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Monthly Archives: August 2006

In Sunday’s Washington Post there was an article about Google’s effort to digitize all the books in the Stanford University Library…and their dream to digitize all the books in the world.

Here is the article “Search Me? Google Wants to Digitize Every Book. Publishers Say Read the Fine Print First” August 13, 2006
(you may have to register with The Washington Post to read it)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/12/AR2006081200886.html?sub=AR

In a nutshell, Google will digitize Stanford’s collection and provide what they consider “fair use” of the material. They will provide the ability to search the text of the books, but will only show “snippets” of the work, what they feel fits the “fair use” stipulations of copyright law. I won’t go into the complicated details, but suffice to say that the Author’s Guild and several publishers have filed suit against Google.

I’m ambivalent.

As an author, it makes a frisson of trepidation crawl up my spine, like discovering someone stealing my book without paying for it. Google argues against this, but the gist of the lawsuits have to do with using material without renumeration for the publisher or author, who create the book in the first place.

As a researcher, however, my response is, “Wow!” Imagine all that information at my fingertips! Imagine me being able to enter “Castle Inn Brighton 1816” (a setting of my next Warner book, Desire In His Eyes, aka Blake’s story, now in the revision stage). It would take me hours in a library, days perhaps, to search out such information. Wouldn’t it be great if I could have it at my fingertips?

Then I think of out-of-print books, like The Regency Companion by Sharon Laudermilk and Teresa L Hamlin. I am lucky enough to have obtained a copy of this regency research classic years ago by bidding $40 on ebay on a Thanksgiving evening, but now ABEbooks.com lists this book as going for a low of $224.50 and a high of $595.00. Obviously this puts the book out of reach for 99.9% of regency writers and readers, but wouldn’t it be great if everyone had access to its information?

Well, what would be great is if Laudermilk and Hamlin would just authorize a re-release of the book. I’d happily buy another copy! If it were a searchable e-book copy, like Dee Hendrickson’s Regency Reference Book, I’d like it even better.

I empathize with the fact that Laudermilk and Hamlin didn’t get one penny of the money I spent on their book, and would not get a penny of that $595, if anyone chose to spend such an amount. If I think of this being multiplied a brazillion amount of times for every author—-shudder! There goes that frisson again.

What do you, dear readers and friends, think of Google’s plan? Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Posted in Reading, Writing | Tagged | 5 Replies

Congratulations, Nicole! As I mentioned Wednesday, I did a drawing (highly official, one of my children picked the name and my husband was the witness) for a visitor to receive a copy of my first book, LORD LANGDON’S KISS. You’re the winner. Please send your snail mail addy to egreene@stny.rr.com and I’ll pop it into the mail.

Also, I recently found out about a contest that should interest the writers in our Risky community. My friends at Writer Unboxed are giving away a spandy new Alphasmart 3000 to a deserving unboxed writer. If you don’t already have one of these delightful devices, head on over and check it out.

Cheers,
Elena
LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice, Best Regency Romance of 2005
www.elenagreene.com

Posted in Giveaways | 4 Replies




When I was a teenager, I was kind of weird. I know–shocking. 🙂 I was a serious ballet student, and when I wasn’t at school or in dance class I had my nose in a book. Not much time for the concerns of most other teenaged girls around me; often it felt like I didn’t even speak the same language as everyone else. Then, on a whim, I tried out for a school play and voila–there was my “tribe”! Theater geeks! Suddenly other people were speaking my language, and I wasn’t considered strange anymore. It was okay to be bookish, to love art and history, to quote from “Monty Python” and Shakespeare. I had found a niche.

I feel the same way about Risky Regencies, and my writing friends in general. We speak the same language (usually). Writing (or any of the arts) can be a very tough business, with more ups and downs than most. Business decisions, reviews, contests, etc. can all feel very personal, when directed at our precious, hard-wrought stories. I stick with it because I have to. So many ideas crowd my head that I’m sure my brain will explode if I didn’t get them out there! But I could never keep on with it without my friends, and without fun places like Risky Regencies. It’s been an honor to be part of this for a year, to be associated with with five fabulous authors and great friends, and to have the opportunity to make new friends!

So, thanks to Cara, who I think totally understands the ‘theater geek’ way of life, and has a wonderful flair for punctuation (and asked me–me!–for a cover quote for My Lady Gamester, so obviously has great taste in authors. Ha!). To Elena, a terrific conference roommate and complete sweetheart, who somehow manages to write great books while raising children and dealing with flooded houses and exploding computers. To Janet, who makes me feel like an ill-read rube (even if she insists she’s just a “faker”!” and has a yummy accent, too. To Megan, my sister in Hello Kitty, party dresses, and cocktails (it’s okay that you selfishly keep Clive to yourself, because Orlando is MINE. And Matthew, too!). And to Diane, who once was my roommate for over two weeks on a tour of England, and who never once screamed at me to Just Shut Up Already, as anyone else would have (that’s a pic of us at Stratfield Saye, the country house of the Duke of Wellington).

Here’s to many more Risky (and fun) years!


1. Amanda likes Hello Kitty even more than I do.
2. Every other Risky is much better-researched than I.
3. If one gets mildly peeved one did not final in a contest, one ought to remember that one did not enter any contests, except for the RITA, where two people really liked one’s story, two thought it was okay, and one really didn’t like it.

4. Other Riskies like their male obsessions about as much as I like Clive Owen. And that’s okay. Just don’t step to me on Owen ownership, at least not here.
5. Other writers are just as insecure and neurotic as I am. Almost.
6. Not everyone thinks I am funny.
7. But hopefully my fellow Riskies usually do.
8. Cara is not saying the universe is on fire just because she uses a few exclamation points.
9. Janet is way better-versed in the classics of feminist English literature than I am, and I always thought I was the most eggheaded of them all.
10. Now I am humbled.
11. Elena thinks just as hard about her writing as I do. Not always a good thing. For either one of us.
12. Amanda is the cutest writer in the world. And sometimes I bet she hates that.
13. Diane is so sweet it’s hard to hate her for being so prolific and so successful. But I’m trying.
14. Not really.
15. No, I am.
16. No, not really.
17. Okay, Eddie Izzard joke ends here.
18. Cake, or death?
19. Just kidding.
20. Yay Riskies! Yay diversity! Yay inane posts!

Megan
www.meganframpton.com

A year ago today the Risky Regency blog started! I decided, after Elena’s preemptive birthday strike yesterday, to talk about what’s changed in the past year–for me (well, it is my day to blog) and, as far as I’m able, to talk about changes in the industry. Because one thing that hasn’t really changed for me is that I still feel totally bewildered by the strange Alice-in-Wonderland world of publishing.

One major change, of course, is that the Signet Regency is no more. A lot of us were taken by surprise and not too happy about it. I’m the exception, because I was clueless what I was going to write for my option manuscript. When I did start one, the hero/heroine had sex on page seven and by chapter three she’d become an old man’s darling; not the usual fodder of the trads. (Go on. I challenge you. Give me the name of the trad where this happens and I’ll send you a copy of Dedication–Riskies, particularly Cara and her encyclopaedic knowledge of the subgenre, are prohibited from entering.) Meanwhile trads are popping up as e-books–even Cerridwen Press, the well-behaved, polite sister of Ellora’s Cave, is starting the Cotillion Line. The first title, A Certain Want of Reason, which will be out this fall, is by my buddy and critique partner Kate Dolan.
I’d like to share with you what this past year has been like. A year ago I was about-to-be-published, and thinking philosophically that if I hadn’t done it by now, it was too late (website, check. Galleys sent out for review, check. Bookmarks made, check. And so on). I’d attracted the attention of a very sharp agent (with whom I have since signed). The future was both terrifying and exciting. I discovered I could spend hours fretting about things like reviews and therefore avoid any actual writing. I plummeted into first book syndrome, something I recently wrote an article on, and which you can read at the Wet Noodle Posse e-zine.

It’s pretty mind-boggling that exactly a year later I can now call myself a multi-pubbed, award-winning author. (Well, almost. I guess I’m multi-contracted, -dealed, or -gestated right now.) There’s a part of me that shrieks, amidst hysterical giggles, What, me? Me? Nice-cup-of-tea Janet? And another part of me that struts around saying things like, Well, why the heck not? I can write and I work hard. So there! Meanwhile, my muse, a rather severe woman of a certain age who sports tweed skirts, refined cameo brooches, and sensible shoes, raises her eyebrows in the way that makes me cringe and murmurs caustic comments about doing what writers should do–write.

I’m not sure exactly where I’ll be this time next year, other than still bemused by the industry, and, I hope, writing better and more, and enjoying the company of my Risky friends.

Janet

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