As wanky as a red, red rose.
Publishing wank, fresh and delicious! Get yer publishing wank, get it while it's long and sticky!

(this wank courtesy of

wank_report)

It starts on Dear Author, with a post about one Red Rose Publishing. Kat Holmes, an author I have no particular knowledge of, finally got out of an NDA and posted a blog about her experiences with the publishing house. The DA summary includes books being published either too early or too late without the authors being told and breaches of contract that, when the author asks for the rights to be reverted, are answered with bills for cover art and editing services, and notices from cover artists and editors quitting are ignored. Part of the horror story from Kat's blog is reproduced, go over and read it if you want a nice, healthy dose of paranoia about picking publishers.

In any case, the founder of Red Rose responds, in a totally, utterly, completely professional and sane manner.

Ok, really it's a wanky mess, but you'd never know it from the first sentence:

This is not intended for the authors who did not go in the readers loop to whine and complain!

Oh yeah, we're dealing with a fucking bastion of maturity here. Some gems from the rest of the screed:

Pot, Kettle
I am beyond furious at those who have done it, and lets say I am not pleased and how unprofessional can you get!

Heidipology anyone?
Yeah, I am behind getting out the statements to those who have not sold $20 because I have been dealing with some serious family issues and for that I am sorry. I apologize for having some serious family issues going on with me.

DON'T TRUST THE GUBMINT!
Believe me the state and federal governments are looking to get money, unfortunately I guess on their parts all of our stuff checked out and was in the auditor’s oppinions [sic] one of the best and well put together as I had every thing she need right there.

It reads like a checklist of poor communication and bile
#1- you had no idea, #2- you are out to do the company and your fellow authors problems or #3- You do not care about Red Rose Publishing, your books, sales or the reputation of the company!

PROFESSIONALISM IS CAPSLOCK
I have repeatedly busted my ass so even those WHO DO NOT SELL GET A CHANCE TO GET THEIR BOOKS in print, well F* me, for going out of my way to help any authors, take out ads or even do contests.

And on, and on, and on. But that's only half this beautiful piece of work.

Down in the comments, things kick off right away with Kat herself showing up at comment #8. The fun doesn't really start until #13, though, when Kat's mother, Lin, shows up to add her two cents, and shilling a thrilling expose on her blog. An expose that, incidentally, I can't find under the hideous eye-searing format of the blog itself. Scroll down from the comment and you'll find Moira, an author who has her own set of little complaints.

I resented being called a f***tard and hearing her call other people the same.

I resented being called via telephone and having to listen to her talk about her staff and authors, badmouthing them, calling them useless, and generally spewing vitriol, blaming everyone for everything and never accepting responsibility that sometimes it may well have been HER fault.

I resent not being paid royalties since I left. She has disregarded her own contract which states if you work a month’s notice, she will still pay you. She doesn’t.

There's about a page more of that. Down at #17, Mom turns up again with...well I'm not sure what, really.

Red Rose only has ONE viable contract for the THREE maunscripts with my daughter and that is for her first, stand alone book VOICE IN THE NIGHT. That means they released TWO of her books without valid contracts because the second contract is made out to me writing as my daughetr even though I have never written as her…and despite repeated requests for a corrected contract we were told not to worry it was legal because they’d changed their copy and would get Kat a copy ASAP. The only copy Kat has from RRP is the one in MY name writing under her pen name.

Yeah I dunno but clearly capslock is the new professional. Moira once again reaffirms her hatred in the next comment, but we're just getting started! Down to #32, over a lot of people recoiling in horror at the post, we have Won't you think of the ~~children~~ authors!, which Lin promptly responds in agreement, but with another list of offenses.

Of course, a one-sided wank isn't nearly as much fun. Another RRP author appears, with the minority sentiment.

Totally objective, here.
Just an FYI, people. There are always more than two sides to a story. Gossip hurts everyone.

I’m not on anyone’s ‘side’, but I will say that RRP promised to get me published and they did, on time, and with excellent support from my editors and the art group.

RIGHTEOUS FURY OF CAPSLOCK
Please consider that this type of nastiness is unacceptible and the source who provided the (yes, scathing) email in the first place is the one who set out to harm, not Wendi.

All excuses aside, even when I have my own issues with someone or a company, I do address this in PRIVATE and never slander someone. That’s just WRONG.

Not in any way passive-aggressive
Thanks for reading. I truly do believe that we are all in this together and I’d like to see a little kindness and understanding from ALL SIDES.

Hugs
Franny Armstrong

I think it's signing off with "Hugs" that really does it for me. Anyways, Kat's mother responds further down in hilarious style. DO YOU HAVE THE COURAGE TO CLICK, DO YOU REALLY?.

@Franny Armstrong: I’m wondering, Ms. Armstrong if you have the courage to seek out the truth. http://linsownspeculations.blogspot.com/
That is my blog and on it I have posted the truth and copied the only contract Red Rose Publishing sent for my Daughter’s God’s At Work Series. Do you have the courage to go to my blog and see the truth? You were there that night, the night Ms. Felder flipped out on Kat and then pulled all Kat’s works from the catalog and banned her from the Author’s loop. She made you talk to Kat even though you knew from your radio show that Kat was ill…in fact you told her Kat should have been in bed…Kat HAD been in bed, but when Wendi Felter wants one of her minions attention you could be running a fever of a 105 and you’re gonna talk to her. You were right there in her home. So tell me, do you have the courage to be really impartial and see if we’re lying or if we have the proof to back our claim? There’s my link? Will you follow? Should be interesting to see what you do.

It's a long one, but there's a lot of glorious batshit pagentry on display. Sprinkled throughout are anonymous authors, editors, and others chiming in with their experiences with RRP, most of which are distinctly negative. This is a wank I highly encourage clicking through, because there's way more that I just couldn't include.

And here come the ETAs: Writers Beware just picked it up. Courtesy of

sistercoyote

ETA the second: Red Rose threatens to sue Dear Author! This could be interesting, and by "interesting" I mean "hilarious". Thanks

rainkatt!

(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)

	seca 2010-09-04 04:06 am UTC (link)
	Why does the romance genre seem so wanky? Or do the other genres just hide their crazy better? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	cleolinda 2010-09-04 04:29 am UTC (link)
	Maybe it has family problems? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	jkefka 2010-09-04 01:32 pm UTC (link)
	Would you like some aloe for that burn? (Reply to this)(Parent)

platedlizard
2010-09-04 05:28 am UTC (link)

I suspect that it's just more visable due to how online the Romance super-fandom is. Most of the real wankiness seems to come from the online publishers, and the rest from authors' blogs. Romance really took advantage of the online market, the ALL the successful online publishers I know of are some flavor of romance, as well as most of the major book-blogging sites. I'm not sure why that is.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	notjo 2010-09-04 09:00 pm UTC (link)
	Really fast turnover. Romance readers read more books, buy them new, and buy them quickly. They also have a lot of brand loyalty. Basically, romance readers are what's keeping the rest of the industry afloat, which is part of why I get so fucking irritated when people bash it. (Reply to this)(Parent)

issendai
2010-09-04 06:14 am UTC (link)

I suspect it's a combination of:

1. An enormous number of small online presses, which are volatile by nature. Online presses had a virtual monopoly on erotic romance until the past few years, and even after the big traditional houses got involved, online presses stayed viable. There's a culture of wait-and-see when a new small press looks hinky because some of those hinky small presses turned out to be workable enterprises.

2. Feral fandom. Some romance fans are sophisticated academics... and some are Twimoms. The feralness extends to the authors, who can easily get caught up in the "We're all a big family, and we need to hang together and do what the publisher says or none of us will sell any books ever and be drummed out of the industry and also disobedience is mean and disrespectful" mindset.

3. Market share. Romance is the best-selling genre of fiction in the U.S., and I wouldn't be surprised if it was the bestseller everywhere else it's sold. It outsells the #2 best-seller, religion and inspirational, by something like 150%. That's HUGE.

...So you have a huge feral fandom, with all the niceness policing that goes with it; lots of authors signed up with the least stable, most wank-prone form of publisher there is; and lots of F_Wers around to notice the wank, because the demographic overlap between traditional fandom and romance fandom is huge. It's a perfect storm of wank.

tl;dr Maybe they do all have family problems. And also, we're mean.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	dreamworld 2010-09-04 11:24 am UTC (link)
	Add to that a huge helping of cult of nice going on in the romance community. Many romance writers opperate under the banner of "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all," and then when someone does speak up about this or that (see the whole Cassie Edwards blow-up) you get a heaping helping of passive-aggressive super-nice. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

issendai
2010-09-04 04:15 pm UTC (link)

*nod* The Cult of Nice is amazingly powerful. I think it's part and parcel of feral fandoms--women get massive doses of the Cult of Nice IRL, and it takes us a long time to learn that we don't have to follow those rules online. Or we never learn, because we fall in with a group of fans who are still following those rules and think there's nothing odd about being locked out of their forum at night because there's no mod available to make sure everybody plays nice. (And who don't protest when told that the lockout gives them more time to spend with their children. Twimom fandom still makes my soul hurt.)

Actually, you get the same thing in fandoms and small forums run by middle- and high-schoolers. They spend their days in a setting where they're expected to "respect" authority, and "respect" means "obey" and "don't question," so when they set up societies of their own, they follow that model. Some of the scariest jackbooted thinking I've ever seen online came from small forums where the regulars were all in school and the mods were under 21. The regulars tended to cluster around a charismatic and/or talented leader who had become a force to be reckoned with online in her teens, so she had never had to deal with adult norms of online behavior; and now, at 20 or 21, she continued to enforce high-school norms in her forum. Some of the leaders I saw were frightened of adult society, and used their forums and online fandoms as a refuge.

...So, not that different from parts of the romance community after all.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	dragonfangirl 2010-09-04 07:20 pm UTC (link)
	and think there's nothing odd about being locked out of their forum at night because there's no mod available to make sure everybody plays nice. (And who don't protest when told that the lockout gives them more time to spend with their children. wat (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	kookaburra 2010-09-05 04:49 am UTC (link)
	Oh, that was amazing. But I can't find the wank! Even the wiki is no help! :( (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	issendai 2010-09-05 01:05 pm UTC (link)
	It's the wank from the release of the last Twilight book. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	sistercoyote 2010-09-09 10:20 pm UTC (link)
	I think that was the Twimom forum that has closed its doors. (Reply to this)(Parent)

lilitu93
2010-09-04 07:38 pm UTC (link)

The cult of nice, ugh. Every few months there's wank between the more "traditional" romance fandom communities and the "meal girl" communities. There are exceptions, of course, but most of the so-called "mean girl" bloggers are just blunt and opinionated, not mean. Also, a lot of the breakdown is between the more traditional/conservative branches of the fandom and the more modern/progressive/feminist branches, and the "mean girls" tend be the latter.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	lilitu93 2010-09-04 07:40 pm UTC (link)
	BTW, is there some kind of spam word filter on journalfen that stops posts from being accepted? I've been trying all day to post the above, but the original thing I wrote was longer and talked about how women are socialized, and now I think that word triggered some filter. Watch this post work perfectly fine and post OK ;-) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	lilitu93 2010-09-04 07:41 pm UTC (link)
	Hmm, it was the word I thought, but if you spell it the British way (with an 's'), it won't post. Weird! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	magnolia_mama 2010-09-04 07:50 pm UTC (link)
	Any word containing -c-i-a-l-i-s- is banned via spam filter on JF, because of the ubiquitous ads for a certain male enhancement drug. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	lilitu93 2010-09-04 08:20 pm UTC (link)
	AHA! That makes a lot more sense than some anti-socializm political conspiracy, though I wish they'd warn you or at least say it was rejected, so I could have edited it. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	snarkhunter 2010-09-07 01:19 pm UTC (link)
	I once spent like all DAY trying to post a comment that contained the word "soc(i)alism," which I had to then spell soc1alism. I wonder if this comment will post as-is. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	lilitu93 2010-09-07 01:20 pm UTC (link)
	Oh good, now I don't feel so stupid, as I also spent all day trying and only realised it was the post content when I noticed other people had commented after I first started trying. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	magnolia_mama 2010-09-04 07:54 pm UTC (link)
	The romance genre may produce more wanks (or seems to: I think the fact that a lot of JF regulars also frequent SBTB and DA means we're more aware of romancelandia wank), but for my money the Franzenfreude wank (which seems now to be finally dying down) has been primo entertainment. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	anonyrat 2010-09-06 10:56 pm UTC (link)
	Scifi gets pretty wanky, but a lot of that is more "I want to punch people until they stop talking" than "LOLarious". (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	visp 2010-09-07 02:51 am UTC (link)
	I always found the SciFi wank to be very "WTF? No, seriously, WTF?" So sometimes it crosses from funny into pure boggling batshit - IMO. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	snarkhunter 2010-09-07 01:21 pm UTC (link)
	IMHO, sci-fi/fantasy wanks tend to veer more into unfunny than funny. Romance wanks, with the exception of the occasional nasty homophobia, do tend to be actually funny, with lots of Authors Behaving Badly and, of course, the semi-annual Publisher Implosions. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	anonyrat 2010-09-07 09:39 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, that's basically what I meant. Scifi wank just makes me angry. Romance wank, for a variety of factors, is usually pretty funny. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	cmdr_zoom 2010-09-08 04:06 pm UTC (link)
	IMO, that would be because sci-fi tends to attract, well, geeks - people generally (generally) lacking in social skills and awareness, often unaware of their privilege, and who've formed ideas in isolation that make others (like visp) just go "what?" when they finally get out. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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