And yes, Ann, that is very true. I do give her credit for that. But then, I give Donald Trump credit for being an egotistical ass under his own name, but I still think he’s an egotistical ass.

She’s an angel sent to earth, truly. Why don’t we recognise her genius?

Unlike many erotic romance novels out these days, this book has a very complex plot that drives the sex scenes, rather than the other way around.

Ohh, right. Most erotic romances out there are plotless drivel. Nice.

Any particular romance genre?

Personally, anything but historicals, but for my team, anything – we’re pretty eclectic. So long as the writing doesn’t suck :)

Clearly not the right stuff anyway :) (But if anyone wants to send me some for review, I would *love* to receive it. We hardly ever get any for Uniquely Pleasurable, and I know we're missing out.)

Any particular romance genre?

Ah, you haven't read lesbian fiction

Clearly not the right stuff anyway :) (But if anyone wants to send me some for review, I would *love* to receive it. We hardly ever get any for Uniquely Pleasurable, and I know we’re missing out.)

In this category, the heroine is always concerned with the health of the environment

How many stories of this kind can there possibly be?

Ah, you haven’t read lesbian fiction *g*

The identities of the celebrities must be thinly veiled and fictionalized, but with recognizable tip-offs.

I thought the people behind Ravenous (I keep wanting to make myself a burger when I think of the name of their little venture) called themselves professionals.

The fanficcers will be wetting themselves over this. Real Person Fiction has suddenly gone legit.

No they won’t. Fan Fiction flies under the radar because fans do not make any money out of it. That’s why their was sub a hubbub from the fanfic writers about the now defunct Fanlib.com. Real Person Fiction is a completely different genre and most people who write Fan Fic do not have anything to do with RPF. It is seen as crossing the line.

This is the kind of thing that you find on sites like literotica. None of the main Fan Fiction sites will touch it. Fanfic.net has a section for you to report it.

In this category, the heroine is always concerned with the health of the environment

How many stories of this kind can there possibly be?

The identities of the celebrities must be thinly veiled and fictionalized, but with recognizable tip-offs.

The fanficcers will be wetting themselves over this. Real Person Fiction has suddenly gone legit.

Environmental Erotica
In this category, the heroine is always concerned with the health of the environment, and she is looking for and finding love in all the wrong places, and saving the environment while she’s doing it.

Celebrity Romance
This category addresses every woman’s fantasy of a night with a famous celebrity, rock star or athlete. The identities of the celebrities must be thinly veiled and fictionalized, but with recognizable tip-offs.

As I said, these are rights that should stay with the author, but if you’re comfortable signing them away that’s your decision (not one I would necessarily make, but still your decision.) But this isn’t a case where RR is being oh-so-great, is the point.

What they’re saying is, they deliberately take rights they have no real plans to use, and then will keep a chunk of the money–a far larger cut than an agent would take–in order to sell reprint rights, when the author should be keeping those rights for themselves anyway. The chances of RR finding a print house to reprint its best selling work, especially with the market where it is today, is pretty slim indeed.

This move seems very prudent on RR's part, since as packagers they already know how to sell work to print houses, and will get print distribution for their top authors without having to invest huge sums of money into print themselves.

True, they won’t have to invest in print themselves, which saves company resources. But what it also means is they actually have no control over which of their authors go into print; just because a book is a huge seller for them doesn’t necessarily mean it will sell (it probably will, yes, but it’s no guarantee). It also opens the door wide to favoritism, as has happened at so many other ehouses, where the special inner circle get print books etc. but the general group gets nothing. How does RR define ‘top author’? By sales? By, say, participation in a Yahoo loop? By how many friendly emails one of the writers sends their editors? How? Just sales?

What expertise do they have selling ficton? Foreign rights? I don’t think this is such a huge deal, honestly, because the chances you will do anything with those rights are so slim–it’s erotic fiction, it’s probably short, etc. etc. But it’s still not, like, See how great and helpful and friendly they are. It’s a grab of rights there is no guarantee they’ll ever exploit, and if they shop your work around chance sare you won’t be able to later.

The practice of selling print rights to a print publisher is not at all unusual-’in fact, back when print publishers were still made up of “hardcover” houses and “paperback” houses, it was very common for the original hardcover house to sell paperback rights as subsidiary and then take 50% of the resulting monies. This is still done to a certain extent with paperback reprint rights. This move seems very prudent on RR's part, since as packagers they already know how to sell work to print houses, and will get print distribution for their top authors without having to invest huge sums of money into print themselves.

Well, yes, it sounds peachy for RR, but not so hot for the authors. You’re comparing apples and oranges in your example, IMO. Hardcover/Paperback vs. electronic/print. And fifty percent? So if they’re able to negotiate 8% royalties for print, the author gets 4%?