Jasmine or honeysuckle, if you\u2019re offering. Lavender and gardenia make my nose itch.<\/p>\n
A resident of the Ivory Tower<\/a>, who apparently called dibs on A\u2019isha (child bride of Muhammed) as her personal and exclusive domain of study and forgot to send the memo, raised a ruckus<\/a> about a book she didn\u2019t like and managed to get Random House to pull it after the author had been paid her $100k advance and the presses were rolling. I say it\u2019s an academic hatchet job.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You can read the prologue here<\/a> and then you may come weep with me that we won\u2019t get to read the rest of it unless someone else picks it up. I like midrash<\/em>-ish treatments like The Red Tent<\/a> (although I haven\u2019t read Card\u2019s series on Rebekah<\/a>, Sarah<\/a>, Rachel and Leah<\/a> yet).<\/p>\n I\u2019m not going to wade in on all the outrage and outcries of what normal Muslims do and don\u2019t think (\u2019cause I ain\u2019t one), but naturally, they\u2019d be offended that their prophet is written about in a secular and therefore, profane, way. Catholics were offended by Dogma<\/em> and The DaVinci Code<\/em>. Jews were offended by The Passion of the Christ<\/em>. Christians were offended by The Last Temptation of Christ<\/em> and Piss Christ<\/a><\/em>. Mormons, well, you know the drill. Anyhoo, my question is this: Why does a major publisher pull \u201coffensive\u201d material about one religion\u2019s sacred icon but nobody else\u2019s?<\/p>\n Update from today\u2019s Galleycat: The dude who wrote Prophets & Princes: Saudi Arabia from Muhammed to the Present<\/em> opined<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cI agree with [the aforementioned Ivory Tower resident] \u2026 You don\u2019t turn scripture into soft core pornography.\u201d While admitting that he hadn\u2019t read any of Jones\u2019s novel \u2026<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n WTF?!?!? These people are scholars<\/em>?<\/p>\n So Teddypig of The Naughty Bits blog has a most excellent article on epublisher website design<\/a>, which I use as a guideline when I\u2019m building and coding. I may not always get it right, but I\u2019m working on it. Anyhoo, he directed Smart Bitches toward a functionality of iPhone to set up ebooks as applications in the iTunes shop<\/a> for download to iPhone. Apparently, the process is a little whacked (because it\u2019s an application, not a text\/data file), but I\u2019m all for getting ebooks out there via iAnything. Steve, I shall ask again: Where is your iBooks store?<\/a> I don\u2019t want the Kindle to be the only game in town and it looks like Sony\u2019s all but given up the ghost.<\/p>\n Fictionwise\u2019s eReader<\/a> was downloaded on 130,000 iPhones in a month and Stanza<\/a> is apparently only a little behind that as the ereading software alternatives to downloading ebooks-as-applications on your iPhone. I am a-quiver.<\/p>\n So the LA Times<\/em> book section shut down amidst weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth<\/a>. Color me clueless. I never read book reviews before Smart Bitches and Dear Author (which sites I read religiously). The elites got all in a tizzy because review sites whose reviewers obviously<\/em> don\u2019t know what they\u2019re doing started popping up all over the place.<\/p>\n Hey. Newspapers. Publishers. You can\u2019t go home again.<\/p>\n What is it about publishing accounting I don\u2019t understand? I mean, I was a college student once and pretended to take accounting 101 for an entire semester. I get it. First, there\u2019s reserves against returns. Second, there\u2019s returns (aka consignment, tyvm, and say, how\u2019s that Breaking Dawn<\/em> return-don\u2019t-burn campaign<\/a> coming along?). Third, there\u2019s the actual tallying which seems to be done by typing monkeys. You know, the ones who can\u2019t count<\/a>.<\/p>\n On a different front, there\u2019s the copyright and plagiarism issue, which seems to be thought of in PublishingVille as the crazy aunt in the attic of intellectual property law<\/a>. What, publishers, you don\u2019t have enough stake in seeing that your property is stolen that you can\u2019t do something about it?<\/p>\n In the most egregious and outrageous case I know of (aside from Cassie \u201cThe Ferret\u201d Edwards<\/a>), Janet Dailey stole from Nora Roberts<\/a>. Thieved. As in, took something that wasn\u2019t hers and got off with a slap on the wrist. Ms. Roberts calls it \u201cmind rape.\u201d Indeed. So if that weren\u2019t enough (I don\u2019t even think I can bear this, but I\u2019ll take one for the team), Jane of Dear Author writes:<\/p>\n Nora was also subjected to many people arguing that she shouldn\u2019t have gone public with the copying (although it was a fan who had made the case publicly in the first place); that she, Nora, was being petty and vindictive.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Crabs in a bucket, I tell you. One attempts to climb out, but the rest just pull her back in. Yes, I used \u201cher\u201d on purpose.<\/p>\n So I was amused to note on Charles Bock\u2019s copyright page of Beautiful Children<\/em><\/a> (also the result of Random House\u2019s research into how DRM doesn\u2019t work and passing out free ebooks without it does), the following notice: This is our intellectual property, so kindly don\u2019t fucking steal it<\/a>. I haven\u2019t read this book yet (I got a copy when it was hot off the interwebz), but it\u2019s in my queue somewhere up front because his last name begins with B.<\/p>\n And finally \u2026<\/p>\n
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