Lisa Hendrix

Trust me. Follow THIS LINK, read the explanation, then watch the video. It will likely be the best thing you do all day.

Then take a moment and post a link to your favorite feel-good video in the Comments.  We all need a smile.

You can get there through the Books page or go directly via

http://lisahendrix.com/books/excerpt-immortal-outlaw/

Enjoy!

I had one of those mom assignments today—to go out and find white gloves for my son.  Not for prom, but to complete his Cogsworth the Clock costume for his HS production of Beauty and the Beast.  I had been told I could find men’s white gloves at the local tuxedo shops, so today I stopped by the most convenient one on the way to the post office.

They didn’t have white gloves.  Neither would the other tux shop in town, they assured me, because “no one wears gloves anymore. ”

Humpf.  I didn’t believe them, but they were clearly not going to help, so I walked out and went down the block and across the street to the local community college in search of a phone book. I spotted an Information sign in the lobby and headed over to ask for the yellow pages. 

“What are you looking for?” the Information woman asked as I paged through the book. I told her, and within moments had every woman within earshot confirming that yes, men do still wear white gloves and offering ideas for where to find such gloves:  a wedding shop, said one. A Quinceañera shop, said another. And then they started giving me directions to all the various wedding and Quinceañera shops in the area. (For those who don’t know,  Quinceañera is the religious and social celebration of a young woman’s 15th birthday in Latin American cultures.  Kind of like an Hispanic bat mitzvah.)

I didn’t need a phone book, I needed women! Women know this stuff and are willing to share what they know (the same principle, btw, that makes the Romance Writers of America so successfully inclusive.)

I ended up with a pair of simple gloves I picked up at the pharmacy–the kind you wear to bed with sloppy cream on your hands–for $3.09.  I stopped there to ask for directions to one of the shops when I couldn’t spot it. And there hung white gloves.

It turned out the other tux shop does carry men’s gloves, for about $9—and they snorted at the idea that “no one wears gloves any more.” Guess which store my son went to to rent his prom tux?

Tomorrow, I have to go buy a handlebar mustache. Wish me luck.

Amazon still hasn’t come up with an acceptable explanation for what happened over the weekend.  Or rather, they’ve come up with so many that it’s clear they’re vamping in the hope we’ll forget.  We won’t.

I could go through the whole thing, but others have done it and given better analyses than I could manage, so I’ll send you off to them (please do remember to come back…):

Amazonfail: Post Mortem by Kassia Krozser at Booksquare.

Amazon = Fail by “the angry black woman” at Alas, a Blog

The Amazon Fail by Hugh at The Book Oven.  He also offers a suggestion to publishers that would diffuse some of the big A’s power and  keep a similar decision/error/”glitch” from causing such a significant hit to a particular segment of books. Publishers, are you paying attention?

Go forth, become educated, and understand why monopolies are bad and what you can do to help. While you’re gone, I’ll be working on my links to offer readers choices beyond Bezos.

Amazon has shown its true colors by de-ranking certain types of books. They call them “adult,” but the designation involves a preponderance of gay/lesbian/transexual books amid the erotica. Don’t think that’s so bad?  How about if I tell you that they’re also de-ranking romance novels left and right? How about if I tell you they’ve de-ranked the children’s book Heather has Two Mommies as well as Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain? How about if I tell you that they still happily rank dogfighting books and videos and everything in the Playboy repertoire?  How about if I tell you that Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military was de-ranked and American Psycho was not?

Amazon Rankings don’t really mean anything to customers…but they mean everything to Amazon itself, which uses them to generate things like front page searches, bestseller lists, “If you like x then you’ll like y” recommendations, and everything else that effects the visibility and sales potential of books.  In other words, if your book is de-ranked, it WILL NOT appear on a front page search, even if the reader searches by your name or title. Heaven help you if they search by topic. Here are a couple of more thorough explanations

Dear Author 

Smart Bitches,Trashy Books  (My particular favorite, but as always, be warned if you’re reading at work or have a tendency to swoon at explicit language).

LA Times Book Blog

And for good measure, a here’s a definition of the term  Amazon Rank. (Add this link on your own site and help Google Bomb the term so it comes up #1 on searches. More about this in the Smart Bitches post.)