These days, if Walmart doesn’t carry it, it doesn’t make it to my house, which is a damn depressing thing to say. Between their lower prices and the idea of driving 65 miles on the off chance that one of the three brick and mortars may carry the titles I’m looking for (and you’d be surprised how often they do not, even if you call and they assure you it’s right there in front of them on the shelf), the either complete ignorance of books and publishing of the employees or the sneers directed at my preference (while they are too busy to ring me up reading ‘Twilight’ or some horror title) it’s just not worth the effort.

So far, I’ve gotten lucky and found everything I was looking for this year, except for 2 new titles that Walmart obviously didn’t carry.

As far the B&N woman who thinks she knows romance, I cannot for the life of me figure out what people find to admire in her. I’ve had a very long face-to-face conversation with her and she’s ill informed, narrow-minded and really has no clue about the topics she pontificates about. Anybody who describes her column readers as ‘fans’ has a majorly over-inflated ego. Her efforts to portray herself as somehow better and morally superior to other bloggers is annoying the shit out of me (when I think about her, which I don’t do until somebody reminds me of her existence) and it just reinforced my bad opinion of B&N because they hired her. Nota bene: I’m not saying anything at all about the article Jane is recommending, I’m talking solely about B whatever her name is. And no, she didn’t run over my dog, I don’t have one. I just really dislike people who profile themselves on the backs of others.

Many of us are exhausted trying to carry the extra load. A lot of us have to work second jobs on top of this to meet the rising costs of living. In my case, writing was already my second job. With expenses rising, I’m writing and promoting even more to try and stay afloat. I’m doing my best to edit and not make silly mistakes, but we’re all human and people sometimes wear out.

I shouldn’t be mad that my local B&N store has moved Sci-Fi closer to the escalator and moved the romance books next to the back wall? Any closer to the actual brick and we would have to shop outside.

Sci-Fi is on the 2nd floor with romance, mystery, cookbooks and children’s books—- and what the hell is on the 1st floor? Oh, a coffee shop & stationary and cds and magazines and a whole lot of other crappola.

Now my local Borders has arranged the shelves for the romance books in a square — sort of like a story time setting for 4 year-olds. No doubt because dumb romance readers would get lost wandering the aisles of the rest of the store?

Did it never enter anyone’s mind in these stores that I do not want to have to find Ellora’s Cave books listed under flippin’ E rather than by the author’s last name?

I sadly have to agree with Moriah Jovan @#1. I just don’t care anymore who stays in biz and who doesn’t as long as the writers write and the publishers publish and someone is willing to sell me the book in either paper or ebook.

Thus ends my Friday Night Rant.

I’m the PAN chair for my local RWA chapter. We have tried over, and over and over to work with the Borders just minutes from where we meet and I’m done!

We’ve had one local best selling author and one visiting best selling author arrive at the store for a signing to find their books were either not ordered or couldn’t be found because somebody went on vacation.

Then someone new with the store came to one of our meetings saying how much she wanted to work with us and do a whole month of romance in Oct. with national and local romance authors. Well Oct is next Thursday and she won’t return my emails or emails and calls from other authors and one of the national authors she said was coming is booked with west coast events next month.

It is indeed hard our here trying to pimp, I mean promote, yourself.

I wish Sue Grimshaw’s great work to promote and love romance would filter down to the store level.

I am not an author (although I write a mean contract) but I think the Internet is the BEST place for an author to promo. Videos, blogs, review sites, contests, and the audience is both global AND very narrow at the same time–global in that people all around the globe are on the web, and narrow in that fans of romance are the ones that will be drawn to and will follow the various authors/blogs/sites.

Three words for authors needing inspiration: lego scene reenactments. This is all win, all the time.

Roslyn: I don't think it's just your B&N. Most B&N's I've been in have the black romances shelved in ::gasp!:: the romance section

True, mine does it as well.

I’m really lucky in that the chain bookstores in my area (I’m predominantly a Borders shopper these days) have really nice romance sections and I’ve never gotten sneers. In fact, in recent memory my local Borders hosted a booksigning with Suzanne Enoch. I was in there the week before and a sales person (a man!) saw me in the romance section, told me about the upcoming signing and handed me a flyer promoting the event. I left the store practically giddy.

I do think it’s good for authors to have more than just an Amazon buy-link on their site – but the way B&N handled this seemed more than a tad ham-fisted (IMHO).

And yeah, I’m whoring out Harlequins again. I absolutely have no shame ;)

THEY EVEN HAVE BLACK ROMANCES ON THE SHELVES FRONT FACING AND NOT IN SOME NEGRO GHETTO!!!!

I shop there all the time even though I prefer the convenience of online shopping. It is the best brick and mortar bookstore I’ve ever seen, and without a doubt one of the best things about my move to Atlanta.

I don’t know if she was just being polite, either, but the checkout lady asked me if the series was any good and what I liked best about it; a couple other women had come in asking for the same book before it’s release date, and she said she was curious.

Overall, I was happy with the service and their selection…I’m not convinced, though, that they need THAT many isles of historical fiction, though…a few more of Romance would be great!

One of the reasons that I stopped reading her books is that I found then to have a very high incidence of errors, some of which were just astounding. I ended up suspecting that her manuscripts must have started with so many that no one could possibly find and correct them all. (Which is not to say that I haven’t noticed an increase in printing and editing errors in the last few years. I just not sure LL’s books have much to say about changes in the industry.)

After my last trip to Borders for four books (nearest bookstore), between getting only one because it was the only one of the four they had, and the clerk who took my money being dour to the point of rude, I don’t care if they live or die.