three cheers, California!

Five years ago I was the maid of honor in my childhood friend's wedding. My dad officiated. Family and friends came from miles away to celebrate. The day was perfect. The brides were beautiful. I've always referred to that day as a wedding, but it wasn't. It was a commitment ceremony, which never lessened its validity in my mind or my friend's, but it certainly did in the eyes of the law.

So here we are, almost five years to the date (their anniversary is in June), able to say that we're making progress---though certainly circuitously. Today's California Supreme Court decision (READ IT) apparently still has to go to the voters in a constitutional referendum from what I've read today. Then California will be the second American state (after Massachusetts) with full marriage rights.

I especially appreciated this part of the opinion:

"[A]ffording same-sex couples the opportunity to obtain the designation of marriage will not impinge upon the religious freedom of any religious organization, official, or any other person; no religion will be required to change its religious policies or practices with regard to same-sex couples, and no religious officiant will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs."


Yay for separation of church and state, something that's been far too conflated during these long Bush years.


---Brooke

how can you make your sex sexier?

Read Sexier Sex.
This new Q&A with the author and Cory Silverberg was a good reminder for me about everything that's awesome about this book.

The book has eight parts that offer "easy to follow answers to common and not so common sexual interests."

Like what, you wanna know?

* How to Make Erotic Art with Cell Phones
* How to Delete Your Ex
* How to Have Cybersex
* How to Use Technology to Have More Time for Sex

One of my favorites is How to Seduce Someone in 160 Characters or Less and How to Share Your Orgasm for the Sake of Art.

This book is smart and fun and full of all kinds suggestions, ranging from hot to hotter to hottest. What could be better than making sex sexier, right? And using the things you own---like your computer and your cell phone---to make you a better lover? It's good stuff, I promise.

---Brooke

moms, recommend this to everyone you know!

Seal has long championed books for moms. Over the years we've done a ton of mom books, which have tended to cover ground that's hard to talk about: from sex after baby to postpartum depression to the reality check of finding out that being a mom sometimes sucks.

And though we've tackled a wide range of topics, we've never done a book quite like The Maternal Is Political, just hitting bookstores now. The contributor list alone will make you want to flip through this book and see what it's all about: the late Benazir Bhutto, Barbara Kingsolver, Nancy Pelosi, Rebecca Walker, and Cindy Sheehan are among the writers who give voice to issues that matter to mothers (and by extension should matter to all of us).

This is one of those books that we published because it needed to be published. The editor, Shari MacDonald Strong, pieced together an anthology that really ought to be required reading in an election year. It's raw and charged and doesn't paint a particularly rosy picture. It's one of those books that will serve as a wake-up call, though, for moms and all of us who care about moms, too.

---Brooke

You will definitely laugh--and you might cry too

Sounds scary and foreboding, right?
I know.
But reading about other people's mishaps is not nearly as scary as actually traveling with kids--yours or someone else's. Check out one of our newest titles: How to Fit A Car Seat on a Camel: And Other Misadventures Traveling with Kids.

My kids are older now (13 and 11), but when I think of car trips with a toddler and a baby, or a six-year old and a four-year old, I get a little knot in my stomach (at least I think it's a knot and not the "Sicilian" tuna I had for lunch. Only time will tell). You never knew what was going to happen next if you had the kids on an excursion. Whether you're trapped in a car, a plane, a bus, a boat, or a train, you're still trapped, and you're still responsible. I always felt like I was in hyper-attentive mode waiting for an explosion of sorts. What kind of explosion will it be? That is the question. It's not relaxing. That's just funny to think of now. I can remember thinking that getting away from the house would be relaxing. So gullible. Even my youngest son says I'm gullible. ("What's that word mom, for people you can trick easily? Who'll believe anything?")

It doesn't matter if you're traveling to your mom's house for a holiday or to a place with a pool so the kids can swim, or to another country for an adventure, if you're using vacation days, it will not be a vacation. An experience, yes. An adventure, most certainly. But vacation probably isn't the word I would use.

This is a great collection. Lots of different experiences, with kids of different ages, and travel for all kinds of reasons. It made me laugh and cry. And I wanted to run right home and say to my kids, "Remember the time . . . ."

Thanks to editor Sarah Franklin and her contributor extraordinaire Katherine Ozment for putting it all together and working with us.

Until next time.

K.

Today and the Expat Harem

Check it out!

Seal editors Anastasia Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gokmen were featured on The Today Show when Matt Lauer showed up today in Istanbul during his annual feature, Where in the World Is Matt Lauer?

Congratulations to Anastasia and Jennifer, and check out Tales from the Expat Harem. It's an exciting book that covers a broad range of experiences about what it's like to live as a foreigner in modern Turkey.

---Brooke

A Public Apology

To Our Readers, Our Friends, Our Critics,

We are taking action immediately to remove the offensive images from It's A Jungle Out There. We are currently reprinting, and we will make these changes now. We apologize for any pain or concern these images have caused.

We do not believe it is appropriate for a book about feminism, albeit a book of humor, to have any images or illustrations that are offensive to anyone.

Some have asked the valid question, "What were you thinking?"

Please know that neither the cover, nor the interior images, were meant to make any serious statement. We were hoping for a campy, retro package to complement the author's humor. That is all. We were not thinking.

As an organization, we need to look seriously at the effects of white privilege. We will be looking for anti-racist trainings offered here in the Bay Area. We want to incorporate race analysis into our work.

In the meantime, please know that all involved in the publishing of It's A Jungle Out There, from editorial to production were not trying to send a message to anyone about our feelings regarding race. If taken seriously as a representation of our intentions, these images are also not very feminist. By putting the big blonde in the skimpy bathing suit with the big breasts, the tiny waist, and the weapon on our cover, we are also not asserting that she is any kind of standard that anyone should aspire to. This 1950s Marvel comic is not an accurate reflection of our beauty standards, our beliefs regarding one's right to bear arms, nor our perspectives on race relations, foreign policy, or environmental policy.

We also extend this apology to the author, Amanda Marcotte, who did not select these images for her book. Writing humor is very difficult. While our intention was to complement your words, we see that these images have had the opposite effect, and for that, we are sorry.

Sincerely and humbly,

Krista Lyons-Gould and Brooke Warner

UPDATE: Please note that, upon reflection, we realize that the second to the last paragraph of this post doesn't do a good job of conveying our intended meaning. We do not want to delete it, but we do want to make a note around our intent, since its purpose was to further articulate the "what were they thinking?" question. We apologize that this paragraph undermines our apology. We acknowledge that the images are racist and not okay under any circumstances. We are wholeheartedly sincere in our apology, and the actions we've laid out above will be acted upon immediately.

industry news

I thought it was worth sharing the news that Amazon.com is up 37% in its first quarter earnings this year, and up a total of 30 percent from a year ago. In today's Publisher's Marketplace, it was reported that this concerns investors, because it raises questions about the company's margins. But, they state: "Publishers only care about what the e-tailer is selling, not how much they are making."

Given the fact that we've been criticized for linking to Amazon.com in previous comments to our posts (a practice I've since changed---I'm now linking to Powell's), I feel compelled to talk about the fact that most of our business is done through Amazon. That's because many of our readers are web-savvy women who get their news online, read various blogs, or blog themselves.

I have mixed feelings about Amazon. They're a Goliath in a country where Goliaths are well-loved. And we rely on them because we have an amazing backlist, and even indie presses don't carry our older books indefinitely. It would be incredibly hard for us, in the position we're in, to make a cause out of people only buying from their local stores---although I'm hugely supportive of that idea. I just also know that it's not always realistic.

I'm curious to know what your feelings about Amazon are---in the face of such huge profits. I wonder if I'm too much of a non-idealist to be worked up about it, or if I have a different perspective on the whole thing as an industry-insider. Like the article says, publishers want to sell books. As an editor I'm guilty of wanting this for Seal as much as for my authors. And more than anything in the world I want more people to be reading books, no matter how they get their hands on them.

---Brooke