Welcome back to links! How are we all doing?
My brother and his wife finally landed back in the States for his new assignment and his wife is speedrunning American franchises. She loves trying out American chains. The biggest hit for her so far has been In-N-Out Burger and she’s discovered she’s not a fan of refried beans. As a reminder, she is Korean and my brother was stationed there for a while.
She also saw her first cybertruck and was aghast! I get it, girl.
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Shana: This bookstore lets you search by identity/heritage (Black-American, African, Asian, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, Muslim, Jewish, Biracial, etc) and I’m so excited by this approach! I find “diverse” unhelpful as a category.
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The Meet Cute Bookshop is moving and they have an Indiegogo campaign to help with expenses. They’ve met their goal, but there is some cute swag on offer.
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Maya posted this link about a romance publishing startup in the SBTB slack and we all had a collective WTF moment. Are you as perplexed as we are?
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One of my recent interests is slime. I’ve definitely been influenced by a lot of the ASMR videos that come across my feed. One shop that I follow is called OG Slimes and they were recently featured on Refinery29 about their business story. Very black cat meets golden retriever energy. I also thought it was interesting that both of the owners are first generation American and talked briefly about how that has shaped their view of money.
Anyway, thought it was super interesting and they have a cool “gemstone” themed slime release this Friday that I’m excited for. And if you or your kids love slime, let’s talk about it! I made my first purchases from Momo Slimes and Peachybbies recently.
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Don’t forget to share what cool or interesting things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
I’m a children’s librarian and we did a slime program last month and it was a huge hit, but also bananas! I had over 60 people attending (at a small community library), and I had mentioned the program at all my school visits and the kids were so excited! And it counts as science since it’s a chemical reaction!
I read that article a few days ago and I’m kind of annoyed by that startup, tbh. So these two women – who’ve only just recently begun reading romance – feel like it’s their job to make romance more “literary and acceptable” and “remove the guilty label” from reading romance? Really? SBTB has been advocating for the romance genre and creating community for years.
While normally my response to anyone who wants to get into romance is “Sure, come on in!” and maybe I’m just grumpy, this feels really consumeristic – making merch and events for all their books? Like the world needs more fast fashion or stuff that will end up in a landfill. We can enjoy our favorite books without buying more stuff to clutter our houses and closets. I also don’t like it when people who’ve barely dipped their toes into the romance waters think they’re doing something revolutionary by putting explicit sex (or anything else that is a common genre staple, which they would know if they’d been around and reading it longer than 5 minutes). I know selling books is what the romance publishers exist for, but the readers and authors have been the ones to organically create the community around them. This feels like some slick Hollywood takeover attempt for a cash grab.
I really am grumpy and pessimistic today, but… ugh, I hate it.
Also, please tell us more about the Slack group reaction/convo on this “831 Stories” startup, because I need to know I’m not the only one having a negative reaction to it.
@HeatherS: We had similar feelings. I believe someone used the phrase that it felt a lot like “not like other girls” romance marketing.
I looked at the first book 831 is publishing & I have to say, that cover concept is not gonna do them any favours.
That 831 book cover, which is basically just blocks of pink and red, looks more like they’re embarrassed about romance, or think readers will be too embarrassed to have a sexy cover, which doesn’t exactly fit their whole “remove the guilt” aspect.
@hng23 – What, the “classy color-block minimalist design” doesn’t make you feel better about reading a box with sex in it?? Oh wait, it’s classy, but it’s still pink! Who will take me seriously when they see I’m reading a book with a PINK cover?!(Snark)
Seriously though, I’m all for new publishers, new takes, new readers. Totally great. What annoys me here is the “lifestyle brand” they’re going for and I literally roll my eyes whenever I see the word “influencer.” I also have to giggle a little that romance is the most read, most purchased genre of literature, and yet these two think it needs their help to make it more accessible to all those readers who feel too guilty to enjoy it. The smugness here is astounding.
Me: “yes, that is the correct take on Pajiba on the whole Chappel Roan thing.
Me: “ah of course, that is former Smart Podcast guest Kayleigh Donaldson
https://www.pajiba.com/celebrities_are_better_than_you/chappell-roan-fandom-entitlement-and-the-right-to-say-no.php
Kayleigh is one of the sharpest, most thoughtful, and informed pop culture writers working today, no question. I was SO excited to have her as a guest. Maybe I should reach out again because I could listen to her for hours (this is a selfish desire, I admit it).
At the height of the homemade slime craze it was nearly impossible to get your hands on a bottle of white glue or a box of borax around here.
@Lauren: I think that’s what really bugs me most, too. Romance doesn’t need a “lifestyle brand”. It’s all very “Hollywood influencer”, very capitalism, and entirely unnecessary.
And yes, the pink-and-red color block cover does not convey “this is a romance”. At all. As a reader browsing the romance shelves at the bookstore (or library), that cover would not invite me to pick the book up. It tells you nothing about the content. It’s glaringly bright and I don’t like looking at it.
The 831 Start up partners seem to suffer from our strange puritanical/victorian and thoroughly American hang-ups about sex. I think most romance readers are way past that stuff.
Perhaps these women think they can reach more readers by putting plain covers on sexy content? Should we tell them a rose is a rose is a rose? Or that their publishing output might become a gateway drug for their readers to begin buying romances with more interesting covers by other publishers and independents?
I also wonder if they really consulted with anyone in the genre already because if they did, it certainly doesn’t seem like it. Like if I were to launch a business, I would be having so many informational interviews with people already operating in that space.
@Amanda: THIS. The wheel has existed a long time, works very well already, and has great people spinning it along, but they seem to think they’re reinventing it and doing something “fresh”. I guess you can tell they’re influencers because it’s all about the “aesthetic” and they seem think they just discovered something new or had an original idea. Readers who are embarrassed by romance covers have had the Kindle (and other ereaders) available for a hot minute now to allow for private reading, but most modern covers are nothing like they were when Kindle dropped – all those small indie publishers like Ellora’s Cave with their Poser covers, the Fifty Shades series, clinch covers on the historicals of yore. Covers now are pretty tame by comparison, actually.
I wrote a long rant that got eaten by my computer. TL;DR version – I stopped feeling guilty about reading romance DECADES ago.
More power to them if they introduce new readers to the joys of romance, but yeah, add me to the grumpy column. Yeshh.
Are we supposed to recognize 831 as pager code, do you think? I had no clue pager codes were even a thing. Isn’t that kinda dated? The whole project is baffling.
Really dating myself here, but does anybody remember when libraries rebound their books in plain ugly hardcovers to make them last? Kids books were solid orange and completely unenticing. That’s what came to mind when I looked at the 831 covers. Nowadays, people might like the color coding aesthetic on their shelves but that’s after they’ve bought them. I’m not sure it’ll do much to sell books.
https://www.reddit.com/r/bookbinding/comments/11goqfd/inside_these_ugly_library_books/
@MaryK I read so many books in those awful covers as a kid 🙂
That cover actually looks like ones you used to get in the early days of e-books. You’d get the print cover in the thumbnail, but once you opened it there was a generic block cover in grayscale. I seem to remember Penguin being especially egregious in that regard.
@MaryK: Yeah, I’m an older millennial and pager codes mean nothing to me. I would have thought it was the area code for the company’s location, personally. I also remember those library bindings you are talking about very well. They were very sturdy and very ugly. Lol
Okay. At first, I just read the LitHub article, but I just went back and clicked through to the Vanity Fair article and – Whoa. Yeah, I think I’m offended.
“At least for now, stories in the planned interconnected 831 universe will be set in contemporary times (though there’s an idea for a historical romance set in the 1990s, pause to wipe your tears and pop a Tylenol) and won’t have supernatural elements. No “she was a ghost all along?!” plot twists, with apologies to Nicholas Sparks.”
“There’s this quote: ‘This is the only genre that you can read and people will think you’re dumber for reading it.’ Which is brutal.”
What the heck?! Who are these women and what “romance” novels do they think they’ve been reading? This is everything I hate about newcomers’ “not your mom’s romance” and “let us improve your genre so smart people will like it” attitudes.
> That cover actually looks like ones you used to get in the early days of e-books. You’d get the print cover in the thumbnail, but once you opened it there was a generic block cover in grayscale.
@Sandra I still see this from some of the major publishers sometimes and I hate it so much!
Hi! Tuma’s Books here and just wanted to say THANK YOU for the shout-out! I got a ton of new visits from your site and came to investigate lol And found this awesome website! =D