Dear Author » Elloras-Cave

Wednesday Midday Links: Kobo Launches in Germany

Jane — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 15:46:47 +0000

Updated: Amazon just announced that AT&T is sponsoring its Kindle with 3G (and I don’t know for how long) so that the price of the Kindle 3G with special offers is now $139. Even without a touch screen, I think this is the best ereader on the market. The 3G makes it so easy to get books on your device. All you have to do is mail them to your Kindle address. Don’t forget to use the free.kindle.com instead of kindle.com so you don’t pay for any document charges.

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Galley Cat reported that Justin Bieber can’t sell magazines and ponders whether book publishers should no longer be pursuing celebrity memoirs.

In a post analyzing recent magazine circulation figures, WWD Media revealed that Vanity Fair‘sJustin Bieber cover story tanked at the newsstand. Despite Bieber’s 10 million Twitter followers, his issue could be the worst selling edition of the magazine in 12 years.

Despite this showing by Bieber (and frankly Vanity Fair readership is not the Bieber audience), I’ve been told by publishing insiders that celebrity memoirs are the closest thing to a sure bet these days. A quick look over the NYTimes non fiction bestseller list and you can see why celebrities are pursued with vigor: Tina Fey, Anne Coulter, Tim Tebow, Chelsea Handler, Steven Tyler. Snooki, the person on Jersey Shore who is famous…for being on Jersey Shore? has signed a deal to write the sequel to A Shore Thing.

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Kobo is signing some major agreements. First, it has a terminal in Grand Central Station. I actually love this. I wonder if this will lead to kiosks in malls? The kiosk will be staffed with Kobo experts:

Kobo kiosk hours of operation are Monday-Friday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturdays 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sundays 11 a.m. to 6 p m.

Kobo also announced the launch of its German store:

Canadian upstart Kobo, which is currently well behind the e-book leaders in the U.S., has always had a global strategy, and is now launching in Germany, with an e-bookstore that offers 80,000 German language titles and a total of 2.4 million eBooks. By contrast, Amazon currently offers around 25,000 German-language titles.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20079085-93/kobo-takes-aim-at-kindle-in-germany/#ixzz1S03wsGxT

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If you are a George RR Martin fan, you might be frustrated (or elated) to hear that Martin is likely to write three more books in the series as more plots and characters have been added in the previous two books, making it difficult for Martin to wrap up as he had originally planned. Actually, according to the Atlantic interview, Martin intended this to be a trilogy (which is why the first three books are awesome and the next two are messes). Also frustrating? Martin doesn’t plan to start book 6 until next year. I have to say I feel better everyday about cutting the Martin cord after book 3.

Jia is slaving over A Dance with Dragons and I suspect we’ll have a review up at some point in the next few weeks. (No pressure, Jia!)

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Ellora’s Cave is loosening up its restrictions on subject matter in its books:

In an effort to stay with the times and to allow your stories to reflect modern sexuality and/or sexual fantasies, I am loosening up on the taboos listed under “submission guidelines,” which can be found at http://www.jasminejade.com/docs/AuthorInfo.pdf

1) I stand firm on the following: NO necrophilia, bestiality, pedophilia, or weapons stuffed up various parts of the female anatomy.

2) golden showers are now permissible in the kink, m/m and exotika lines ONLY. SCAT is still forbidden.

Really? The people who aren’t bothered by golden showers would be bothered by SCAT? I wonder if EC is hurting for submissions. Some of the new release pages are peppered with older books. These older books aren’t designated as older releases but you can tell when you click on the excerpt and see the copyright date. EC announced today that Laurann Dohner signed a 75 book deal with them. 75. O_o.

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A historical fan? You might like this new community. A half-dozen Regency authors are starting a new group blog: http://www.theballroomblog.com and it launches tomorrow, the 14th. The authors involved include Tessa Dare, Sarah MacLean, Gaelen Foley, Miranda Neville, Katharine Ashe, and Sabrina Darby. They’ll have regular posts three times a week, and most posts will be dialogue, like snippets of conversation overheard in a Regency ballroom. For example, author-to-author, author-to-character, Lady B (the fictional hostess)-to-whomever she pleases. The Ballroom will be light, fun and reader-focused.

This sounds totally different and entertaining. You can also find the group on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/theballroomblog and on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/theballroomblog

Ellora’s Cave Settles with Chris Brashear

Jane — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 15:26:51 +0000

As of April 8, 2011, the three year lawsuit between Ellora’s Cave and Chris Brashear has come to an end. On April 7, 2008, Chrissy Brashear filed suit against Ellora’s Cave alleging that she was entitled to a distribution of profits from 2005 until the date at which defendants bought out her 5% shares. EC’s response to the litigation was to not participate, which you simply cannot do in a litigation.

EC refused to give up documents such as tax returns and ledgers. The failure to respond the request for documents impaired Brashear’s ability to proceed with her claim. EC blamed it on their first lawyer who they fired. EC retained new counsel but the pattern of delay and duck continued. Brashear filed a motion for sanctions (a request asking the court to punish EC for its delinquent behavior). The court granted the motion after EC and its counsel failed to show up for a hearing. EC asked the court to set aside the sanction and promised it would deliver the documents requested by Brashear. EC never did.

Ellora’s Cave was given one last chance to respond to the discovery but instead of responding, they filed for a protective order asking the court to limit what documents EC had to produce to Brashear. The Court granted the motion in part and denied the motion in part. A pretrial hearing was scheduled.

No attorney showed up for the pretrial nor did any of the representatives for EC. As the court order noted, the court placed phone calls, waited sixty-five minutes, and still there was no response. The court then ordered a judgment against EC in favor of Brashear. (PDF order here).

Fed up with Ellora’s Cave, the court set out the behavior by EC that it characterized as contumacious. (twenty seven page ruling (PDF)).

A trial would proceed but only on the damages that Brashears was claiming. Those damages were set out in a trial brief filed by Brashears. (PDF) The trial brief laid out the calculation of damages alleged by Brashear. First, it alleged Brashear was entitled to over $140,000 in unpaid distribution. The follow table represents the distributions made to Engler and Marks from 2006 to May 17, 2010.

Period Ended	12/31/2006	12/31/2007	12/31/2008	12/31/2009	05/17/2010
Distribution	$230,966	$503,322	$491,716	$430,178	$189,661

The distributions in 2010 only include data up to May 17, 2010, as Ellora’s Cave has not divulged any post May 17, 2010 data. Interesting that in this period of great digital growth, EC’s profits (as seen through it’s distribution) is declining. In valuing Brashears’ 5% ownership in EC, EC’s expert is alleged to opine that Brashear’s interest in EC amounts to approximately $51,700 whereas Brashear’s expert values her 5% shares at $121,500.

The trial brief also asserts that Ellora’s Cave is diverting assets away from the company. First, by borrowing money through commercial lines of credit and loans in EC’s name and then transferring those loan funds to Engler, Marks, and others at substantially lower interest rates. Second, EC is paying above market rate rent to its landlord (who happens to be Tina Engler). For example, in 2009, the market rent is around $40,131, and EC was paying to Engler $97,200 in rent.

All told, Brashears claimed about $350,000 in actual economic damages as well as damages for defamation and punitive damages (designed to “punish” the wrongdoer as opposed to “compensatory” damages that are designed to make the plaintiff “whole”) and attorneys’ fees.

The settlement is confidential (PDF) and thus we won’t know what has been paid although if Ellora’s Cave did pay in authors (as I suspect that they may have given their cash flow problems), we may see some authors’ backlists appearing on the Samhain site in the future.

Wednesday Midday Links: Upcoming RT Convention, Avon Impulse, EC lowers prices

Jane — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 16:08:58 +0000

This will be my third year of attending RT Convention. RT has, in my opinion, really made an effort to bring interesting content to readers. The conference takes place in LA from April 6 through the 10. All of the “reader” events are marked by “READER” at the front:

READER: Western Reader Roundup
Date: Wednesday April 6, 2011 01:00 pm – 02:00 pm

READER: "He's A Pirate" Treasure Hunt
Date: Wednesday April 6, 2011 02:15 pm – 03:15 pm
Event Type: Reader Author Meet Ups

At RomCon, these Reader Author game/meet ups were very popular. Sarah Wendell, Angela James, and I will be doing our eReader roundup so if you are at the conference and wondering what ereader to buy, stop in during the session. We’ll be talking about what to look for in an eReader and we should have all the latest devices for you to try out. I’m not sure when the session is, but as soon as I do, I’ll post it.

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This post has been updated with official EC response:

Ellora’s Cave’s pricing at retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble has been outrageously high. This is because EC’s existing contracts pays royalties based on the cover and if EC lowers the retail list price then (according to how the contracts are structured) EC would lose money on the sales at third party retailers. The stated goal is to lower prices but “adjust royalties so that EC makes no less than it does now and the author makes more that currently due to increased sales.” The internal email goes on to state that ten authors have been recruited to test a lower price point with a reduced royalty rate of 30% cover price. At the lower price, EC will need to have “at least two-and-a-half times more sales from the vendor sites to compensate for the lower per-sale income.”

We're starting with around 150 titles from 10 test authors who have agreed to participate for a limited time period (3-4 months, starting in April). We'll keep the cover price on our website the same as it is now, but dramatically lower the MSRP to third-party vendors (Amazon, B&N, etc.). If the new pricing/royalty structure increases sales enough to make it viable for authors and the company, we will offer it to all our authors.

For “backlist” books (books that are two years or more older and whose sales are “less than several hundred”), the cover price will be reduced both at the EC site and the retail sites.

We will lower the MSRP and cover price of older books (more than two years old) that are selling less than a few hundred a year. That's a huge undertaking because our backlist is so large, so we'll do that by genre, starting with our smaller genres. That will take most of our books down to far below $10 and many to $5 and below.

Current Cover/MSRP — New Cover/MSRP
7.99 / 15.98 — 5.99 / 11.98
6.99 / 13.98 — 5.24 / 10.48
5.95 / 11.90 — 4.95 / 9.90
5.20 / 10.40 — 4.20 / 8.40
4.45 / 8.90 — 3.45 / 6.90
2.49 / 4.98 — 1.99 / 3.98

For UK Kindle pricing,

Kindle is now offering publishers the option to set a specific GBP price per ebook, and is very strongly encouraging that this price be low enough to offset all or most of the VAT. We have just signed the contract for this, and will be working on pricing, setting a lower UK price than US price for the ebooks

Generally, EC will be discontinuing its free online reads as they don’t see a monetary uptick in sales as a result of the free reads. (EC had free reads?). ~~No official comment from EC was given when contacted.~~

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I am not sure what to make of this and I couldn’t find any information on Diesel’s website, but Diesel and Macmillan have announced a partnership. At first I thought this meant that Macmillan would be using a Diesel powered digital purchasing site to sell directly to the consumers. But now I believe that Diesel is cutting out Ingram or Overdrive. For these smaller retailers (and for Harlequin), the content is actually housed on an Overdrive or Ingram server where the magical DRM takes place. This way, Diesel can cut out the fees paid to Overdrive/Ingram by serving those files directly to the consumer. This is what Amazon and BN does.

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Avon Impulse. We have an ad for Avon Impulse, but I had no idea what it was for until Monday. I thought it just was meant to direct readers to the Avon blog. Instead, Avon Impulse is a digital publishing arm of Avon. From the Smart Bitches site:

Where will Avon Impulse titles be sold?

Our Avon Impulse e-books will be available at every e-tailer, and readers will be able to download them onto every portable reading device sold today-and tomorrow, too. Readers who seek a hard copy of individual Avon Impulse titles will be able to lay their hands on physical books, thanks to a print-to-order option available through major online book retailers.

Do Avon Impulse authors get an advance? What is the royalty rate?

Avon Impulse will not pay an advance, but authors receive 25% royalties from the first book sold. After an e-book sells 10,000 copies, the author's royalty rate rises to 50%. (Contracts will provide royalties for both e-book and print-to-order copies.)

ETA: Pam Jaffee confirms royalty is based on net.

I had to do a little math, but 25% of the net with agency is about 17.5% of the cover price and 35% at the 50% net assuming, of course, that bookseller fees are the only thing that reduces the net. There is no mention of word count, price of books, length of contract. Maybe that is all negotiable. I did see on Twitter that they are looking for westerns, steampunk, historicals, and erotic romance.

Also from Sarah’s site came the word that the books would be DRM’ed. Unsure about georestrictions. I’ve emailed for clarification. UPDATE: From Avon: “The plan is for Avon Impulse e-books to be delivered everywhere around the world where English-language novels are sold.”

REVIEW: “Commanding Acquisitions” and “Firm Touch” by Christine d’Abo (with bonus: Brazen by Cara McKenna)

SarahF — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 21:00:18 +0000

Dear Ms. d’Abo.

I became interested in your writing after seeing that Jane had accepted one of your stories for her Agony/Ecstasy anthology. So I hied me on over to Ellora’s Cave and bought these two stories. I’m glad I did and I look forward to your anthology story even more now.

Commanding Acquisitions

Simon’s bookstore is slowly sinking into the red and his personal life is non-existent, because the local kink-friendly club is more about teenage poseurs than real players. One day, he finds a mysterious business card in his mail. All it says is 1-800-DOM-help. He’s pissed enough to call the number and intrigued enough to go to the club that “The Operator” tells him about. There he meets Gavin, a willing sub he finds attractive enough to beat, then fuck. But Gavin runs away. Then shows up unexpectedly as the business consultant Simon hires to help him with his store. They have a strictly business relationship for three weeks until they both break, have another great night, and Gavin runs again. Gavin, of course, comes crawling back soon enough for a wonderful reunion.

The reason Gavin runs is…unexpected and both sweet and slightly eye-rolling. Simon’s lack of a sex life is never really explained. He’s never had a relationship that included kink. He’s had subs and boyfriends, but apparently they were never the same person. He’s also a stubborn shit, too “domly” to take business advice, which is just stupid. And did they REALLY work 12 hour days for THREE WEEKS?!?! on a business and advertising plan for a small-town bookstore with one storefront?! I’d think Gavin’s bosses would NOT be pleased with him for that, forget about sleeping with his client!

Those issues aside, though, I really enjoyed this story. It’s 95 pages long, not long enough to make me really want to slap Simon, but close. The sex is hot and the BDSM is (unfortunately) pretty tame. Gavin groveled well at the end. And I enjoyed the angst of will-they-or-won’t-they-get-together at the end enough that I’m looking forward to more of your writing.

The super-mysterious Kinky Klub of Doom, though…isn’t it possible for kinky people to find each other the same way other people do? Through mutual acquaintances, chance meetings in bookstores (and hey, Simon owns one!), bumping into each other running at the park…anything? Sigh.

The review sounds like a C grade, but the reading experience was a B-. So…

Grade: B-

Book Link | Kindle | All Romance eBooks | Ellora’s Cave

Firm Touch

Despite the truly hideous cover, I bought this book precisely because it’s a book about fisting. As much as many of the m/m romances out there flirt with it and talk about it and threaten to do it sometime, very few of them actually go there, so I was interested to see how this one would do when that’s what it was explicitly promising.

I loved the first chapter of this 40 page short story. Leo sets his preparations to fist Max all the while flashing back to the drunken conversation when Max finally tells him that this is what he wants. The tension of the preparations and Leo’s hesitation with what he’s doing are multiplied by Leo’s memories of desperately trying to get Max to tell him what he really wants for Christmas. It’s very well done and a lot of fun.

The actual scene of fisting itself was also great. What I loved was that it wasn’t all about the act of putting Leo’s hand in Max’s ass; it was about the relationship, the emotion, the need and desire and love between them, as it should be:

Time dropped away. Nothing mattered beyond Max. What he was feeling, the looks on his face, the soft noises escaping him-’Leo’s attention locked onto everything. A rush of power flowed over him, the knowledge that Max had given up complete control, trusted him to do something that could seriously hurt him if done wrong-fuck, Leo wouldn’t have believed anyone who’d told him how much of a turn on it would be.

Don’t get me wrong, you detail the actual physical act brilliantly. But the love and trust comes through loud and clear during the whole short, making it a romance, rather than just stroke fiction. The ending, after the scene, was a bit over the top (and really, if things aren’t going brilliantly between them, it also seemed a bit of a risk), but it was romantic and fun and cute nonetheless. After reading this one, I really can’t wait to read your Agony/Ectasy story.

Grade: B

Best regards,
-Joan/Sarah F.

Book Link | Kindle | All Romance eBooks | Ellora’s Cave

And a bonus:

Dear Ms. McKenna.

Someone whose opinion I trust told me to read your Willing Victim, which we’ve already reviewed here at Dear Author. I’ve still got that on my phone unread, but I loved the excerpt of Brazen too much not to buy it too.

Catherine is a photographer and a divorcee, rich, living in a large house by herself in Boston. She tells her assistant that she wants a harem and the ensuing conversation about specifications for the men in her harem is exquisite and the reason I bought the 45 page short story.

Of course, as soon as I get passed the excerpt, we find that Catherine doesn’t actually want to have sex with the men, or, more accurately, the boys. She wants to torment them, make them come, and send them on their way. She doesn’t want a relationship, she wants to objectify them. As she says, it gets her off.

Sean throws her plan into disarray. He’s disobedient, he’s too old, he kisses her, he torments her. Although the story is told entirely from Catherine’s point of view, I love the mix of submissive and dominant in Sean, the need to see to Catherine’s desires, to do what she says, but also the cheekiness that makes him push her again and again.

The sex between them, as a result, is super-hot. Jane often says how difficult she thinks it must be to write truly arousing sex. I’m firmly (harhar) of the belief that truly arousing sex is all about breaking through emotional barriers. It’s not hot unless it’s breaking a character’s own taboos, unless it’s threatening their emotional existence, moving them forward somehow. You do that brilliantly here, showing how Catherine fights against her desire for Sean because of how it threatens her hard-won balance. That’s what makes the story so hot. And it’s definitely hot.

This is not a romance. Sean and Catherine do not establish a relationship, although the story is certainly left open at the end. As much as I loved the smartness, the sly, seductive fascination of this story, I don’t want Dear Author readers to think it’s a romance. It’s fascinating, clever, hot erotica, and it makes me want to read all your other books, especially the Shivaree/Backwoods/Getaway trilogy of shorts, but it’s not a romance.

Grade: B+

Best regards,
-Joan/Sarah F.

Book Link | Kindle | All Romance eBooks | Ellora’s Cave

2010 Trend Analysis from All Romance eBooks

Jane — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 15:35:14 +0000

Lori James, co owner of All Romance eBooks and its sister site, Omni Lit, share a 2010 trend analysis that she said I could share with all of you. I think that there are some really interesting data points. (Here’s an interview Kassia Kroszer did with Lori James and one between Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches and Lori on the importance of metadata).

Every January, ARe completes a trend analysis based on our prior years sales experience. 2010 was a very successful year for eBooks in general and for AllRomance.com and OmniLit.com specifically. Although both websites realized an increase in traffic rank, we're proud to announce AllRomance.com broke Alexa's top 10,000 website barrier in the U.S.

I asked Lori to explain the rebate system because I recommend EC books from time to time and I hate buying at EC direct. The website and interface is just terrible but outside EC, the prices are exorbitant. ARE, however, sells them near EC’s price. Here is how it is done:

The customer pays the suggested retail price of the title. Then we give them a percentage back in eBook Bucks, our in-store currency. They have the option to assign those bucks to their own account for use, or to gift them to another user. They essentially work like cash. There is no expiration. As long as the book they want costs less than their remaining balance, they can click on our “Buy Now” button and with one click the cost is deducted from their available balance and the book appears in their library. People can also purchase bucks and many do – it’s a nice way of staying within budget, shopping on the go, or making sure that you have just a couple charges from All Romance appear on your card each month instead of dozen smaller ones.

Some general highlights

# Total publishers in 2009 = Approx 3000
# Total publishers in 2010 = Approx 4700
# Romance titles in inventory 2009 = over 30,000
# Romance titles in inventory 2010 = over 52,000
# Total titles in inventory 2009 = over 250,000
# Total titles in inventory 2010 = 315,053
# of staff in 2009 = 5
# of staff in 2010 = 12

Growth in customer base 2008 to 2009 = 250%
Growth in customer base 2009 to 2010 = 215%

Some enhancement highlights

AllRomance.com website re-design
Revival of the ARe Bookclub
Initiation of a tagging feature
Credit card profile storage
Launch of customized advanced search engine
Creation of a tutorial-based customer support system
iBookstore distribution
Completion of server move
Expansion of individual author pages
Addition of social share features for each book

Some buyer highlights

We're continuing to experience triple digit growth in the U.S. and the bulk of our sales are to U.S. customers. We are currently selling in 214 countries.

Top ten markets: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, India, New Zealand, France, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Top ten U.S. markets: California, Texas, New York, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and Ohio

Female = 90%
Male = 10%

Some bookish highlights

Heat Rating = over 97% of sales are on books rated 3 or higher, of significance is that the 5 flame sales have dropped almost 15% over last year with most of the difference shifting to the 4 flame rating.

DRM v Non DRM = 96% of sales are on Non DRM titles.

File formats = PDF and ePub account for 86% of files downloaded. Next is PRC at 7%, then LIT at 5% and HTML at 2%.

NOTE: We've heard from several publishers that they are discontinuing production on some file. We believe PDF, ePub, and PRC are the "must have" formats. If you want titles to be readable on the Kindle via our Wireless Transfer program – we recommend you create PRC's. PDF's do not lend themselves to reflow on that device. Due to numerous requests, we will be adding the Mobi format in 2011.
Romance remains, by far, our biggest seller. Although still popular, the overall market shares for gay fiction, multiple partners, BDSM, interracial and contemporary were all down 43 – 55% from 2009. The overall market share for erotica almost doubled during 2010 and sales increased significantly for all of speculative fiction sub-genres. In rank order we saw growth in sales of Paranormal, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Vampire/Werewolves, and Shapeshifter books.

In terms of which romance sub-genres owned the biggest piece of the pie in 2010, the top 10 are = Erotica, Gay Fiction, Vampires/Werewolves, Paranormal, Contemporary, Shapeshifter, Sci-fi/Fantasy, BDSM, Multiple Partners, and Interracial.

The most popular non-romance categories include General Fiction, Family and Relationships, Fantasy, Mystery, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Thriller, Young Adult, Sci-Fi, Historical, and Non-Fiction.

NOTE: We realize that many books cross multiple sub-genres. We base our statistics on the category the reader selected prior to the purchase point. If it's a M/M, Contemporary, Paranormal and they clicked on Contemporary prior to the purchase, then the sale goes to Contemporary.

A special note about the impact of and plans for agency = Tens of thousands of DRM titles were removed by what has commonly been referred to as "Agency" publishers in April of 2010. Q1 data seems to indicate DRM might have ended up being approximately 12% or more of sales in 2010, as opposed to the 4% that resulted. Although we've certainly realized some lost sales due to the decrease in that inventory, data supports the fact that many readers simply found alternate content to interest them and accordingly shifted those purchasing dollars to non-Agency publishers. (jane added emphasis).

Our customers have continued to express the desire to purchase Agency titles through us and we want to accommodate. We are in the process of working to re-stock that inventory.

Tuesday Midday Links: Ellora’s Cave Gets the Smackdown from Judge

Jane — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 17:08:31 +0000

Yesterday, I received an email from HarperCollins that it was shuttering its ebookstore (used to be called PerfectBound) as of November 19 and that customers would only have until December 19, 2010 to redownload their purchases. After the December 19, 2010, date, titles purchased through the HC eBook Store would not be accessible. (I thought it odd that the email was sent 3 days after the shuttering of the eBook Store but I haven’t bought anything there for a long time).

On the same day, I received a newsletter update that AvonRomance.com will be offering special digital exclusives such as original shorts and digital bundles of their most popular authors.

These digital books will be available at your favorite retailer or for purchase directly from Avonromance.com beginning December 21, 2010, in epub format. The bundles are available only for a short time although the digital exclusives will be available forever. The first digital exclusive will be penned by Eloisa James. Storming the Castle takes up where A Kiss at Midnight left off and features Wick as the hero. Wick is the brother of the her in A Kiss at Midnight. AvonRomance.com will also have a brand new design come December 1, 2010.

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Digital Book World has a really interesting article on agency pricing and how publishers aren’t seeing any depreciation in sales because the ebook market is growing at such a rapid pace. I think this is what Nate at the digital reader tries to point out in noting that ebook sales aren’t growing at the rate that they had in the past even if they are growing. In essence, ebook sales are flat, argues Nate. Further, agency pricing was supposedly designed to help new retailers enter the market and take away the dominance of a retailer like Amazon but in the short term, it has cost retailers millions of dollars. In the long term, independents like Diesel and BooksonBoard believe it will help them combat Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

*****

Ellora’s Cave has been in a contentious legal battle with Christina Brashear, owner of Samhain Publishing, since 2008. Brashear brought suit against EC alleging EC owed her 5% of EC’s profit in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 5% of the overall value of the company in a shareholder buyout in addition to damages arising out of Tina Engler, and others, defaming Brashear.

EC refused to give up documents such as tax returns and ledgers during the litigation. The failure to respond the request for documents impaired Brashear’s ability to proceed with her claim. EC blamed it on their first lawyer who they fired. EC retained new counsel but the pattern of delay and duck continued. Brashear filed a motion for sanctions (a request asking the court to punish EC for its delinquent behavior). The court granted the motion after EC and its counsel failed to show up for a hearing. EC asked the court to set aside the sanction and promised it would deliver the documents requested by Brashear. EC never did.

In a twenty seven page ruling (PDF), the court sets out the behavior by EC that it characterizes as contumacious.

Defendants willfully evaded the production of discovery, resulting in unnecessary delays of this case and increased legal fees. Defendants’ actions in this case have crossed the line from a zealous defense to malingering, malfeasance, sabotage and delay.

As for the missed hearing (which I think played a huge partin this ruling), the court noted that the Defendants Marks and Engler are “savvy and sophisticated litigants”, that they knew how to contact the Court and monitor the docket based on previous behavior, and that the two of them discussed the case and the hearing with each other in person and in email. Their attorney said that his absence was a calendaring error.

It is suspect that all three of them failed to appear for the final pretrial. The Court could understand if one of them had neglected to put it on their calendar or “forgot” to come. But the absence of all three, who concede to receiving notice of the hearing, is questionable.

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Such continuous, systematic delays and flagrant disrespect for court orders resemble an unwillingness to defend and bad faith attempts to derail the case from moving to a resolution.

In the end, summary judgment was granted to Brashear and now all that is left will be a trial on damages and a hearing on attorneys fees.

In 2006, Forbes noted EC had pulled in $6.7 million in revenue in 2006 and another source pinned EC’s revenue in 2009 at $5 million. The ultimate bill for EC as a result of not participating in litigation is likely to exceed seven figures if you include attorneys’ fees and interest. Does EC have this amount of cash on hand to pay this judgment? EC can appeal and would have to post a bond for the judgment (usually 10%). The appeal standard for a decision like this is usually “abuse of discretion” and given the detailed account of EC’s misbehavior, it’s not likely (in my judgment) this decision would be overturned.

EC had filed suit against its first attorney but has recently dismissed the case (PDF). The dismissal is without prejudice and can be refiled.

REVIEW: When in Rio by Delphine Dryden

Jane — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 18:00:31 +0000

Dear Ms. Dryden:

You probably know that I started reading and buying your books after you submitted a story to me for the upcoming anthology I am editing for Berkley. I’ve made my way through your backlist and hope to write reviews for each one but I started with this one because of recent comments regarding readers looking for BDSM books that aren’t all about how the characters are wondering why they like what they like, but rather it’s just a regular romance between two people whose kink happens to involve some pain and rope.

Katie Snow is an ecologist with Globe Oil (I know, too soon after BP?). She works under Senior Vice President and Global John Benedict. “Jack, to his closer colleagues. And presumably to his friends. None of us actually knew if he had any though. Jack was mainly just something the yes-men throughout the company called him when he wasn’t around, as in, ‘Jack is behind this project one hundred percent’, or ‘We’d need Jack’s approval before even considering that’. Or even, occasionally, ‘Jackass’.” Because her skill as a writer caught Jack’s attention, Katie was moved from standard ecologist to senior data compilation expert and data liason to public relations. In sum, Kate compiles information and readies for public consumption. While Katie enjoys working for Jack, she really misses being out in the field. When Jack tells her she needs to attend an important conference with him in Rio, Katie is reluctant to go and not because of the work but because she’s afraid that she won’t “survive an entire week in a romantic, tropical resort town with Jack Benedict without throwing myself at his feet, admitting to two years of secret adoration and begging him to let me be his sex slave.”

The story is told in the first person and it’s a very conversational tone. I know that this can be offputting to some readers, but I’ve always liked the chatty girlfriend storytelling voice (I supported chick lit long after it died). Further, Jack is loquacious which gives us insight as to what is going on in his head even though it’s told in the first person.

In some ways this book reminded me of an HP. It had the boss / secretary dynamic, the exotic setting (Rio) and even an obligatory shopping trip due to lost luggage (shopping trips are de rigeur for HPs). The power dynamic between the two didn’t make me uncomfortable, probably because it is told in the first person. In other words, Katie was never uncomfortable in the wrong way and she never felt like her work position was threatened. Further, it wasn’t they were in Rio and then they were in bed. The transition from boss and assistant to lovers seemed much more natural.

In fact, it all feels natural and believable. Katie discovering a lesbian couple who are into the lifestyle at the conference wasn’t odd at all, partly because it’s treated so casually. The other couple helps to provide insight into Jack and Katie’s relationship too because they assume Katie and Jack are a couple. For instance, Katie observes Jane wiggling in discomfort and recognizes the wiggle as a recently paddled behind and offers Jane some Tiger Balm to alleviate some of the soreness.

"We'll do a sneaky ointment handoff later. You can keep it. It's not like I'm going to need Tiger Balm this trip for anything but a pulled muscle if we go hiking again."

"You're not?" Jane said, her initial confusion replaced by a dawning awareness.

"Oh honey, that's just sad. But maybe y'all will make up. Rio's pretty romantic, after all." And breaking into a painful little jog, she left my side and rejoined Kendra, leaving me a bit puzzled and slightly concerned.

Just what impression had Jack and I been giving everyone?

I thought that the way in which Jack outs Katie as a submissive was well done. Jack is observant and Katie responds to his natural command by accidentally slipping in a few “Sirs” now and then.

“I may really regret asking this. I didn't come here planning to ask this. But out of curiosity, little Katie, what would you do if I just said, "You will be wearing the suit, so get out in that hallway, now'?"

Did he mean aside from letting my jaw drop like an inebriated codfish and blinking at him like I was slightly deranged? Because I know that was my first reaction. My second-’because I figured I had been thinking about how much I disliked my new job anyway, so I might as well just go out with a bang, not a whimper-’was to stammer out, "I would-I would say "Yes Sir' and go out in the hallway, right now."

"I see. Good to know."

There is a lot more to the story than just sex and the relationship. There is a lot of atmosphere. We get a feel for local ecology Rio itself through Katie’s love for the outdoors, we are treated to descriptions of local cuisine and decadence of the beach and ocean.

The emotional conflict is, in part, the office dynamic (as in what happens when we both return to Houston) but also that Katie and Jack are learning about the strength of their feelings for each other through the seriousness of their play. For once, this submissive thing isn’t just kind of a joke for Katie. She’s a submissive and she enjoys being a submissive, but in the past, her interactions are a bit rote. When Jack asks Katie a question, she gives what she thinks is a perfect response to which Jack replies “Did you learn that by heart from the Big Book of Submission?” And Jack, who self describes as a spanker with pretensions, finds out that Katie not taking his orders seriously really bothers him and not because he is all jacked up on the need to control but because he wants Katie to take him seriously.

What holds this book back, in my opinion, is lack of tightness in the descriptions and dialogue. Both Katie and Jack tend toward verbal monologues instead of actual conversation. The descriptions of the local scenery is well done but almost too exhaustive. The more is more concept is carried into the sex scenes. At one point, Katie is so sensitized she is at the point of pain, which I suppose can be the point. But I did feel that the story would have been much smoother and stronger had some of the scenes been clipped of unnecessary description and chatter. For those that want to read a hardcore BDSM story, this probably isn’t it. Most of the sex scenes contain light bondage, spanking, and a lot of ordering about. B-

Best regards,

Jane

Book Link | Kindle | EC

Remember that EC book prices are jacked up at third party retailers like Amazon.

Wednesday Midday News: Nookcolor

Jane — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 16:22:19 +0000

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Barnes and Noble invited press to view its newest edition to the Nook family. The NOOKcolor is a tablet like reader that runs on the Android operating platform. The tablet has an IPS screen which is similar to the iPad and is capacitive, again like the iPad and iTouch/iPhone. Where it differs is internally. BN hasn’t given the internal specs yet, but it has 8 hours of reading time IF the wifi is turned off. The internal memory is 8 GB of space with an external memory slot. This means that your movies, if the nook can sufficiently power video, will likely have to be stored on a remote memory cards. There is wifi but no 3G. Even though it is built on the Android platform, this is not an Android tablet with access to the Android App store. Instead, you will be allowed only to use apps available through the not yet up and running BN Nook App store.

The screen is 7″ and the device weighs just shy of one pound. At $249.00, it is half the price of the low end iPad and $100 more than the low end nook/Kindle. I’m curious about this but unsure who the market is. A color reader? A crippled Android tablet? The price point seems high if you are trying to get parents to buy it for their kids because the device itself is really a single use device – reading. This move by BN is also curious given that Android tablet PCs will be announced by the bucketful between now and January 2011. Case in point is today’s ACER presser which shows off the to-be-produced slate of ACER tablets with price points of $299 to $699.

*****

Susan K gave me a heads up that rumors are a floating around the internets that Apple is interested in buying Sony. Apple has billions (yes, billions) of dollars of cash on hand, but to buy Sony? The gaming platform might interest them but the computing part? The music part? Maybe it is the content making part of Sony that Apple is interested in. After all, wouldn’t it be great for Jobs if he didn’t have to deal with record labels (or publishers)? (This is a facetious and rhetorical question).

*****

Someone on Twitter put up the link to this gorgeous state library in Lenin. It’s very very grand.

******

The NY Post has a feature on the latest cover model du jour and it is not the guy from Jaci Burton’s Perfect Play but rather one Timothy Adams.

New York's newest Fabio has ravished the covers of more than 100 romance novels in the past seven years. The Jersey-born, East Village-dwelling hunk's scorching body of work includes "My Immortal Assassin," "Sins of the Highlander," "Welcome Home, Cowboy," "Caressed by Ice" and that literary classic, "Unfinished Business with the Duke." Adams ticks off his titillating roles: "I've been a gladiator, a cowboy, a dad, a tycoon, sometimes shirtless, sometimes with costumes, sometimes with women in a clinch."

My response? I don’t recognize him with his head or shirt on even though Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches (who is quoted in the article) says that his head actually appears on the covers.

*****

In an interesting divergence of opinion and practice, Carina Press is going DRM Free on digital galleys at NetGalley and Ellora’s Cave is not sending out review copies until after the book is published. Ellora’s Cave is instituting this new policy in hopes of cutting down piracy. I guess reviewers are, according to EC, responsible for piracy? I’m pretty sure that EC isn’t going to reduce piracy with this measure, but it will likely reduce exposure of its publications. We don’t receive review copies from Ellora’s Cave so I don’t have the text of the memo that went out to reviewers.

Wednesday Midday Links: BN may go private

Jane — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 16:00:43 +0000

The big news yesterday (and there does seem to be big news constantly in publishing these days) is that Barnes and Noble is up for sale. This may mean nothing more than Len Riggio is tired of answering to shareholders. Riggio has said that he is interested in putting together a private equity bid for the business that is currently valued at over $700 million. Riggio was paid nearly $600 million by Barnes and Noble for his college stores and that is one argument that Ron Burkle made to show that Riggio isn’t making deals that are good for shareholders, only deals that are good for Riggio. Sarah Weinman at Daily Finance suggests that this move toward privatization is all about Burkle. I guess the question is a) whether the board would entertain any offer other than a Riggio offer and b) whether a shareholder lawsuit could force BN to look at other offers.

*****

Self publishing is hitting the mainstream. Newsweek has an article about the economics of it, suggesting that self publishing can be a legitimate path to making a living as a writer. It has worked for a few authors, but it hasn’t allowed for the same earning capacity for a greater percentage of authors as print publishing has. Yet.

Newsweek put together an interesting chart which among other things suggests the costs of producing a hardcover novel v. a comparable digital edition is $4.05 v. $.50. I’m not sure that is entirely true, but it really cuts at the publisher argument that publishing digital books costs just as much as publishing print books.

*****

Amazon is sponsoring a Kindle commercial contest. Create a commercial for the Kindle or a Kindle App and you may win $15,000. Amazon says that it has 70-80% of the ebook market and that there has been a consumer shift to avoiding buying books that are over $9.99.

*****

Overdrive surveyed the digital library lending crowd. Over 74% of the people who download and use the digital lending library are women and nearly 70% have a college or post doctorate degree.

******

It sucks to be a woman in publishing because you are earning far less than the male population of publishing. This could be because the higher earning jobs in publishing are male dominated or it could be that publishing is comprised of a bunch of sexist jerks or both. There is more detail at PW on the issue of annual earnings of publishing people.

******

Ellora’s Cave is putting its authors on the cover. I find this to be a terrible idea. Talk about blurring the line between fantasy and reality. No, I don’t really want to think I am reading some author’s fantasy about hooking up with a cover model or anything else.

******

Random House believes that ebooks will be approximately 10% of revenue next year.

******

Anne Rice has apparently quit Christianity. This is only newsworthy because her faith (and lack thereof) has played an important part in her writing. I actually empathize with Rice because my own experience with Christianity has been very stifling (Fundamentalist upbringing that made the father in Footloose appear lenient).

*****

Connecticut AG is investigating agency pricing. Apparently the AG is surprised that Apple and Amazon have nearly identical pricing. I am sorry but a little investigation would have shown exactly why that is. But I’m not surprised that agency pricing is being investigated. I’ve had my doubts about the legality of it since it was announced.

REVIEW: Liberating Lacey by Anne Calhoun

Jane — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:00:32 +0000

Note: This is one of my longer reviews, but I promise that I only really laid out in detail what happens in the first chapter. It’s just a book that I enjoy thinking and talking about.

Dear Ms. Calhoun:

Thank you for sending me this book as it is not one that I would’ve picked up on my own. In fact, I was over at Ellora's Cave the other night buying myself a mobipocket version of this book (the PDF just doesn't transfer well) and looking to see if there was anything else I would want to purchase. The covers, the blurbs, the titles are so offputting that I left with purchasing only yours.

I hope that with this review I can allay some reader concerns that might arise from its cover, title and description. First off, this is not some skanky, highly sexualized cougar story that makes older women look ridiculous and predatory with a young, immature man. Instead it is a story about two people from different backgrounds, socioeconomic status, and age groups finding in the other the right match.

Lacey Meyers has just gotten a divorce from her husband of fifiteen years who she met at the age of 19 and married at the age of 22. The two of them drifted apart, more so on her husband’s end than hers. Intellectually, Lacey understood. Her ex husband had fought to become the partner in a well heeled law firm and he wanted to forget his hard scrabble past. Lacey, who was grew with him, knew too much about his past and his struggle for him to enjoy being a success now. It probably didn't help that Lacey had a trust fund and high powered career of her own, something her ex would always have a hard time measuring up to.

Lacey decides that she will experience the life that she missed out on having married so young. While married, she lived vicariously through the exploits of her single friend, Charity. In somewhat of a role reversal Charity married and had two kids about the time Lacey's marriage was ending. Charity gives instructions to Lacey on how to navigate the Meet Cute, the hookup, and the aftermath.

Tired of meeting the same people over and over-’lawyers, bankers, real estate men–Lacey heads off to Buff, voted the city's hottest club. Once there, Lacey is made uneasy. Everyone seems so much younger, hipper than her despite her tight jeans and backless shirt. Even if she wanted something different, and she does, would her interests coincide with someone else's?

While standing at the bar and surveying the crowd, a tall dark and handsome young man approaches to order a drink and briefly touches his fingers to the skin on her waist as he attempts to maneuver past her. Lacey admires this man fully but is quite certain that a man who can excite a woman with just a finger touch would rather be going home with one of those lithe young women. Yet Lacey and stranger who happens to be Hunter Andersen engage in a serious flirtation which leads them onto the dance floor and then into the parking lot.

Lacey understands this to be a hookup with all the hookup rules, rules with which Hunter is intimately familiar. Charity points out later in the book men like Hunter write the rules for the hookup. Yet knowing the rules and following them are two different things. Yes, Hunter could be called a player. He rarely sleeps at a woman's house and he's not dating a woman for emotional gratification. Lacey's class, her willingness to try anything, along with the spectacular time in bed, do something for Hunter that keeps him coming back.

This book shines as an erotic romance because sex is used to highlight how physical intimacy is quite different than emotional intimacy. And because the sex scenes are incredibly hot. But at one point, Lacey tells Hunter that if he has sex this good with everyone, he is a very lucky man, keying in on the fact that sex with emotional intimacy is so much more powerful.

Hunter is a very good lover. He watches Lacey for cues on how to make it hotter for her each time because, well, as he ruminates one time to himself "the hotter the girl, the hotter the blowjob" or later:

Her pulse pounded in her throat and she recrossed her legs for the dozenth time that evening. "Why did I have to ask? Maybe I've misread you, but I don't get the sense you have a problem with-what I'm asking for."

He pinned her to the back of the booth with a look, then leaned a little closer. "Are you hot right now, Lacey? Getting wet? You're shifting around like you're sitting on tacks."

Her heart stopped. Flat out stopped. She stared at him, her face flushing. He knew. He watched and knew, but he didn't push. She could drown in the space he gave her to just be.

"That's why you have to ask. Something about it makes you hot. Watching you explore makes me hot."

Hunter and Lacey have sex within an hour of meeting and while the relationship is primarily physical, Hunter is able to convince himself that the age, professions, money, lifestyle differences don't matter. Of course, these are just coping mechanisms. Hunter isn't ready to face down his fears and by telling himself that they don't matter, he can deceive himself into believing the relationship is superficial and when he is too scared to commit to anything deeper, he deceives himself into believing these things matter all too much.

I do have some minor complaints about this book which I will try to articulate. You have a tendency to write things in a non linear fashion. You'll start a section at the end of the scene with one or two sentences and the rest of the section will be what happened leading up to the end of the scene. I don't know if better section breaks would have made a difference but I would find myself backtracking to figure out what happened.

Another criticism was that I I had known more about the characters' background (I saw that this was a complaint of Sarah Wendell's and I completely agree with it). I enjoyed spending time with these characters and felt like a bit more depth and dimension could have been provided with more flavor around the edges such as Hunter's dad or Lacey's mom. They seemed little islands at times.

Liberating Lacey is one of the best erotic romances I’ve read in a long time but it is also a book for those who enjoy contemporary romances because the eroticism comes primarily from the graphic nature of the sex scenes. There is little to no kink. No ridiculous cocks that are jumping out of the pants and running down the street after the heroine’s twitching clit.

I read the book twice in as many days because I wanted to revisit particular scenes in the story. In rereading it was still as good as the first time so I hope other people find out about you and read your book. It’s an emotional read with two characters that I can fall in love with. B+.

Best regards,

Jane

The cheapest place to buy this is at Ellora’s Cave. EC lists its books at retailers at nearly three times the price it sells the books for at EC.

Monday Midday Links: It’s Release Time Again

Jane — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:28:50 +0000

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the official release of the April books. Most Avon and Random House books are released on the last Tuesday of every month. Kensington, Grand Central, and Harlequin have an official release date of the first of every month with Berkley/Jove/Signet/NAL books being released on the first Tuesday of every month. Many epublishers like Samhain release books weekly or biweekly on Mondays or Tuesdays. To celebrate new release dates, we post two open threads at Dear Author. The first one is for readers to recommend books to each other, talk about what issues are on their mind, and bring up their favorite new releases. It’s one of my favorite threads at DA.

The second open thread is a place for authors to pimp their books. Generally we frown upon off topic pimpage but we do recognize that there should be a safe haven for authors to talk up their books and this is the place for authors to do so. I think I spotted a giveaway or two referenced in that thread.

These two threads are a great way to make up a buy list.

***

Smashwords, a self publishing digital storefront and distributor, has made a deal with Apple to bring its Premium Catalog to iThing readers. The cost to be included in the Premium Catalog is not content based, but rather production-quality based. That is, the ebook must meet certain quality production standards and must have an ISBN to be included. Mark Coker, the owner of Smashwords, also put out the pricing guidelines, as required by Apple. Even if you don’t have an iThing or plan to own one, Apple pricing scheme is being adopted by five of the Big 6 and will likely inform the prices at other retailers (this is one thing Amazon is fighting for – the right not to be outpriced by Apple).

Full right to price without Apple restrictions exists for:

Books that do not have a print equivalent.
Hardcover list prices that exceed $40 in print
Mass market or trade paperbacks list prices that exceed $22

For Mass Markets or Trade Paperbacks

For any book with a print equivalent list priced at $22 or less, the cap is $9.99
This is for the first year only
After the first year, price can be anything UNLESS APPLE DEEMS IT UNREALISTIC

For Hardcovers

Anything under $22.00 is capped at $9.99
$22.01-$24.00, the maximum ebook price is $10.99;
$24.01-$25.00 is $11.99;
$25.01-$27.50 is $12.99;
$27.51-$30.00 is $14.99;
$30.01-$35.00 is $16.99;
$35.01-$40.00 is $19.99.

Is this Agency model? No, it’s Apple pricing. Mike Cane had a peek inside the iBookstore (screencaps galore) and notes that prices are all over the place, but none dip below $9.99. Publishers’ Marketplace says that there are additional provisions that require a book to be sold at $12.99 if it hits the NYT Bestseller list. (paid link)

Kobo Books suggests that loyalty programs will be a thing of the past. If that is true, I wonder what will happen to the Fictionwise buying club and whether I should use my micropay rebate dollars now while I still can.

***

Ebooks are not popular worldwide. In Ireland only 100 ebooks were sold in 2009 but that Penguin believes that overall digital sales will exceed 15% in five years.

***

I found this interview with the deceased Dick Giordano on the topic of romance and comic books of great interest. Giordano spoke about how difficult it was to draw romances in comics because romances are mostly emotion based.

LUSTIG: In an interview in Comic Book Artist, you indicated that when you were young you found romance comics harder to draw than action stories and that you required more visual references. That probably surprises some people.

GIORDANO: The reason they're harder is that they're emotionally based. The subtle hand movements and body language that you find in romance books are very hard to do from memory, so photo reference was something I used quite a bit of. Conversely, when you're doing a superhero story, you can't really get someone to pose photographically for some of the outrageous action that takes place. You basically have to make that all up, or follow somebody from before you who's done it better than you're doing it.

***

Author Solutions, the much reviled publishing services company, has struck a deal to get all of the books that are published using its services onto the Kindle platform. I had no idea that they hadn’t such a deal already.

***

Karen Scott notes that EC is seeking submissions for two wildly different lines. One sounds like a Girls Gone Wild and the other sounds like Inspy Erotica.

***

Trisha has some thoughts about the YA RITA nominations (she’s a YA blogger if you wonder why I am linking to her). She is a fan of Perfect Chemistry like everyone else I’ve read. I have got to buy and read that book.

Ellora’s Cave Fails to Show Up, Respond to Discovery in Lawsuit

Jane — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:21:41 +0000

Christine Brashears, owner of Samhain Publishing, brought suit against Ellora’s Cave on April 2008. The details of the original suit I blogged about here. Ellora’s Cave filed a countersuit, alleging Brashear engaged in misappropriation of trade secrets, defamation, breach of contract, tortious interference with existing and prospective contracts, among other allegations.

Discovery (the exchange of paper documents, written questions, and oral depositions) commenced but Ellora’s Cave refused to comply with repeated requests from Brashear and orders of the court. Finally, the court found Ellora’s Cave in contempt and dismissed with prejudice (meaning that they couldn’t bring these claims again) all the allegations against Brashears. This occurred in November of 2009. (PDF ruling here).

No attorney showed up for the pretrial nor did any of the representatives for EC. I understand missing court appointments (I really don’t understand it but it can happen) but to not even follow up and provide even a lame excuse? This was the third attorney that EC had in the litigation, the previous two withdrawing.

As the court order noted, the court placed phone calls, waited sixty-five minutes, and still there was no response. The court then ordered a judgment against EC in favor of Brashear. (PDF order here).

All that is left for Brashear is to prove her damages or what she believes that Ellora’s Cave owes her. According to her petition, she has estimated the profit of Ellora’s Cave each year and reported that to the IRS. Likely, she will present this as evidence of her loss. If EC doesn’t show up (and why would anyone expect them to at this point), the court doesn’t have much option but to take the evidence provided by Brashear as verbotim. According to the Forbes article, EC was doing $6.7 million in revenue in 2006 and a recent article points to $5 million in revenue in 2009. (Let’s not even get started about how the most well known brand in romance epublishing had declining revenues when ebook sales are quadrupling every quarter).

At this point, Ellora’s Cave can ask for a reconsideration by the judge but these are rarely granted unless there are extenuating circumstances like the attorney’s relative dying but even then you can contact the judge and ask for an extension of time. EC can appeal the judgment but, in my opinion, it’s not likely to be overturned by an appellate court. If EC did appeal, it would have to put up an appeal bond which is generally 10% of the overall judgment and, of course, interest would accrue. Further, they would have to pay for a law firm to do an appeal and appeals are very expensive. If they don’t act, the judgment would be considered final and Brashear could place a lien on the EC profits.

What this means for Ellora’s Cave depends largely upon its cash reserves. If it has the money to pay the judgment, it may delay expansion but EC does not need a ready amount of cash to keep publishing given that much of the business is royalty based, from the authors to the editors. If it doesn’t have the ready cash? That’s probably not very good for EC.

Does eBook Pricing Affect Your Opinion of a Publisher, Author or Retailer?

Jane — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:00:59 +0000

Ellora’s Cave is finally selling its ebooks outside of its own portal, jasminejade.com. Strangely, though, Ellora’s Cave is setting its list prices at third party vendors at twice the rate of the ebook price at jasminejade.com. For example, Jade Black’s After the Storm sells for $7.99 in unencrypted PDF, HTML, MS Reader, Mobipocket, and Rocketbook at Ellora’s Cave but at Amazon, the Kindle version has a digital list price of $18.99 which is kindly discounted by Amazon down to $9.99. The digital list price is the price that is set by the publisher. Devil in Winter, a novella by Diana Hunter is at Ellora’s Cave for a price of $4.45 and it is at Amazon for $8.99. Alien Overnight by Robin Rothman sells for $5.95 at EC and $11.90 at Amazon. You get the picture.

St. Martin’s Press and Simon & Schuster are notorious for selling its ebooks at a super premium price. Simon & Schuster lists several of the backlist titles at $9.99 ebook price even though these books are currently available in a mass market price. St. Martin’s Press lists ebooks as high as $14.00 for books that have a comparable print version in mass market.

It frustrates me to no end that St. Martin’s Press and Simon & Schuster place what I like to call an ebook tax on its digital copies. I would love to access Ellora’s Cave books outside of Ellora’s Cave. I find the checkout process to be unwieldy and frustrating. Oftentimes the site will not load or the login process takes several attempts or the book won’t download and so forth. But to charge twice as much at a third party site is not only frustrating but seems short sighted.

The core readership of Ellora’s Cave is not likely to switch their buying habits to accessing books via a third party site, knowing that the prices at Ellora’s Cave are cheaper. Readers who do buy via a third party but learn later that they paid twice as much will become very frustrated. But will the ire be directed at the publisher (Ellora’s Cave) or the individual author?

Digital publishers are heavily publisher branded. I think readers associate heavily with the publisher identity rather than individual authors when it comes to digital publishing. When you look at the covers of Ellora’s Cave books, Samhain, Loose-Id, and Liquid Silver, to name a few, the publisher brand is carried on the front cover itself. I sometimes think that EC and the digital publishers that came after them were inspired by the Harlequin category lines and its heavy publisher branding.

Interestingly, over at Barnes and Noble, readers are upset with the ebook prices at BN, arguing that the BN prices are too high in comparison with Amazon.

For most readers, though, the face of a book is the author. If the reader doesn’t like the title or the cover or the price, the reader often blames the author. If there are typos and grammatical errors that occur in the post author stage because some copyeditor gets his hands on the manuscript last, the author gets blamed. So, in the case of ebook pricing, does the reader blame the author, the publisher or the retailer?

REVIEW: All the Women in Pearl by Emily Ryan Davis

Jane — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 18:00:43 +0000

Dear Ms. Ryan-Davis:

This is a book in which I loved the voice but didn’t love the execution of the story which means I’ll be on the look out for future books despite this one not working out for me.

John Raincrow has been dispatched by C.C. Carver’s family to bring her home which dovetails nicely with C.C.’s own desire to return home. When C.C’s mother had had enough of the West, she left her sons and husband and took C.C. back east. She remarried to a wealthy man and both died. C.C., alone except for her stepfamily, determines that she’ll take her inheritance and return to her brothers in the West.

C.C. travels west in the company of her stepbrother and two others, all disreputable. The story opens with C.C. and her traveling companions in a gambling establishment, working to cheat the house. C.C. is dressed tartily and playing some kind of role in the grift. John Raincrow finds C.C. here and “buys” her release from her group.

The workings of the plot are sound. C.C falls into the hands of an unscrupulous family and she must negotiate her time with them until she can get to her brothers in Pearl. John Raincrow makes certain assumptions about C.C. based on her appearance and her company.

The problem is that the plot, in the execution, doesn’t stand up to the details. C.C. is a wealthy woman, apparently in control of her own fortune. She travels with the family out of choice, not compulsion.

John Raincrow is on his way to Trinidad to claim land of his own, a desire that burned fiercely for him. Yet, later we find out that Raincrow has land already and the reasons he doesn’t feel like the other parcel is his own doesn’t quite match up because he didn’t have the funds to pay for the land outside of Trinidad but instead came to him as a result of a death of a friend.

The heart of the conflict is C.C. and John’s longings for each other. They were connected before C.C. left and those feelings have remain unabated despite 10 years and geographic differences. C.C. sees her opportunity to finally bring those unspoken feelings to a head but John is focused on leaving Pearl and thus cannot give into his own desires.

John’s justifications for needing to leave Pearl seemed weak to me (as did C.C’s predicament). To some extent, I felt that these justifications and plot strategems were window dressing to create the right atmosphere to create tension. I wanted more exploration of C.C.’s ten year absence from her family; whether that had any impact on her forming relationships; why she had no connection with any men back East. Having said that, I did enjoy the voice and look forward to something perhaps longer from you in the future. C

Best regards,

Jane

This novella can be purchased at Ellora’s Cave

REVIEW: Strongman by Denise Rossetti

SarahF — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:00:43 +0000

Dear Ms. Rossetti:

This book recently won a Passionate Plume Award from Passionate Ink, the erotic SIG for RWA. I’ve long been intrigued by the blurb on EC, so thought I’d check it out. I’m very glad I did. It’s part of a series, but completely stands alone-’I haven’t read the rest of the series, after all, and although I could tell I was missing things here and there, and the external plot was obviously part of something much bigger, the core romance was more than enough to make Strongman worth reading by itself.

Strongman is set in an alternate world (or maybe a far future Earth, technologically diminished?), something I’m usually not interested in reading because world building bores me. But here it’s done so smoothly, so organically, that I hardly noticed I was learning about the world as I was reading. I loved the very short Encyclopedia entries beginning each chapter, explaining parts of the world just as they became important to the story. New species and situations were introduced and explained seamlessly, with no info-dumping, no “As you know, Bob” moments. Perfect.

Griff is a tumbler, part of a circus act. Fortitude "Fort" McLaren has just signed on as a roustabout and general muscle for the circus. It’s instant attraction for both of them, but Griff’s much more comfortable with that than Fort is, whose background as a child in the Straight Church, where homosexuality is a sin punishable by death, still affects him, no matter how much he tries to claim it doesn’t. I especially liked the unexpected spirituality of the story and its effects on the characters. Fort has converted to a matriarchal religion with a strong emphasis on the joy sex provides, but still finds himself running up against his Straight Church background in unavoidable ways. But Griff pushes and pushes and pushes, until it’s more work for Fort to deny him than to accept their attraction.

Although the story is set in the circus, most of the progress of the romance takes place outside the circus, as Fort and then Griff are on a scouting journey that’s part of an obviously larger narrative. The romance is most beautifully perfectly done. Each step in their relationship reveals more about the individuals, where they come from, who they are, why their partner attracts them, and what they’re going to do about it. The focus of the story is mainly Fort’s journey and I just fell in love with him as he fell in love with Griff but had to push himself to accept it:

Today was all Fort had, all he could allow himself. Because he couldn’t live his life like this, not every, ordinary day after day and still be Fort McLaren, still be the man he knew. This was a time out of time, a dark, shining secret graven on his soul. Precious. But he couldn’t prevent the sly thought that it wouldn’t be difficult to persuade Griff to come away with him again, somewhere like this. He looked around. Yes, somewhere exactly like this.

Griff took another nibble, on the shoulder this time, and Fort closed his eyes, telling the thought to go to hell. The tumbler deserved better and he- No. Think about the moment, only the moment. He couldn’t risk the other man’s life to satisfy his own crooked lusts. Tomorrow he’d escort Griff back to the Valaressa road and send him on his way.

Something small and sad and stupid whimpered deep in his chest, but he told it to shut up. He got Griff out of the water and over to the tents so quickly it felt like levitation.

I usually don’t like illness or injury as a way to force the denouement of the romance, but you do it so very well here, with such deep emotion, and such stripping away of all Fort’s defenses, that I very happily went along with it.

The sex, by the way, was amazing. Fort is the title’s “Strongman,” but Griff is a tumbler and can give as good as he gets. Evenly matched, each sexual encounter is a fight for dominance and it’s hot and fascinating and each scene is integral to both plot and character development.

The only niggle I had was that, although the story was obviously part of a larger plot so characters from a previous book in the series were necessary to that larger plot and rather seamlessly integrated, it still felt like a revisiting of old characters as a reward for long-time readers. Then again, I wouldn’t mind revisiting Fort and Griff in future books of yours, and I’ll probably go back and read the previous books in the series.

Thank you for a fun, hot, sexy read.

Grade: B+

Best regards,
-Joan/Sarah F.

This book can be purchased at Ellora’s Cave.

Borders Moves to Dismiss Lawsuit by Ellora’s Cave; Alleges Short Shipments by EC

Jane — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:55:51 +0000

Borders has filed a motion to dismiss in the lawsuit filed by Ellora’s Cave. The motion to dismiss mentions, among other things, that the number of returns EC incurred was due to EC’s own failure to provide full shipments. Instead, EC engaged in a practice of short shipments. From the Motion to Dismiss:

It is also Borders’ policy (specifically for Waldenbooks) to hold any “short-shipped orders”-i.e., those in which the quantity shipped by the publisher is less than the amount ordered by Borders’ invoice-in its warehouses. If the seller does not supplement the order to satisfy the quantity requested by the Borders/Waldenbooks invoice, the entire order is shipped back to the seller. Throughout its commercial dealings with Borders, Plaintiff short-shipped orders. As a result, Borders was forced to warehouse the short-shipped product and, if not supplemented, to return it to Plaintiff. Plaintiff’s practice of short-shipping its orders therefore resulted in a number of returns from Borders.

In 2007, Plaintiff began to complain about the volume of returns it was receiving from Borders. As a result, a conference call was held on April 18, 2007, in which Borders and Plaintiff agreed that, to simplify the order and return process, Borders would begin to place orders with Plaintiff through Baker & Taylor, Inc., a North Carolina-based and nationally recognized wholesaler, rather than directly. Plaintiff supported this development fully.

Accordingly, on May 25,2007, Borders sent Plaintiff an e-mail confirming that it was updating its information for Plaintiff to note that Baker & Taylor was now the vendor of record and that future returns would not be made by Borders directly to Plaintiff but through Baker & Taylor, with whom Borders had a separate contract that allowed for full return rights. The parties’ commercial relationship continued with Baker & Taylor acting as wholesaler. Pursuant to its contractual rights, Borders later returned certain seller titles located at the store level to Baker & Taylor, which then returned those titles to Plaintiff.

Plaintiff soon began to complain again about returns made by Baker & Taylor. In March 2008, in another effort to accommodate Plaintiffs concerns and to continue the parties’ working relationship, Borders arranged a conference call with Plaintiff to discuss its concerns. The conference call included representatives from Borders and Patty Marks, Plaintiffs CEO. At that time, Borders made an offer pursuant to which Borders would take back returned titles that were
being held at that time by Baker & Taylor. Borders subsequently placed that proposal in writing and, in a show of good faith, took back approximately 22,000 books from Baker &Taylor. Baker & Taylor (and, thus, Plaintiff) was credited for these returns.

Borders has not placed any additional orders with Plaintiff since it reclaimed the returns from Baker & Taylor because Plaintiff never responded to Borders’ written settlement offer, despite Borders’ show of good faith in reclaiming returned titles held by Baker & Taylor.

Instead, Plaintiff filed its complaint in this lawsuit on January 6, 2009 in the Court of Common Pleas for Summit County, Ohio (Case No. 2009-01-0070).

REVIEW: Feral by Nathalie Gray

Jane — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 22:00:21 +0000

Dear Ms. Gray:

I can’t recall why I wanted to read a book of yours. Was it a comment you made? Somewhere? It’s hard to say. I mentioned one night on Twitter that I was going to buy one of your books (Damnation) but my friend, Nicole of BlogHappy, twittered back that I should try Feral. So I bought both books and here are my somewhat incoherent thoughts. I have to admit up front that I don’t know how much sense my review will make because I was hardly able to articulate why I didn’t love this book.

First, this book is a space opera in the vein of a Linnea Sinclair or perhaps, Ann Aguirre. Spy and assassin, Eva Grigorevna Serova, is sent on a mission to retrieve a digital transmission. She doesn’t know what is on the transmission, only that she should find it and bring it to Prime Minister Vonatos of the Global Alliance of Nations. Oh, and she should eliminate the entire team that she is working with once the digital transmission is recovered.

The team is comprised of a number of lycanthropes. Lycanthropes are deemed to be viscious, sub-human types.

Poor buggers. And all because of some long-dead mad scientists’ dream of creating tougher humans for the harsh environments outside Earth. She wondered if they’d lived to see their "creation" become a hush-hush weapon, a state shame. And now a menace.

Despite Eva believing that these lycanthropes were a mad scientist creation that she deems to be “poor buggers” she has no problem recognizing that the lead of the team, Dex Solomon, stirs her libido. This seemed a bit off to me. If Eva believed, had a bias against lycanthropes, as equal members of society, would she really be so willing to shed her clothing and engage in the beast with two humps with the science created animal? I know I am supposed to believe that Eva is without conscience, but wouldn’t she have some hesitation to being physically attracted to a lycanthrope?

In any event, Eva finds the time to bed Solomon, find the chip, and then face the dilemma of executing her orders. In the same space of time, Solomon discovers there is a traitor in their midst and while he is off humping Eva, the mission is going to hell in a handbasket.

Eva, ironically, is more feral than Solomon. Initially she’s willing to do anything for survival but she is in no way heroic from the start. After all, she is willing to accept any assignment regardless of how morally bankrupt it is and not for any reason such as patriotism or revenge, but just because. It’s not that I found Eva to be dislikeable, but that her amoralness is so suddenly transformed. And her amoralness never really fit with being part of a structured governmental outfit. Did she have any belief or direction? Was she merely an automaton? a weapon of female destruction? I couldn’t get a fix on her other than she liked her sex to hurt.

As for Solomon, he was standard hero issue. A big bad alpha who didn’t like to hurt women. Seriously, his entire character arc was devoted to his fear of hurting Eva, particularly when they were sexxing it up when he was shifted, even though there was plenty of evidence that Eva liked it when he went shifted. Eva, with her moral ambiguity, was far more interesting than Solomon, a hero who has starred in an overwhelming number of romances before.

Another thing that I found curious was that there were quite a few action scenes in this book but I found myself bored. I struggled to explain this to even myself so I don’t know how much success I’ll have here. I felt disconnected to the fight scenes and many times, I wasn’t even sure what had taken place, only that after the smoke cleared Eva and Solomon would run off to burn up their adrenaline.

Nicole really enjoyed this book and it seemed to have all the elements of a story that I would like too. I’m still reading Damnation since I already bought it and everything. C

Best regards

Jane

This ebook can only be purchased at Ellora’s Cave.

Do Exclusive Publisher Portals Make Sense?

Jane — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 09:00:25 +0000

Note: I mentioned below that several ebook vendors were having big sales this week including BooksonBoard. I read the BoB promotion to require a minimum of $100 to get the 50% rebate. This is not accurate. There is a 50% rebate/reward for each book purchased through today regardless of what you spend.

Arstechnica, one of my favorite tech blogs, had an article up last week about EMI’s decision to open an EMI only music store. Ars argued that an EMI only music store was doomed to fail for two basic reasons

most music customers don’t know the label of their favorite musician
music buyers want to find their favorite music easily and in one place. “Research has shown that when consumers are looking for music they want it all in one place.”

These assumptions don’t necessarily carry over to the niche romance ebook reading market. Ellora’s Cave has a brand name in erotic romance of which most ebook readers are aware. For several years, EC was really the only game in town and thus it made sense to drive readers to its exclusive portal. But the ebook market and ebook publishing has evolved since 2001, the birth of Ellora’s Cave. There are over 60 epublishers in business today. Fictionwise, eBookwise, BooksonBoard, eReader, Mobipocket, All Romance eBooks, and Kindle serve as legitimate retail outlets for ebooks.

There is a push from major forces in the entertainment industry such as Amazon and Sony to increase ebook reading. Even the iPhone has created still another avenue for ebook readers. But Amazon, Sony, iPhone, Fictionwise, eBookwise, BooksonBoard, eReader, Mobipocket, and others have one thing in common. They still do not sell every ebook published today.

Part of that is due to self imposed limits. For example, Fictionwise “partners with publishers who can provide 25 or more titles by at least five different established, professional authors.” But some of the problem is that e-publishers are self limiting. Ellora’s Cave, for example, does not list its titles at any other vendor. The only way to purchase EC books is directly from the EC site.

EC’s webtraffic, according to one independent metric, has a ranking of 55,719. Fictionwise.com has an Alexa rating of 30,164. In a google search for “romance ebooks”, All Romance eBooks shows up first. The first epublisher to show up in that same google search is Alinar Publishing followed by Liquid Silver. I browsed through the first ten pages of search results. Ellora’s Cave didn’t show up. Neither did EC show up on any of the paid advertisements that appear on the right hand side of the search results

What about the search term erotic romance? Ellora’s Cave is missing from the first page of those search results. Hot romance reads? New Concepts shows up. Sexy romance reads? Amazon. BDSM books? Nope. BDSM romance books? Nope (DearAuthor has the second link on this search result).

Erotica ebooks is the first search where EC appears and it’s the very last of the front page search results. Liquid Silver shows up before EC. How about “romantica ebooks” since EC has trademarked that term? Diesel eBooks, an etailer, shows up first.

Apparently part of the reason that EC books do not appear on websites like Fictionwise.com is due to the fact that these e-vendors take a high rate of the royalty. Fictionwise, it is reported, takes 50% of a small print publishers royalty. If a publisher’s contract does not take into consideration third party retailers, then the publisher’s cut is reduced decreasing its willingness to see sales escape from its exclusive portal. But the question is really whether the loss of sales from lack of widespread distribution is made up by increased royalties at the exclusive portal.

Obviously, that is not an answer that I can give hard numbers to as I don’t have sales figures from Fictionwise and an ebook publisher to compare. Anectodotal evidence given in this thread suggests both that authors are better off being sold through a publisher’s exclusive portal and that the widespread distribution means better sales overall.

I can say from personal experience that I would buy more Ellora’s Cave books if they were made available at Fictionwise or some other retailer and it is because, as stated in the ArsTechnica article, I like a one stop shopping place. More and more e-vendors are building up loyalty programs to encourage readers to buy from one store. Fictionwise has its micropay rebates. BooksonBoard and eReader have reward dollars. These programs are designed to reward customer loyalty by giving back a percentage of a sale to use toward a future sale.

Further, e-vendors offer sales and loss leaders to encourage more purchasing. Fictionwise has its weekly 100% micropay rebate offers whereby you get the entire book’s purchase price rebated back to you in the form of a credit to be used later. Currently Fictionwise, eReader, and BooksonBoard* are offering 50% rebates on their entire catalog of books.

No epublisher’s exclusive portal offers these constant discounts, not even Harlequin who does offer the occassional coupon. These vendor promotions do not decrease an ebook author’s royalty as the promotions are absorbed by the vendor. But sales and promotions do increase reader purchases. How many Ellora’s Cave authors are missing out on sales at these vendors during these promotions? That is true for any number of epublishers who don’t have their entire catalogs on these e-vendor sites. (I.e., Josh Lanyon’s book, Death of a Pirate King, still is not in the Fictionwise or BooksonBoard catalog).

K.Z. Snow commented that epublishers might strike a balance by driving traffic directly to the publishers exclusive portals for the new releases and allowing the old releases to gain new readership by allowing those to go to the third party vendors. I think that is what is happening with Lanyon’s book. But for this one reader, I won’t be buying the book from Loose Id’s site. I’ll wait for it to show up at Fictionwise where I am flush with micropay rebate dollars I’ve earned from previous purchases.

When EC was the only erotic romance epublisher in town, selling your books only at Ellora’s Cave made sense. Seven years later, does exclusive publisher portals mean more money or lost sales?

*The 51% rebte applies for purchases totaling $100 or more. For those who do not like the rebates and rewards programs, the normal straight discounts will return after this program ends. BooksonBoard also allow readers to get Rewards Dollars on purchases made exclusively with Rewards Dollars, a double-dipping option not available elsewhere.

Ellora’s Cave Exploring Possible e-Tailer Service

Jane — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:22:19 +0000

I read on Emily Veinglory’s blog today that there was a rumor that Ellora’s Cave is offering to serve as a distributor/etailer for other ePublishers. According to Patty Marks, CEO of Ellora’s Cave:

This is a potential business venture being considered by Jasmine- Jade Enterprises. When there are details to announce, we’ll do so. The hosting of other publishers’ titles would be non-exclusive – those publishers would continue to sell their books through their own website and any other channels they want (such as All Romance eBooks or Fictionwise, for example).

This is mostly a win for EC. It takes advantage of its existing readership and the brand it’s built up since 2001. It gets a royalty of 40%. At that rate it’s possible that this royalty, since it’s pure profit, is more than what EC makes from selling one of its own books.

Possible downsides for EC is that there are some epublishers with poor editing and/or poor covers. There is some danger of EC’s own brand being diluted by the product of other epublishers. In weighing the difference, though, it seems like it’s a good risk for EC.

For readers, this can be a good thing because there is a more centralized location for purchasing ebooks as long as readers remember that these are not EC books but books from other publishers (which can be both a plus and a minus for readers). EC allows for payment via Paypal which I like.

As an EC author, however, now you are competing not only against your fellow EC authors but also with other authors. I’ve heard that EC authors are unhappy about this. EC ebooks are not sold through any other online merchant such as Fictionwise, BooksonBoard, All Romance eBooks or even Kindle. I would gather that part of the reason you sign on to EC is to get an exclusive shot at its broad and established readership. Now other publishers are going to get to sell their wares from an EC branded site but the EC authors books aren’t exposed to readerships at say Fictionwise or All Romance eBooks.

I’m not sure if EC is going to open/launch a new bookstore front or sell the books straight from the EC site itself. Those details were not forthcoming nor is there any date I was given as to when readers could expect to see other publishers books on EC’s site. Ultimately, the question is whether EC is positioning itself to be a major etailer of erotic romance and romance books to compete with All Romance eBooks, Fictionwise.com and BooksonBoard and if so, what that means for the epublishing industry. Vertical integration is a smart business choice and I can hardly fault EC for going that route.

The Oversexualization of Romance

Jane — Tue, 06 May 2008 09:00:15 +0000

Romantic Times convention took place a couple of weeks ago. Since the convention, a few people spoke up about their experiences which included a negative reaction to the antics of the Ellora’s Cavemen. SB Sarah said that the Cavemen acted like cavemen and were overly grabby. JC Wilder reported a poorly thought up 9/11 tribute which included strippers and a porn star grabbing themselves in military regalia and later one of the cavemen simulating a sex act with a woman. (Note, according to a pro-Caveman commenter and author, Trista, the stripper remained a whole 12 inches away from the woman at all times while simulating the sex act.) Lori Foster’s report praised the event, cheered the harmless entertainment (the costume balls), but was disturbed by the acts of the Cavemen.

The push back against this is that those who do not wholesale condone or appreciate outward displays of sexuality are prudes or anti-sex. This latter sentiment echoed the arguments of those who defended the Open Source Boob Project. (I refer to this argument as The Ferret Chorus). For those who didn’t follow OSBP, a few guys started asking women if they would offer their breasts up to be touched. It morphed into the OSBP and was rolled out with buttons at PenguiCon. In order to not be groped, you had to wear a non-groping a button. That’s right, it was an opt out program. Now, PenguiCon is synonymous with a convention where women have to wear a button on their boobs to avoid being groped by strangers.

Similarly, I think the RT convention is becoming a conference that is no longer about romance readers meeting romance authors and romance authors taking writing seminars, but instead is becoming the con of ribald and tawdry antics. As stated by author Trista,

You know it happens every year and you complain, than turn around and go again the next year. It’s not going to change. Next year there will be yet another round of complaints. Someone was offended, someone acted inappropriately. If you want conservative, safe, then go to Lori’s event (It is alot of fun, I’m not putting it down). If you want a little more, then attend RT. It’s as simple as that.

Essentially, if you want to be “safe”, you should not go to RT. I hope this isn’t the message because what a scary one it is. The message is that if I attend RT, I should expect to be groped. If I attend RT, I should expect to see graphic sex acts. I should not expect to be safe and if I am not a prude, I should enjoy it. That’s the unintentional message that is being sent and it is not being sent to just romance readers or romance authors but to others outside the genre.

What would we say if Locus magazine, the venerated science fiction/fantasy magazine, would host a convention attended primarily by male readers and its male authors. It hosted an event which included staged events featuring young, nearly nude, nubile women and allowed another publisher, say, Eos, bring in a number of porn stars and strippers who engaged in lewd acts with the attendees in hosted events and in the bar. What would we romance readers think of a conference like that or a publisher who did those things?

The defense to this is that it represents what romance is truly about. Some would argue that romance should own up to its prurient side. The charge is that we should let go of our high minded, elitist shields and accept romance for what it is – graphic descriptions of sex wrapped up in a socially acceptable package. We read it, the argument goes, to be sexually aroused. If the most sexual organ is the brain, then how are words any different than pictures. How is reading about a woman strumming her clit different than a picture or a short video of the same?

There are some types of disagreements that will always reside within our romance community. On one end are the authors and readers who are disgusted by the inclusion of books that contain homosexuality or polyamorous relationships within the romance umbrella. There are others who, at one time, viewed all books published by Ellora’s Cave as nothing more than porn.

I think the answer comes from a non romance writer – Lois McMaster Bujold. On the Eos blog, Bujold writes of difference of writing romance v. fantasy. She defines the genres as follows:

if romances are fantasies of love, and mysteries are fantasies of justice, I would now describe most F&SF as fantasies of political agency.

Love, for me, is inextricably intertwined with sex. Romances fulfill the love fantasy through the argument that a union with just a mental bond is not as strong as mental and physical bond. Matthew 10:8, if I can offer a biblical reference says “For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall join to his wife: and they two shall be one flesh?” The union, no matter how it is populated, it made one through a physical act.

But no matter how sex is used, as physical release, plot conflict, or expression of love – it is not simply porn because it invokes a physical reaction. Measuring whether a book is porn or romance based on the physical response it invokes is dangerous and misleading. Victims have reported both lubrication and orgasm during forced or non consensual sexual stimulation.

Women may succeed in having sexual intercourse with unwilling men because the anger, fear, and pain that such intimidation can evoke, although unwelcome, can cause sexual arousal or even orgasm.

Family Health International (citing R. Levin & W. Berlo, Sexual arousal and orgasm in subjects who experience forced or non-consensual sexual stimulation, Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine, Vol. 11, Issue 2, Pages 82-88).

Now, this is not to say that sexually explicit scenes in romance engender physical response due to anger, fear and pain but it does show that basing the romance = porn argument on a mere physical response is fallacious. There can be conscious arousal, unconscious arousal and automatic arousal. We can choose books that we know can be titillating but still satisfying on an emotional level. I would argue that a physical response is the result of good writing. If a book can make you cry, you are having a physical manifestation to an emotional stimulus. If a book can make you aroused, it is any different? You simply have a physical manifestation of an emotional stimulus.

The overt sexualization of the romance industry whether it is through chestless covers or half dressed women or cover models stimulating sex scenes at a reader and writer’s conference elevates only one component (sexuality within romances) and unfairly brushes the industry with a broad red brush. That taint is undeserved because romance is more than heaving bosoms and oiled chests. Many books within the genre have no sex or very little or is represented in a closed door manner. If all that readers wanted was sexy stuff wrapped up in a pretty package, you have to wonder why more explicit erotica and erotic romances aren’t more successful. I’ve not seen one Aphrodisia on the romance Bookscan top 100. Bookscan is a list that measures sales figures for books. It’s generally deemed to be unreliable for those books that are sold in grocery stores and big box stores but for books whose sales are made primarily in bookstores and through online sales, Bookscan is pretty darn accurate.

Romance is not porn and I think that EC and RT do a disservice to the genre by focusing on one component above everything else, further promoting the equation of romance with porn. What does it say about the genre if the highlight of the event is to get your picture taken with prostitutes and xrated porn stars? Is it really then about books? I don’t think so. I think that the innocence of RT has been slowly eroding.