Talk:Blood Touch: Welcome To The Gratista Vampire Clan

Wait, what? Why did you move it Kay? Now this article includes the series name which I thought we were avoiding. --DawnBurn 17:53, 17 September 2007 (PDT)

I am not sure what I did. The page used to be Welcome To The Gratista Vampire Clan (series title or book title???) with this ISBN and other info (which seems to indicate it was a book with a subtitle, not a series). The link to the lulu page takes you to a page that does not list a book entitled Welcome To The Gratista Vampire Clan. I googled the ISBN number and it showed up a book entitled Blood Touch: Welcome To The Gratista Vampire Clan as a book with a subtitle, BUT that is also not on the lulu page. It is all rather murky and I was going to leave a note to fix it but then tried to do so myself. --Kay T 18:11, 17 September 2007 (PDT)

Hrmm... My understand is Blood Touch is the series name. The books are Welcome To The Gratista Vampire Clan, Desires Unleashed, and Caress of a Psychopath. I agree that it is not on the lulu page and the author page doesn't list it (or the other books than Caress which has an additional subtitle). Add the publisher into the mix and I think we are honestly looking at a self-published author. I don't know what the policy is on that, BUT I do believe the move should be undone (redone?) and Blood Touch as a series. If we don't just nuke the whole set of pages. --DawnBurn 21:16, 17 September 2007 (PDT)

Look at this link Bookfinder listing for "Blood Touch" and this review Coffee Time Review --Kay T 10:48, 18 September 2007 (PDT)

If you scroll down to the "Desires Unleashed" cover at http://www.bloodtouch.com/ (Warning: backgroud music), it also has a big "Blood Touch" on the cover, leading me to believe "Blood Touch" a series title, at least for "welcome to the clan" and "Desires Unleashed" (Caress sounds like a prequel, maybe?). I created the original pages from content submitted by the author (see the Author Page), and although I think KayT is right that original author did submit 'Blood Touch' as being part of the title for "Welcome to", the webpage makes it look like Blood Touch is actually the series. I don't care how we format it as long as we're consistent, but it's hard to be consistent when the author him-or-her-self isn't. --Robini 11:49, 18 September 2007 (PDT)

And also, this might deserve to be its own page, but honestly, AS DawnBurn has pointed out, does Romancewiki have a policy on self-published titles? On the one hand, I am not opposed to letting self-published authors use the wiki raise awareness for themselves (I file it more under "help the reader find books they might be interested in," once you add categories and so on) - and hey, additional content is additional content, if we don't have to add it, all the better - but I am quickly arriving at "If an author can't be bothered to put together a professional-looking, well-organized webpage, and a traditional publisher can't be bothered to print it, is it really worth my while to take whatever mess the author submitted, and spend my time formatting it?". In terms of dealing with unclear series titles and pages that make me listen to gothic music alongside my iTunes, I used to answer "yes," but now I'm leaning towards "no."

Now, as to whether we delete the content, leave it as and have ugly pages, or is format it thereby spending our time to add credibility to a self-published title with a bad webpage, Well...That's up for debate.

I don't think we should be in the business of policing what is 'acceptable' romance (aka 'wiki worthy'), which means no deleting, but...I also question spending so much of our time on self-submitting authors with very little or no distribution. I feel we'll be a more useful resource if we can cover what people are actually reading, and we are supposed to be a resource first, even if we are an outlet for self-promotion in some capacity. So perhaps we could make a policy of not deleting pages for self-published authors, but warning any wikigoers that the page is author-submitted content? We could have a box like the "marked for deletion" one.

That's my off-the-cuff $.02. --Robini 11:49, 18 September 2007 (PDT)