wendypalmer

golgaloth, 5 days ago to writing

Releasing a book as an independent author these days is like screaming into the ... wait, hang on.

Do any of you use particular strategies for increasing awareness that your book actually exists? Help an author out, here.

#WritingCommunity #AmWriting #writing #authodons

wendypalmer, 6 days ago to random

#WritersCoffeeClub May 3. Should books include a content warning?

(LONG, and it gets pretty footnotey)

They serve a valuable function, though “should” is a strong word. In one way, it’s a personal preference — I see more content warnings in author notes than from the publisher, which implies to me that the publisher is neither enforcing content warnings nor preventing them. And obviously self-published authors (like myself) make the decision for themselves, both to include them or not, and where to draw the line.

BUT if the author/publisher doesn’t provide them, it’s almost certain that reviewers will. Some reviewers just list them to help out other readers. But some get very annoyed that they had to find out for themselves.

I also suspect it’s generational ie younger authors are more likely to do it, for their younger (but still adult) audience. I think it comes from losing the unspoken cues (imprint, genre, cover style, blurb etc) from traditional publishing that told us what to expect, due to the rise of genre-busting self-publishing, and also a more general blurring of genre lines, combined with the culture of fanfic, where thorough warnings are expected as a community-driven convention.

And I also think it is a bit muddled, as any big and self-determined umbrella term is likely to become. It can be “warning: contains graphic violence” or it can be “warning: only-one-bed trope alert!!!” And that’s ok but it might undermine the serious content warnings for the readers who need them. But I think readers have become used to parsing CWs for themselves.

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wendypalmer, 6 days ago to writing

Today, in my adventures in foolishly asking the internet general research questions:

The internet, shamelessly repeating the same factoid endlessly: throwing rice at weddings is an ancient tradition dating back to the Romans!

An anonymous old lady writing a cranky letter to the editor in 1895: this is a modern tradition that doesn't date back more than forty years and needs to stop before it takes a new bride’s eye out.

#writing #AmResearching #WeddingCustoms