Friday, January 20, 2006

Zane's Claims---More Race Venting

I got an email last week about the biography on Zane's site. Someone asked if this statement in it was true:

"Zane, Toni Morrison and Terry McMillan are the only three African-American women to make the print list of the New York Times Fiction Bestselling list this century."

I don't think so. In fact I know that's not so. What about Bebe Moore Campbell? Dr. Maya Angelo? I think Zane's left them out.

At any rate, it's a crying shame that we can so easily count the number of black women that have made the list this century. I'm sure it's just as easy to count them from the inception of the list. How about we count the number of white female authors. Anyone see a problem here? Publishing house presidents? Vice presidents? Acquisition editors?

Why are you doing this to black authors? Why?

Now, I must digress a bit>>>>>For an author with such a horn-blowing biography, why does Zane's website scream: AMATEUR? No organization. Just a bunch of stuff centered in a line straight down the page. The bio page is anything but reader friendly. God, I was crossed-eyed by the time I got to the end. No spacing. No organization of information. Just one big blob! And the whopper----what the hell is with the ridiculous red scroll running across the top of the page?? I don't know.....Maybe no one's got the guts to tell her, so take it or leave it, I'll throw it out there from behind the alligator. Here it goes.......

New York Times Bestselling author Zane can afford to have a professionally designed and maintained home on the web! Despite the fact that her primary audience is filled with the masses of horny teenagers and marginally intelligent adults wanting a good source for their smut-fixes, she really would benefit from losing the unpolished presentation & appearance. Your website is you. It REPRESENTS you. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even while you sleep. Give up the self-maintenance Zane. It looks awful. Like something you'd find at www.hometown.aol.eroticanoir.html. Not good.

You're in the big league now. Let's look like it. Especially with the kind of traffic her bio says surfs through there. Let go of the "I'm self-published and can't afford it" website reins. It's okay. Time to turn it over to a professional.

Disclaimer: No disrespect to Zane. Just keeping it real. With all due love and respect. And I think I'll help some other folks out and do some more wake up call posting/critiquing in the future.

Monday, January 09, 2006

The Man Who Conned Oprah

A Million Little Lies

Oh, no. It's a sad day in the history of the written word when something like this happens. What a waste, eh? 3.5 million copies and counting. The Smoking Gun has blown the lid off of James Frey's Oprah-praised "memoir" A MILLION LITTLE PIECES. KA-BOOM!!

Mr. Frey should be very, very nervous. Credibility is paramount. Without it you're sunk. Ditto for his publisher. As for Oprah.....she should simply stick to fiction---unless she wants to invest the manpower required to research the facts of "memoirs" such as A MILLION LITTLE LIES.....er, PIECES.

I read this book shortly after Oprah announced it, and while I did get sucked into it initially, it lost its luster about halfway through to the end. I then read some of the reviews on Amazon and many questioned the plausibility of the rehab accounts, the root canal sans pain-killers, etc......I wondered, but Oprah picked it.....It's a memoir......It has to be true.....right?