It seems that Circlet Press had decided to eschew its role as erotica publisher and gone into the comedy business. I found this out through Catherine Leary’s blogpost ‘Really, Circlet? REALLY?‘
I actually had to click on the links to confirm it with my own eyes, because I just couldn’t believe any organization that considered itself a legitimate publisher could do this. But it’s true. Circlet Press have established a twitter feed and they are tweeting excerpts of stories from their slush pile.
We write in a very beleaguered genre. This last September saw the first – THE FIRST – ever convention for erotica writers. We get accused of being synonymous with pornography. We get banned. We labour under ridiculous publisher guidelines that bully writers into self-censorship. Many readers who would happily sit down with a Philip Roth novel won’t touch our genre because they believe all erotica badly written, unskilled crap. Good writers who might bring incredible wealth to our genre won’t do it for fear of having their work labeled as erotica. A huge portion of what is labeled as erotica is nothing more than formulaic romance novels with the sex added.
And now, one of the very few print publishing houses that does publish within the genre has decided that what it does is comedy. It’s using the public humiliation of writers as a marketing tactic. God, where were their ethical standards when someone made this decision?
And how deeply hypocritical that your publishing guidelines exclude rape (although 57% of women have erotic rape fantasies) but you seem to have no problem publicly gang-banging a writer for having the temerity to submit something to you that you don’t like.
I despair. I honestly do. I look at a stunt like this and I think…what the fuck am I doing? What am I doing in a genre where one of its major publishers can’t even take itself seriously enough to act professionally? How the hell will I ever get taken seriously as a writer with shit like this going on? I am so angry.
You, Circlet Press, are a bunch of assholes. Your stupid, unethical, sadistic behaviour has put another nail in the coffin of the genre I love. You have damaged the integrity of my work and my identity as an erotica writer. I fucking hope you NEVER get another good submission. I hope you drown in your slush pile of crap.
I need a vodka. Now.
Astounding, simply astounding. But in a way it does kind of affirm what I’ve always thought about the publisher’s attitude towards the slushpile. But even so, this is just flagrant. It reminds me of when UK high street jeweller Ratners CEO described his own products as tacky, with predictable consequences. Circlet may just have cut their own commercial throats, if enough people who might have dealt professionally with them, reconsider.
Thanks for posting and bringing to all out attentions
Actually, it’s Catherine Leary you should thank.
Attitudes like this just make me want to write more erotica-laced material and put it out there even though it’s not particularly my forte.
Sing it, RM. You’ve said clearly exactly why this isn’t just a decision that affects them. It looks bad on all of us.
On our Twitter, I periodically post “typo of the day” tweets. Those are from my own manuscripts, or those of friends that I’ve asked for permission. Similarly, when we were asked in an interview about the strangest sub we’d ever received, we made a story up. (And it was damned entertaining, I might add.) The reason we did that is simple: submitting your story to us doesn’t give us any sort of rights to it. The mere act of adding it to our slushpile doesn’t make it ours to do with as we wish. Until a contract has been signed, that story doesn’t belong to us.
It seems like such a basic principle to me, and it boggles me that a company as large as Circlet wouldn’t understand it. If you’ve signed a contract for it, post all the excerpts you want. If you haven’t signed a contract, it doesn’t belong to you!
Your ire is both magnificent and beautiful, RG. Thank you.
Meh, in the cold light of morning, I fear it isn’t going to do any good. I think it says a lot about the genre that this twitter feed has been up for a long time. I really don’t know what to do. I really don’t. It breaks my heart. We’re stuck between clowns like these assholes and publishers hell bent on reproducing the Harlequin model. And this is the state of the genre. And it seems to me, at times like this that there is no room for writers like me, or you, or so many of the brilliant erotica writers we know – with passion and integrity, with skill and craft.
I was watching a really interesting youtube interview with Iain Banks. He said: science fiction is really all about how humans cope with change. I thought I’d never heard a more succinct definition of the genre in my life.
Erotic fiction is really all about how humans cope with desire. How they reveal themselves in the face of it. And so much of our genre is oblivious to this, doesn’t care that this is an important examination of humanity, doesn’t take the writing within it with any seriousness. So… ? *sigh* Where do I go?
>Erotic fiction is really all about how humans cope with desire. How they >reveal themselves in the face of it.
RG, I love your definition of erotica. It’s why I write it…to explore the raw vein of humanity which is revealed in those situations. Keep the faith, because some of us have to.
Well, you write to that purpose very well, Nan.
I am not an erotica writer, but I’m certainly an appreciative and avid reader of it. Circlet Press’ actions would be reprehensible under any circumstances and I will be steering clear of any of their publications. You are correct…erotica authors have enough obstacles in their way without this sort of crap. Thanks to you and Catherine for bringing this to our attention.
Circlet Press hasn’t really invented anything “new”. The technology might make it different, but Exquisite Corpse (RIP, 1983-2011) used to have a section called the “Body Bag” wherein they’d publish at least the names of those people who submitted and were rejected. This included their editorial comments and, I believe, snippets from the rejected. I can’t remember all the details. You have to go to delving into Google’s archives for examples. I imagine it was quite shocking to the writers when it first came out, but then it became one of the prices for admission: don’t submit unless you are prepared.
ahhh, here’s an example:
http://www.corpse.org/archives/issue_10/cyber_bag/index.html
And I’m not sure that what Exquisite Corpse did was original either. For all I know there’s a history of such public rejections. It’s at least more personal than a form letter without comment. This at least gives a writer a clue as to what the cause for rejection was.
While the erotic genre is maligned, in many (okay – many, many; okay okay, most) cases there’s plenty of good reason for the disparagement. There’s so much bad writing allowed & glorified in this genre, having a snarky editorial response should be refreshing – as long as there’s wit involved. Amusing snark is fun to read, repetitive rants just add to the annoying noise floor of bad writing.
The sensitivity of a writer to criticism implies that the writer’s feelings are more important than the reader’s experience, or the story. This “white gloves” approach to critique will be what continues to cripple the genre, not an editorial response. I see the possibility that Circlet’s Press response might actually help point out what’s bad in writing, so therefore be instructional as well as amusing. It could certainly reduce their slush pile.
What I see as unfair is paying $7-$15 for a work which has eyeball bleed inducing clichés, spelling errors, basic grammatical mistakes, plodding plots, paper doll characters, and the use of the word “turgid” repeated like a Gregorian chant, and body fluids belching like geysers. That’s my opinion of appalling and degrading to the genre.
Now we should go off to read their comments and if their comments bore, then they should be rightly smacked, but for lack of ironical writing, humor, or wasting electrons without anything interesting to say.
Well, I guess you know I’m going to disagree with you about whether this is right or wrong. However, your rationale: “The sensitivity of a writer to criticism implies that the writer’s feelings are more important than the reader’s experience,” lacks logic. If a piece is not publishable, it can be rejected and not published. Publicly humiliating the writer who submitted it is not required in order to ensure the reader doesn’t have a bad experience. Just don’t accept it for publication.
If Circlet press was really interested in helping bad writers become better ones, there are far more effective, educational and equally market-worthy ways to do it. However, you’re right. It WILL certainly reduce their slush pile. I won’t be submitting anything to them, and neither will a number of very good writers I know. I know I’m not a spectacular writer, but I don’t think i damage the reputation of the genre in terms of my actual writing skills. My choice subject matter, on the other hand, might be another matter.
I don’t disagree with you that having awful quality work for sale under the heading of erotica damages its reputation. But I’m afraid the blame for that also lies squarely with the publishers. Self-published stuff might be just as horrific, but it’s cheaper.
You are defending the reader’s right to a good experience. I can’t fault you for that. I think we just disagree as to how to go about ensuring it.
>>If a piece is not publishable, it can be rejected and not published. Publicly humiliating the writer who submitted it is not required in order to ensure the reader doesn’t have a bad experience. Just don’t accept it for publication.
Now this assumes that unpublished works are not part of the public discourse even though they’ve been submitted to the public, that they are not to be commented upon or reviewed with the same critical eye as a “published” work can be. That’s where the logic of “don’t publicly comment on unpublished work” goes. And I don’t agree with that because the minute a writer submits for publication, or for public comment that’s just what they should expect to get – an uncontrolled response.
When a writer puts their work out for publication they’re leaving themselves wide open for all types of response, including mockery. Of either pre-publication or post-publication, the post-publication critical response would probably be most harsh, if the work garners any attention at all. But a work post-publication is not somehow made “a target” for publically critical commentary simply because it is “published” while pre-publication material is sacrosanct and never to be publically commented upon until the ink hits the paper. We are not sending our manuscripts to priests in a confessional.
Any work which the author pushes out from the private journal to somewhere in front of another person’s eyeballs becomes public because that is the writer’s intention (unless said writer is dead and has relatives looking for a buck or two beneath the bedsprings – I, personally, burn my journals in a huge fire on the evening of December 31st of any given year for that simple fact alone.). And once a work is public, then it’s not up to the writer to decry the reader’s response. I could see debating the technical accuracy of the response, but frankly, if the reader is technically accurate, there’s little to argue about. If a writer wants a guaranteed response, don’t make your work public.
Writers will be rejected, in some cases publically, in some cases with mockery & derision, in some cases with polite, quiet responses. Some rejection will be pre-publication, some rejection will be post. The critical process is messy and often impolite, quite often wrong, but is part of the brawl of human experience and also of learning. Reading the F – reviews at Smart Bitches is one of my favorite ways to pass the time between being born & being dead. They’re hilarious and I know some of those authors have to cringe after reading such a review of their work. There’s no reason why a published work should be held to one standard of critical response and an un-published work to another.
Making ingénue writers aware that this kind of thing can happen to them is a helpful act. Letting them know that Circlet Press is dead serious about their writing guidelines and carries consequences is a helpful act. I still can’t say I find tweeting such rejections as shocking because it’s been done quite often before – maybe not in this genre, but it’s been done. I wouldn’t call it polite, or a pleasant experience to be on the receiving end, but it’s not unheard of. I’ll excoriate Circlet Press if they fail to amuse, or if they have slovenly publication standards. If they publish pieces whereby the raven-haired protagonist views her shapely reflection in the mirror to contemplate her 36DDDDDDD breasteses, then we’ll have a bonfire.
“Now this assumes that unpublished works are not part of the public discourse even though they’ve been submitted to the public”
Nettie, I’m sorry, but this isn’t making any sense. A writer sending a story to a publisher is NOT submitting it to the public. They’re submitting it to the publisher and petitioning the publisher to submit it to the public. I’m perfectly fine with you tearing into anything that is posted on a blog, twitter, a forum by the writer or published in any way. But this is sent PRIVATELY to a publisher for their perusal and NOT to the general public. It is essentially private communication until such time as the publisher accepts it and offers a contract for the rights to publish it. Sorry. I see a VERY BIG ethical distinction here.
Secondly, I believe that the consequences of contravening Circlet Press’ guidelines are assumed by most writers to be that the works are NOT published. Tweeting them on twitter is in fact an act of publishing. It is publishing without even crediting the author, which while probably not illegal, is unethical.
I understand you don’t like bad writing, and I am not defending it, but I don’t think Circlet Press’ actions are helpful. I think they are harmful. If this is done in the name of educating “ingénue writers”, then I must tell you that there are more effective ways to help them to be better writers than to publicly humiliate them and pedagogical research backs me up on this.
As you admit, for you it is your amusement that is paramount. For me, the advancement of my genre. Clearly we have different agendas.
(I’m not sure how the threading works, but I mean this as a reply to Nettie.)
Actually, what you submit to a publisher in hopes, pre-contract, is NOT submitted to the public. It’s submitted only to that publisher. Should that publisher want it, there’s still negotiation to be done–how much will you be paid, etc. If the publisher rejects it, you own the work, and you decide where it gets published, if anywhere. If the publisher hasn’t signed a contract with you (and, usually, agreed to pay you for the work), then they do NOT have the right to publish your material anywhere.
Once your work is published, then you’re fair game, and critics might descend en masse, who knows. But at that point, you could well have been edited and proofread, and your work might be better for it. If you choose to publish something on your blog or literotica or some other unvetted venue, then you’ve still decided that you’re ready to go public. But at the submission stage, the work is still private, IMO (and possibly legally?).
You know, I’ll confess that I was aware of the twitter feed, and did read and get a giggle out of it, but reading your tweets, Catherine’s post, and this one has made a little ashamed of that. As much as I can see Nettie’s point that bad writing shouldn’t be excused and we do let a lot of it go highly praised and uncritiqued, you’re right that it should only be the works that are definitely published – either professionally or self-published, the standards ought to be the same – as, after all, someone had hope that it was good enough for public scrutiny, whereas yes, that behind the scenes correspondence does imply a level of trust that is just not given. So, mea culpa on my part, and thank you and Catherine for pointing out the problem.
I don’t think you should be ashamed about being amused by something that is undoubtedly amusing.
I get quite a few unsolicited stories from new erotica writers and some of them make groan-worthy or just plain funny reading – if I read them. So I have giggled over my fair share of unpublished work. I don’t feel bad about that. But I wouldn’t make their pieces public for the entertainment of others.
What I try to do, when I have the time, is point out some of the major flaws and tell them to keep working on it. To take the time to read some good work and be a little more critical of their own. Very often I never hear from them again, because they were only after praise. I don’t have a lot of time for people who care more about getting stroked than producing good erotica.
But mostly, I simply suggest they join the ERWA writer’s list. It’s a very good place for new erotica writers to learn and grow. They get robust critiques there, learn to critique others (which is a marvelous way to learn more about your own failures, btw) and get to see a standard of writing that they can aspire to.
I think that is a far, far better way to ‘educate’ new writers than to humiliate them publicly.
Thanks for your reply. 🙂 Though I do feel a bit odd still for not having made the connection that there was something very off about posting these for public consumption. It is good to have these things pointed out!
Critique groups (ERWA was good when I was on the list – trying to decide if I should go back on – left because it was a lot of email/info and I needed to step back from that), writing buddies, someone, anyone who can give you good feedback are essential. And yes, I’ve found particularly of late that giving people feedback on their work has made me look at my own and think ‘oh wait, I do that too…um…’ And indeed, much better than public humiliation.
It’s interesting this all coming up, because thinking back, my own dealings with Circlet staff have been very good – the feedback from the pieces I’ve submitted to them (no acceptances, mind) has always been thought out, never a form letter, which was something I valued, and certainly not unkind or out to ridicule. Of course, we don’t know who on the staff uses the feed, and that doesn’t excuse it’s existence.
I met Cecilia Tan (who owns Circlet) at the EAA convention, and I found her to be fiercely intelligent and extremely kind. Plus I felt she had a very great passion for writing and for the genre. I don’t know how this jives with this twitter stream. Some things in life are just paradoxes
I’m back, but just to bring information. Apparently, erotica writers have been “protected” for quite a while now from what appears to be a strong movement within the wider literary world. In trolling the web “slush pile privacy”, I’ve found that not only does tweeting excerpts from query letters exist in the larger world, but there are even convention panels & tumblr pages dedicated to it. This appears to be a type of “exposure” which is here to stay.
This awareness should include the point about the perceived privacy of slushpile submissions. There are contrasting comments, but John Fox in his blog, Bookfox, wrote a good synopsis of the other side of that “privacy in correspondence” during the query process:
“However, I believe that when this ‘private’ correspondence is a mass submission to hundreds of journals, and when the letter betrays a complete lack of familiarity with the journal – calling it by the wrong name, or no name at all; misspelling the name of the editor, or writing a former editor, or no editor name at all; submitting an 85 page manuscript to a journal that publishes nothing over 20 pages – that this contract no longer retains its former strength.”
The whole article is here: http://www.thejohnfox.com/bookfox/slush_pile/
I can’t say I really know what his current position is at the time, I just saw that position restated several times as I was browsing through the net. Needless to say there are heated debates, both pro & con on the topic, but I leave that up to others to delve into.
“I’m back, but just to bring information”
Yes, clearly you’re not back to read this ‘ingénue’ writer’s actual fiction. You’ve made it clear.
“I’ve found that not only does tweeting excerpts from query letters exist in the larger world, but there are even convention panels & tumblr pages dedicated to it.”
Right, everyone’s doing it. So it must be okay? Is that your argument?
I really don’t know how else to respond to you, Nettie. It’s obvious we hold fundamentally different opinions, probably born of standing in very different places, living in different cultures, or being brought up in different environments. You are defending something I find ethically reprehensible. I feel my reasons for finding it so are rational, sound and humanitarian. So, you’re not going to persuade me to shift my position unless you can show me the click-wrap agreement on the Circlet Press submission drop box that clearly states “By submitting a manuscript to us you agree to allow us to do whatever we want with it, including publicly tweeting excerpts out of context for the purpose of entertainment.”
I met Cecilia Tan at the EAA convention. I deeply admire her as a writer and like her as a person – very much. And it disappointed me to find out that her publishing company was doing this.
I am not a tremendously successful erotica writer. I haven’t spent a lot of time pursuing publication in print and what Circlet Press has done does not encourage me to reconsider my efforts pursue it more assiduously. There are several editors of anthologies I respect and trust – D.L King, R.K. Bussell, Alicia Brio and Maxim Jakubowski – who have published my work and who, I feel, have a good ethical understanding of how to do their jobs. There are also publishers – Republica (mine), FreakyFountain (Catherine’s), and others – who find that they can keep their standards without humiliating new authors. So, these are the places I will seek publication. I’m pretty sure Circlet Press will never miss me in their slush pile.
I don’t have anything to add to the debate on this, RG – everything you’ve said (particularly in response to Nettie) covers the logical and moral view on this as I see it.
But, for what it’s worth, I am actually part-way through a story that was intended specifically for a Circlet Press submission. I’ve never submitted or had published any of my erotic writing before; this was something I was sort of gee-ing myself up to, with the acceptance that I might very well be rejected.
Now, with this brought to my attention, I’m not sure if I still should. I’ve had my writing rejected other times, and it hurt, and I was ready to accept that. But knowing whatever I write will be used for the sole purpose of mockery? That’s… well, kind of a bridge too far.
I guess I’m too sensitive or something, but whatever. I don’t know if I should bother finishing the story or not…
you should most DEFINITELY finish the story. You have to write to WRITE, not to get published! Write to have your story read. You don’t need Circlet or any other publisher to do that. And you certainly don’t need a publisher to validate your worth as a writer. Certainly NOT in this genre. There are so few publishers and half of them are Romantic Erotica anyway. Some won’t publish men. If you are depending on publishers to give you a reason to write, you’ll be holding your breath and keeling over before you get it. Circlet Press is not the only erotica publisher, and as far as I know, they are the only one who does this sort of shit. But if you are going to submit it anywhere, why not workshop it first? Why not join something like ERWA’s writer’s list and get some eyes on it? It’s a great place to build up your confidence as a writer. Meet other writers. Learn how to spot flaws in other people’s work which can help you be more critical of your own.
If this is your first erotic piece, personally, I would definitely NOT submit it to Circlet. But there are other venues and it’s not like any of us are getting paid enough to make a living at this. We really don’t need to be publicly flagellated on top of it all.
I knew I could rely on you to post this! Makes me so angry. Arrgh!