L’esprit d’escalier

Banned Books Week officially kicked off this past Saturday. What did you read this past weekend?

Friday saw an editorial in the Wall Street Journal’s online edition that simply misses the point (or perhaps does so intentionally.) Let’s take a look, shall we?

Mr. Mitchell Muncy starts out with a wee bit of condescension in his tone:

‘To you zealots and bigots and false patriots who live in fear of discourse. You screamers and banners and burners. . . .” These are the opening lines of the official Manifesto of Banned Books Week, which starts tomorrow. This annual “national celebration of the freedom to read” is led by the American Library Association (ALA) and co-sponsored by a number of professional associations and advocacy groups. Events and displays at “hundreds” of libraries and bookstores will “draw attention to the problem of censorship” in the U.S.

See all those quotation marks? I love the one around “‘hundreds’” — as though there aren’t really hundreds of libraries and bookstores participating (hint: yes there are.)

He goes on to say that “[a]s the tone of the Manifesto suggests, the sponsors are more interested in confrontation than celebration.” Well, yes and no. The sponsors are confronting the challenges to free speech, absolutely, but in many cases they’re also celebrating the very fact that they’re allowed to sell those books under free speech laws in the first place. They’re celebrating the freedom to read and write and publish, even though there are people out there who would happily yank that away.

Next, we start with the definitions:

In the common-law tradition, censorship refers specifically to the government’s prior restraint on publication. None of the sponsors claim this has happened; the acts they have in mind are perpetrated by private citizens.

Ah ha! Two can play at that game, Mr. Muncy!

From Dictionary.com:

censor

–noun
1. an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds.
2. any person who supervises the manners or morality of others.
3. an adverse critic; faultfinder.
4. (in the ancient Roman republic) either of two officials who kept the register or census of the citizens, awarded public contracts, and supervised manners and morals.
5. (in early Freudian dream theory) the force that represses ideas, impulses, and feelings, and prevents them from entering consciousness in their original, undisguised forms.
–verb (used with object)
6. to examine and act upon as a censor.
7. to delete (a word or passage of text) in one’s capacity as a censor.

I bolded numbers two and seven for you, there, in case you got all hung up on the Freudian thing.

So, sure, in Muncy’s “common-law tradition” definition, there’s a disconnect, but let’s get this straight: Mr. Muncy is deliberately sending you off in the wrong direction. Reread definitions two and six. That’s what Banned Books Week is about.

Isn’t language awesome? Let’s play some more! Muncy again:

The problem of loose language aside, we can still ask whether books are banned in this country. The obvious answer is no, if banned means something like “made dangerous or difficult for the average person to obtain.”

Right here? This very line? This is where Mr. Muncy waves a stick at you and throws it in the complete opposite direction of what Banned Books Week is about, hoping you’ll chase after it like a good doggie. Again, he’s trying to define the words, intentionally narrowing the definition to one where what’s really going on stops fitting. Shall we talk about what banning really means?

To Dictionary.com! (It’s kind of like the new “to the Batcave!”)

ban

–verb (used with object)
1. to prohibit, forbid, or bar; interdict: to ban nuclear weapons; The dictator banned all newspapers and books that criticized his regime.
2. Archaic.
a. to pronounce an ecclesiastical curse upon.
b. to curse; execrate.
–noun
3. the act of prohibiting by law; interdiction.
4. informal denunciation or prohibition, as by public opinion: society’s ban on racial discrimination.
5. Law.
a. a proclamation.
b. a public condemnation.
6. Ecclesiastical. a formal condemnation; excommunication.
7. a malediction; curse.

Wheee, more bolding! Also, I notice that Mr. Muncy declined to go right to the source, the Banned Books week website, and share the actual things Banned Books Week is confronting. Here, I’ll help:

Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read. It was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than a thousand books have been challenged since 1982. The challenges have occurred in every state and in hundreds of communities. People challenge books that they say are too sexual or too violent. They object to profanity and slang, and protest against offensive portrayals of racial or religious groups–or positive portrayals of homosexuals. Their targets range from books that explore the latest problems to classic and beloved works of American literature.

Challenging books is, essentially, going to a school board or a library or wherever and saying “I don’t want you to carry this book. I don’t want you to make it available.” Often with the added bonus of “Remove it for the children!”

This happens. In this country.

No, it’s not Fahrenheit 451. Books haven’t been banned on a national level by the government. That doesn’t make them any less banned in the areas where it’s happened. In some places, the school library is the only exposure children have to books. Maybe there isn’t a bookstore nearby for miles and miles. Maybe their families simply can’t afford the luxury of buying books (did you realize, Mr. Muncy, that book buying is often a luxury? Not everyone has the disposable income available to enter a bookstore and come home with an armload of books. For some families it’s a decision between eating and reading. That’s why libraries are so damned wonderful and essential — they’re free.)

Oh, wait. You don’t realize that at all:

If a book isn’t available at one library or bookstore, it’s certainly available at another. Not even the most committed civil libertarian demands that every book be immediately available everywhere on request—though in the age of Amazon that’s nearly the case.

Because every child in America can just hop into a car and go to the next closest library or bookstore, right?

Next of course, Muncy points out how flawed the week’s theme is because — le gasp! — the website discusses banned and challenged books. “By this definition,” he says, “censorship includes not only the actual removal of books, but complaints about books as well.”

Yes, yes it does. Because, you see, the people challenging the books are making the attempt to ban them. They are, by definition #2 of the word, trying to supervise the manners and morality of others, whether or not their cases succeed.

And it’s clear why complaints must be counted. In only 10% of the 186 cases on the map was a book permanently removed from a library. (If we add books removed from individual classrooms, we reach 16%.)

10% is unacceptable. 16% is unacceptable. The people challenging and banning and removing these books are acting as censors. This is the whole point.

If the criterion of book banning is that a book be banned—anywhere—the incidence of censorship drops about 90%.

Again, let’s watch Muncy redefine the criteria to fit his argument. The criterion of book banning, since he’s refusing to state it, includes the attempt to ban as well as the actual banning because it’s important to know that challenges are being issued. It’s important to know that some people are trying to police the rights of others to read as they please. It’s important to know that a handful of parents in one town can remove access to books not just for their own children, but for every child who goes to that library.

Further down, Muncy gives us half a story:

One of the “frequently asked questions” on the ALA’s Web site is: “Can’t parents tell the librarian what material they don’t think children should have?” The Manifesto’s answer is clearly “no.”

Really? That’s on the ALA’s FAQ? Why didn’t Muncy provide the ALA’s answer to that question?

Oh, wait. He didn’t provide it because it’s not there at all.

So, now he’s willing to make things up to support his claims. Mr. Muncy’s a liar. Good to know. (If, by chance, that question is there and I missed it, please let me know. I’ll be happy to edit this post with the ALA’s response.)

The ALA repeatedly emphasizes that public and school libraries are “government bodies.” Is Banned Books Week a celebration of free speech, or is it a way for government employees to bully ordinary citizens by stigmatizing those who complain (“bigots,” “false patriots,” “screamers,” “burners”)? They clearly hope future challenges simply won’t be brought. Does that make Banned Books Week an attempt at prior restraint on speech by the government—an act of censorship?

Ah yes. Fear-speech to make your local librarian into a scary bully. Seriously?

The librarians aren’t the bullies here. The bullies are the ones trying to take the choice away from the readers.

Let’s talk a little about this Manifesto that has Mr. Muncy so offended, shall we? It comes from a poem, by author Ellen Hopkins. Ms. Hopkins wrote books based on her dauther’s real experience with drugs, and found that one of her book signings had been the books had been yanked from the local library’s shelves for reasons still unknown. Go ahead and read her livejournal entry about it.

Now, here’s the poem in its entirety, recited by Ms. Hopkins:

The last stanza is one Mr. Muncy doesn’t seem to want to quote. So I’ll do it for him:

Torch every book.
Burn every page.
Char every word to ash.
Ideas are incombustible.
And therein lies your real fear.

Muncy chooses to end with a quote from Benjamin Franklin, suggesting that

Franklin, the founder of American libraries, understood that threats to freedom are much more likely to come from those in power who won’t hear criticism than from private citizens who want a hearing.

You can play this game with the Bible or the Founding Fathers. For every quote you can come up with saying they mean one thing, I can come up with another saying they meant something else. I see your Ben Franklin, Mr. Muncy, and raise you… Ben Franklin (from the ALA website, natch):

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”

“Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech.”

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”—Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

And I’ll even throw in a little Thomas Jefferson:

I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this [i.e., the purchase of an apparent geological or astronomical work] can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offense against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason. If [this] book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God’s sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we choose.”—Thomas Jefferson to N. G. Dufief, 1814. ME 14:127

I’ll have more to say on the idea of challenging books this week, though you can surf on over to Just One Anna for an excellent post that very eloquently points out that when you ban a book, you’re not just keeping your own children from reading it, you’re keeping everyone else’s children from reading it, too.

(Update: B&N has responded, both on Smart Bitches and to Galleycat.

Joe Gonnella, the VP of trade merchandising, responded on SBTB’s comments thread:

Barnes & Noble does not have a policy to boycott books because authors don’t link to us.

Everything is bought in anticipation of in store or online customer orders.

We do encourage authors and publishers to link to our website as part of a comprehensive marketing approach to drive sales in all channels.

I would be happy to address any specific concerns that are out there!

And to Galleycat via Twitter:

@GalleyCat We love author links. We ask for links. And we want them to be “fair.” But we don’t do that is suggested here.

So, good to know that it’s not required.  I’m going with my guess that whoever sent the request to authors from the publisher used strong wording to get authors to act.  If anything else comes up, I’ll update more.)

Look!  More wtf-ery, this time from Barnes & Noble.

The Smart Bitches received word from their publisher that if they didn’t have a link to B&N on their site, B&N wouldn’t order their books.  Other authors confirmed it in the comments.

Like they said, would it have killed B&N to ask rather than threaten?

Though, let’s also keep in mind that the request came through their publishers — it’s possible that the B&N wording was a bit more subdued than what authors received from whoever sent it out at their house:

One of our major accounts is now checking author websites, and is REFUSING to put in an order if their site is not listed as a place to go to buy….

The particular account is B&N, but we anticipate that in the future more sellers will have this requirement….

Please do this ASAP…. I’m not exaggerating when I say they WILL NOT ORDER the book unless their site is listed.

I don’t know if that came from an editor, an editorial assistant, someone in marketing, or what, but it sounds extremely dire.  Which, believe me, things can get kind of apocalyptic when one of the big chains says “OMG DO THIS NOW BECAUSE WE SAID SO.”

No matter how you look at it, though, it sucks.  Whether they asked or threatened, a major bookseller is dictating what content should go on authors’ websites.

Galleycat’s asking a good question in their post about this:

The deeper question, it seems to us, is: How much influence should one vendor—any vendor—exert over the marketing plans of authors and publishers? Are we being naively idealistic, or does that kind of hardball tactic from a bookseller cross the line?

Looking at it from a business perspective, I can see why B&N would want to be sure they’re represented on authors’ sites.  So many people just slap up a link to Amazon and call it a day. They don’t link to B&N, they don’t link to Borders, they don’t link to IndieBound or their own local bookstores.  That Amazon has become the default online bookstore is disappointing all on its own.

So are they within their rights to go to publishers and say “Hey, could you please ask your authors to link to us in addition to Amazon and other online bookstores?”  Absolutely.

But to say “If you don’t comply, we’re not ordering your books, period, the end” is throwing their weight around just like Amazon’s doing.

This should have been an opportunity for B&N to rise above Amazon’s tactics, to be supportive of authors and publishers alike.  There’s that whole catching more flies with honey thing.  Ask nicely.  Don’t throw out ultimatums.  Go to the publishers with numbers:  “Here’s what sales look like for Author A who doesn’t link to us.  Here’s Author B (someone comparable, from the same genre and with similar average in-store sales) that does.  Look at how much better Author B’s sales are through B&N.com because of it.”

Here’s the thing: authors want their books to be in bookstores.  You can all pick yourselves up from the floor now.  I apologize for the shocking revelation.  I realize that if I ever get published, some agent or editor’s probably going to be /facepalming at me for calling Amazon out here.  Because, guess what?  If I get published, I’m going to want them to carry my book.  Because I want people to read it.  But if they come to me and say I have to put a big huge “I love Amazon” banner at the top of my blog and link to them and them alone, it’s going to be an interesting conversation, to say the least.

Because, here’s the other thing (hold onto your chairs, cats n kittens): authors don’t like being bullied. It’s not a good feeling, whether it’s the big kid in your first grade classroom or whether it’s the big bookseller on the block.  Someone is telling you “You will do this,” and they’re taking away your ability to say “No, I don’t think I will.”

It’s so much easier, so much more pleasant, to work with someone.  A store comes along and says to an author “Hey, I think if we do this thing here, we can sell more of your books.  What do you think?”  With very, very few exceptions, the author’s going to say “Oh hell yes!  What can I do to help?”

So why not just ask?  Why threaten dire consequences if the author doesn’t comply?

Someone in the Galleycat comments thread mentioned that some indies have also threatened the same, long before this came out:  link to IndieBound or we won’t stock your books. It’s no more excusable with a small bookstore than it is with the behemoths.

(Updating to note: The Galleycat poster didn’t back up the comment with a source, so (and thanks to IndieBound’s Paige for calling me out on this in the comments) remember that this isn’t something all indies are doing.  It’s maybe a handful, and they don’t represent all independent bookstores everywhere.  The following paragraphs are not intended as a scolding, more of my musing on an opportunity.  I’ve reworked it a bit, so I hope it better represents that. )

This is every bit as much a chance for independent booksellers to win authors over to their side — hell, it’s even more of one.  If people brush off what Amazon and B&N are doing as a privilege of their success/market share, then this is where independent booksellers shine.

They work with the authors.  They can show them the benefits of independent bookstores and their communities, and the idea of linking to IndieBound isn’t a chore or something you feel forced to do — it’s appealing.  It’s a mutually beneficial experience.

(This is the part where I put on my If I Ran a Bookstore Hat)

If I ran a bookstore, I’d set aside a page on the store’s site highlighting authors who linked to either IndieBound or Books That Don’t Suck.  At some certain interval — maybe once or twice a month, maybe weekly, depending on the response — the site would feature one of those authors’ books on the front page.  It would take a bit of audience participation to make it more than just a random cover image, of course.  In a rose-colored world I’d be able to post something from the author to go along with it:  a Q&A, a blurb on how awesome they think indie bookstores are, etc.

Would it take some coordinating?  Yes.  And there are plenty of authors out there who just plain don’t have ten minutes to do an email interview.  I wouldn’t necessarily expect to get, say, Stephen King on board,* but hey, reach for the stars, right?  And hey, why not promote a new author who’s trying to grow his or her readership?  Thanks to the interwebs, it’s easier for authors to connect with their fans.  This is another way they could do that.

There are times I feel like the bookselling community — which includes not just booksellers, but publishers, authors and readers, too — forgets that whole being a community thing.  So many opportunities out there to work with one another and get some really wonderful books into the hands of eager readers, and we spend all this time working against that.  There has to be a better way.

*Though, he did a coast-to-coast tour of indies when Insomnia came out, so you never know…

Some photos from Sydney, Australia after yesterday’s dust storm.

I know the air pollution levels were probably high enough to kill Greg, but I can’t help but think how cool it would have been to walk around and see that first person.

I know, I know.  This blog should be about something other than Amazon asshattery now and then, but SHEESH.

Amazon forces LibraryThing to remove links to other booksellers on their primary pages.

LibraryThing, bless their hearts, is responding the best way they can, which is to make their secondary pages promote the hell out of other stores and libraries.  As they put it:

We’re going cut back our primary-page links to Amazon alone, and give people the best, most diverse secondary pages we can make. We are allowed to link to other booksellers, like IndieBound and Barnes and Noble on secondary pages, and we’re going to do it far better than we ever have. We’re going to take something away, but also make something better—something that goes way past what we did before, in features and in diversity of options.

It’s an unfortunate situation that they even have to make these decisions.  Amazon already dominates the online bookselling world, and they’ve been doing pretty well at kicking bricks-and-mortar bookstores in the teeth for sales, too.  To require that a site for booklovers capitulate to their demands is infuriating.

Yes, Amazon’s providing LibraryThing with information in the form of book cover images and other cataloguing information.  It gives them a certain amount of leverage — if they want to take their ball and go home, LibraryThing has to scramble to find another way to post that information on their site.  Is it doable?  Sure.  But being able to receive that information from one source, in the same format every time, very likely frees up the staff’s time so they can concentrate on other things.

Amazon had the opportunity to be gracious and confident here — honestly, how much damage would it do to them to have their link on the same page with Indie Bound?  My guess is not very much.  Instead they decided to play the internet bully yet again.

Yes, it’s a business decision.  Yes, it’s their call to make, to look out for number one, and LibraryThing could have said “You know what? Forget it.”  But they also say this:

LibraryThing is not a social cataloging and social networking site for Amazon customers but for book lovers.

Which means that, when they weighed the options, it was in the best interest of the site’s users to go along with what Amazon wants.  Backing out of the agreement is, sadly, not the fight to pick here.  It would diminish user experience.  So, they get to do the next best thing:  meet the minimums of the Amazon agreement and fill the secondary page with ten kinds of awesome.

They’re already working on connecting Indie Bound and LT.  And, to show how incredibly cool their community is, when they asked for help verifying information on more than 1300 bookstores, the people who responded got it done in eighteen hours.

So, a tip of the ol’ floppy hat to LibraryThing, for sticking up for themselves and their community in a positive, constructive way.

(via Gawker’s review of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, which I won’t be reading):

[...]and you can buy the electric Amazon Game Boy version of the book for a mere ten dollars!

/gigglesnort

My response to Twitter’s new Terms of Service agreement is more than 140 characters long, so, here ’tis, in blog-form:

I don’t like it.  It’s a rights grab.

I’m not sure what their old TOS looked like, and for all I know, this was in there previously.  However, let’s talk a bit about what’s there now and why it’s not cool.

Here’s the part I don’t like, under the “Your Rights” section:

You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

They have a reassuring little “tip” below that, stating:

This license is you authorizing us to make your Tweets available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same. But what’s yours is yours – you own your content.

Yes, but that doesn’t address the whole thing.  You own the content, but look again:

By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

Bolded part mine.  Let’s take ‘em piece by piece:

• By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services

What that says is, “if you post 140 characters in that box and hit ‘update,’ you are agreeing to our Terms of Service.”  You don’t have to sign any contracts, you don’t have to click an opt-in or opt-out button.  Well, actually, you sort of do.  The “update” button is your opt-in button.  It’s like buying a piece of software, opening the shrink wrap, and seeing on the install CD that the act of opening the package constitues agreeing to the Terms of Service, whether you’ve read them or not. With Twitter, the only way to opt-out is to not use Twitter.

• you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense)

That copyright of yours?  The one they just said you retained?  You’ve just given them license to use it.  They’re not claiming your words, they’re claiming the right to reuse your words.  So, sure, maybe they’ll be nice and attribute anything of mine they use to @falconesse, but they don’t have to.  And royalty-free?  Well, cats and kittens, that means they don’t have to pay you a single penny.

• to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content

“If there’s any synonym for reproducing we’ve missed, we’ll add it in later.”  “Publishing’s” the term that most concerns me.  Not that any of my tweets are worth inclusion anywhere, but let’s say they decided to publish a book of Twitticisms and collect the 100 wittiest tweets.  Let’s say mine’s one of them.  Under the Terms of Service, they can use it, without even letting me know they’re going to.  And they don’t have to compensate me in any way.

Think about it:  how many successful people and celebrities of all caliber are on Twitter right now?  They could do a whole damned series if they wanted to:  Cooking Tips from the Twitterati; Writing Tips from the Twitterverse; Political Twisdom.  They don’t have to pay anyone a dime.  So, say, Uncle Neil does a Q&A on writing one afternoon.  The powers that be at Twitter, under these Terms of Service, can collect his replies into a book and publish it, and they don’t have to give Neil Gaiman a goddamned cent.

• in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

What this last bit does is say “So, yeah, whatever way we might be able to disseminate information in the future?  We can put your tweets out that way, too.”  Think about it — fifty years ago, the publishing industry didn’t have to think about eBooks.  Nowadays, they’re part of the contract.  But what about books distributed through iPhones and other electronic media?  New ways to distribute information are popping up faster than publishers can change their boilerplate contracts.  Twitter’s covering their bases by saying “we can use anything that hasn’t been invented yet, when someone gets around to inventing it, to redistribute those tweets of yours that you granted us license to use.”

So, bottom line is pretty much caveat emptor.  If you have a Twitter account, I suggest you don’t use it for your creative endeavors.  I’ll be curious to see how the people who have been tweeting their novels and short stories will react.  Because, y’know, if Twitter wants to, they can collect and republish those into their own anthology, and the authors have no way to argue against it, or collect payment for their own work.  Sure, they’ve got the copyright.  Doesn’t mean they retain the licenses.

Okay, so here’s the deal.

Banned Books Week is coming up fast:  September 26th-October 3rd.  I’d like to do something this year that requires audience participation.

What’s the best way to do that?

Why, offering swag, of course!

So, here’s the deal:  go find something on one of the ALA’s Frequently Challenged Books Lists.  Titles on the google map of challenged and banned books are eligible for this as well, or, if there’s a book you know of that’s been challenged/banned and doesn’t show up on any of these lists, that’s okay, too, just drop me an email outlining the circumstances behind the bannination.

Found something?  Good.  Now, go pick up a copy (preferably, of course, from your local independent bookstore), and get reading!

Here comes the part where I make you work for it:  review what you’ve read.  It’s your review; you can say whatever you’d like.  Want to talk about the banning?  Go ahead!  Want to write a straight-up book review?  Sure thing!  If you have a blog, post your banned book reviews there anytime from now until Banned Books Week ends on October 3rd and send me a link.  If you don’t have a blog, you can email the reviews to me (falconesse at gmail dot com) and I’ll post ‘em here.

Everyone who participates will receive a shiny ALA 2009 Banned Books Week button.

Whoever reads and reviews the MOST banned books gets the superawesome tote bag you can see here, proclaiming to the masses that you, yes YOU read banned books and are damned proud of it!

If you’re thinking of participating, I’d ask that you stick a note in the comments here so I can get a ballpark idea of how many buttons I should order, and even hopefully get them out to you before Banned Books Week begins.

Have at it!