One of you – RES? – asked me to write about how different people view the book. The book, if you will, from the perspective of the writer, the publisher, the reader.
Meanwhile between blog comments and talking to a friend yesterday I became aware of the zany ideas ya’ll have about the writing life, starting with how much we work and ending with how much control we have over what you get on the shelves.
For extra points and double daring somersault I’m going to combine both into one post AND add in how this is changing with indie publishing (because my posts are normally so short, yeah.) Watch me fall on my face.
So, let’s start it double reverse and from the back.
You, the reader, what do you know/see about a book?
I can answer this, because I’m a reader. I was a reader long before I was a writer. I was a reader – more importantly – before I knew Jack about publishing, because I had no hope of ever being a writer. As a reader, like the man who doesn’t know what is art, but knows what he wants to hang over the sofa, I knew what I liked.
Mind you, what I liked varied. Sometimes I was in the mood for science fiction, sometimes for mystery, more rarely for fantasy, occasionally for historical. And within each of those I had my subsets and the writers I liked. (I still have those. I adore Pratchett, Freer and F. Paul Wilson, and half a dozen others but not back to back and rarely on the same day.)
As a reader, I watched for the writers I loved, bought their books, dragged them home in victory. I can’t remember anything quite so cozy and rewarding as walking home on a rainy afternoon knowing that when I get in I’ll put on my robe and read that book I just bought and am carrying.
What did I know of the writers’ life? Well, I knew what I’d read in books and seen in movies. Writers wrote when inspiration struck, for instance. Also, they were either bottom feeders (and even then they could get their agents to do things like pick up groceries for them) and cranked out book after book, or artistes, and too fine for common life. Publishers could ALWAYS tell the difference between the two. If you were an artiste, you would go through a starving period at the beginning, but once you sold your first book you became rich beyond the dreams of Croesus.
Publishers… I still don’t know much about how publishers work, except for knowing most of them are parts of giant media conglomerates and that the important thing about your book is their putting forth a PROJECTION of what they think the book will sell. Say, editor b reads book x and likes it well enough to buy. Before editor b takes it to meeting, she has to decide how much they’re going to “invest” in pushing the book, which means they have to decide how much the book will sell. When they come back and say “It will sell five thousand dollars” that book is going to be slapped out there, often – no, I know of at least a couple cases – without even an assistant editor at mega publisher inc READING it. (If it was bought on proposal.) I also know that it’s best for the individual editor if a book sells as little as she predicted than if it breaks her predictions and goes huge. Why? Because what she’s selling isn’t books. What she’s selling is her judgement in picking them.
Once you’ve figured that out, stuff that made no sense suddenly comes into focus. Like the midlister whose book goes out of print a week after coming out, because it has sold out of the printrun, and the editor in charge chooses to bury it, rather than risking its going blockbuster. Like the distribution that doesn’t happen for “bottom” books. Like… Like books being taken out of print when they’re about to earn out of advance. Like… The bizarre editorial behavior in thinking they should control distribution and ultimate sales, instead of allowing readers to read what they wish. Because for each individual editor, that’s enlightened self interest, right there. For them the best possible outcome is not each book they publish is a bestseller, but each book they publish sells exactly as predicted.
And then you have the writer. Here I’m going to give you a highly skewed view, and I want you to remember I came into the field at what can only be called the twilight of the gods. That is, I came in when the publishers had achieved what they thought they wanted – complete control (via shelf space and exposure) of what readers go to see. This meant if they slated you as a best seller you’d be that. If they slated you to fail, you’d fail.
Let’s say given my tendency to stick pins in the “accepted” attitudes – often because I’m a contrary dog’s daughter – I would never be slated as a best seller. And I wasn’t. But they also never QUITE managed to kill me. Oh, they killed SOME names. For a time. And they could force me to change genres. But they could not make me go away.
The reason they couldn’t make me go away is twofold. One is because I can’t stop writing. The other is because I don’t like authorities telling me what to do or forcing me to do something.
Kit Marlowe once said “Hell is empty, and all the demons are here.” Well… that could describe my career for the last ten years. I got caught between the “but I have to write” the “I’ll be damned if they make me give up and go away” the “writing for any reason other than money is futile and stupid. If people aren’t paying for it, or reading it, why bother?” and the “but I have to write.” What it did – and I have yet to figure out if this is good or bad. When the flames are hot enough they refine, after all – is that it took the “but I got to write” and taught me to harness it.
They wanted historical mystery? Sure. I could do that. Literary fantasy? Oh, it depresses me, but I can do it by the numbers and blindfolded. Historical biography-novel? Sure. Modern mystery? Of course.
Why was this hell? Well, remember where I said above that as a reader I read practically EVERYTHING but not at the same time, not back to back, and – sometimes – not on the same day? It’s the same as a writer. Sometimes what takes possession of my mind is a space adventure, sometimes it’s a funny mystery with cats. And sometimes it’s a dark, laugh in the teeth of hell, vampire book.
The problem is this – in traditional publishing, to sell these, I had to write an outline and send it out.
When the idea first comes over me, it’s the most important thing in the world. It possesses me. It makes me do it THEN. Most of my ideas were like that (save when I was TOLD to send in a proposal on this or that.) So, I write the proposal in a white-heat. I send it out. Three years later, I get the contract. (Or eight years later, in one case.) By then, my head is in a completely different space. I learned to force it. (You can learn anything.) This didn’t make me happy, though. It might also not have made for the BEST product (good, sure, but not the best.)
Not that it mattered, since I was firmly slated “midlist” and nine times out of ten no one in the publishing house bothered to read the book.
However what it meant for me was sort of forcing little plant after little plant to come to maturation, then throwing them into the fire.
Because – listen to this – movies, and even books lie. Unless you’re a mega bestsller – and sometimes not even then – your publisher and agent will not bend backward to do stuff for you. For most of the mega corps you’re exactly that “slot” they’ve put you into. Hell, even if you’re doing your own publicity, they won’t help, if they’ve slated you to sell “Minimum and no more.” I had a publicity person at one of the houses become smitten with one of my books and work with me on some very creative campaigns. She was fired. Mind you, she did make THAT book a success. Which probably made life very difficult for the editor, who fortunately managed to sink the next one to the appropriate level. (Yes, it might be stupidity, not malice but… How do you know?)
Because – listen to this – it’s not that I’m an artiste and too impractical for the grubby business of selling my book – see above, where I had to let go of the artiste and crank out books on demand, to kep publishing. It’s that once I give a book in to a traditional house, I have ZERO control over that book. There are certain things they technically can’t do (not that they haven’t all done it at one time and another) like, rewrite an entire chapter and not tell me, however, they have control over ALMOST everything else. How the book is packaged. What the cover looks like. Whether it’s called fantasy or science fiction or main stream or biography or… What the title is. Whether it’s marketed YA or adult (and some of the decisions make one face-palm) and, more importantly how much push it will be given to be on shelves (or not.)
But Sarah – the reader says – how can you not have control? It’s your book. What I see, what I remember is your story AND the name on the cover.
Yes, of course. Which is why for years now, publishing houses have gotten away with “every failure” (or unexciting performance) “is solely the author’s fault.” And yet, the author had no control. No control over when things came out, how they were presented, or even if more of a series came out. More importantly, the writer dared say NOTHING. Why? Because to say anything meant you had a good chance of never working in publishing again. And because all of us – writers – knew the system forced us to write things we didn’t want to write by the time they sold (no matter how much we wanted to write them when we first submitted) we also always felt a little guilty and like we were not doing our best, which fed into the whole thing.
This meant that we were shoved into a field where we had no control over our careers, but had to stay in it because most of us are compulsive, and where those who should be our greatest defenders – readers – held us responsible for the boneheaded moves of others. (If I had a dime for each fan who has sent me a letter saying “Why didn’t you write more Shakespeare? I liked those books.” Or “Why didn’t you write that third refinishing mystery earlier, so that I didn’t have to wait two years for it?” Or… Well, I wouldn’t need to write for money. We’ll just say that.) And we had to be nice to the people putting us in this impossible position. Oh, yeah, and there was no way to advance beyond what they slotted for us, but you could always FALL. Which in my case meant falling right off publication.
And then they said we were neurotic because we were artistes. Yeah. Let me tell you, what’s amazing is that none of us ever went postal.
So. How has it all changed with Indie? Well, you guys still attach the book mostly to the writer. That’s fine. No, you won’t like everything even your favorites ever wrote. BUT you’ll get to see it.
For writers? Well, the possibility is there to write everything on spec (which I’m retooling towards as soon as possible.) Which means, you write it while you’re white-hot and the book just wants to be written. Does that produce the best work? For me it does, usually. I won’t answer for others.
For publishers? Well… the good ones will find they have a better relationship with us. The one publisher I’ve chosen to keep might or might not be shcoked because I speak frankly now. (I don’t know.) But I know it makes me easier to work with, because I’m no longer as full of doubt, guilt and aggression as a chicken with three heads. The bad ones are finding that no one ever attached THEM to the books. They attached the writer’s name, instead. To them this is almost unfathomable. They’re also finding that – because bookstores don’t want to die – they are ordering from what they see the book doing on Amazon more than on the word of the distributor. (Right now it’s mixed, but you’re starting to see books slated for success fall flat, and vice versa.) All of a sudden there’s nothing to be gained by making the book fail just as you predicted. Whether that will change corporate culture or not, I neither know nor care. I think the mega-corps are beyond redemption, and I’m not going to cry as they fall, though I might be happy if they retool in a more functional manner. Because as a reader, a system that gets more and better books to me is always welcome.
Meanwhile, unless we screw up the transition, we seem to be going towards a system in which the hand that rocks the keyboard rules the reading world.
And I feel fine.
According To Hoyt 
As a reader, I watched for the writers I loved, bought their books, dragged them home in victory.
A very nice characterization. This aptly describes how I used to feel when one of my stable of favorite authors finally released a new book (Stirling, Hamilton, Simmons). “Victory” sums up that feeling nicely. I say used to because I don’t believe I’m doing the book store thingy anymore. I’ve converted wholly to e-ink.
I can’t remember anything quite so cozy and rewarding as walking home on a rainy afternoon knowing that when I get in I’ll put on my robe and read that book I just bought and am carrying.
Ahhhh…I remember that well. And then I had kids…lol. Now, between trying to keep a word count at 500+ a day and the family, I’m lucky to get 30 minutes of me-time reading before sleep each night.
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Very good Sarah. [Smile]
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Excellently done. I well remember coming home from the 2 hour city bus trip with the newest Andre Norton, and *such* a feeling of exultation! I was also convinced I should *never* write her a ‘fan letter’ — that she lived in some exalted castle/mansion, with servants and secretaries, and the fact that some little girl in South Omaha liked what she wrote would be meaningless to her, even assuming one of her lackeys let the message get through. ::sigh:: Well, I was in *grade* school, and I was the only person I knew who read her books, so I suppose I can be forgiven for being such an imbecile. But I do wish with all my heart I had written to her, and Robert A. Heinlein, just to tell them “Thank you, you have enriched my life so much with what you do.” Lost opportunities.
However, I won’t let it happen again!
Sarah — Thank you. You have enriched my life so much with what you do.
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I have long suspected that the reason writers were so prone to use Eeeevillll Corporations as villains was because that reflected the writers’ experience of corporations.
It sounds as if the publishing biz has long envied Hollywood, where a standing joke is “That starlet is so dumb she thought she could advance her career by sleeping with a writer.”
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The publishing business has become more and more like Hollywood over the last ten years, including the worship of YOUNG and PRETTY authors. And the reason I object to that is not only that this came about as I entered my forties — the main reason is that my writing idols: Pratchett, Heinlein… well… they weren’t exactly young and pretty when they broke in. Freer does have beautiful eyes (Hopefully his wife doesn’t mind my saying that) though he hides his face behind a huge beard, and F. Paul Wilson cleans up nice. BUT none of them are “young and pretty” — it has nothing to do with writing. To judge writing on the writers’ appearance is insanity.
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Ah, but publishers aren’t in the business of judging writing, are they? They’re in the business of selling writing … and they know that young and pretty and willing to go on Oprah, Today, Good Morning, Fox & Fiends and hundreds of local variants is what sells books. A “compelling personal story” sells books. Good writing? Eh, not so much. For one thing, who knows from good writing?
There is a Britcom called “As Time Goes By …” in which one character/subplot is a publisher, working assiduously to chivvy an author into producing a salable book and representing pretty much everything loathsome about publishing … although in the end he is actually a very sweet guy. Along the way there are some very amusing takes on the writing world (especially when an American production company decides to make a mini-series of the author’s life.) Don’t Netflix it, you should spend more time writing things for us to read — those galleys won’t move themselves, you know.
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But see, part of it IS that I like writing for writing’s sake. I couldn’t care less what the author looks like.
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Yeah, well, but — you are a writer and a reader. Your only interest in selling books is (has been) to sell them to publishers. Most readers aren’t like that. The publisher has to give them a reason to notice one book amongst thousands. So, getting the author on TV or radio (Glen Beck proved the driest compendiums — Hayek??? — could sell through with just a little push from him) is key to the publishers’ purpose.
I could not possibly care less what an author looks like — for all I care my favorite SF author could be a BEM (well, these days the publisher would probably put him … it, out there on TV with a tale of anti-BEM discrimination and hardship and how writing these stories was h … its only outlet …) but an attractive smiling face, a bit of cleavage, a little leg will draw my eye, thanks to a few years of evolution and heavy cultural conditioning.
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Geesh. MUST I put out the picture of the lace stockings AGAIN? :-P
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Unnecessary for selling your books to me.
But I long ago gave up any thoughts of passing as normal and have no clear idea what would sell them books (is constant reading normal?)
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Horse pucky! I’ve been a reader for …. 56 or 57 **years** — I purchased exactly ONE book that I saw an interview with the author on TV (Rehwinkle’s “The Flood” – Concordia Publishing House). And I was 12 or 13 at the time. I buy books that are by authors that I like, and I usually find authors that I like by reading their stuff in the library. Now that tends to be Baen’s Free Library :-) But anybody who buys books because liked an infomercial probably also buys stuff from late night hucksters. How’s that salad shooter holding up for ya?
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Lin, I share your bias — but I was trying to describe how things is, not how they ought be. Getting on Oprah’s Book Club increased sales by a significant multiplier. Glen Beck sold Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and thousands of “incorrect” histories. Had I never heard an hour interview with C.J. Box on Hugh Hewitt’s show it is unlikely I would have bought the first (and since then, all) of the Joe Pickett series.
It doesn’t actually even matter whether these ploys sell books — what counts is that publishers apparently think they sell books. The most important skill in most jobs is the ability to look like you’re engaged in productive effort. If the boss thinks putting an author on TV will sell books, those desirous of keeping their phoney baloney jobs will put authors on TV.
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Just because some people are easily led doesn’t mean that’s the only way … or even the *best* way! … to sell books. I heard of Road to Serfdom in the late 70s. I heard CJ Box at a writer’s conference about eight years ago. Glenn Beck? Oprah? Two people whom I avoid if at all possible (had a friend — a multiple NY Times Bestselling author — who said, “All Oprah books should come shrink-wrapped with Prozac!”)
Sad if there are that many sheeple around. One wonders how many of the books purchased after being shilled by Beck and Oprah are ever actually read (not that publishers mind!)
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I expect the percentage of books sold on Oprah and/or Beck that actually got read compares with the percentage of copies of Hawkings’ Brief history of Time actually read. As you note, the publisher isn’t interested in people reading books nearly as much as they are in them purchasing the books.
The issue here is not “the best way to sell books” — that is another topic all together. The issue here is what do publishers do that they think sells books. Publishers think getting authors on TV sells books, so they get authors on TV. Publishers think having authors doing talks at book stores and garden clubs sells books, so they arrange such appearances. If publishers thought putting authors in clown suits juggling chain saws would sell books …
SF/F is possibly unique in publishing in holding conventions. At least I’ve never heard of mystery or nurg cons, and if there were any I expect I’d have heard (epistemologically dubious, I realize.) Which makes it a superb venues for publishers and authors to directly interact with readers. In all other genres the relationship between author and reader (producer and consumer) is at least two steps removed, having publishers and book sellers intermediating the relationship, each with their own agenda.
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Mystery has conventions. Left Coast, B-con, and a half dozen others.
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Mystery conventions: Left Coast Crime. BoucherCon (the grandaddy where the Edgar is awarded). I’ve been to both. Marvelous!
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Stuffier than SF/F cons, though. EVERYONE tries so hard to act like grown ups.
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Doesn’t Romance hold conventions as well? Or was that only from the Murder Mystery Die For Love book? (Highly amusing book, that, though perhaps cruel to many romance books. I believe it was an Elizabeth Peters book, or perhaps a pen-name thereof.)
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No, Romance also holds conventions, particularly Romance Writers of America Nationals.
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“All Oprah books should come shrink-wrapped with Prozac!”
I agree. The resulting mass overdoses would definitely improve the race, although probably not permanently because the Venn diagrams for “Oprah book club” and “prime reproductive age” don’t have lots of overlap.
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There’s an understatement! I’m not sure if anyone who watches Oprah is of reproductive age. Perhaps it remove some of those before they passed their enlightened ideals onto those of reproductive age however.
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Ah, but here’s the thing – a good author will sell to a certain number of people who are compulsive or semi-compulsive readers, but a certain number of people who aren’t in that category, but who do still read occasionally, will pick up a book because of an interview they saw on one of the shows mentioned. Especially Oprah. So if they can get someone on TV to either show some skin or tell how they overcame some sort of horrible difficulties in the past, then they can sell more.
And yes, many of them probably still have Salad Shooters tucked away somewhere, but the Publishers don’t care, as long as they still have money to buy some books.
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Bah! No one should write before their forties, they haven’t got enough life experience to have anything worth saying.
Yes, I am an old fogie. My parents claim I was born one. :-P
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I believe them. My older son was born fifty four. We’re becoming — now — closer in age as I am close to turning fifty.
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So, if i’m going to become a best-selling author I should look like Nathan Fillion?
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Actually, yeah, Nathan Fillion’s picture is used on the back cover of the “Richard Castle” books. Yes, those do exist; I’ve seen the hardcovers for sale at my local Barnes & Noble. Amazon tells me there are three books out, and the fourth is accepting pre-orders.
I’d say that’s a pretty good example of a pretty face (and, admittedly, a fictional character) selling books. Even though it’s clear from the premise that the books are ghostwritten. Publishing is weird….
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The “Castle” thing is one of the most well done tie-ins I’ve ever seen. The idea behind the series is that Richard Castle, best selling author, rides along with Det Beckett and two of her ‘crew’ to murder investigations. The *real* books come out at the end of the TV season, are written as Castle would have “invented” his character, Niki Heat based on Det Beckett. The mysteries are new, well done and well written — and if you’ve watched the series, you can see scenes that were lifted from the dialog and interactions among the characters.
It’s all make believe — but so much better done, even, than the normal “companion fiction” for TV shows that I find it utterly delightful. Even if they *did* having him do a book signing by signing the picture on the back of the dust jacket! >headesk<
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They’re also write for hire and will be pushed because… profit to publisher. And people buy tie-ins.
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True. All that. But at least they have some kind of quality control — that’s much, much higher than some of the other series/movie books that I’ve had the misfortune to read
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Well, it probably wouldn’t hurt … but, if you looked like Nathan Fillion why would you spend your time writing?
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Yes, but see YOUNG and PRETTY actually makes some sense in Hollywood, since you are actually seeing what you buy. Most readers have no idea what their books authors look like, unless there is a picture of the author in the back of the book. Many readers don’t even know the sex of the author if they happen to have a unisex name, Andre or Casey.
YOu know an industry is crazy when I am argueing that Hollywood makes more sense than the publishing industry
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Image: Trad publishing and the author’s relationship as a marriage. Trad has his own issues and problems which he is failing to address. He brings them to the marriage. They play out in an abusive way helping no one.
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I can’t remember anything quite so cozy and rewarding as walking home on a rainy afternoon knowing that when I get in I’ll put on my robe and read that book I just bought and am carrying.
To this day my favorite image in Jane Eyre is in the opening chapter:
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This is the money quote: “Because what she’s selling isn’t books. What she’s selling is her judgement in picking them.”
I remember watching BookTV on cable several years back and they had a panel discussion of publishing execs. One panelist had the single credential of having once worked for some obscure military publisher in DC AND had green-lighted a novel by this guy named Tom Clancy. That single decision to publish The Hunt For Red October made her career.
I can understand folks in this position lying, cheating, and stealing to fluff the numbers for the books they green-light, but not sabotaging them. For a few minutes I thought you (Sarah) were being paranoid with a persecution complex.
But then I remembered the musical-chairs we’ve seen in the publishing industry. Suppose when the music stops that X gets downsized. X’s properties will be reassigned to other personnel. Whoever gets one of those properties will have a reason to make sure those properties fail: to vindicate the decision to sack X.
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No. Most of the sabotage wasn’t even MY books. Tom Clancy was a different time.
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And no, it’s not just orphaned properties that get nixed. It’s that you have to sell to the numbers they SAID. And for a long time they’d lie steal and cheat to make the numbers come out right. (Shrug.)
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About 35 years ago, I was reading Pauline Kael’s movie reviews every week, and she mentioned she kept hearing rumors that the insane things that were happening to movies were soon going to happen to books — someone’s book was going to get taken away from him and finished by someone else, or rewritten, or someone’s novel series was going to be continued whether the author liked it or not. The first series I heard that happening to was Tom Clancy’s, his wife won the right to continue a novel series under his name written by a ghost writer because his cancelling the series he was bored with diminished the value of her divorce settlement. The rewrites were common when Kael wrote the article.
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Nope. All the incentives are based on correctly *predicting* sales. In other words, if Editor-demon says Book A will sell about 5,000 copies, Editor-demon will be in trouble if that book sells 10,000 because it messes with the forecasting and *really* wreaks havoc with expenses, since at 5k the book probably was targeted to just barely sell out, where at 10k they’re paying the author royalties.
Is the industry totally screwy? Hell yes. But being able to say “we’ll sell this many of this book” makes the uber-anal-know-nothing-accountants and MBAs (spit, dose mouth with bleach) happy, and they’re the ones pulling all the strings.
For more information, read The Business Rusch and Passive Guy.
It ain’t paranoia when they really are screwing you over.
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Steve, I’m sorry, but Sarah is *not* paranoid, and it has *nothing* to do with orphaned properties. It has to do with with the (supposed) ability to determine, upon reading, how many copies of a book an author is liable to sell. If the author sells significantly *more* books — it still makes the “picker” look like a nincompoop who can’t tell a best seller from a midlister. And the editor does *not* want to be made to look like an nincompoop. So limiting the print run to the editor’s “projection” makes the editor look clairvoyant, and thus full of ‘good picking juju’ — and the editor cares about the editor’s career far more than the editor cares about (interchangeable) writers.
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This sounds so much like a Monty Python that it screams for screen writing. “And now, for the publisher sketch!”
Mid-level exec walks into plush office. “You wanted to see me, Ma’am?” Senior book exec: “Yes. I am very disappointed with your last book selection.”
Mid-level: “Well, he just broke a million copies in hardback, and won both the Man Booker prize and the Pulitzer. Is there a problem with the movie rights sale?”
Senior: “No, he was supposed to be a mid-list! Now we are having to print an additional run of this thing and we’ve been getting letters demanding a sequel. This sort of thing will not do.”
Mid-level: “Ma’am?”
Senior: “People like this fellow’s work too much. Can’t have that; ruins the press’s reputation.” And so on.
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well, the thing is it NEVER got to that point, because they could make sure the book was only seen in limited venues, or if it did sell out, as I said, you took it out of print OR you delayed the reprint six months, after which interest would have died down. I’ve had the second happen to me, and I’ve heard of the first with a week of being out. This model has ONLY existed so long as the sellers have had control over the distribution and there could be no surprises. That time is passing and btw they LAMENT it. As in, they announce with lamentation “the time for push is past.” And “Push doesn’t work” and “targeted distribution doesn’t work.”
Thank heavens.
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I’ve only been reading this blog for less than a week, but already you’ve answered quite a number of questions that have been on my mind for decades (why didn’t whoozit write a sequel to that, why can’t I find another book by that author, etc.). When I was younger, I subscribed to Analog, and many of the writers whose books I read were authors that had been printed in that publication. I dutifully ransacked every library, used book store, or other source I could to find the books I knew existed, but never could find to read. Some time during the mid-1980’s, Analog changed, and I dropped my subscription and quit reading it. I never gave up on Science Fiction, but most of the “name” authors of the 1980’s and 1990’s didn’t appeal to me. I spent most of my book money on either authors from prior years that I liked, or on other books (I read just about anything, not just SF. I just prefer SF). I’m slowly developing a few new authors I like, especially online with Baen, or among the ebooks from Kindle and B&N. I’ll be quite interested in seeing how many “old” books suddenly show up in ebook format, as writers get greater control over their prior works.
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Totally apropos of nothing to do with this blogpost, but I am suddenly getting emails the last few days asking me to subscribe to the comments to your blog. Why is this? And how can I get them to stop? I tend to check my email about once a week, and the aforementioned emails say if I don’t want to subscribe, to ignore this email and they’ll never bother me again. But they say the exact same thing in at least a dozen emails, all of which have been ignored.
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My guess is that it’s some wordpress thing. I didn’t do it and have NO clue why it’s happening. WordPress, like Facebook, sometimes gets above itself.
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This is a problem across WordPress, and many people have noticed and complained. You should see the screams from commenters at places like Watt’s Up With That, where a 200-comment thread is mercifully short.
Go to the comment form. Notice, below the post box and info dialog, the “Notify me of follow-up comments…” line. What WordPress, in their infallible judgement, decided was to make it “opt out” rather than “opt in” — that is, the box is checked by default, and you have to remember to uncheck it to avoid getting inundated by email.
Whether or not the condition will persist depends entirely on who in WordPress thought of it. If it was some drudge of a coder, it will disappear fairly quickly. However, it’s now gone on for well over a week, which hints that the Divine Inspiration came to a Vice President or someone of equal precedence. If so, we can expect a period of ever-more-elaborate justifications (“It really is good for you! Learn to like it!”) before it goes away, if it does.
For the nonce, take the extra step of ensuring that the box isn’t checked, and meditate upon the fact that publishing isn’t the only business inhabited by people with power they delight in displaying, regardless of result.
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I should have known there were other Watts Up fans reading this blog. :)
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Guilty as charged! Been there about five years now.
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I’d bet dollars to donuts that, somewhere in the Dashboard, there’s a box that allows the blog author to uncheck that. Or there’s something in the php code you can bit-flip to make it go away.
M
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Of course there is, Mark.
Your task is to find it, in ten screens comprising half a meg of code. We’ll wait.
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Already did. (See below.)
M
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Bearcat, when you comment, down below where your email and name are, there are two little boxes. One of them is checked automatically: “Notify me of follow-up posts via email” If you post with that box checked, you’ll get the notice you’re talking about. Just make sure neither box down there is checked, and you’ll be free of the emails :-)
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Thank you, now we’ll just have wait and see if that is something that needs to be unchecked every comment
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Yes. Every, single comment, you need to uncheck that. And I think that goes for *every* blog on whatever platform (or whatever you call it) this is on.
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It does not appear to be so. It is a matter of your host, not your platform. WordPress.COM seems to be the one doing this — the host — not WordPress.ORG — the CMS developer. I just tested this (I have Akismet installed on my sandbox site) and posted several tests and did not even have the option to subscribe. Nor did I receive any emails as the commenter. My site is hosted at DreamHost, NOT wp.COM.
Of course, when I tried to comment HERE, I had to log into a WordPress.COM account I tried to get them to delete awhile back, which I find no end of annoying, but whatever.
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Actually, I think it changed sometime recently. All last week people were complaining, and the few times I commented here I had to uncheck the box (and forgot to, once). This morning when I opened the site the box wasn’t checked — that is, it’s back to “opt in” mode.
If you have a WordPress account, there’s a commenter-side facility. The emails contain a link to a page where you can follow or unfollow a comment thread. I don’t know what happens if you don’t have an account.
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When this post arrived on my phone, the last word in the title was truncated at “K”. I thought the title was going to be “The Hand that Rocks the Kindle”; and I thought that would be a very provocative post.
This IS a very provocative post, but not the one I expected.
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