sank into the product, the longer you’re not in the black. Time is money, friend.*

(*For 10 points, tell me where you’ve heard this line before.)

So, I’m a little suspicious of IPG whining about selling their books wholesale. Uh, welcome to the rest of the business world?

The wholesale model makes a hell of a lot of sense for publishers, because, barring opening up their own retail outlets, which cost a lot to staff and operate, they need someone to sell the books. And those someones need to be able to make enough money off of the books to justify even carrying them. Literature may be an art, but book-slingin’ is a business.

Enter Amazon. Everyone shops at friggin’ Amazon. Even people who think Amazon is the Great Satan still secretly shop there. Amazon has a lot of purchasing power, because it has a lot of money. It has a lot of money because everyone shops there. If you sell something, the place where everyone shops is kind of the place that you want to be. Amazon also has a lot of money because it is smart at selling things. So, I dunno, if I were a company that seemed to be having trouble meeting the bills because of slim profit margins, I might sit up and take notice when Amazon said my ebooks were overpriced.

Being “forced” into a standard wholesale contract like the rest of the business world could actually be good for IPG, for a few reasons:

• Amazon will probably buy more books if offered a better contract. What publishers lose in percentage, I bet they will make up and then some in volume. And since these are ebooks, they don’t have to pay to have them reprinted–they can keep selling them indefinitely off of the master files, which means the cost per copy sold decreases over time and the profit margin increases.
• Indie presses don’t generally (with a few exceptions) have a lot of highly-anticipated blockbusters like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games. The reason that Amazon lets the publishers who do have these books get away with charging more is that they know they have instant mega-sales when these books release–some people will buy both an e-book copy and a hardback so they don’t have to wait even a second to start reading. Those publishers don’t just publish the big-name books, though; by selling indie ebooks at a lower price point, indie books become more attractive than these publishers’ less blockbuster-y works. That means more sales. Volume, again, makes up for loss in percentage.
• Indie authors are usually authors that many readers haven’t encountered before. A lower price point may convince more new readers to take a chance on unfamiliar authors, thus creating more fans of indie authors and presses.
• More sales means more buzz about indie authors, which means even more sales. Not just for this book, but also for future books by the same author.
• Book reviewers (cough) such as myself will be able to afford to buy more indie books to review, which means more exposure, which means more sales! (P.S. Indie presses and authors, I totally accept ebooks to review. Just saying. Pitch us.)

I really think a huge part of this problem is that publishers are a little bit behind when it comes to making ebooks work for them. Publishers seem to see ebooks as having a 1:1 replacement ratio for treebooks–as in, for every ebook they sell, they fail to sell a treebook. When ebooks are priced at $10, they’re probably right about that; lowering the price on ebooks, however, has some interesting implications. What would happen, for example, if you were selling an ebook at $5.99, and instead of sacrificing one treebook to sell one ebook, you sold two or three or four ebooks to each treebook that wasn’t sold? Or if instead of buying a used copy for four or five dollars (keeping in mind that you automatically plunk down four dollars in shipping if you’re shopping used at Amazon, so even the penny used books cost at least four bucks), a person picked up a new ebook because it’s more convenient and only costs a bit more? A person might spend five or six dollars on an ebook rather than wait for the library, but likely would skip over the $10 book in favor of the wait. A person might buy two or three ebooks at a time when the price point is less expensive. There are many instances when a less expensive ebook could turn a higher profit through volume.

I hate to blaspheme the great Steve Jobs, but this is all a little annoying. Apple has always sold high-priced goods, and has profited by being insular and just a tiny bit incestuous–you get the iPod, which works with iTunes, which has an iStore where you buy iMusic or whatever. The thing about the iPad as an e-reader, though, is that you can put a Kindle app on it and get the books cheaper on Amazon (or, at least, you could have done that). So, there was really never any reason to go buy higher-priced books through Apple, unless you wanted a non-Kindle format (which, for some, is reason enough to shop iBooks, I guess). By forcing the pricing issue and putting high-percentage dollar signs in front of publishers, Steve Jobs has basically ensured that we will always pay through the nose for ebooks. Thanks, Steve.

Publishers, if you’re listening out there, here are a few ideas that could make you more profitable when it comes to ebooks:

• Sell them cheaper. We will buy more of them if they are cheaper. I swear to God, we will buy more of them. Consuming is what we do.
• Rent ebooks to us. We can get them from the library, sure, but did you know that there’s often a wait to check out digital library books because there are limited copies? (Of course you knew that, because that’s part of your contract with libraries.) Capitalize on our impatience and let us rent an ebook for a month for a $1.99 or so. The genius of renting the book is that we don’t get to keep it. That means if we want to add it to our collection–as many readers are wont to do when they read a book they love–we have to give you more money. And you will get rental sales from people who wouldn’t have bought the book at any price.
• Stop freaking out over DRM. People want to buy books. We do. Making the books more user-friendly for us will bump up the perceived value of the books, so we might be willing to pay more. We’re not thieves, we’re your customers.
• Netflix for ebooks. Think about it.
• Run more promotions on your own sites and get the word out. We’ll flock to wherever the books are cheap, and us buying directly from you means that you keep more of the money.

So, what do you think of this whole ebook situation, book fans? Am I being too hard on publishers? Am I evil for sort-of defending Amazon? How much do you think ebooks should cost? Tell me all about it in the comments!

Reading Rage Tuesday: Types of characters I never want to read in a book again.

I want to talk about characters again; after all, the cast of a novel plays a vital role in one’s emotional response to many books. I wrote before about specific characters I’d like to punch in the face; today’s characters aren’t single characters that, while generally well-written, make my blood boil with their asshatty ways. No, these characters are literary epidemics for which we must find a vaccine. These characters make swine flu look like a good way to spend a weekend. They’re everywhere and we need to put a stop to them right now.

(Of course, this is by no means applicable to writers who are able to take these types of characters and make them dynamic and interesting.)

Characters who have generous financial means to solve problems and no significant mental distress.

I’m not saying that wealthy people don’t have problems that money can’t solve. There are a lot of fucked-up well-to-do families, and their stories make for dramatic reading when done properly. More and more, though, I’m seeing memoirs creeping onto the scene that focus on the midlife crisis of the advantaged upper-class person. Having realized that they’re having a crisis, these people don’t do anything cool like turn to heroin, run away and become prostitutes, or develop a gambling problem and go broke [NOTE: THIS IS SARCASM, DO NOT DO THESE THINGS, YOU WILL NOT BE COOL]. Instead, we get stories about how they throw caution to the wind and have (gasp) sex and buy some new shoes or go on vacation or something.

Yawn.

This character bores the hell out of me because the character never struggles in a way that has any lasting significance. Bored of marriage? You can afford a divorce lawyer–you’ll be quite eligible in no time! Confidence shaken? A sympathetic ear at $100 an hour will have you feeling amazing. Cushy job isn’t fulfilling your creative side? You have enough in the kitty to start your own successful business, and also probably an awesome idea that won’t fail, right? Without a conflict the character finds difficult to overcome, the book reads a bit like Donald Trump’s diary: “Was hugely successful again today! One of my casinos went broke, but I was over it by noon when my other casino made a kajillion dollars. A few people made fun of my hair, but hey–I have enough money for a new hairstyle, I like it this way, so they can fuck off because I am awesome.”

What's The Donald thinking here? Give me your best caption in the comments!

The chronically self-sabotaging person (aka, you never learn, do you?).

 How many times do you have to fuck up before you figure out that you’re doing it wrong? For this character, it is every time. This character never makes a connection between their behavior and the chaos that ensues afterward. Which, granted, there are a lot of people in the world who are like that; I’ve known more than a few people who live their lives running full-tilt at the same brick wall. I don’t really want to read a book about these people, though–and judging from some of your comments on the post about how to ruin your YA fantasy novel, a lot of you feel the same way. Characters have to change. They either need to spiral totally beyond salvation or redeem themselves. If the character is the same at the end of the book as at the beginning, what’s the point of writing a book about them? Zero. There is no point at all. Thanks for wasting my time, self-sabotaging character.

Couples who keep fucking everything up because they are entrenched in gender stereotypes.

I searched "divorce" on Flickr and this came up. Is this not totally sad? Wait--is the dad SMILING? "Leaving my shrew of a wife today, OHHHH YEAAAAAH." (I think that is his nose. But it could be a jaunty smile.)

Picture this: a man and a woman, dating or married. The man is a macho macho man, the woman a rather uncertain feminist–she wants the kids, the career, and some power of her own, but just can’t kick that pesky man-loving habit. He does all of the macho things; he expects her to do the dishes, cook dinner, do the laundry, watch the kids while he drinks beer with his buddies, and put out when he gets home. Or maybe he’s more subtle than that–maybe he is one of those mostly-modern males who has that fierce, protective I am man! streak running through him that never fails to pop up when given the opportunity. Depending on which side of the coin she’s on, she either unfailingly forgives him in an effort to make it work (or, like in the sitcoms, because she’s feeling smug and superior to small-brain husband), or she fights him tooth and nail every step of the way because she’s every woman. Then he asks if she’s on the rag and she cries and locks herself in the bathroom, or maybe keys his car.

Very few couples run into the same conflict and respond the exact same way all the time. Unless you have the insight of an amoeba, you generally learn how to get along in a marriage (either well or badly, but you make something work to keep from screaming at each other every day) or you build up to a spectacular drama-explosion and the marriage ends. In a dramatic work, I want to see the learning or the explosion, not this constant irritant that never, despite the author’s mediocre best efforts, seems to turn into a pearl. I want a pearl, goddammit. Also, the evolution of gender roles in society can be fascinating when approached correctly. There’s a lot of interesting shit going down in the world of gender roles, people. It’s exciting and terrifying and uncertain. With the whole gender spectrum to explore, plugging husband into slot M and wife into slot F and turning on the autopilot when you go gender-spelunking is lazy writing. I didn’t pay fifteen bucks to read the novelization of King of Queens or Leave It to Beaver.

The [insert minority here] character as a sensitivity-training tool, especially written by people who aren’t part of that group.

This character type makes me want to take a hammer to my skull because, if you’re looking in from outside–in some cases, way outside–someone else’s struggle, you can’t write convincingly about that person’s struggle. I’m going to pick on James Ross again for a minute because this example is kind of perfect. In the book Tuey’s Course, Ross claims to be tackling the difficult issue of racism. The problem is that Ross is whiter-than-white and has never been on the receiving end of racism, nor does he really seem to have much of an idea what it’s like to be a black person. As a result, Tuey O’Tweety is such a half-assed throwback to the stereotypical “house Negro” mixed with a 20-years-outdated knowledge of “black culture” that even the Grand Wizard would be unconvinced of Tuey’s authenticity. Tuey is long-suffering, always in trouble with the law; he laughs good-naturedly when some asshole country club drunk does “impreshuns” of him, and probably would’ve slapped his knee if Captain Jer had smeared on blackface; he’s a big fan of rappers “Shriek Caramel U-Hop” and “MiSSuS KuLe BReeZe SiSTa JaNeLLe”, but turns it down like a good boy when the white guys complain that the gangsta rap gives them a headache (a middle-aged Kenny G* fan didn’t name those rappers at all, btw); he’s far too poor to play golf with the guys; and, worst of all, he talks like this through the whole book: “Sum uh da fellas wanted ta git tagedda fo’ ole times sake.” Oh, and bonus: Mrs. O’Tweety’s name is LeVournique, and she apparently dresses like a gypsy drag queen with bright makeup and fake costume bling. As Arnold would say, “I am not shitting on you.”

*I’m only guessing that James Ross likes Kenny G. But I bet he does. How do you like stereotyping now, Mistuh Ross?

Things turn sour for cheerful Tuey at the end, and he perishes in a violent shootout with city officials (a violent end, SO CLEVER AND UNEXPECTED)–a shootout which he initiates because he has rabies. (Not that rabies is a racial stereotype, but shit, you guys, HE HAD RABIES. Maybe it is Ross’s way of explaining why the gangstas are so darn violent with their baggy pants and their rap music–maybe they are all rabid. BEST PLOT TWIST EVER.)

Could have saved Tuey's Course with a little more Mammy. Everybody loves Mammy, right?

Ross has indicated that he thinks that his work is part of a serious discourse on racism in America, but the only profound thing that comes across in his work is the fact that he’s looking at racism through Extreme CrackerVision. He can’t write these characters convincingly because he doesn’t know these characters; this is a major pitfall for people trying to “enlighten” others about something that they, the writers, have never personally experienced. As a person with an autism spectrum condition, I cannot wait for his upcoming book featuring autistic main characters. It’s going to be the most wretched thing ever put to paper awesome.

Based on his nuanced characterization of Tuey, I'm pretty sure this will be the template for his autistic characters. I could be wrong.

The other reason I find this type of character completely annoying is that they don’t tend to be real characters at all. Authors often use these characters as vessels to carry a message. I hate preachy books and I hate characters who aren’t realistic. I find a character who is supposed to be a representative of a group rather than an individual person a bit of a literary insult; I always feel a little miffed, for example, when I read an author falling flat trying to write a female as All Women rather than as a person who happens to have a vagina. No two women are alike, and I imagine that fact extrapolates to other categories of people, so creating this representative-of-the-group’s-struggles character without individuality will likely be full of fail.

(Actually, can we just stop making crusades of our fiction altogether? Just tell me a story–one that makes me laugh, makes me cry, one that moves me. Shit, this is starting to sound like a bad ballad.)

Bros.

No special reason, I just don’t want to read about bros.

This is just the tip of the bad-character iceberg, my friends–but if I kept going, I could write a fucking book about bad characters (ironically, I would want to read a book full of bad characters if the book were making fun of said characters). What poorly-written character stereotypes make you want to drop-kick a novel? Leave em in the comments!

Reading Rage Tuesday: I recommend that you kiss my ass.

If they can't find me, they can't make me do anything.

As a lover of literature, I love getting book recommendations. I do. I really do. So this rant is going to seem a little weird. Just bear with me.

Getting to hear about future favorite books must be the most awesome thing about being part of an online reading community. I probably would never have picked up Outlander if it weren’t for my Shelfari book club. Might never have stopped to read a Sookie Stackhouse novel if not for same. If I weren’t a book blogger, I might never have read the book Zazen based on a recommendation I found in some research I was doing (Amy and I will be reviewing this book shortly-ish). You guys have told me about all of your favorites–well, maybe not all but many–and my to-read list grows by half-feet daily.

Why, then, are recommendations the topic at hand on this fine Tuesday?

Over-recommenders.

We’re all prone to getting over-excited about our favorite books now and again, but the over-recommender doesn’t just occasionally step out of bounds when it comes to pushing his or her beloved works on you. The over-recommender lives out of bounds. The over-recommender considers it his or her duty to make sure that the whole world experiences the things that he or she considers worthy of attention. All of the things.

To try to be slightly fair, I am obstinate when it comes to being pushed around. If I get even a whiff of pushiness, my gut instinct is to dig in my heels. If that doesn’t work, I pull the toddler maneuver: I sit down on the ground and make it damn near impossible for anybody to drag me anywhere. So, the over-recommender and I really do not get on well. At all.

I also tend to push back any work that doesn’t look like it will fit my tastes. Not that I’m not all about trying new things, or even things that I don’t think I will like–I love Cormac McCarthy, for example, and he’s often compared to Faulkner, for whom I have little affection. I can generally tell fairly quickly if I’m going to like something or not, though, and I tend to favor things that I will like over things that I don’t think I will (note to self: way to go, Captain Obvious). The over-recommender doesn’t operate based on what his or her friends enjoy, though, and there’s another potential conflict: they’re not recommending because you will love this thing, they’re recommending because they love this thing. And there’s no polite way to brush off an over-recommender, because they keep coming at you like they’re Michael Myers and you’re a teenage girl in skimpy panties.

(Do you ever wonder what Michael Myers does when it’s not Halloween? Do you think he hangs out with Santa? Or maybe he goes on Carnival Cruises?)

This is where it gets ugly. The over-recommender persists in nagging you every chance he or she gets. Trying to demur fails. Telling them that you’re busy fails. Saying, “I don’t think this is going to be a good fit for me” fails. Of course it is going to be a good fit for you, it is AMAZEBALLS-TASTIC FOREVER. This is the point where most people would give in and read (et al.) the damn thing just to end the conversation.

NOT ME!

A typical set of exchanges between myself and an over-recommender might go something like this:

Me: Yammering on about something that is interesting to me, like I usually do, because I have Asperger’s and there’s almost no mental filter available when I get onto a subject that fascinates me. (Which is probably almost as annoying as over-recommending, but I’m working on it, at least.)

Over-recommender: Hey, speaking of that, have you heard about this thing that is marginally related?

Me: Um… no.

OR: Oh, you should definitely check it out. ZOMG SO GOOD. Definitely. Check. Out. Definitely check. Definitely. Out.

Me: Okay!

I check it out. I see that it’s a book written by the same author that this person has recommended to me about four hundred different times and by whom I’ve already read other works that I didn’t like. I put it in my “probably not going to read this” file.

Around the time that I have just forgotten the recommendation:

OR: HEY! Did you read the thing yet?

Me: Oh! Uh, what thing?

OR: YOU KNOW. The book I told you about a month ago that is the most amazing thing since humans discovered fire.

Me: Oh, right. Um, not yet.

OR: DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT

I start to get a little testy. And promptly forget everything about the thing I am supposed to read out of spite.

OR: Hey, did you read it yet? Didja? Didja?

Me: No.

OR: Here, you can borrow my copy, I have like ten copies just take it okay? REEEEEEEEAAAAADDDD ITTTTTTTT readitreaditreaditreaditreadit

Me: You know, it’s really not my kind of thing–

OR: NO IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE ANSWER.

headwall

OR: You STILL haven’t read it? Here, sit down, I will read it to you.

Me: I.. what? No. No! Look, I don’t really want to–what the . . . did you just handcuff me to a chair?

OR: Yeah, I sure did! Check it out, I even have created different voices for all of the characters!

I pick up the chair and start beating them with it. I go to jail, but it was worth it.

Fin.

I think there should be a rule that if you recommend something to someone, you can only follow up on it a maximum of one time. And I think at least six months should have to pass between the initial recommendation and the follow-up. Because if someone recommends something to me, and I read it, and I agree that it is amazeballs-tastic forever, I’m going to chat them up and say, “OMG YOU WERE SO RIGHT” the first thing when I finish it. If I don’t agree, I will probably avoid the topic to have to keep from having the “I think your favorite thing sucks” conversation. I think probably 95%* of people understand that this is how recommendations work; you either revel in it together or you recognize that you have different tastes and the other person just may not be that into it. It’s that other 5%* that is ruining it for everyone, and by everyone, I mostly mean me.

*Completely made-up statistics.

What do you think, booksluttians? Am I totally weird, or have you encountered your own pushy recommendations? Ever lose a friend over bad recommendations? Tell me your stories in the comments!

P.S. I’m sorry if this isn’t up to my usual rage. I just started a new job and I am SO FUCKING TIRED. And sore. And tired. Did I mention so tired?