Dec 19 2008
Author Reader Relationship
Nov 18 2008
Does an Author Have to Live It to Write It?
more animals This is the third in a three part series of what part the author plays in the marketing of a book. In the beginning of Crystal Hubbard’s book, Mr. Fix It, Hubbard’s heroine suffers a crisis of confidence. She is a romance writer but has stopped believing in love, let alone romance. Because(…)
Oct 28 2008
The Crushing Weight of Expectations
more animals Ihave to confess that I have had a hard time constructing this post. If my thoughts seem muddled and my position incoherent, it is because I am having difficulty articulating this topic myself. I will be anxious to read the comments to see how I can flesh out my feelings on this matter.(…)
Aug 19 2008
What Is Wrong With the C Review
more cat pictures Last week we saw yet another author/reviewer contretemps in which an author, upset over a review, engages the reviewer in a comically bad mannered way. When we’ve witnessed this in the past, it almost always seems to be over a C review. An average review. A review that says this book is(…)
Jul 15 2008
A case of mistaken identity?
more cat pictures That was the end of Grogan… the man who killed my father, raped and murdered my sister, burned my ranch, shot my dog, and stole my Bible! If you’ve ever seen "Romancing the Stone," you’ll recognize this line as the last one in Joan Wilder’s latest Western, the one she’s narrating at(…)
Jun 17 2008
Why I Don’t Like Street Teams
more cat pictures Last week Pocket author Karen Tabke blogged about an old marketing concept that is just now taking root in the publishing industry. Street teams originated in the urban music market when rap labels such as Jive Records used a band of teenagers to drive interest when mainstream distribution markets froze urban labels(…)
Jun 10 2008
Looking Past the Ivy to See the Writers
more cat pictures What do Diana Peterfreund, Lauren Willig, Julia Quinn, and Eloisa James have in common? They are all Ivy League educated authors. Peterfreund is a graduate of Yale University. Willig, Quinn and James are Harvard educated. They are all, to varying degrees, commercially successful writers. At the both ends of the reading industry(…)
May 20 2008
Solutions for Greater Equality in the Romance Market or We Can Haz Help?
more cat pictures During the past couple of weeks, the Smart Bitches and Karen Scott’s blog hosted heated debates regarding the state of African American romance fiction. For the most part and with few exceptions, romance books written by African Americans are shelved with African American books. To some authors, this is a regressive trait(…)
Apr 23 2008
In re: the Moderation of Posts and the Endorsement of Comments
We’ve had a bit of a firestorm here at Dear Author and many new readers (hello new visitors). I thought it might be worthwhile to do a bit of post mortem on the recent brou ha ha. For new visitors, let me give you a bit of a history. I started Dear Author in April(…)
Apr 10 2008
Author DeborahAnne MacGillivray Harasses Amazon Reader
Apparently, there appears to be a breakdown in the comment box on the previous thread. Ms. MacGillivray was the recipient of a three star review on Amazon. She chastises the reader for not understanding the book correctly. Reba, Thank you for letting me know you enjoyed “A Restless Knight” so much you read it twice.(…)
Mar 2 2008
Dear Authors: Can We Put Some Mystery Back Into Our Relationship?
This past week saw another fun dust-up involving Phase authors. Apparently, there are a certain contingent of Phase authors and other self designated erotic romance authors who share a good deal of their personal lives online, using their literary pen names. Some authors, like Selena Kitt, post photographs of nudity (NSFW) and blog about their(…)
Feb 26 2008
Coming Out of the Closet
The question of whether there is a divide between authors and reader/blogger/reviewers has been discussed and debated here and elsewhere. To me it seems clear that it does, at least in some quarters. Some reader/blogger/reviewers, including some of my fellow bloggers here on Dear Author, have called out some authors for behaving badly. And some(…)
Feb 19 2008
Ethics in Blogging: Taking the Wild Out of the Wild West?
moar humorous pics In the past few weeks, we here at Dear Author have talked about author ethics and it occurred to me that we haven’t talked alot about blogging ethics. While I do think that ethics is a community issue, I am not trying to force my ethics on anyone else in the blogging(…)
Jan 29 2008
You Have No Right! Or Do You? I Don’t Know Anymore
moar funny pictures After weeks of thinking, whining, ranting, and being generally disoriented in the aftermath of Savage Gate (phrase courtesy of Seressia Glass), it finally dawned on me that all of the brouhaha, both with the plagiarism thing and the mean girl thing, is all about boundaries (yes, I know I’m slow). Where does(…)
Jan 20 2008
What It Means to Be a Fan
There’s been a backlash of sorts on some authors’ blogs around the internet due to the exposing of Cassie Edwards’ borrowing. I’ll be posting on Tuesday about some thoughts about the definition of plagiarism as it could be defined in the romance writing and read community, but today, in lieu of a ebook post, I(…)
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