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Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 624 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell. My guest today is Christine M. Larson. Dr. Larson is the author of a new book, Love in the Time of Self-Publishing: How Romance Writers Changed the Rules of Writing and Success. Sounds like it is relevant to our house of wheels. This was published by Princeton University Press this year, and this book is nifty. It’s literally about us. Now, I was interviewed for it, and we are going to talk about all of the things inside it, including my favorite parts: the idea of identity-driven ethics of care, and we also talk about RWA and the need for a collective unified body for creative people. So you’re going to come for the vintage Romancelandia gossip, and you’re going to stay for the labor activism. At least that’s my experience.
I will have links to this book and all of the other books that we talk about in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast under episode 624. That’s a really big number.
Speaking of numbers, hello! Patreon community, I have a compliment today, which makes me so happy.
To Aspen J.: Dogs everywhere love walking by your house, because the traces of your footsteps communicate to them how kind and loving and excellent you are, wherever you are in the world.
If you would like a compliment of your own, or you would like to support this here show, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges start at a dollar, you get a wonderful Discord, bonus episodes, the complete scan of every Romantic Times issue that I and my flatbed scanner have created – slowly, very slowly. But it would be wonderful to have your support. If you value this show and you like what we do, that is the greatest way to help us keep going. Plus, you make sure every episode is accessible to everyone, thanks to a transcript hand-compiled by garlicknitter. Heyyy, garlicknitter! Hope your day is going good. [It is, thanks! Back atcha! – gk] Thank you for being part of the Patreon, and thank you for your consideration. If you’d like to join, we’d love to have you.
All right, you ready to talk about academic writing, romance writing, Romancelandia? This is such a fun book and a really fun conversation, and I hope you enjoy it. On with the podcast.
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Dr. Christine M. Larson: Ooh, yes! Smart Bitches is my happy place!
Sarah: That’s so nice of you to say! Thank you!
Dr. Larson: It’s nice of you to do!
Sarah: Well, I have to start by saying I’m really sorry – well, actually I have to start by making sure I have your consent to record our conversation, ‘cause I’m in a dual-consent state. Do I have your consent to record our conversation, please?
Dr. Larson: You absolutely have my consent!
Sarah: All right, so that’s, that’s out of the way. So I, I have written books, and I know they take a while –
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – and you, you spend a lot of time thinking, This, this fucker is never going to get done. Why did I do this? And I just, I read your book in one day; I’m really sorry. [Laughs]
Dr. Larson: Oh my God. That’s wonderful! Thank you!
Sarah: So, like, and I was, like, I sat outside yesterday, and I was just having the best time, and then I’d pick it up, be like, Look, there’s a whole chapter RWA in here! And back I’d go.
Dr. Larson: [Laughs]
Sarah: It is very weird to read a book, and I don’t remember my own verbiage; I don’t remember things I say; so I’m like, Oh, that was, that was a really smart – oh, fuck, I said that. Like, I would just run, run into myself as a citation? That was weird. But I read it in one day, and I feel guilty, ‘cause I know it takes longer than a day to write a damn book. But that was really a fun, fun book. Thank you very much for a really fun afternoon.
Dr. Larson: Well, thank you for helping me write it. You know, your book, your, your Smart Bitches book was my model for the initial tone of the book? Which…
Sarah: Wow, thank you! I didn’t know that!
Dr. Larson: Yeah! It was! I was like, Oh, you can write something really smart and still be, like, funny and sassy.
Sarah: Deeply sarcastic.
Dr. Larson: I, I did, I have to tell you, I had to, my editor said I had to dial back the sarcasm a little bit. [Laughs] It, I mean –
Sarah: You do not ever have to dial back the sarcasm; not around here anyway. [Laughs]
Dr. Larson: That’s why I’m happy to be here. Academia’s a little bit different than Romancelandia.
Sarah: Oh, you don’t say! Oh yes, yes, it is.
Dr. Larson: [Laughs]
Sarah: Oh, it’s – well, this is, this is slightly awkward, ‘cause we’ve already been talking, but just –
Dr. Larson: I got you: now we have to start.
Sarah: Well, no, I just, I just need you to introduce yourself and tell the people who will be listening who you are and what you do.
Dr. Larson: I got you! Yeah. All right, so I am Dr. Christine Larson –
Sarah: Hell, yeah.
Dr. Larson: – and I – hell, yeah! Use that title; I earned it. I teach at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and I study digital technologies, innovations, and networks, which led me into the fascinating world of Romancelandia.
Sarah: I love when academics sort of stumble into romance and are like, Oh, hang on! This is a rich text, as the academics say. I, I’m assuming that you read all of the work from the two sociologists who studied romance writing communities.
Dr. Larson: Yes! Yes.
Sarah: Dr. Lois and Dr. Joanna.
Dr. Larson: Yes, I met them at my first RWA, and they could not have been more helpful and welcoming.
Sarah: Oh, aren’t they great?
Dr. Larson: They’re, they’re wonderful. I’m just…
Sarah: I’ll tell you, I met them at RWA, and my, my experience with, with press and with academics is, I, I enter conversations with media people and, and academics with a great deal of caution, because I don’t know exact-, unless I know them already, I don’t know if they’re entering from a place of, Oh, look at this bullshit; I’m going to make fun of it; or, I really want to understand this; and how, how willing they are to engage with, let’s be weird, let’s be honest, some of the weirdness of the romance community? So I met with the two sociologists at their first RWA. Yeah, I was, I was a very, I was a very sarcastic source for them; those poor ladies.
Dr Larson: [Laughs] You know, sociologists call sources like that informants.
Sarah: Mm-hmm!
Dr. Larson: So you are a key community informant.
Sarah: I was absolutely, I was informing the hell out of everybody; I didn’t care.
So congratulations on this nifty book!
Dr. Larson: Thank you! Thank you.
Sarah: Did you absolutely have a litter of kittens when you saw how good-looking this cover is? It’s so good!
Dr. Larson: I was so excited. The, the designer is a genius –
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Larson: – and she just got everything just right.
Sarah: It’s so good. It is so gorgeous. So congratulations on Love in the Time of –
Dr. Larson: Thank you.
Sarah: – Self-Publishing. What led you to writing this book, and what was your focus while you were writing or when you started? Because you take quite a journey in this book.
Dr. Larson: Yeah, it was a journey! And the book started with a heartbreak, actually. I was in grad school after a fairly long career in journalism, and I decided to get my Ph.D., ‘cause that seemed like a good idea?
Sarah: At the time, sure, yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Larson: Yeah! Right, yeah! So second of year of grad school, my marriage ended unexpectedly –
Sarah: Ooh, no fun!
Dr. Larson: – and –
Sarah: Bad! No thanks, zero stars.
Dr. Larson: Yeah, unhappy surprise. And I was suddenly a single mom with my eight-year-old twin boys, and –
Sarah: That’s a lot of small humans to take care of.
Dr. Larson: It’s, it’s a lot. And then when the dust settled and I could finally sit back down at my computer, I blanked! I just was terrified! I, I couldn’t focus on what I was researching, was, which was journalism in innovation and digital technologies, and fortunately I had done a story for The New York Times not long before in my other identity as a journalist, and I had talked to Hugh Howie, the romance writer, or, romance, the science fiction writer, who had had a lot of self-publishing success, and he told me that the, just off hand he said that the people who were really succeeding in self-publishing were the romance writers.
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Larson: So there, yeah. So I was staring at my computer one day trying to be an academic, and I said, I need a different project. I emailed a few romance writers, they got back to me immediately, and then I just got focused and, and wrapped up in this mystery about how the most ridiculed authors in history transformed the publishing industry.
Sarah: Yep! Little bit.
Dr. Larson: Yep. So it was a distraction, and it lasted eight years.
Sarah: That’s a very good distraction. I mean, that’s not like just, like, picking up a hobby and then all of a sudden you have supplies. Like, you came out of it with a whole-ass book too.
Dr. Larson: Oh yeah, I, I, I picked up hobbies too.
Sarah: Well, I mean, they’re –
Dr. Larson: I’m knitting socks now, yeah.
Sarah: Socks is good, yeah! I’m working on a quilt; I have to finish mine.
What did you learn while researching this that really, really struck you, or that, that you’re still thinking about? There are a couple of things that really struck me, and I’m really curious which ones are yours.
Dr. Larson: Oh, I want to hear what yours are, but the big takeaway for me was the power of relationships and networks to drive innovation and change?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Larson: And I saw this happen three times with romance writers. Once in the ‘80s and ‘90s with the rise of RWA.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Larson: Once with the rise of self-publishing, and then finally with the drive for diversity inclusion, which was long overdue. And, like, at each of these moments it was unique and powerful female networks that made change happen. So that’s, that’s really stayed with me.
Sarah: That’s absolutely true, too. One of the things that I’ve noticed – so I don’t know if you’re aware, on the podcast we’re doing a project called Romantic Times Rewind, where every other episode is looking at an old issue of RT. In the issues that we’ve looked at, there are such early mentions of how to buy eBooks and ads that will –
Dr. Larson: Hmm.
Sarah: This is, this, this part just makes me so sad. It’s like reading about all these bookstores that are gone? We sell eBooks in the following formats – and it’s like ten formats for devices that don’t even exist anymore! And this was twenty-plus years ago. RT was really instrumental in teaching people, Okay, the new wave is eBooks, and here’s how you read them, and here’s where you buy them, and here’s how you get them onto your device or your phone or computer, whatever. And this was all, a lot of it was very reader-driven, ‘cause readers were teaching other readers at the conferences as well. And it’s –
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – it’s fascinating, because at the end of, at the end of all of these major movements, the drive was, Okay, but I just want to have good books that I like to read. That was the major motivation. Like, this is our genre: we want good books to read. We want good books to read that are more sexual than publishers are willing to produce, that include marginalized communities and marginalized people accurately and fairly instead of, you know, This is the struggle of their life, that they are not white or straight or whatever. We want good books! Get out of the way.
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm!
Sarah: It’s really cool –
Dr. Larson: I –
Sarah: – isn’t it?!
Dr. Larson: It’s so cool, and I am so glad you’re doing that. I was also fascinated with your interview with Steve Ammidown?
Sarah: Oh yeah!
Dr. Larson: About the amazing romance writer index? Like, social media before – yeah! The handbook. Yeah.
Sarah: Seriously, there’s, there’s like two hundred pages of pseudonyms in this little thing. I got weird romance reference books on my desk; it’s really fun.
Dr. Larson: I do too! I know, it’s so fun. I’m really glad you’re doing that, but you, you raise an amazing point, which is romance writers were the pioneers of eBooks, and we are talking about, like, floppy disks! And we are talking about, like, Send me a check, and I’ll send you a PDF!
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Larson: Yeah. So I –
Sarah: Send a self-addressed stamped envelope with your check, and I’ll send you some bookmarks to go with my eBook! Like, it’s all there. That’s okay.
Dr. Larson: Exactly! Exactly, and, like, we, we laugh about it, but it’s also really serious. Like, these were digital innovators, and when we think about digital innovators we – not, well, not you and me or your listeners, but when a lot of America thinks of digital innovators they think of, like, Mark Zuckerberg or, like, young, skinny white guys, and nope!
Sarah: Mm-mm.
Dr. Larson: Like, eBooks, we would not be where we are today without romance writers.
Sarah: It’s absolutely true.
The other thing that really struck me, and this is what I wanted to ask you to talk more about, was the concept of ethics of care.
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: And I find this so fascinating, because the ethics of care and then the idea of, like, general philosophy ethics operate –
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – not quite in opposition, but they are very different. And it was very interesting, ‘cause –
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – one of the way, one of the things I was talking about with this, with this book with my husband is that he and I are very different in a couple of major ways, but one of them is that he thinks very much in the macro? He’s –
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – he’s an attorney for the federal government, so he thinks in terms of, like, federal policy and oversight, so he’s always thinking –
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – in the macro, including when it comes to, like, ethics and philosophy, and I’m always thinking, Okay, but what about the individual people? And how do we best support the individual people? ‘Cause you said that, you know, ethics of care is rooted in empathy and connection and network –
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – and I’m like, It’s really interesting, because this is, this is illustrating a major division in our personalities, and I didn’t know they had names. I get really excited when something has a name! I’m so excited; I know what to google!
Dr. Larson: [Laughs]
Sarah: Can you talk more, can you talk more about –
Dr. Larson: Yes!
Sarah: – ethics of care and how it applies to the romance community? ‘Cause I think that was really, like, the core of your book is demonstrating all of the ways in which this concept has pervaded romance’s organization, for lack of a better term.
Dr. Larson: I, I am so glad you asked about that, because this whole diving into the ethic of care has transformed the way that I teach. I, I think about my teaching now really differently –
Sarah: Oh, that’s –
Dr. Larson: – and we can talk –
Sarah: – interesting!
Dr. Larson: We, we can talk about that later. But, yeah, so your husband subscribes to the traditional justice ethic, which arose from decades of philosophy, the idea of the most good for the most people. What is the most fair to everyone? And that sounds really good, but that kind of thinking was based almost entirely on male, the thinking of male moral philosophers, who didn’t have to take care of kids and care for, you know, their extended kinship networks. And the ethic of care was proposed by a philosopher, Virginia Held, in the ‘80s, early ‘90s, and developed by Joan Tronto, another feminist moral philosopher, and the idea of ethics of care is that our actions and moral decisions should be driven by the people that we have a sort of moral investment in taking care of, and that in a community or an organization, say Romance Writers of America, there was an ethic of care that we need to make sure that the needs of, of everyone in our group are taken care of.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Larson: And unfortunately, most of America, including RWA, had their blinders on and thought, well, for a long time thinking, Well, what’s good for our dominant group, in this case white, middle-class, well-educated women, is good for all of our members, because it will float all the boats, the rising tide. But the ethic of care needed to be more identity-aware, and there’s another scholar who writes about identity-aware ethic of care – that’s Sue Robinson – and that means making sure, it means recognizing that people’s needs are different, depending on their life experience, and in that ethic of care we need to make sure that everyone’s needs in our community are being met in that way.
So that is Moral Philosophy 101 for today.
Sarah: Well, thank you very much! I appreciate that. I love having a word for, I, I love having descriptive words of knowing – like, I always suspect someone has researched this; I just don’t know what it’s called? Somebody’s thought of this.
Dr. Larson: [Laughs]
Sarah: Somebody has done this. I love the concept of using identity-aware ethics of care to look at everything that has happened with romance and specifically with RWA? Was it LaQuette that said that, like, RWA and romance is like a microcosm of every other large issue that’s happening?
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: It’s so true. It is so completely true, and it’s really interesting to have this sort of book document of what happened.
So let’s talk about RWA, for example, for, just for a little bit. What did you think of the news that RWA was filing for bankruptcy and included mention of DEI as their filing. I, my – so, what I actually wrote down in my original draft of questioning: So how big is the dent in your desk? Is it head-shaped? ‘Cause mine is head-shaped, ‘cause I was so –
Dr. Larson: Oh my God.
Sarah: – mad! Oh, I was so mad! Oof!
Dr. Larson: I know; I read your post! I –
Sarah: [Laughs] I was a little pissed off, and I’m –
Dr. Larson: Yeah!
Sarah: – I’m actually really proud that I managed to be coherent, because really, it was just me banging on the keyboard. I was so pissed! [Laughs]
Dr. Larson: I know! I know. I have to tell you, I was – it’s, it’s that, eh, depressing mixture of sadness and anger?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Larson: Like, I’m just still sad because RWA was so central for so long, forming friendships, and really protecting so many writers. They made big missteps, but they actually did so much good, and people made so many relationships through that. And, and a lot of people worked so, so hard to make it a better, more inclusive organization –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Larson: – and they were making steps, so, like, this didn’t have to happen.
Sarah: I know.
Dr. Larson: But then the mad part, of course, is, like, why did they mention DEI? They opened up all these old wounds, and what’s infuriating, and you’ve written about this, is that it did not lose members because of a DEI controversy; it lost members because of a disastrously mishandled ethics complaint against Courtney.
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Larson: And, you know, blaming DEI makes it sound like, Oh, DEI’s the problem, and it just gives ammunition to this anti-DEI movement. Ooh yeah, it’s complicated.
Sarah: It’s a dog whistle. It was such a performative thing. And I sent it to, again, my spouse, who is an attorney, though not in bankruptcy, and he’s like, That’s really kind of weird because, you know, the judge doesn’t give a shit. Like, whoever’s, the judge is making sure you crossed your Ts and dotted your Is correctly. The other thing, I think, that it illustrates is the, the, the, Wow, you really are just tripling down on bad decisions here, people, is that they, it shows when and how badly they went over the trust thermocline? Have you heard this term before?
Dr. Larson: [Laughs] No! Tell me!
Sarah: Okay. I love, I love this so much; I learned about this on the internet, which is where I learn a lot of cool things. So the trust thermocline is a, is a business concept, and it is an idea that describes when a consumer has decided they are no longer going to engage with a product or a service or a company, where the mental cost of staying with a product or a brand is outweighed by the desire to abandon it. The trust thermocline can happen when you, you know, you take your customers for granted, you have a history of bad customer service, and it’s very difficult to win customers back once they cross the trust thermocline.
So it’s – and, and a thermocline is actually an oceanographic term, which I think is even more fun, ‘cause it’s super nerdy? But it basically describes when the ocean goes from warm to cold water, when the temperature drops significantly, and so it’s a, it’s a, it’s a significant feature in oceanography, and it’s become this term in business to describe when you have screwed up so badly your customers are like, Oh, okay. Like, one example of a trust thermocline is the number of Teslas that now have a decal that say, I bought this before we knew he was crazy.
Dr. Larson: [Laughs] Ah! That’s, I, I think you’ve just given me a couple of ideas for more academic papers.
Sarah: Sorry! My bad. My apologies.
Dr. Larson: …It keeps me in business!
Sarah: Sorry, sorry. [Laughs] But the –
Dr. Larson: Hey!
Sarah: Like, the, it is – I said this in one of my posts in 2020; like, there is going to come a point where being a member of RWA is going to make you look bad. If you, if –
Dr. Larson: Hmmm?
Sarah: – if you stay, and every person of color has resigned, and every member of the board who is a person of color, and then the whole damn board resigns, and people who weren’t even board members are like, I’m out, and people are sending their RITAs back, like, you can’t – even if for your own branding, and romance authors are so sensitive to the concept of personal brands, ‘cause they’ve had to build them slowly –
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – and independently, the idea that your association with RWA is actually going to reflect badly on you is another example of how the, they, they have no, they have no ground to stand on anymore, because their members –
Dr. Larson: Yeah.
Sarah: – the members who could make change and want to make change are, the mental cost of staying far outweighs the benefits of being in the organization.
Dr. Larson: Yeah, exactly. You know, I always say, like, Social media is an absolutely amazing tool for calling attention to issues, but it’s like the Eye of Sauron: once you attract it –
Sarah: Oh yeah!
Dr. Larson: – the, the pressure of doing anything, you’re, you’re just under constant scrutiny and –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Larson: – you know.
Sarah: And there’s, and there’s no – the other thing I think that you talk about in your book is that social media is a great spotlight, but the spotlight doesn’t last long enough to show how someone, or a group or an organization, is going to fix the problem?
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: I always think back to the Tylenol tampering –
Dr. Larson: Mm!
Sarah: – which was in the ‘80s.
Dr. Larson: Yeah.
Sarah: I was very young for that, but that was all driven by television news and newspaper coverage, and it was originally a local story, and then it became national because Tylenol recalled every- – excuse me – recalled everything, and that was when you started getting, like, tamper-proof lids, and now I can’t open the catsup without a pair of pliers. You know, all of that was a response to, was it like eight, eight poisonings that have never been solved?
Dr. Larson: Yeah.
Sarah: And that was a real effort to be like, Yo ho, we’re going to fix this, and we’re going to make sure you understand that you are safe; here’s what we’re doing. And that, that actually worked! Tylenol as a brand –
Dr. Larson: It did!
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Larson: It, it did, but that was also a totally different media era –
Sarah: Exactly!
Dr. Larson: – where, you know, there’s –
Sarah: Exactly! There was just print –
Dr. Larson: – simple, yeah.
Sarah: – and news media. Like –
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm!
Sarah: – six o’clock, seven o’clock news, and then everybody went to bed. Now we’re, we have so many media fire hoses that we can, you know, drown ourselves in that the –
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – because we’re always looking for the new thing, and our time of attention gets shorter and shorter, you don’t see the progress. You don’t see any repair; you don’t see any efforts made to change until somebody with –
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – a bigger voice is like, Oh, hey, I looked at this again, and look at all the things that have happened. They need to attract attention back, but conflict and, and, and outrage generate way more interest than –
Dr. Larson: Oh sure!
Sarah: – how to fix it.
Dr. Larson: And – right, or than bureaucratic change?
Sarah: Oh, boring.
Dr. Larson: [Laughs] Like, I, you know, I, I interviewed C Chilove, who was really instrumental in trying to reboot RWA, and –
Sarah: Oh yeah!
Dr. Larson: – she has a deep, yeah, deep background in, in DEI with, like, universities and corporate setting. That is not interesting to, to social media. Like, oh, we, we revised all these internal policies!
Sarah: Woooo!
Dr. Larson: It’s, it’s a tough sell. It’s, uh, yeah.
Sarah: It’s –
Dr. Larson: But the second you do something wrong, you get all the attention, all the pressure, and that’s understandable. Like, for sure there were some, you know, giant missteps.
Sarah: I think that one of the things that the bankruptcy filing did, and I don’t know whose decision it was to include mention of DEI, the Bloomberg headline that was, like, just sticking Courtney Milan’s name in the slug of the article still pisses me off.
Dr. Larson: Right.
Sarah: That really was, to me, a big signal of, We have not learned a thing. We will continue down this path. And I’m like, Okay, have fun! We are not getting back together, like, ever.
Dr. Larson: Yeah.
Sarah: The other focus of your book, and this does, you know, connect to the bankruptcy filing, is that you, you talk a lot about the need for a collective unified body for creative people, and I have said to so many people, the loss of RWA is the loss of the conference and is the loss of the community, and it is the loss of all of these published authors and unpublished authors making incredible changes in an industry? That is a loss, but also, they could advocate in a way that none of us can do individually. There was a person at Facebook that would answer the phone. There was a person at Amazon that would answer the phone! They could get on the phone –
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – and be like, Amazon, we have a problem with this member’s account, and you’ve turned it off, and I, we think this was AI-driven. There was a person who’d be like, Oh! Let me look into that and get back to you! Give me a minute! Like, that loss is not measurable.
Dr. Larson: Yeah, yeah.
Sarah: The loss of RWA as an advocacy group for authors to publishers, to retailers, to, to agents is a huge loss, and I don’t know if that part has fully been realized and understood. Do you know what I mean?
Dr. Larson: I know exactly what you mean, and I think that, like, in, in a lot of ways the, let’s say the practical reasons for joining RWA were al-, were going away already, because once upon a time, in the days of Vivia-, Vivian Stephens and Rita Clay Estrada, the only way to learn the craft and get connected to the industry was RWA.
Sarah: Yep!
Dr. Larson: They were kind of the gatekeeper to the gatekeepers. Now, you want to learn to write romance? There are dozens of Discords, there are online groups. It’s easy, because that spirit of cooperation and mentorship is still there.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Larson: Lots of people to help you, so that part, and that part, the big organization isn’t as critical as it once was, so it’s really easy to lose sight of the fact that writers need advocacy on a level that they have never needed it before because of the dominance of tech platforms.
Sarah: Yes. With the, with the additional arrival of R, of, of AI?
Dr. Larson: Mm.
Sarah: The loss of somebody saying, No, we’re not putting that in contracts. No, we are not going to have you at our conference if you do have this language in your contract. I mean, there used to be points of access that RWA was the only one to offer, and that’s, that’s gone! They, they have no, they have no authority, and they have no bargaining.
Dr. Larson: Exactly. Exactly. You could, you could basically get blacklisted as a publisher for…practices.
Sarah: Oh yeah! It happened a couple times while I was a member! They blacklisted Harlequin Horizons –
Dr. Larson: Right! Right!
Sarah: – the self-publishing arm. I remember RWA in the early days – this might have been 2007? 2008? – they un-membered, like, they un-welcomed all of the digital-first presses because they had a problem with one –
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – but they couldn’t figure out how to deal with one, so they just, like, all of you are no longer approved. And the other publishers were like, What the hell?! We, we weren’t – and this was back when, Oh, you’re not offering an advance! That’s not a real publisher! Like, o-kay. One of the things that I get asked a lot by the media is, Did RWA create change, or was RWA dragged into addressing change? I’m like, it’s usually the second one, because the authors –
Dr. Larson: Mm.
Sarah: – were always ahead of the organization in terms of –
Dr. Larson: Right.
Sarah: – development.
Dr. Larson: Right, but the authors were RWA.
Sarah: Yep!
Dr. Larson: So, so it’s easy for, like, insiders like you and me to say, Oh yeah, all, you know, everybody agrees that RWA as an organization, was slow to recognize self-publishing, or even resisted self-publishing. But, when you compare it to other writing organizations like SFWA, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America – I love them – or Mystery Writers of America, RWA actually was way ahead of the time. So for romance writers, who are always the leading-edge innovators –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Larson: – yeah, maybe it seemed slow for the RWA kind of establishment and conference planners to catch on.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Larson: For the rest of the publishing industry, they were still way ahead.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Larson: So.
Sarah: So when you wrote about how Vivian Stephens’ boss was like, Girl, you created a union, and that’s a problem here, and I remember very frequently being told, RWA is a professional business organization. We are a trade organization; we are a trade association; we are not a union. Do you think that we will ever have something like a union?
Dr. Larson: I wish.
Sarah: A wish?
Dr. Larson: I really wish that could be the, the case. It seems –
Sarah: Wouldn’t work under federal law right now.
Dr. Larson: Right, you have to, you would have to change federal law, because – so screenwriters and musicians, like, other creative people are able to form trade unions because they work, they work as, basically as employees of, say, a film studio. They, they’re de facto employees, and when you’re an employee, under federal law you can band together. But because romance writers are freelancers, federal law says if they band together it’s price-fixing. So that’s one reason why RWA is so careful to say, Nope! We are not a union, ‘cause they’ll lose their –
Sarah: We’re a trade organization.
Dr. Larson: Yeah, yeah, they’d lose their tax status.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Larson: That said, in the gig economy, labor law needs to change –
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Larson: – because so many of us are technically entrepreneurs in one way or another –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Larson: – and we need to be able to protect ourselves!
Sarah: Yes. That’s very true.
Dr. Larson: This whole idea of the gig economy and do what you love and hopefully get paid for it is, can be, if, if you talk to academics and people who work in the gig economy, like, say, freelance writers like me, you know that a lot of that is rhetoric that really benefits somebody else, like tech companies. Yeah.
Sarah: For sure.
Dr. Larson: Yeah.
Sarah: For sure, for sure.
For a romance fan who hasn’t read a lot of academic work, I, I have to say this is enormously accessible and very friendly and interesting, but also rigorous in terms of the way you describe research and the way you describe collecting data? Like, that part would just, I would not know how to deal with any of that. And I noticed that you were using a lot of other sources to help you analyze data, and you would bring in scholars like Janice Radway and other scholars to look at the data that you had. What was that process like?
Dr. Larson: I, because I come from journalism and one of the things I teach is narrative journalism –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Larson: – I wanted to see if we could do something similar using academic research.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Larson: Like, and, and I also wanted more than six people to read my book.
Sarah: I mean, fair.
Dr. Larson: Yeah, so I, I tried to write it in a way that if you just want to read the narrative, you can do that, and if you just want to read the scholarship, you can do that, and if you’re, if you’re you, Sarah, then you can read it all.
[Laughter]
Dr. Larson: I use a, a process called member-checking, where every time I wrote a lot about someone, like, say, Janice Radway, who, like, I’d tell her little story, I would send them that section. Same with LaQuette or Bella Andre, and, and that, like, pr-, not for their approval per se, but to see what conversation that sp-, that sparked. With some of the, the deeper analysis, like I did the social network analysis looking at who shared advice with whom, which let me say definitely that romance writers have this very unique type of, of network, I, I tracked down a, another grad student at Stanford with me at the time, Elspeth Ready, and she knew nothing about romance but everything about social network analysis, and she just found this data really, really interesting. So if I could get other scholars intrigued by some of the questions –
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Larson: – and they would kind of come on and help me, and they were usually women motivated by an ethic of care.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Larson: And an interest in this amazing story, so.
Sarah: Nice job! That must have been fun!
Dr. Larson: It was really, really fun.
Sarah: I also imagine that that type of involvement makes it more attractive to an academic publisher, because they’re, they’ve got all of these names to, to connect in this one work?
Dr. Larson: Yeah. It’s, it – oh, that’s another thing that I think needs to be done more in academia right now is this, like, we’re all in our little silos, and our silos are getting smaller and smaller, just like –
Sarah: In romance.
Dr. Larson: – the rest of us are – yeah! Like, when we can connect those conversations?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Larson: I think we all learn a lot more.
Sarah: And you can also build on establ-, already done research and expand on how people are looking at different ways of communicating and networks.
Dr. Larson: Yeah, yeah. We find – if I can get wonky for a minute –
Sarah: Yeah, please get wonky! Get hella wonky!
Dr. Larson: [Laughs] Most of the time in networks, we find that people congregate with people who are like them.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Larson: So that’s called homophilic –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Larson: – that is, they love sameness. And the romance network turned out to be heterophilic, which meant that people of wildly different backgrounds and experience formed advice relationships with each other. So you would have – what was especially un-, unusual is that elite romance writers, like published romance writers, bestselling romance writers frequently formed advice relationships with up-and-comers, and it wasn’t just that they were giving advice to the, the newbies; the newbies were giving advice to them –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Larson: – on self-publishing. That was, that’s a particular kind of network called an open elite network?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Larson: The elite is open to forming relationships –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Larson: – and what was interesting to me is that we, these unusual networks were also present in Renaissance Florence and in Silicon Valley during the biotech boom.
Sarah: Oh, that’s interesting!
Dr. Larson: Romance writers discovered something that also drove innovation at completely different historic times and circumstances and geographies.
Sarah: That’s so cool. That’s just –
Dr. Larson: Yeah!
Sarah: I also loved how you talked about the second RWA, that people would join RWA but then find their RWA network, and that was certainly true for me, because I was in a weird space where I was an author, but I wasn’t a romance author all of the time? That was, I write about romance; I don’t actually write romance as my job. I have written a romance –
Dr. Larson: Right.
Sarah: – I’ve written a couple, but what I do is actually write about romance, and for a while there was, there was, like, some concern that I was operating as press as a member, and I was like, I’m not operating as press. I am writing about this, but so is every author who has a blog, ‘cause back then every author had a blog. Some authors had, like, one blog for the ten of them. But I was writing about romance, and there wasn’t, there was just sort of like, Well, what do we do with this group? I ended up finding my, like, RWA people, and I remember when I resigned my membership I thought to myself, There are people I’m never going to see in person again now. I’m never going to see those people in person again ever, unless I go and, like, show up at their house, and that would be creepy. And that’s, first of all, that was quite a loss. I was really bummed about that, and I still remain, like, bummed about it. But I also think it’s very interesting that you have this large organization that does, on its policy level, tend towards a hom-, homog-, homogenous perspective?
Dr. Larson: Hom-, homogeneity.
Sarah: Thank you: homogeneity. Word I cannot say on the first try. But within that, you have a lot of little networks; it’s like, Oh, I know who you need to talk to. So we’re very open about, like, telling people who to talk to – Oh, you need to talk to so-and-so; you need to talk to so-and-so –
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm
Sarah: – but we form our own networks within the larger one that are more effective in –
Dr. Larson: Yeah.
Sarah: – addressing our needs, and that was certainly my experience. It was very cool to see that written up.
Dr. Larson: Yeah! Yeah. Allison Kelley, the long-time executive director called that trust groups?
Sarah: Hmm!
Dr. Larson: She says there’re all these different trust groups, and one of my favorite examples of, of that is Vivian Stephens, after she was a romance editor, started a writing group for Black women authors?
Sarah: Yes!
Dr. Larson: And those included, like, Shirley Hailstock and Donna Hill and Rochelle Alers and Sandra Kitt, and, like, you can just see how those network – and that’s a network that was started in the ‘80s?
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Larson: And, like, persist today.
Sarah: What would you think romance readers will find in, in your book?
Dr. Larson: So I think romance readers will find that they are so important to the success of romance writers –
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Larson: – and of digital publishing. Like, without the unique bond between romance writers and romance readers –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Larson: – digital self-publishing and really the industry would not be where it is today.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Larson: And part of that is what you’re exploring with RT! Like, this is the bonds between readers and writers were –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Larson: – really unusual in fandom communities, and that’s still true today, and I hope readers take away that they’re a part of this community? They already know that.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Larson: But it’s cool, because you could just pick up a rom-, there are a lot of casual romance readers who don’t yet know about Smart Bitches or, you know, that they’re part of this thing.
Sarah: Yep.
Dr. Larson: So I hope readers realize that they are part of something!
Sarah: Oh yes, and a very important part of things.
Dr. Larson: Mm-hmm!
Sarah: So I always ask this question: what books are you reading right now that you want to tell people about?
Dr. Larson: Oh my God, how much time do you have? [Laughs]
Sarah: It’s the internet. I have no limits. I have no, I have no FCC oversight; I can say whatever I want. I have no, I have no federal communications guidelines; I’m a podcaster and a blogger. I, I –
Dr. Larson: Well –
Sarah: – I’m just flying by the seat of my pants all the time! [Laughs]
Dr. Larson: There is another academic study. All right!
So I am listening – so I’ll tell you what I’m listening to; I’ll tell you what I’m reading.
Sarah: Fabulous!
Dr. Larson: I’m listening – yes! Okay, so there’s a debut author named Myah Ariel. She’s writing what’s kind of like a Devil Wears Prada…in Hollywood kind of? Like, her heroine is a, at the bottom of the Hollywood hierarchy, and I am listening to it, and it is a fantastic performance. So that is When I Think of You by Myah Ariel.
And I’m also listening to Café con Lychee, which is a trans romance by Emery Lee, and he’s just really funny and wise and snarky.
So those are really good, good listens.
And then piled up on my Kindle, I, I’ve got the new Cat Sebastian, You Should Be So Lucky. I love Cat Sebastian.
And then it’s been a really stressful time, so I’ve been, like, going for some comfort reads? There’s a new one by Chloe Angyal; she writes about Australia’s ballet world, and that’s really cool because she was a, is a, is a journalist, was a journalist, and she’s written deeply about the ballet world. So seeing her turn that into romance is great.
And then also for comfort I’m, like, revisiting the Montana Sky series by Debra Holland.
And then – you’ll laugh at this one – there’s a romance writer named Maggie Marr. She wrote a series called Hollywood Girls Club, but she also is an IP lawyer, and she wrote a book called Books to Film & TV, and I’m reading that because I really think this highly academic political economy of publishing would make a great Netflix series.
Sarah: Oh, absolutely! No question! Oh, yes! I have said there really should be a documentary series about the RT convention or RT and rom-, and, and romance generally. Especially, you talked about this in your book a little bit, and I’ve noticed this tension in other work that I’m doing. The, that RT was very much the, you know, the man chest and the big hair and the Mr. Romance and the more salacious, tawdry, camp aspects of romance, and RWA was like, Nonononono! We take ourselves very seriously; we do not do that. That tension still exists; it’s just in different venues now? I think that would be an amazing –
Dr. Larson: Cool.
Sarah: – documentary series too.
Dr. Larson: Totally. You should do it.
Sarah: No, I’m not a filmmaker. And I’m old and I’m tired. I don’t want to!
Dr. Larson: [Laughs] I know, I know. I’m so tired.
Sarah: Where can people find you if you wish to be found?
Dr. Larson: There are two places they can find me. I have a website; it’s christinelarson.com. And also, if you really want to, really want to talk to me, you can go to University of Colorado, Boulder, and my contact info is there. Yeah.
Sarah: Fabulous! Thank you so much for doing this interview, and thank you for your book. It was a really fun, fun read, and I –
Dr. Larson: Oh!
Sarah: – I personally have been having a lot of trouble reading text, I’ve been doing a lot more audiobooks lately, and it has been a while since I sat down and read a book cover to cover and was like, Fabulous! I feel great! So thank you for that.
Dr. Larson: Oh, thank you! I am, your, your praise means a lot to me –
Sarah: Oh, thanks!
Dr. Larson: – and it was a long time coming, so, and I just love getting to talk to you. So.
Sarah: Thank you! And thank you for including me; it was weird to run into myself, but it was pretty cool.
Dr. Larson: [Laughs] Yeah, you’re in the index! I know, right?…
Sarah: I know! Don’t think I didn’t send pictures of my, to my dad like, Look at that! Wendell, Sarah and like a bunch of pages.
Dr. Larson: [Laughs] Awesome! That’s so great.
[music]
Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you to Dr. Larson for connecting with me, and if you are thinking, Oh, I kind of want to look at this book, well, I have links to all of the books we talked about at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast under episode 624.
I always end with a terrible joke. This week is no exception. I would never let you down! This joke comes from Bransler in our Discord.
Did you know that Bigfoot is sometimes confused with Sasquatch?
It’s true! Sometimes Bigfoot is confused with Sasquatch.
Yeti never complains.
[Laughs] Yet he never complains! Thank you, Bransler! Yeti. I love the bad jokes. Please keep sending them. They make my day. I also love hearing, like, what happens when you tell them to other people. And, you know, if you want to tell me about the show or ask me questions or anything, you can always contact me at [email protected].
On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend, and we’ll see you back here next week.
Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.
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