Open Mic Wednesday 5/25/11
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
It’s Open Mic Wednesday. What’s on your mind?
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Books by Kaye Dacus
Novel in Progress
Follow the Heart*
Book 1 of The Great Exhibition Series
Due May 1, 2012
first draft completion goal date: 01/31/12
*working title
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Middle Tennessee Christian Writers
I’m still pretty much brain-fried from getting Turnabout’s Fair Play finished, so today, it’s up to y’all to come up with some fun discussion topics that we can chatter about. What’s it to be? Books? Movies? TV? Animal? Mineral? Vegetable? Coffee? Tea? Milk? What do you want to talk about today?
And don’t forget, this weekly open-forum post was developed so that if you had questions you wanted to ask but didn’t feel right posting them on specific topical posts, you’d have a place to do it. So feel free to use it for some Q&A time with me (or the other regulars here) as well.
With all of this talk about e-books and reproducing out of print books in that format I’m wondering, when does a book officially go “out of print”? Doesn’t the original publisher still hold the copyright? Do you know anything about this Oh, Wise One?
There’s huge discussion of that on the published-author loop I’m in. I haven’t been paying attention to it . . . mainly because it’s not something on my radar right now—and because by the time it does come up for me, the publishing model will have changed yet again.
I do know several authors who, prior to e-readers and e-publishing becoming such a viable option, did either have their book rights revert back to them (and this varies from publisher to publisher on when they will label a book OOP—or OP, also depends on the publisher which acronym they use) and they’ve since either gone on to get the books republished elsewhere (Joan Hochstetler, Kathy Tyers) or put them up for sale on e-book themselves (MaryLu Tyndall).
As e-publishing settles in and continues to change and evolve the traditional publishing model, how rights reversion and OOP works will change. Which is one of the reasons I’m so glad I have an agent who can stay on top of all of those things and take care of it for me when/if the time comes!
Thanks, Kaye. I can always count on you for great input. I suppose I should leave some of those things in my agent’s care, too. I’m not even “in print” yet, so it is a little early to worry about such things. But I suppose it is something to consider having incorporated into contracts. I wonder if that is becoming an increased request.
Who is going to win American Idol? Not that I’ve been watching it a whole lot, but I’m just curious.
Alas, I don’t watch AI. Never liked the concept of that show when Simon was on it—let’s see just how horrible and mean I can be and crush the hopes and dreams of these kids who have their hearts set on this). I understand that Steven Tyler has changed that aspect of it this year—but I still won’t watch it. First, because I don’t like 98% of the music featured on the show (I’m very picky with what I’ll listen to); and second, because if what I’m hearing at the end of the show right before Bones comes on, my ears would be bleeding every week because they’re just not that good.
Oh, but speaking of televised singing contests, I heard this little girl, Jackie Evancho, on NPR yesterday afternoon. She’s eleven years old:
Jackie E. is pretty amazing. My friend Courtney worked on her upcoming PBS special (I think it’s supposed to air in July).
She sings like an angel!
On Factual Accuracy in Books
If you picked up a novel set in a time/place you know more than just a little bit about and found a glaring factual error in the very first chapter, would you continue reading? Would it make a difference if you’d paid for the book or if it was free?
Here’s the scoop: I downloaded a historical romance novel from the free Kindle list this week. It’s set in 1811 in the Caribbean and from the description, the heroine is first saved by a pirate and then kidnapped by him. In the beginning, the heroine is engaged to a Royal Navy captain who serves on a seventy-four-gun ship of the line (like Alexandra in the Ransome series). The heroine is on a smaller passenger ship behind. Her ship is destroyed in a storm and she and her brother seem to be the only survivors. In this scene (in the first chapter), the author has the heroine think about how the 74-gun ship is crewed by 380 people.
This was where I stopped reading and went back on to Amazon to post a comment about the lack of research in the book and how I wasn’t certain I wanted to keep reading. Less than five minutes of online research (beginning with Wikipedia, then moving on to other sites) shows that in the early 19th century, a 74-gun Man o’ War carried a crew of no fewer than 550 and up to 800, with about 700 being average. This is a fact I know as well as I know my own name, simply because of the hours of research I did when writing the Ransome series. I probably did more hours of research than I did actually writing, because I was so concerned I’d get something wrong.
Well *someone* commented on my review that I’m being ridiculous in expecting facts in a novel and that I should just enjoy the story, not be looking for facts. But as I tried pointing out, both in my review and in my response to the comment, fiction must be based in fact—and the fact that there’s a glaring historical error in the very first chapter, something easy to find online, makes me leery of spending hours reading this book if the author couldn’t even be bothered to do a few minutes of research.
Am I off base here? Do I have too high a bar of how much factual accuracy a book should have? Have you ever stopped reading something because of a blatant factual error that made it obvious the author hadn’t done any research?
I don’t think you’re off base at all. It drives me nuts when I read a novel and there are errors in it, whether they’re historical errors (which I’m not that likely to catch, as I’m not a history buff) or just errors about a topic I happen to be familiar with or knowledgeable about.
I had someone comment on a blog tour I had posted with the first chapter it was set in England during Henry the VIII’s rule and talked about tea. She said they didn’t have tea like this till and she had the time and everthing. She had studied this and it stopped her from wanting to buy the book. I didn’t know so to me it didn’t matter. But to her she then thought if this fact is wrong how much would be.
I have read a few books set partly in australia and it really annoyed me how the facts were so wrong. I did like the story and this was only a tiny part of the book but it frustrated me as they has set something in North Queensland and had a big naval base there which was wrong but the clincher was the fact they had it as a 2 hour drive to Sydney. when infact it would be close to 24 hours in the era. its still a Long way. Although I enjoyed the book it really annoyed me.
I have had another friend actually contact an author who wrote about Australia and mentioned a few errors in a nice way she was then able to help the author with her following books set here and it helped the author check on locations and a few things which she appreciated.
New three-minute trailer for Ringer starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ioan Gruffudd, and Nestor Carbonell coming up this fall on the CW:
The preview heavily reminds me of two Bette Davis sister films: A Stolen Life and Dead Ringer.
I had no idea Ioan was going to do a tv show. Interested to see him. CW is one of the very few stations I actually can get.
How did I miss the fact that Ioan is in this??? And not having to hide his yummy accent this time?
Definitely thinking this looks fascinating.
Ooh… Ioan Gruffudd. NICE. Always up for Horatio Hornblower…
Summer TV shows…I am SO EXCITED about USA NETWORK SUMMER TV SHOWS!
First off, White Collar and Covert Affairs return on USA network 6/7/11…that is LESS THAN 2 WKS AWAY!
And then there’s this new show called SUITS that starts 6/23…I think it looks like it could be fun, especially if the “buddy dynamic” between the leads reminds me at all of the Peter/Neal friendship from White Collar. http://www.usanetwork.com/series/suits/
I also want to give USA’s Necessary Roughness a try (starts 6/29/11) – about woman who becomes a therapist for a pro football team. http://www.usanetwork.com/series/necessaryroughness/
And Burn Notice…I almost forgot about Burn Notice…yeesh USA Network really helps me through my summer.
Except they pushed Psych back to the fall….. *cries*
Oh, I was CRUSHED to hear that news about Psych…but at least it is coming back.
And since it’s coming back in the fall, I figure a Christmas episode is all but guaranteed (those are some of my favs!). 
That crushed me too! I love Psych.
And I cannot fail to mention my summer science fiction shows on SyFy.
I am really looking forward to the return of Eureka and Warehouse 13 on 7/11/11. And I’m excited that a Warehouse 13 spinoff is in the works, starring the H.G. Wells character. STEAMPUNK! 
http://www.syfy.com/warehouse13/
I also want to try SyFy’s new show Alphas…also starting 7/11: http://www.syfy.com/alphas/