The magic of invisible words

As the subtitle of this blog notes, I am a "resurrected" romance novelist.  And throughout the course of this blog, I've been presenting some resurrected books and ideas.  For some time now, I've been trying without success to find an article I wrote for an RWA newsletter back in the days..  Although I remember parts of it, I had hoped to take the original and update it to reflect changes in the publishing scene.

Today, while looking for something else, I stumbled across one version of it, a fading hard copy that contained all the important points.

Writing has always been, for me, a very magical business.  We writers are able to create new worlds, where everything is exactly as we want it, where we are in complete control of everyone's lives and fortunes.  We can reward good and punish evil; we can dispense justice fairly; we can solve all the world's problems within the space of two or three or five hundred pages.  Love is always perfect, and everyone who deserves to will live happily ever after.

Unfortunately, once we decide to bring others into the world we've created, the magic doesn't always work.  In the old days when a writer was at the mercy of traditional publishers and editors and agents, she faced the very real possibility that her magic failed and she got rejected or didn't win the contest or her critique partners said, "Are you kidding me?"  The magic worked for her and she thought it would work for everyone, but it didn't, and that meant her book didn't get published.

Today, digital publishing is a magic all its own, and it makes possible the instant publication of virtually any book, no matter how well or poorly written.  Digital self-publishing has magically removed not only the time it takes to market, contract, and publish a book through traditional print channels; it has also removed the bad juju of rejection letters, of low contest scores, of critique group partners who say, "What the fuck?"  Digital self-publishing allows the writer to go directly to the reader without any intermediary.

But the magic of digital publishing is only half the magic.  It can bypass the traditional obstacles of agents and editors and publishers to take the created world directly to the reader, but it alone cannot bring her inside that world and make her enjoy her stay there.

Digital self-publishing has replaced the form letter rejection with the negative review, which wields the added weapon of public humiliation.  Whether it's "0 stars" or "DNF" or "F-" or "STA," the negative review is out there for all the world to read.

Many people used to say in the old days that there was no magical secret to prevent rejections.  But in fact there was.  And today that same magic works just as well to prevent negative reviews of digitally self-published books.

The magical spell for avoiding rejection slips and negative reviews is very simple:  Never let anyone see your manuscript.

The first spell was used frequently, often unconsciously, by those writers who were either too timid or too unsure of their work to put it into the hands of an editor, an agent, or even a friend.  These people wrote, sometimes churning out novel after novel, but they never showed their work to anyone else.  By never letting anyone see their manuscripts, they never suffered the pain, the disappointment, the disillusionment of rejection.

But by invoking that magic, they cut themselves off from any possibility of experiencing the joy of seeing their name on the cover a book, the sweet savoring of success as they scrawl their name across the back of a royalty check, the delicious delight of penning an autograph on the title page of their published novel.

Today, that type of writer does the same thing:  They don't put their stories online, don't share them with friends, don't enter contests.  They never let anyone see their books, and they never have to deal with negative reactions.  The magic works, every single time. 

If you never let anyone see your manuscript, you will never be rejected.

But wait, are you saying you want to share your story, want to sell your books?  You don't want just to avoid rejection and negative reviews, you want success?

Well, you're in luck, because there is a magic spell for that, too, and it works just as well in the digital publishing format as it did when print ruled:  Never let anyone see your manuscript.

You say it sounds the same as the other one?  Well, similar maybe, but not identical.  And they mean two very different things.

Those writers who enjoy the thrill of publishing success in the traditional print format (not self-published or POD) have always employed that second spell rather than the first:  They let other people -- editors, agents, critique partners, etc. -- see their manuscripts, but they never let them see the manuscript.


The first spell obviously requires no complex incantations in an arcane language, no special ingredients, no ensorcelled tools.  It is very easy to cast:  Simply keep your stories to yourself and you will never be rejected, never be criticized, never be told you have no talent, never be embarrassed in public.  You can entertain yourself and be perfectly content.  There is no law that says you have to share your writing.

The second spell, of course, has always been much more difficult to cast.  It is not, in fact, a simple phrase, a cantrip to be mouthed in fervent hope.  Instead, it is an elaborate enchantment that is woven not on yourself or on your book, but on your reader, whether that reader is an editor, an agent, a fellow member of your critique group, the person who picks your book off the rack at the grocery store check-out lane or downloads it to their e-reader.

To understand how this second magic spell works, you must remember that your digital manuscript exists on two separate planes.  Its quasi-physical being is the electronic document that you upload to the publishing platform, whether that is Amazon's Kindle or Smashwords, or anyone else.  Its invisible being is the story those words convey to the reader.  The trick -- and it is tricky -- is to involve the reader so thoroughly in the story that she does not see the manuscript.

It ain't easy, but no one ever said it was.

Any little thing that reminds her she is only looking at words on an electronic device breaks the spell.  These are nasty little critters called Tokens of Visibility, and they are incredibly easy to conjure up, even without trying.  Whether it is faulty formatting for the digital platform or too many typos per page or wrong words or characters who can't stay in character (or historical period) or inaccurate research or vague descriptions that never let the reader see the scenes or grammatical errors that send her into gales of laughter or inappropriate dialogue or physically impossible sexual positions -- anything that takes the reader out of the story and back to the reality of letters on a digital screen is likely to result in the torment of negative reviews. 

The same problems that used to cause manuscripts to be rejected by editors and agents have not lost their power just because the books can now be self-published digitally.  The difference now is that their magic brings on the threat of public scorn.

The very first things the reader sees are your cover art and your listing on the digital bookseller's site.  If you are not a graphic designer yourself, get someone who is to do your cover art.  Excellent digital cover art can be purchased for $100 or less.  If you are expecting people to pay you for your book, you need to invest in the product, and that means providing an attractive display.

Your listing on the digital site should be exactly what the site calls for, and this is basically what would be found on the dust jacket flap or back cover of a printed book.  You are not allowed to make any spelling or grammatical errors here -- it's too public.  You have to put your magic skills on prominent display here.

Once the reader has purchased or downloaded your book, the magic takes over.  If you have not cast a perfect spell or if you have left too many Tokens of Visibility in your text, the magic will not work.

Allow me to repeat that:

If you have left too many Tokens of Visibility in your text, the magic will not work.

If there are too many Tokens of Visibility, the reader will remember she's just reading, she will not be caught up in the story, she will not engage emotionally with the characters.  The more Tokens there are, the sooner she will give up on the story.  And she just may leave you a negative review.

This is not the reader's fault.  It is the writer's fault -- and only the writer's fault -- if the magic doesn't work.  The writer is the magician, and if she fails to cast the spell properly, she has no one to blame but herself.

It is not the reader's fault that the formatting is screwed up.

It is not the reader's fault that there are spelling errors.

It is not the reader's fault the story is internally inconsistent.

It is not the reader's fault the historical or geographical or technological facts are inaccurate.

Now, it is very true that many writers whose magic fails end up resorting to devious and nefarious means to erase the negative reviews, the low star rankings.  As has been amply documented on the "Badly Behaving Authors" thread on the Amazon discussion boards, authors will go to great lengths to either erase negative reviews or post fake positive ones.  Such chicanery not only does not make the magic work; it is in and of itself the strongest evidence possible that the magic did not work.  And if the magic doesn't work, all the lies and all the sock puppet reviews and all the excuses will not make it work.

If the magic works, it works.  If it doesn't, it doesn't.  It's as simple as that.

Shenanigating authors may increase their sales, but shenanigans do not create magic.  Good grammar and clean formatting are not the only things that conjure the magic.  Engaging characters, fascinating plots, all of these combine, of course, with the more mundane mechanics of writing to create the magic of invisible words.  And while it is of course true that not every book will appeal to every reader, and there will always be readers who leave unkind (and even inaccurate) assessments of digital books, authors who understand the magic and how to use it will also recognize that there is nothing they can do to work the magic on these readers.  Authors who understand the magic and how to weave it will not attack the negative reviews; they will ignore them.  Authors who understand the magic and how to invoke it will not send out their minions to post shill reviews or denigrate the negative ones.

Authors who understand the magic and are able to create invisible words. . . . . . .are authors.

The words as I wrote them, or more shameless hussiness

Yeah, I still have a hard time doing it.  But there it is.  And this time it's a cover that matches the book.

If I am a resurrected romance novelist, Shadows by Starlight is a resurrected romance novel in more ways than one.  And in honor of Kim Killion's wonderful cover, I think it's only fair to give some of the book's history.

Shadows by Starlight was the original title when my agent sent the partial to Zebra Books as the option book on my contract for Secrets to Surrender.  On the strength of that partial, Zebra offered a two-book contract, but the acquiring editor wanted one rather major change.  Because the book wasn't written yet, I didn't have any real difficulty incorporating the requested change; although I didn't follow the editor's suggestion exactly, I revised the element that he found unacceptable to something he could live with.  It all worked out fine, and in fact the revision actually made my concept for the book stronger.

Sometime between then and the time I completed the book, Zebra assigned me a new editor, my fourth in three books.  During the phone call she made to introduce herself, I became increasingly uneasy.  Her comments seemed not to make a whole lot of sense.  I was aware that this was her first job as an editor, though she had been in the book business for a number of years.  Friends told me not to rock the boat, play along, be a "good" author and don't be "difficult."

All of this happened 20 years ago, when there were no viable options.  If you wanted to be published, you worked with your editor.  You did what your editor told you to do.  You did not know better than your editor, even when you did.  And I was pretty sure I did.

The writer is always too close to her work.  Always.  Every book needs an extra set of qualified eyes, and every book needs improvement.  No book is ever finished; it just gets closer and closer and closer.  I never had any problem with that kind of thinking.

But -- the suggestions this editor was making made no sense.  She seemed almost not to have read the proposal.  After the completed manuscript was delivered, she began making nitpicking changes that did even worse than make no sense: they created internal inconsistencies and outright errors.  I knew that as the author I would be blamed for those inconsistencies and errors if they made it into the printed edition, so I fought to get them reversed.  Almost all of them were.  Almost.

In the interest of my "career," however, I didn't push for corrections on the rest of them.  I just plain gave up.  And that's not something I do easily or often.

I might have continued the fight if she had not changed the title. 

Fellow Zebra authors Evelyn Rogers and Martha Hix and I had laughed ourselves silly at the RWA conference in New Orleans, making up "typical" titles for Zebra Heartfire books, especially the Indian romances that were then so popular:  Arapahoe Auditor, Paiute Podiatrist,  Dakota Dentist, etc.  There was never any question that Zebra -- and to a lesser extent, all the paperback romance publishers at that time -- had a system to titling.  But when my editor called to tell me my book would be published as Starlight Seduction, I gagged.  Tacky, tacky, tacky.  But there was nothing I could do.

She did, however, promise me a spectacular cover.  I struggled to keep a positive attitude but was never able to make myself like that title.  As the time got closer to publication, I asked her more about the cover and received the exciting news that it would be a step-back, with a foiled old-fashioned gaslight on the outside and on the inside the lovers standing under the gaslight.  She told me it was gorgeous.

Huh?  There were no gaslights in the story.  It's set in a small Kansas town in the 1870s.  Even the title she had given it had no connection to gaslights.

But there was no sense arguing.  My concerns about her editing competence had to be set aside and I needed to have confidence in her marketing ability because that's the area she had come from.  The cover would be wonderful and it would sell gazillions of copies.  I had to believe that, or I'd go nuts.

I remember the day the sample cover flat arrived.  I had been at a local RWA chapter committee meeting and my husband called to let me know the cover had come in the mail.  I asked him to describe it to me. . . and he wouldn't.  He just said I'd have to see it.

When I did, I almost cried.  It was horrible.  And when I called the editor to ask why there were no people anywhere on the cover, she insisted, "Oh, there are people on it, on the back."  There weren't.  I have my guesses as to why she said there were, but this is a blog and it's going to be in print, so I'll keep my speculations to myself.

The background color was midnight blue, with gaslamps and big pink roses all over the place, neither of which were in the book at all.  No people on the cover, no starlight.  Foil lettering outlined with pink and yellow that made it difficult to read.

I wouldn't even let my husband make a frame for it, and it's never been hung on the wall.  I was more than disappointed; I was ashamed.

Fast forward almost 20 years.  Shadows by Starlight, with the original title restored, has been published on Smashwords for everyone else and Kindle Direct Publishing for the Amazon shoppers.  The rest of the little errors have been fixed, and the missing backstory has been supplied.

And Kim Killion of Hot Damn Designs took my long-winded description of what I saw in my twisted little brain as the cover and turned into the real thing.

Words, words, and more words

This is a post just for me, tallying my progress on various projects.

26 May 2012
StBr -- 32,289

7 June 2012
GyCo -- 4,431
8 June 2012
GyCo  --  4,718
13 June 2012
GyCo -- 7,603 - 7,653
14 June 2012
GyCo -- 7,756 - 8,146
16 June 2012
GyCo -- 8187
19 June 2012
GyCo -- 8677

24 June 2012
SaCa01 -- 920
25 June 2012
SaCa01 -- 1,740
30 June 2012
SaCa01 -- 1921 - 2887

Missing those very special words

A conversation with a friend this morning got me to thinking about why it is that so many authors who enjoy the benefits of digital self-publishing are so seemingly unable to accept criticism.  The accounts of major author meltdowns are too numerous to list here and are easily found with your favorite search engine.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized these reactions aren't a new phenomenon.  One of my very first writing pen-pals, back in the early 1980s, was so furious over a rejection letter from a publisher who had held her manuscript for  several months, that she threatened to throw her typewriter out a second floor window and never write again.  How dare they!

About ten years later, another acquaintance of mine was so furious about requested revisions to her contracted manuscript that she threw temper tantrums on the phone to her editor.  Her refusal to change a single word resulted in the publisher taking virtually unheard of action:  Not only did the editor make all the changes herself, but the publisher cancelled the second book on the contract before the first had gone to press.

Neither of these writers was unfamiliar with the pain of rejection, the sting of criticism.  For some reason or other, however, they reacted excessively to any negative comments.

But their actions were not the norm; most of the writers I knew, whether published or unpublished, knew that their artistic vision sometimes had to be compromised.  They also knew that their prose might or might not be deathless; it might need the deft hand of an editor.  More important, we knew our work would be edited whether we wanted it to be or not.  Dealing with an editor was part of the process.

We also understood that once published, our words were cast in stone.  Or at least in wood pulp, which was almost as permanent.  If the back cover copy listed the heroine's name as Amber and the text had her as Allison, well, too bad.  If the hero was clean-shaven on the cover painting but he is noted for his luxurious mustache throughout the story, oh well, them's the breaks.  When we got our page proofs for final corrections, we may have pointed out the typesetting error on page 220 where Queen Victoria's husband is identified as Prince Alfred, but if no one actually made the correction, it's going to be on page 220 in every single copy printed.  Tough luck.

All of that has changed.  The whole process of writing, for many people, has changed.  Instead of write, rewrite, revise, polish, share with critique partners, enter contests, revise, rewrite, polish, send to agents, send to editors, lather, rinse, repeat; it's now just write and upload.  Oh, maybe some authors hint that if they get enough complaints about the bad grammar and dozens of typos per page, they might go back and revise.  Many, however, just don't care.  Some might decide to pay a professional editor AFTER they've sold enough copies to justify it.  And the real-time nature of digital publishing allows them to do that.  Nothing is carved in stone any more.  So the first digital "edition" is full of typos and grammatical mistakes; the second has been professionally proofread and most of the errors are cleaned up.

But another thing that has changed is that digital self-publishing offers no visible mark of quality assurance.  The reader who goes to a bookstore and sees shelf after shelf after shelf of paper and ink books knows that most of them have been through sufficient selection and editing to be halfway decent.  Oh, the occasional clinker slips through, and virtually no book is without at least a couple of typos, but if the story was good enough to be accepted by a publisher, then it was good enough for the publisher to make sure the final product was clean.  In many cases, the manuscript had to be reasonably clean just to get the editor to read it, but in all cases, the expectation of a clean final product was the norm.

Another thing that has changed is that the author can't carry around a copy of the book -- or even the contract or letter of acceptance -- as evidence of quality.  I'm a romance novelist, and throughout my tenure in RWA, there was a strict division between the published and the unpublished, even though RWA admitted the unpublished writer -- even the person who thought maybe she might someday want to write a romance novel but hadn't yet actually done so! -- to full membership.  That began to change in 1989 with the formation of PAN (Published Authors' Network) and in 1994 when I started PASIC (Published Authors' Special Interest Chapter).  And believe me, there were a whole lot of unpublished members of RWA who absolutely hated that the published members had something extra.  (Never mind, as I pointed out routinely, that a published author was FOREVER excluded from the Golden Heart contest.)

RWA still maintains strict requirements that an applicant must meet to claim that "published author" status, and the sad truth is that most of the current crop of write-it-and-upload-it self-published authors are not going to meet those requirements.  Digital self-publishing does not carry the same weight as the message from an established publisher, whether it comes as email, phone call, or letter, "We'd like to publish your book"

A word or two (thousand) in defense of defending

Maybe I'm completely wrong, but I think I have a pretty honest assessment of myself.  In other words, I know I can be a real bitch.  And not just in a generally bitchy way but in a persistent, American Staffordshire Pit Bull Terrier way.  When I get into that "I know damn well I'm right and you're going to know it too before I'm done with you" mode, I can be a pain in the ass.

Acknowledging that is not the same as apologizing for it, and it certainly is not the same as promising I won't do it again.

I don't think there's anything wrong with defending a stance on a controversial issue.  Whether that issue is nuclear energy, reproductive rights, immigration, voter fraud, plagiarism/copyright infringement, or publishers' illegal collusion to fix prices, I firmly believe that passionate defense is not only right but almost obligatory.

If someone tells me "It's not worth getting riled up about" or "Don't piss people off" or "Everyone's entitled to their opinion even if they're wrong," I can come mildly unglued.

And here's why.

Everyone is entitled to her own opinion, but not to her own facts.

If, for instance, you wish to believe that the Agency pricing agreement between the Big 6 publishers and Apple is illegal but morally defensible because Amazon is becoming a monopoly, you are entitled to believe that, because it's an opinion based on facts.

1.  There was such an Agency pricing agreement
2.  Such collusion to fix prices is illegal.
3.  Amazon may (or may not) be becoming a monopoly.

You are entitled to base your opinion on fact.  And if you say that is your opinion, that's fine.

What arouses my passion and my pit bullishness is those who base their opinions on non-factual "facts" and/or faulty logic such as this:

1.  The implementation of Agency pricing actually lowered the price of ebooks.
2.  If Amazon becomes a monopoly, they will immediately abolish printed books.
3.  It's legal for publishers and Apple to fix prices because other industries like cosmetics do the same thing.
4.  It's okay for publishers and Apple to break laws to fix prices because Amazon breaks laws, too.

Those of us who operate in a reality-based environment know that empirical facts contradict all of those four assertions, and a lot more.  Agency pricing immediately raised the price of ebooks.  Amazon still distributes printed books published by print publishers and Amazon can't make them stop printing.  The specific kind of price fixing involved with ebooks has absolutely no parallel in the cosmetics industry, none whatsoever, so the comparison is ludicrous.  Two wrongs don't make a right.

I think it's morally wrong to allow such assertions to go unchallenged.  Even at the risk of alienating friends and supporters who don't want the boat rocked, who want everyone to get along, blah blah blah, I will continue to defend myself and the facts.  The truth may be the truth, but it still needs to be defended, and sometimes with passion.

Words for sale -- at inflated prices

As I've made quite clear on previous posts, I pretty much have no respect or liking for traditional publishers.  And by traditional I mean those outfits -- corporate or otherwise -- who contract with an author to take her story from its manuscript condition and make it available to the reading public.  This includes the small-time digital publishers going back to Hard Shell Word Factory and New Concepts and up to Samhain and Ellora's Cave and Carina and so on.  As for the even more traditional paper-and-ink publishers, I have pretty much nothing but absolute and deep contempt for them.

When I came back to the writing business a little over a year ago, one of the big issues in the digital publishing world was the recently implemented "Agency" model for pricing digital books published by the major print publishers.  Very very briefly, this amounted to the publishers, who saw their cash cow of hardcover books going the way of the Aurochs, colluding (allegedly) with Apple to inflate the price of digital books and (allegedly) squeeze out Amazon.  A few people thought this was pure and simple price fixing, restraint of trade, and other things nefarious and illegal, but all done under the guise of preventing an Amazon monopoly.  So good (allegedly) intentions but bad (allegedly) tactics.  The Department of Justice brought suit, and things started to happen.  Jane Litte at DearAuthor.com gives a great overview of the latest development (as of 16 May 2012) in the Department of Justice's lawsuit, with a link back to her earlier explanation of the basics behind it.

If you are a non-writing reader, this alleged conspiracy has harmed you, in the form of taking more of your money for books than the publishers or Apple could justify.  And only their collusion to control the market -- in other words, to eliminate competition and eliminate anything resembling a "free" market even though they claimed they were doing all this to protect a free market and foster competition -- allowed them to do it.

If you are a writer trying to be published, this alleged conspiracy has harmed you, not only in the same way it has harmed the non-writing reader, but by forcing readers to pay more for the books they want to read and leaving them less money to try "new to me" authors and books.

If you are a writer who has been published by one of the Agency 5 (or sometimes 6) publishers, this alleged conspiracy has harmed you by raising the price of your print books AND your digital books in a way that discourages buying, and even though you may say your net royalty per copy sold go up, if the number of copies sold drops below a break even point, you're the loser.  Because the agreement was designed to limit digital sales and protect paper sales, it encourages the purchase of tradeable and/or resalable copies that can limit your sales as well.

If you are a writer who has digitally self-published, this restraint of trade may actually have helped you because it allowed you to sell your books at a much lower, i.e. more competitive, price than the best-selling books.

The only people this alleged conspiracy has benefited are Apple (who pays as little taxes as possible while maximizing profits), Steve Jobs' heirs (who pay no tax on their windfall inheritance), and the Big Six publishers (many of whom are not based in the U.S. where the bulk of their sales come from).  This has not been about helping readers or writers, and they're the ones it should be all about.

My contempt for publishers increased.

The words haven't changed, and neither has the attitude

Somewhere around 1991 or 1992, I got together with a few local romance writers and formed what eventually became the Valley of the Sun Chapter of Romance Writers of America.  I served as president for a couple of years, and devised their annual "Hot Prospects" contest.  Yes, it's still running, too.  (Pats self on back.)

One of the greatest things about being a chapter president was the opportunity -- in those days before blogs -- to write a monthly column for the newsletter.  While looking for some other "old words" this afternoon, I stumbled upon this.  Nineteen years and counting. . . .

President's Column for April 1993
　
The Almighty Dollar

As most of you who write romances are aware, our brand of popular fiction accounts for close to one-half of all mass-market paperback books sold in this country. Whether we receive fifty percent of the advances and royalties paid for these books is debatable. What is not debatable is that we do not receive nearly the respect such numbers should generate.

Andy Rooney (who writes most of his own material, or so he says) and Johnny Carson (who claims to be a "victim" of his staff of writers) have made considerable fun of romance writers. Romances are routinely trashed in newspapers and other print media, and when they aren't denigrated, they are frequently just ignored.

The "bashing" of romances seemed to reach a new low on Mozark Productions' HEARTS AFIRE, a television sitcom that pokes fun at the U.S. government as symbolized by the bumbling fictitious Senator Smithers. In the episode aired March 15, the Senator's speechwriter, a former investigative reporter, confesses with immense shame and embarrassment that she moonlights as a writer of "sleazy" historical romances, under a pseudonym, of course, and also of course only for the money. She has a manuscript due in the morning and 100 pages remain unwritten. Her husband and cronies complete the manuscript for her (with no apparent research for historical accuracy but with liberal use of the word "throb") and deliver the completed product on time. Two days later, the editor produces a check for $25,000. Laughs abound.

Fantasy, right? And good clean fun, right? And we occupy 46% of the paperback market, so why should we care?

We should care because it is the perpetuation of this attitude that keeps us from taking an even greater share of the market. It is this attitude that prevents the reviewers from Newsweek and Time from reviewing romantic fiction with the same respect as mystery or science fiction. It is this attitude that allows publishers to withhold advertising and promotion money from profitable romance authors while lavishing those same funds on first-time mainstream authors, and then using the profits from romance lines to compensate for others that habitually run in the red.

It is even this attitude that allows a reputable agent, who represents romance authors, to negotiate six-figure contracts for her non-romance clients and admit publicly that romance novelists, whose books routinely show profits, support the "serious" writers.

If we are supporting them, by what definition are they "serious?" Does "serious" then mean "unpopular" and/or "unprofitable?" Do we then take it one step further and say that publishing cannot therefore be a "serious" business, since most publishers are in the business to make money, and this is not, by definition, "serious."

The answer, fellow romance writers, is to make a concerted effort to stop this nonsense, to take ourselves seriously, to stand up for ourselves when bashed, whether by ill-informed individuals at cocktail parties or by dollar-wielding media moguls who ought to know better. And to demand the respect, in the form of dollars, that we have earned.

Yeah, right.  That's really happened, hasn't it.