[ETA For those of you who would, in fact, like to own The Virtu in hardback, sleary is the Hero of the Revolution to whom you should apply.]


Right now, The Virtu is out of print in both hardback and paperback. My editor is trying to get it into the POD program Ace is starting up, and my agent is making a formal protest on my behalf to Ace Books. But unless and until Ace changes their mind (or the rights revert to me and I figure out what to do to make the book available), you're going to have to look for it used or remaindered.

Yes, this also means the Google Book Settlement is, hello, extremely concrete and personal right at the moment, and I have to say, for a company whose motto is, "Don't be evil," Google is and has been behaving like, well, serious evil on this subject. Essentially, as I understand it, what Google's position boils down to is, We aren't going to respect your copyright and you can't make us respect your copyright. If you want ANY say in what we do with your copyrighted material, you have to agree that it's ours to begin with. [That would be opting in to the settlement. And please notice that this involves agreeing to Google's false premise that they can ignore your copyright in the first place.] And if you don't agree [i.e., if you opt out], well, we're going to do it anyway unless you sue us. And if you sue us, we can squash you like a BUG, little author, because we're Google and you're not. Neener neener. Opting out of the settlement doesn't actually protect your copyrights from Google, it just means that you don't agree with the deal the Authors Guild worked out. Which I don't, because it looks pretty much like signing away your birthright for a mess of pottage.

So, yeah. Dear Google, what happened to "Don't be evil"?

[ETA: And opting in ALSO tacitly agrees to the false assumption that the Authors Guild has the right to represent me. As someone pointed out on a mailing list I'm on, Google is not the only entity behaving like an asshat here.]

Amazon claims the de-ranking is a glitch, not policy.

I'm skeptical, but if this means they're going to undo their "glitch," then I'm all in favor.

ETA: This is a very interesting commentary.

I should add, I suppose, that while the de-ranking (and the basic principle of censorship behind it) infuriates me, it has not affected my opinion of Amazon. I didn't like them when I got up this morning, and I don't like them now.

This is appalling. And infuriating. And Not Okay.

(My books have not been stripped of their sales rankings--I just went and looked. But clearly they should be.)

ETA: Smart Bitches, Trashy Books FTW: Amazon Rank.

ETA2: Nicola Griffith, who is seriously one of the most awesome sf writers I've ever had the chance to fangirl in person, is among the authors affected. If there was anything needed to make me angrier (which there wasn't), this would have been it.

Albinos in Tanzania are being murdered for their body parts.

Also, a quite interesting Q&A about albinism itself. And how much do I love the SciAm writers for remarking on the popular culture Evil Albino stereotype?

(N.b., the type of albinism I have is not the same as the albinism being discussed in the article and Q&A. I have no pigment in my retinas, but my pupils and irises are normal. I am also, as people who have met me can testify, extremely pale--among my extended family of brunet(te)s and redheads, I am the only blonde, and my skin is also noticeable for its pallor. (See icon.) This is typical of ocular albinism, which seems to decrease pigmentation in hair and skin, but doesn't remove it entirely, as oculocutaneous albinism does. I also have nystagmus, and a lot of trouble with light levels, and the ocular albinism is the reason I started wearing bifocals at the age of thirty-two. I'm lucky, though, in that my problems are not as severe as they would most likely be if I had oculocutaneous albinism--I'm not legally blind, as long as I'm wearing my glasses.)

If you're interested in finding out more about any type of albinism, NOAH (the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation) has a lovely and informative website.