The Case Against Mandatory Disclosure

The main argument I’ve heard for the FTC guidelines so far is this: “It’s just disclosure.  How hard is it to disclose where you receive a book? Just paste something on your sidebar and you will be okay.”  I am a strong believer in openness and transparency.  I also believe in disclosure—if you will note, when I talk about books, I have always tried to work my relationship with the person into the conversation.  But although I think that disclosure is generally a good idea, I think there are clear instances where whatever value we might gain as a society from disclosure is swamped by the negative aspects of that disclosure.

So let me tell you what I mean by this.  I’m going to start with a person who doesn’t exist—at least, she doesn’t exist precisely as I describe her.

But imagine there’s an anonymous book blogger who calls herself Ms. Revels.  Ms. Revels reviews young adult books with a mission: She wants to highlight books that are fun and entertaining for young adults, while still being clean enough for the parents.  Ms. Revels’ reviews range the gamut.  She glows about Ally Carter’s DON’T JUDGE A GIRL BY HER COVER, because of its proactive, positive message.  She completely trashes Suzanne Collins’s THE HUNGER GAMES because of its violence.  She gives a so-so to Scott Westerfeld’s UGLIES, because while it is violent and scary, she thinks the message about being comfortable with your own body is important for teenagers to hear.

Ms. Revels, however, has a secret.  She is also a young adult author.  She does not review her own books; she considers that ethically suspect (and she is trying not to be suspect).  But she receives regular checks from Simon & Schuster and Random House (she has written for both over time), is friendly with editors from all the major houses, and as a fairly prominent author herself, she regularly receives ARCs and manuscript copies for her blurb (or, just in case she reads it and maybe likes it).  The vast majority of her reviews come from these free copies.

Ms. Revels has not disclosed that on her site. She has not done it for one very simple reason: She has lambasted books that her own editor worked on.  She has called “dangerous” books that people who are her friends have written.

She does so, because she firmly believes that teens should be taught that “clean” activities can be fun.  Now, you may not agree with Ms. Revels’s philosophy.  You may not like her. But that’s the burden of the First Amendment: we let people speak, even if we think what they are saying is a load of crock.

The requirement of disclosure would sink Ms. Revels. In order to meet the FTC’s disclosure requirements, she would have to issue a statement that she had written books for Simon & Schuster and Random House, and that she receives ARCs from all major houses. And that disclosure would be tantamount to a revelation of identity, because there aren’t many people who would fit that bill.

There is some value to the consumer in having that information about Ms. Revels.  But Ms. Revels’s speech is entirely burdened by the FTC’s disclosure requirements: She must either provide information that divulges her identity, or quit speaking altogether.

For people outside the U.S., it’s hard to understand why anonymous/pseudonymous speech is given such a privileged place in our system of laws.  It is, however, a large part of our culture.  A major event in the Revolutionary war involved anonymous persons dumping tea in Boston Harbor.  Advocates for the Constitution wrote “the Federalist Papers” under the pseudonym “Publius.”  In more recent history, the Supreme Court held in 1958 that members of the NAACP had a First Amendment right to keep its membership rolls private, because members of the NAACP, if disclosed, might be subjected to abuse, ranging from lynching to burning crosses.

Under the First Amendment, we protect people who voice unpopular opinions from disclosing their identity.  We think the opinions they have to share are more important than the value the public gets from the disclosure. And it is this that makes me quail from the FTC guidelines:  The disclosure the FTC seeks, in some cases, requires a person to leave a trail of informational breadcrumbs leading to her identity, as a precondition for engaging in speech that is both politically and culturally valuable.

Let me give a somewhat less abstract example:  Moonrat.

Moonrat talks about books on her blog.  She is in publishing, so presumably, she gets many of these books for free.  More importantly, if she ever discussed a book produced by her house or one of its subsidiaries, she would have to disclose her interest, and that means she would have to disclose her house. If she discussed a book produced by a friend of hers, who bought her coffee, she would have to disclose that.  And that means, of course, that if she talked about books at all, she would have to divulge information that would make her identity a foregone conclusion.

Moonrat is anonymous, and we all know why: Because if she were not, she would be deluged with people telling her to buy their novel. Also, her authors would tear their hair out, and people would take all her rejections personally. Moonrat nonetheless provides a very valuable service, and I would be sorry to see her go away, or to discover that Moonrat might not be able to talk about books.

The book publishing industry is small, intimate, and interconnected.  Sometimes, the only way for insiders to speak harsh truths about books is under the veil of pseudonymity.

The unethics of the FTC regulation

Here’s the thing: Book bloggers can avoid the FTC regulation by disclosing any and all relationships. Authors cannot. And this is what you have to recognize, as an author: The new FTC regulation says that if a reviewer does not disclose a relationship, both the reviewer and the author are liable:

The Commission recognizes that because the advertiser does not disseminate the endorsements made using these new consumer-generated media, it does not have complete control over the contents of those statements. Nonetheless, if the advertiser initiated the process that led to these endorsements being made – e.g., by providing products to well-known bloggers or to endorsers enrolled in word of mouth marketing programs – it potentially is liable for misleading statements made by those consumers.
Imposing liability in these circumstances hinges on the determination that the advertiser chose to sponsor the consumer-generated content such that it has established an endorser- sponsor relationship. It is foreseeable that an endorser may exaggerate the benefits of a free product or fail to disclose a material relationship where one exists. In employing this means of marketing, the advertiser has assumed the risk that an endorser may fail to disclose a material connection or misrepresent a product, and the potential liability that accompanies that risk. It is foreseeable that an endorser may exaggerate the benefits of a free product or fail to disclose a material relationship where one exists. In employing this means of marketing, the advertiser has assumed the risk that an endorser may fail to disclose a material connection or misrepresent a product, and the potential liability that accompanies that risk. (p. 15)

So what do those terms “advertiser,” “sponsorship,” and “endorsement” mean? For purposes of providing review copies, “advertiser” means “person who gives out merchandise” generally, to someone who reviews–so that could include me, the author, handing out free copies of my reviews, to someone who reviews the books:

[A] blogger could receive merchandise from a marketer with a request to review it, but with no compensation paid other than the value of the product itself…. If that blogger frequently receives products from manufacturers because he or she is known to have wide readership within a particular demographic group that is the manufacturers’ target market, the blogger’s statements are likely to be deemed to be “endorsements,” as are postings by participants in network marketing programs. (p. 10)

Okay. So if I send my book to a reviewer that I know, they have to disclose, and if the reviewer fails to disclose, I can be held liable if (a) they fail to disclose their relationship, or (b) they make claims about my book that may not be true (“Courtney Milan’s book is the perfect cure for a blue day!”–this statement has not been evaluated by the FDA for accuracy. Admittedly, a book is neither a food nor drug, unless taken internally, which I do not advise.)

What can I do to avoid liability? The FTC explains that I can police the relationship by asking bloggers to disclose, or I can tell them to edit their reviews.  In other words, the only way I can avoid liability is to tell book bloggers what to write.

Sorry, FTC. That goes against the grain.  That really is, in my mind, unethical, and I’m not going to do it. It is not my job as an author to tell anyone what to write.  Now, if the person chooses to disclose our relationship, or that they got the book for free, that is totally fine with me.  But I find it personally offensive that I should have to tell a person what to say in a review, or on their website.  That is the opposite of ethical behavior on the part of an author, and I won’t participate.  Now, telling a reviewer what to say vis-a-vis disclosure is not as bad as telling a reviewer what kind of review to provide (which is heinous). But it still sticks in my craw as a bright line that should not be crossed.

So I am not going to follow that regulation.  Sorry.  I am not going to tell people what to write in their reviews.  And quite frankly, I think the contributory liability portion of the FTC’s regulation, as it applies to bloggers, is unenforceable under 47 U.S.C. 230, which states that “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

I don’t advise that anyone reading this should take any of this as legal advice–it is not–or that you follow my example–because I am opening myself up to liability.  But the alternative seems to my mind to be unethical, and so them’s the breaks.

(All citations are to a PDF which has been since wiped from the FTC’s site, for reasons unknown to man or mouse.)

Edit: the PDF is back, here. They deleted the word “to” and changed the word “setting” to “settings.”  Nothing substantial.

The FTC released guidelines today governing blogging about books.  In those guidelines, it makes it clear that it wants bloggers to disclose to consumers their relationships with the horrible companies that give them books for review.  As far as I can tell upon perusal of the FTC guidelines, those “horrible companies” include me, and “book bloggers” includes you.  Yes, you, reading on this blog.  Have you ever talked about books you got for free online?  This applies to you.

Apparently, my giving you books could be construed as an act of “sponsorship,” and the FTC thus thinks it can regulate the resulting speech.  The regulations it has promulgated are actually more stringent than those applied to print magazines and newspapers.

Let’s be honest.  We’re talking social media here.  Even if there was no giving of books, reviewers choose to review things because of the social context in which they encounter them.  Jane has posted on Dear Author that she read a book on my recommendation (or on others, e.g., SB Sarah).  She usually posts the context in which a book comes to her attention.  Some bloggers include context; others don’t.

It’s also not a surprise that my acting like an idiot could have an effect on reviews.  If I started writing regular rants on this blog saying, “Jane Litte is a poopy-head! Smart Bitch Sarah makes really lousy baklava!” bloggers would start thinking I was crazy, and would be less likely to read my books and review them.  Especially true if they thought there were reviews were going to be negative, and they didn’t want to have to keep deleting comments from me that said, “Yah!!! You poopy head!”

Blogging is a social world, and the currency of the social world is trust.  Not money.  Not even free books. The truth of the matter is, if I can get people to trust me, they are overwhelmingly more likely to give me a try, free book or no.

This effect is so strong that it completely overwhelms the simple question of, did the blogger pay for the book?  It’s certainly true in my case.  I regularly blog about books I think people should read.  And here’s a secret: I read all those books for free.  But you would have to be dumber than dirt to read my posts and think, somehow, that Tessa Dare “sponsored” me.  Confession: Tessa bought me dinner a couple of times. Other confession: I have bought her dinner, too, even though one time I had to douse her in ice water first to grab the check.  To try to characterize our relationship as one of commercial sponsorship is beyond ludicrous.  I couldn’t even attempt to disclose what Tessa has given me, or for that matter, what I have given her. It’s called “friendship,” not “sponsorship.”

I also read an early copy of Victoria Dahl’s ONE WEEK AS LOVERS.  Vicky is also a friend.  She is a friend in part because I followed her around meeping piteously at her talent for years until she took pity on me.  That’s not commercial either.

I’ve given people copies of my debut anthology for a number of reasons.  Because they’re my friends.  Because they won them in giveaways.  Because I hope they will like it.  Because I think they have fantabulous taste in books and respect that.  To relegate this relationship to one of “commerce” or “sponsorship” is to do violence to the heart of social media. FTC, it’s called “social” for a reason.

So I am not going to add disclaimers to any of my discussions of books, either on my blog or on the website. It would be clearly stupid to do so, and while I am generally not a fan of scoffing at the law, I think that if the FTC conducts its case by case analysis and concludes there is any sort of sponsorship going on in my case, it is insane.

But if anyone was wondering, from here on out, every copy of a book I send out will contain the following disclaimer:

THE FTC MADE ME DO THIS

Under new FTC guidelines, bloggers and authors can be held liable for making statements without disclosing the existence of a “sponsoring” relationship.  The FTC seems to think that under some circumstances, my giving you a free copy of this book could constitute “sponsorship.”

So let’s just make things clear for the FTC: This book is a gift. I do not expect or care whether you do anything with it.

You can give this away to a friend. You can use it to prop up the short leg on your desk. If you would like, you can even do something radical with it, like read it.  If you read it, you can choose to mention it to other people, or not.  You can choose to review it, or not.  You can review it as harshly or as positively as you like.  If you review it harshly, or you review it positively, or you do not review it all and instead use it as a mass-market doorstop, it doesn’t matter to me.

Over at Carolyn Jewel’s

Today, I am over at Carolyn Jewel’s blog, telling an inordinate number of lies about myself, and my release, “This Wicked Gift.” Come over and say hello, and try and identify which one of my statements are lies.  There are more of them than you think.

By the way, Carolyn Jewel’s follow-up to the marvelous “Scandal” comes out tomorrow.  I have been really looking forward to this book ever since I read the awesome excerpt on Carolyn’s website. Go and read it, and tell me it doesn’t make you shiver with longing for the book!

Mr. Milan reviews “This Wicked Gift”

Courtney’s Note: This review was written by Mr. Milan. Courtney edited it only for length. We all know that Mr. Milan has no bias towards Courtney. None.  Admittedly, he is married to her, but a little thing like that would never lead him to soften his reviews.

Hello, I’m Mr. Milan. Yes, I’m a man, and as such, I don’t usually read romances.  My tastes run more to fantasy and sci-fi with the occasional Elmore Leonard or James Ellroy novel just to keep things fresh.  But Courtney asked me to write a brief review of her novella, “This Wicked Gift.”  No one has to ask me twice to give my opinion about something.

I will not allow the fact that Courtney makes me dinner to bias my review of her story. I’m not afraid to call it like I see it.  It’s like when Courtney attempts to play basketball.  If she sinks a three-point shot, I’m eager to shout “you go, girl!” and pat her on the bu–uh, on the back.  But if she fumbles the ball out of bounds because she bounced it off her own foot, despite the absence of any defensive pressure whatsoever, I’ll groan louder than anyone.  (Delicate considerations of marital peace prevent me from saying which event happens more often when Courtney plays basketball.)

You can trust me to give you the straight scoop about her story.  Which is that it sucked.

For one thing, there weren’t any good fight scenes. Swordfights?  None.  Gunplay?  Forget about it. Now, I like a good sex scene myself, don’t get me wrong.  But I prefer it when the sex is the denouement to a bloody barbarian invasion, or when the hero and heroine get a little jiggy with each other after they’ve just killed a monster with a six-inch kitchen knife and their own teeth.

For another thing, I know Courtney went to great lengths to make everything about the story fit with the historical setting of London in December of 1822.  The pences and shillings all add up, the way a lending library works is accurate, the neighborhoods are all realistic. But what was not realistic for any year in any city, was that a man would have sex with a woman and say anything other than, “Let’s do that again.”  When I told her this, she said something about “conflict” and “motivation.” I’m sure it would make sense to another woman.

There is some stuff to like about “This Wicked Gift.”  I don’t know if all romances are this way, but the dialogue was okay. My favorite part of the entire story, in fact, was the part near the end where the hero and heroine finally get around to discussing what the “Q” stands for in “William Q. White.”  It was something I’d been wondering about since the book started.  Quincy?  Quigley?  Quintillian?

And I have to say, I like the name William Q. White.  I may not be an expert, but don’t most romance authors give their heroes good metrosexual names like Adrian or Ethan or Derrick?  “William Q. White” sounds like something out of a documentary about the foreign policy of the Truman administration.

Unfortunately, a little sex and a lot of wit don’t make up for the lack of butcher knives or machine guns.

Bottom line: 2 out of 5 Sherman Tanks.

Um, thank you, Mr. Milan! I … appreciate that. Very much.

“This Wicked Gift”: Now officially out!

First things first: The four winners of the copy of Tessa Dare’s A Lady of Persuasion are: Kimmy L, Tris, Llehn, and Angela T. Send me an e-mail at courtney@courtneymilan.com and I will get your books out right away.

Second things second: I’ve announced the winners of my website contest for the month of September. Head over there to see if you won! While you’re at it, you can enter October’s contest–and get a chance to win my anthology, a tin of Jacques Torres hot chocolate, and a recording of Richard Armitage reading Georgette Heyer. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Elizabeth Essex asks an interesting question, though, in the comments to the post:

And cheers to Courtney for being such an awesome promoter of ‘books she did not write herself.” When (hint, hint) is it your turn?

Well. Since you asked…  Far be it from me to remind you all, but while I may be an awesome promoter of Books not Written by Courtney, I am a prodigious promoter of Books Written by Courtney. Every day which is not “Buy a Book Not Written by Courtney” Day is officially “Buy a Book Written by Courtney Day.”  If you don’t believe me, just look here. See? It says so on the Internet. It must be true!

Ahem. In any event, as most of you know, “Buy a Book Written by Courtney Day” has been woefully undercelebrated, for the simple reason that up until now, Courtney has not had any books available for purchase.  This has been a travesty.  Sadly, the travesty will continue, because Courtney still has no books available for purchase.  She does, however, have a novella in an anthology. (Astute readers, please note that “Buy a Book Written by Courtney Day” is a holiday much given to splitting of definitional hairs.)

In any event, my anthology is officially out.  In anticipation of this, my publisher gave me, oh, a box of like fifty copies of the anthology.  Somehow, all but two copies are already magically spoken for.  I thus demonstrate that Courtney does not understand the concept of “Buy a Book Written by Courtney Day,” as I apparently seem to have misunderstood this as “Give away 50 Books Written by Courtney Day.” I am not quite sure what I did with all those books. I built a fort, yes. But I took it apart, and so I should have more than two left!

Notwithstanding this idiocy, I will forge ahead.

Want my anthology?  I’m giving away my last two copies.  Leave a comment, and I will choose two winners tomorrow.

But the festivities are not over for the day.  No–swing back around noon, because Mr. Milan will be posting his first ever review of a piece of romance writing.  Yes, Mr. Milan is my husband. Yes, he is reviewing my novella.  And yes, he will be 100% totally completely and utterly unbiased.  He is good like that.  Promise.

While you’re at it, swing by the Vauxhall Vixens–they’re throwing me a release party! Plus, I am guest-blogging over at The Romance Writer’s Revenge, mixing piracy and revenge.

Giveaway: A Lady of Persuasion

I’m not sure whether I should be happy or sad, but today is the day when the last book in Tessa Dare‘s debut trilogy will be released.  It’s been a wild ride for me–and I have only been hanging on at the edges, by my fingernails.  At this point, Tessa and I met three years ago; it seems odd that she has now released three books (and, by this point, written 5).

Still, A Lady of Persuasion is a particularly special book.  It’s funny, poignant, and as I’m sure you’re used to by now, the subject of a holiday over at courtneymilan.com, where I urge you to go and purchase a book written by Tessa Dare today.  A Lady of Persuasion is, I think, the sweetest of her three books, without being saccharine.  It brings all her characters together,  but in a way that is not gratuitous.  It shows all her characters firmly cemented in their happy endings, and it makes you believe, ever so strongly, that they will really make it–not just into some fairy-tale happily ever after, but into the real happily ever after, the one where no matter what life throws at you, you know you’ll survive because you have a partner at your back who will cheerfully watch over you and make sure that nothing gets through.

It’s a book that features two of the strongest secondary characters ever–I won’t name names, for fear of spoiling it, but let me just say that Tessa took the strongest-willed characters from both Goddess of the Hunt and Surrender of a Siren, and made me ache for their happiness.  And then, evil woman that she is, she took that happiness away from them–and then slid it back in place, just when I thought I wouldn’t be able to fill the hunger I had, she let them win it again.

This book also made me laugh, out loud, multiple times.  I could list all the times here, but I would spoil all her best lines.

In short, I’m getting just a little nostalgic thinking about this particular ending.  Tessa has had a brilliant debut trilogy… and she’s going to do it again, with another three books, in May, June, and July of 2010.  Whew!

In the meantime, I will of course continue to promote books I adore on courtneymilan.com.  One thing I have noticed is that because I tend to push books on their release dates, and because I will only push books I have read (I am not going to tell you to buy a book that I do not personally want to read), I have mostly picked books from friends, which I managed to read early.

That’s going to change.  I really adore books, and I want to make sure I highlight amazing books even if it isn’t their release date.  The rule, of course, which I have not yet made explicit, is this: I will always give away at least one copy of a book I promote, which I purchased with my own money.  No free copies from the author (unless she wants to add her own to the copy I purchase–but that’s not necessary)–no solicitation.  After all, if I’m not excited enough about a book to buy TWO copies of the book (one for me, one for you), why should you take my word for anything?

In the future, I’ll be featuring books, not only from friends, and not only books where I’ve seen an advance version.

But for the present: four random commenters will win a copy of Tessa Dare’s A Lady of Persuasion.

Open letter to sellers of eBooks

Dear sellers of eBooks,

You may have seen my script that automatically links to 9 print book e-tailers, given one ISBN (you can see it in action on my books page, here, or on the sidebar of my blog). The reason I can do that so simply is that all of those e-tailers, from Amazon to Barnes and Noble to Indiebound, all make it easy to link to an individual item by ISBN.  That is, you can access the page for my Christmas anthology by clicking on a link that looks like this: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0373774273

Want a different book? Just change the ISBN.  Having (mostly) conquered my online print book script, this last weekend I devoted some time to creating a similar thing for ebooks.  It made sense.  I like ebooks; I would like to make it easy for other people to buy ebooks from my website.  But I discovered there was no way to set up anything similar.  Why?

Here is how Books on Board lists its product page: http://www.booksonboard.com/index.php?BODY=viewbook&BOOK=513519

See that “BOOK=513519” at the end? If I wanted to automate a link to Books on Board, I would have to figure out where that last number, 513519, comes from.  The ISBN for the digital edition is: 9781426840616.  And that appears to be related to the book by . . . absolutely nothing.  I love Books on Board.  They have a fantastic selection and great prices (also, full disclosure: at the Rogue Digital Conference, I won $200 in free books from them).  But because they link to books using an entirely inscrutable number, it is hard for me to automate links. (I can’t even automate a search to BoB, because searching on ISBN yields no results.)

Here is another store I wish I could automate: eHarlequin.  I love eHarlequin as a site.  They have great deals, including free books, and hello, vintage eHarlequin releases this October? Yes, please.  Also, Harlequin is my publisher.  I would love to be able to automate a link to an eHarlequin eBook.  This is the eHarlequin link to the eBook version of Gena Showalter’s The Darkest Whisper: http://ebooks.eharlequin.com/D9DBB432-4D08-410F-BD61-2C912A2A4748/10/126/en/ContentDetails.htm?ID=A19D6AFC-916A-4BB9-A9CE-B56411DB4427

If you snoop around a bit, you find that the first inscrutable number (and yes, a mixture of arabic numerals and letters from A-F is a number–just a hexadecimal one) is some sort of a web-tracking device.  You can replace it with anything, and the website will continue to return a result.  But that does leave us with the second inscrutable number, A19D6AFC-916A-4BB9-A9CE-B56411DB4427.

What is that thing?  How can I generate it, without going to their website and looking it up?  The Sony eBook store uses another inscrutable number, usually in the form of R-400000000000000169063.

Barnes and Noble gets this right.  If you want to link to an eBook on B&N’s website, it’s simple.  You just link to this: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=9780345516848

See how easy that is?  The only inscrutable number they use is the actual inscrutable number that is attached to the electronic format.

Now, what does this mean, oh sellers of eBooks?  Well, it means when I write my eBook script, I grumble. A lot.  I have to choose a small number of eBook retailers to link to–there are more e-tailers out there than there is space to gracefully link to.  So who am I going to choose? I’m going to link to eHarlequin, because they’re my publisher and they’re awesome.  I’m going to link to Books on Board, because I like them. I’m going to link to the Sony store, because I think they have a beautiful eReader. I’m going to link to the Kindle version. I’m going to link to each of these places, even though it means I will have to go and search out an inscrutable number for every single one. I’m going to do all those things for my own books, because, well, I want people to buy my books from whatever outlet they buy books from.

But I’m also going to link to Barnes and Noble and Powell’s, an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, because they made it really easy for me to do so.

On a more than occasional basis, I link to other books. And it is far too much work for me to go in and look up five inscrutable numbers every time I link to another book.  I am too lazy, and it takes too much time.  So I wish you would make it easy for me to try and sell people your eBooks.  If someone points me in the direction of an eBook store that allows me to easily link by ISBN, I will add them to my script.  It takes almost zero work for me to do that.  For those other books, I won’t link to Books on Board.  I wish I could, but it takes too much work.

So, booksellers, if you implemented a simple redirect–given an ISBN as input, it spits out the single-item page as output, just like Barnes and Noble and Powells–I could automate my links to your site, and that means you would get more incoming links.

I want to link to you.  You want me to link to you.  Make it easy for me to do so, and I will link to you forever, with every book I mention on my website.  And if I’m wrong–if you have made it easy to link to your site via ISBN, and all my snooping around hasn’t uncovered it–please shoot me an e-mail, and I’ll be happy to add you to my general script.

P.S. I do share my scripts–and in my copious spare time (namely, when I need a break from writing), I am actually working on a WordPress plugin to do the same.  I value inclusiveness.  I want to include you.  Make it easy for me to do so.

Observed in the wild

Final Cover

Those of you who are interested in hunting the anthological beast might have noticed that even though the “official” release date of my anthology is October 1, 2009, it can be found, lurking in dark caves, before then.

In fact, it is now shipping from Amazon, Books-a-Million, Powell’s, and Barnes & Noble. Eek!  You may, in fact, be able to find it in Actual Stores–but I have been too chicken to make it inside one to check.

This fills me with all kinds of trepidation, and it makes my fingers almost hurt with anticipation.

Go, little anthology, go!

Edit 9/20: Apparently, it’s now shipping from the Book Depository as well. And commenter Rachie G found it in her Walmart.  I admit I made a special Walmart trip yesterday and did not find it, so it’s not out everywhere yet.