I can honestly say that what I’ve read from Ravenous has not been smut (comparing it to most erotica I’ve read). The only exception to this would be Jamaica Layne’s Knight Moves which I gleefully equated on several occasions to the old-school erotica I’d read when I first became familiar with the genre way back when. I’ve mostly been devouring their anthologies in which there are hit and miss stories but this has been the case with virtually every anthology I’ve read (I’m never going to get over Amanda Ashley’s phanfic in The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance) and overall they’re neither inferior nor superior to any of the other e-pubs. I’ve read some real trash from all of them at one time or another, no exceptions including my own publisher.

I can’t speak to what they had been released when they first opened because they only hit my radar in the spring, but I’ve certainly read enough good stuff from this pub to keep me coming back.

Thanks.

Congratulations on getting published, and even more congrats on getting featured on HSN. That right there is some stupendous exposure!

I do wonder, however, if this will translate into sales for the many other RR authors, especially the authors who do prefer to write with more erotic content? Will RR change it’s focus to more “mainstream” romance, if the HSN deal takes off?

Will the books garner a following for the *authors* or for the *company*? Or will the readers just read that set, and go back to their normal romance book buying habits. Will they foray into the other types of books RR sells?

It will be interesting to watch.

So if RR has changed its philosophy and is publishing romances as well as porn, good on them. It's news to me, is all.

I’m the anonymous new writer with RR who wrote about the PG romance above. I’m remaining anon because I think it’s cheesy to promote my book on a comment thread. I know writers do this. I don’t.

I can’t speak for RR’s philosophy. All I can say is that my book is very tame. There’s no smut, no porn, no explicit sex. There’s no kink, no foul language, and no silly references to genitalia. It’s PG, it’s a romance that revolves around love, and the female protagonist is very strong and independent.

The other day I say Ramona Singer (The Real Housewives of New York) selling her jewelry on HSN and her jewelry was doing very well.

To some degree, I think Crusie misses the point. It's not that we readers don't recognize that Bad Mothers are plot devices or intentionally written to be bad but rather that the proliferation of Bad Mothers in romance may be unintentionally saying something. Maybe it is just an easy plot device to create a Heroine with Baggage.

It’s just that often those easy plot devices are the most loaded with baggage themselves, lol. Which was my point.

I was kind of puzzled by Crusie’s post, actually, because she’s written so much about the genre that depends on reading it through the “political as personal” lens, and on the inter-related nature of craft and politics. Seemed a strange time to try to separate them, because it strikes me that this issue lies at a definite intersection rather than a divergence.

I don’t know; maybe it’s a generational thing, not just between mothers and daughters in the books, but also a generational thing among readers. Or maybe the mother thing is so loaded that it’s already so personal to women that it’s difficult to consider relative to the Romance genre outside some autobiographical context (I was also surprised at how much personal history seemed to drive Crusie’s piece).

It’s a little reminiscent of the whole virgin widow debate where some authors were arguing that it’s just a device and no big deal, and some readers were absolutely incensed about it. It’s been a fascinating discussion, though, and interesting reading the different comments.

Or it could be that the question was posed from the perspective of analytical literary criticism and that I and others with similar interests and backgrounds see an underlying pattern in the (over-)use of the device of the ‘bad mother’ which the authors I referred to were not able or willing to see. Possibly because as authors they are closer to the subject matter than those who analyze literature for underlying concepts and ideas.

Frustrating for both sides, I’m sure.

To those making nasty comments. Have you read all of the books that are being offered? Are you really that quick to get on the “let's slam them” bandwagon? That just makes me sad.

My comment was not meant to be nasty, but puzzled. I haven’t, to my knowledge, read an RR book. I don’t pay that much attention to a publisher unless I really, really like or really, really dislike a book. Or they make asshat moves in public, like several people purporting to represent RR did.

Ravenous Romance came out and called their product women’s porn and feminist smut, indicating that they don’t know what the Romance genre is. A great many supporters came out insisting that a sexy story didn’t have to have a central romantic relationship to be categorized as a romance.

Yes, it does. A heroine boinking her way through half a dozen men doesn’t make a romance unless she develops lasting romantic relationships with those half-dozen men.

So if RR has changed its philosophy and is publishing romances as well as porn, good on them. It’s news to me, is all.

I don’t know how many secure Microsoft Reader ebooks Fictionwise sold before the sale to B&N compared to after the sale. But FW stopped selling new titles in secure Adobe format before B&N bought them. I noticed it while looking through different authors back lists, that older titles were available in secure Adobe but newer titles were not. Even though other retailers had the Adobe format. So I checked the link on FW’s home page to search for books by secure Adobe format, and then sorted the results by FW release date (newest first). The most recent title was from January 2008.

That’s about the time FW bought eReader; a year before the B&N purchase. Since it coincided with FW buying eReader, I figured it might have something to do with FW wanting to promote the their own eReader format.

So my book was not one of the books that was tailored down and there were no explicit sex scenes removed, because there weren’t any in the first place.

I can’t speak for any other books. Only the one I wrote. But I did want to clarify that my book was PG from the start and has not been edited at all.

Nobody’s sending me any money for that opinion, by the way, more’s the pity.

On the other hand, the other two RRs I bought are unreadable. Otherwise, I have no opinion on RR in general or specific.

The texts have not been expurgated, but have altered for a more general audience-there is nothing new, disingenuous, or misleading about this as it happens all the time.

To those making nasty comments. Have you read all of the books that are being offered? Are you really that quick to get on the “let's slam them” bandwagon? That just makes me sad.

I did not mean to sadden anyone.

I really thought RR publishes explicit adult erotic books. The one I read was very explicit. And the website does say, “All of our books feature explicit adult content and are for mature readers only.”

The words “all”, and “feature” (as opposed to “some” and “contain”) strongly suggest this to me.

So when Jane said they were “sanitized with the sex scenes mostly removed” I wondered how there would be any book left. I mean, it’s not like taking one swear word out of a rock song.

I wasn’t trying to be nasty, and I would make the same point about any erotica publisher.

Absolutely agreed 100%. This is an excellent marketing move.

I'm not saying RR is the only publisher who could pull it off.

Books have been sold on HSN and QVC pretty much since their origination, so obviously not–both small publishers and the largest publishers have been doing this for the past 15+ years (not to mention self-publishers like the dreaded Kevin Trudeau!) I hope it works really well for RR authors and management and HSN and whoever else can profit from this particular bit of marketing, and that everyone who buys a book enjoys it like crazy.

But it’s a little silly to interpret the move as some kind of validation of RR’s legitimacy; conversely, if it doesn’t work, it’s not an invalidation of RR’s legitimacy, it’s just a marketing move that didn’t work out.

I can’t say for certain how other authors re-edited their books, but when revising “Nashville Heat” I just took out any profanity (there wasn’t much to begin with) and altered the more graphic, hardcore “erotic” descriptions in the love scenes. The books in the collection are still sexy romances, but tailored for a more mainstream romance audience.

I don’t know the specifics on how RR got the HSN deal, but whatever you may think of the company and its principals, they have many contacts in many different kinds of markets and are really, really good at leveraging them. I’m not saying RR is the only publisher who could pull it off. I hope this kind of national exposure opens a door for other romance publishers to find new outlets and new audiences, as well. I truly believe that what’s good for one romance publisher/writer is good for all of us :)

Best,

Bethany Michaels