I tell everyone I know about your books. I even shared the story of Parisia and Micah’s with some random taxi cab driver in Chicage because the tangerine craziness is something that I can’t keep to myself (although in searching the DA archives it appears that I have not reviewed this masterpiece. Trust me, I will rectify that nonsense forthwith).

In the last book I felt a bit morose at how the females were portrayed. I noticed how each one of the women in power, particularly the crazy head woman in charge, was replaced by a man. This book was much more empowering for the women. Oh, Marcus is still in charge and Thorne, the hero, is taking a new position of leadership but I did feel that there was a lot of appreciation poured out for the women, particularly for Endelle.

The main love story is quite provocative and I wonder how readers will respond. The foreseeing heroine, Marguerite,was kept prisoner for more than a century in a religious institution where other seers were housed. At some point, Marguerite began to room with Grace and when Grace’s brother, Thorne visited, Marguerite brazenly came on to Thorne. Thorne responded and for a century, the two engaged in a secret physical affair. This relationship kept both of them sane during Marguerite’s imprisonment and Thorne’s endless fight on Second Earth against the death vampires.

When Marguerite is released, however, she leaves Thorne and runs away to earth. Marguerite wants to live and for Marguerite that means she wants to drink heavily and chase men. Thorne loves Marguerite, though, and abandons his position as the head of the Warrior Brothers, to follow her.

Marguerite feels a fondness for Thorne but she doesn’t think she loves him or at least doesn’t love him enough to want to abandon her plans to sleep her way around Earth. She begins by picking up a hot guy in a bar, Jose. Thorne watches her. Marguerite proceeds to have sex (good sex) with Jose but what she doesn’t realize is that Thorne has taken over Jose’s mind. (This happens in the first chapter and thus I don’t think it is much of a spoiler).

You crazy mofo. You went there. BRAVO. Seriously, bravo. Because having the heroine a) sleep with someone other than the hero and b) enjoy it is genre breaking. Plus, Maguerite’s sexual experience with Jose isn’t gratuitous. Maguerite is some nympho in name only. The barriers between her and Thorne’s expected HEA aren’t just for show.

I dn’t know if I’ve ever read a story like this before and it worked for me. Maguerite was desparate to have experiences. She loved men. In fact, it was her love of men that got her imprisoned in the convent in the first place. Her family was embarrassed and ashamed of her behavior. They beat her and then stashed her in a convent where she was beaten more. Her survival was based on her time with Thorne and her dreams of escape.

Thorne’s response to Maguerite is one of frustration and resigned acceptance. He loves Maguerite and part of what makes her amazing to him is her brazenness and lustiness. Thorne has to balance his love and lust for Maguerite with his possessiveness. Thorne is also increasingly disenchanted with the war. He’s done nothing but fight but his side hasn’t gained any ground. If anything, they were perilously close to losing the war. He isn’t sure what he is fighting for. But Thorne’s gift is to train and lead men and even though he’s battle weary, he can’t shut away those instincts.

In some ways, I found this to be a marriage in trouble story. The two had been together for a long time and while Maguerite had not gotten bored with Thorne, she was definitely curious about men other than Thorne. It takes her much of the book to come to appreciate Thorne’s worthiness as a mate for her; that mating with Thorne won’t tie her down; that whatever adventures she wants to explore, Thorne will be there to make sure they are enjoyed to the fullest.

Thorne’s response to Maguerite was always “yes, I want to do that too”. It wasn’t a resigned response nor did I feel Thorne was put upon (after all he was a grown man, several centuries old, and a leader of a powerful band of warriors. He could walk away if he wanted to) Nor did I feel like Thorne was settling for half a measure of Maguerite’s affections. Instead, I felt like Thorne was excited by Maguerite’s adventurism. His willing response was full throated.

Let’s be clear, though, this book is full of the crazy. There are weird foreseer dreams and a host of conveniences like stumbling upon a secret commune filled with warriors in training and other secret seers. There is the insane attention paid to the weeping wing locks which have to be as gross as it sounds.

He put his hand on her shoulder and folded off her robe. Her back was a mess. Her wing-locks were swollen and weep- ing. She wasn’t far away from a mount herself, but he knew of one sure way to keep the wings from releasing.He leaned over and began to suck. He started at the upper left wing-lock and gorged on the moisture that wept from the aperture.

I shuddered as I read about her non stop weeping wing locks and it wasn’t with desire. Certain writing tics have calmed down. The tendency of characters to use the dialogue tag “cry” is greatly reduced and by greatly reduced, my search function says 31 times. (This is a reduction, I swear). There is some anatomically impossible dual wing lock sucking along with some bizarre deep mind diving (done at the same time, like simultaneous orgasms).

The story has less battles but still enough scenes of the evil doers. All of them, however, are kind of surrounded by a rosy haze as if to say these creators of Death Vampires who are trying to destroy the other side aren’t so bad. That was a little too much for me to swallow at times. The backstories of Maguerite and Thorne are told in some terrible As You Know Bob fashion and there is definitely infodumping. Yet.

Yet, on many levels, this was my favorite Roane book. It took chances, particularly with the depiction of Maguerite. I felt that the mate bond was fully explored between the two. They both hated it and then came to appreciate it. Their love for each other was borne out of true emotion (okay, and lots of physical attraction) but their love was more than an instantaneous fated event. But the vaguely paternalistic tone wasn’t completely defeated. The women are primarily hearth and home folks while the men go out and fight the battles. Endelle, the most powerful woman, is subjected to some kind of horrible incidence from a man who professes to love her. Commander Greaves, the evildoer, is evil because of some poor relationship with his mother. While I acknowledge the problems, I can still appreciate that this book was different and fresh in terms of the relationship aspect. Maguerite is a fun heroine and Thorne, “I’m up for anything you desire” was sexy as all get out. B-

Best regards,

Jane

P.S. for those keeping track she smells like roses and he smells like cherry tobacco.

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It’s no secret that I am a fan of your writing so perhaps its impractical for the Dear Author readership that I am the one writing this review but when I received the ARC, I admit to hoarding it. Sorry other DA reviewers, but the good news is that I am willing to let it out of my hands as my ebook copy is preordered and will be downloading sometime tonight.

Rainshadow Road is written in the same spirit of a Sarah Addison Allen book, a contemporary world with a touch of mysticism or what some term magical realism. The mysticism aspect of the story was the weakest part. Why magic in a mundane world?  Is it that true love can only be obtained through magical intervention?  Or is it meant to highlight the beauty of love, that there is something magical in the concept. Or was it just something to test writerly boundaries? I’m not sure if the message of “Rainshadow Road” is that every gifted artist has magic or whether every person has a gift of magic.  The inclusion of magical realism is also soft. The story would have remained the same if you removed the mysticism. The characterizations, the plot, the conflict all exist without those elements. The good thing is if readers don’t like the magical realism element, it doesn’t interfere a great deal and will be only a minor irritant.

Lucy Marinn is a gifted stained glass artist who is reeling from her fiancé running off with her sister, Alice. When Alice was five she contracted meningitis and after Alice’s recovery, the family response was to coddle her well into adulthood. Alice grew up taking what she wanted and she wanted Lucy’s fiancé. The truth is that Alice has always wanted things that Lucy enjoyed and Lucy’s fiancé is just the last in a long line of things Lucy has had sacrificed on the Altar of Pleasing Alice. Kevin, the weak willed fiancé carries out the role of infidelitous bastard almost cartoonishly by telling Lucy that not only is he going to “take a break” and that he’s fallen in love with her sister and that he’s been sleeping her sister, but “But the thing is, Luce…Alice’s going to be moving in pretty soon. So you’ll need to find a place.” (Pg. 21)

Kevin, however, is the only character drawn with this heavy hand. Even Alice is more nuanced and her parents give her some tough love. The majority of the story centers around Lucy and the owner of a vineyard on False Bay at the end of Rainshadow Road. Sam Nolan is a good time guy. He treats women with respect and enjoys their company, but he doesn’t do relationships. The two meet on the shoreline of False Bay and Lucy runs away from Sam, thinking that she’s a single woman alone and he is a big strapping man. There is nothing to fear from Sam Nolan except for a broken heart. When Sam invites her out after some banter, Lucy turns him down.

The guy who just broke up with me…he was exactly like you, in the beginning. Charming, and nice. They’re all like you in the beginning. But I always end up like this. And I can’t do it anymore.

(Pg. 32) I particularly liked this line because it explains why she ended up with #RatBastard and how #RatBastard probably seduced the willing Alice. #RatBastards hurt people because they are so charming. If they weren’t charming no one would give them a chance to be a #RatBastard. I digress.

Lucy and Sam are forced together for two reasons. First, #RatBastard approaches Sam, an old classmate, to take Lucy out on a date because Alice and Lucy’s parents are being difficult about #RatBastard and Alice’s marriage. (I should probably give Alice a nickname so we’ll call her #NarcissisticBitch which is actually a term used by Sam in describing Alice at one point). #RatBastard had done Sam a real favor when Sam had been starting out in the winery business.  Sam is  pretty appalled by #RatBastard’s request but feels compelled to go through with one date.

Sam stared at his disbelief. “So you want me to track down your bitter, man-hating ex-girlfriend, and talk her into going out with me?”

(Pg. 109) When #RatBastard texts him a picture, it is accompanied by a boast that #RatBastard has the “younger and hotter” sister. “As if to reassure himself that he, Kevin, had still gotten the best of the bargain.” (Pg. 111) Sam does not hide this from Lucy (thank god) which leads to an exchange which exemplifies the gentle humor and good dialogue:

“Apparently Kevin and Alice think the solution is to set you up with someone. They want some guy to romance you until you’re so full of endorphins, you won’t have a problem with them getting married anymore.”

“And you’re supposed to be that guy?” she asked incredulously. “Mr. Endorphins?”

“Speaking.”

(Pg. 119) Second, Lucy gets injured and is unable to care for herself. Alone on the island, knowing only Sam (albeit briefly) she finds herself hauled off to the vineyard at Rainshadow Road. This leads to an incredible hot shower scene full of sexual tension that is unconsummated showing how the build up to the act can be as powerful (maybe even more so) than the culmination.

Lucy and Sam’s emotional conflict stems primarily from Lucy’s belief she is bad at relationships and isn’t ready to get burned so soon after the last disastrous breakup with #RatBastard and Sam’s belief he is a bad bet. He’s only seen the bad side of loving as Lucy points out. Sam’s entire experience with other people works best, in his opinion, at the most shallow level. He’s not capable of anything else or so he believes. But Sam’s entire life is changing with renewed relationships with his estranged brothers, caring for his deceased sister’s young daughter, and his deepening friendship and attraction to Lucy. At the end of the story there is no doubt that Lucy and Sam belong together and the way in which their love evolved and cemented into one beautiful image leaves the reader feeling confident this is a secure happy ever after. This is not a cheap book. It’s a trade paperback which likely means the digital price for the book will be $9.99. But it’s a book with passages I’ll want to revisit and for that reason it was worth the buy price for me. B

Best regards

Jane

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*****

Shifty Jelly posts that it is removing itself from the App Store because Amazon is a crappy business partner. ShiftyJelly complains that while its initial terms indicated that if Amazon choose to give away the product for free, the developer would still get 20% of the asking price. However, Amazon offered the Free App of the Day space to ShiftyJelly only with the provision that the developer would be paid nothing. ShiftyJelly agreed to these terms and over 100,000 apps were downloaded.

What actually interests me about this story isn’t that ShiftyJelly feels like it got shafted. They didn’t. They choose to participate in a promotion that gave away their product for free. What is interesting is the low number of downloads (only 100,000) and the fact that the product didn’t generate any significant sales after the promotion.

*****

Dan Lubart, Principal, Iobyte Solutions has offered another analysis of book sales and the Amazon store. The goal of promotional pricing should be to increase a title’s visibility and in Amazon’s case, pushing the title onto the top 100. According to Lubart, HarperCollins achieved that with nine of its titles. My guess is that the HC titles were $1.99 and under.

*****

Another author signed with Thomas & Mercer, Amazon’s mystery imprint. I think Amazon has a better handle on what is selling in the mystery imprint if the titles, covers, and blurbs of the Montlake books are anything to go buy.

However, while indies might be snubbing Amazon’s published books, Costco is not. The Hangman’s Daughter is the featured title in this month’s Costco Connections (a magazine sent to Costco subscribers). The Hangman’s Daughter was originally published in Germany and part of the Amazon Crossing’s program, where Amazon buys and translates books from foreign markets.

*****

Speaking of foreign markets, apparently Macmillan has been doing bad stuff overseas. According to this Wall Street Journal article, Macmillan’s UK branch was accused of participating in bribery in order to secure educational contracts in Africa.

The company said it’s agreed to pay a fine of GBP11.2 million levied by the Serious Fraud Office over illegal payments made by its education division to secure contracts in East and West Africa.

Another school related publishing scandal, Scholastic has decided to reduce the corporate sponsorship of books that it pushes into schools:

Two months after Scholastic, the world’s largest publisher of children’s books, was hit with a barrage of criticism for distributing an unbalanced curriculum sponsored by the coal industry, the company is cutting back its InSchool marketing division’s corporate-sponsored projects, and creating a new review board to vet its materials.

*****

Digital sales are about 14% of Penguin’s business worldwide. At Simon & Schuster (aka Pocket), digital sales have doubled but have not offset the decline in print sales.

*****
I’m opening up the 2012 advertising. I have one slot in August available. If you are interested in rates and terms, email ads at dearauthor.com

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Another Alloy package is the Vampire Diaries written by someone called L.J. Smith. At the center of the series is a love triangle between Elena and two brothers, Stefan and Damon. I don’t know Ms. Smith’s real name but the LJ Smith moniker is apparently owned by Alloy as is the series. The Vampire Diaries has been made into a TV series and all the parties involved, except for the author writing the series, appears to want to make the series more focused on Elena and Stefan instead of Elena and Damon. The ‘ship between Elena and Damon was important to the author and apparently she was unwilling to move the focus to Elena and Stefan so she will no longer be the author of the Vampire Diaries. I’m assuming that the move toward Elena and Stefan is because that is what the powers that be behind the series believes that is what the majority of the viewership/readership wants, after all, TPTB want to make money more than anything.

Smith is said to be deeply saddened by these changes but that is the plight of the ghostwriter or author for hire.

Which brings me to this.

According to Kristin Nelson, an agent, Macmillan is attempting to gain the derivative rights to works in a standard publishing contract.

In the new Macmillan contract is clause 6. (b) Copyright on Derivative Works. To state bluntly, this clause gives the Publisher the right to create "derivative works" based on the work they are buying from the author. And to add insult to injury, the publisher owns the copyright to any of these "new works."

Nelson goes on to state that “this is actually in direct contradiction to US copyright law and can't be legally enforce but hey, what do I know.”

I’m not quite sure what she means by this because publishing contracts are all about the transfer of copyright usage from the creator to a publisher who exploits those rights for money. I’m puzzled that an agent would state this, but regardless, I think it is illuminating about what direction Macmillan (and perhaps other publishers) want to take with the products it buys. I believe that this is in line with what Disney and other multimedia companies do when they buy intellectual property rights. Macmillan announced last year that it would start a film and tv division to produce projects based on books it purchases. The contract term which bothers Nelson so much (and really doesn’t appear to be contrary to US copyright law and unenforceable) seems in line with a transformation from being a book publisher to being a multimedia corporation. I’m not going to comment on whether this is a rights grab or morally corrupt or whatnot. I’m thinking more about what publishing will be in the future and maybe, what it won’t be.

****

I have to confess I feel some impending doom approaching. March 1 is the due date for Apple App Developers to get their apps in line with a new/old policy that Apple is enforcing which requires an app to offer in app purchases of digital media if the retailer provides out of app purchases.

Right now the pressure is being applied to newspapers and magazines that are offering subscriptions you can purchase on their websites but don’t offer in app subscriptions.

The reason that app developers have not offered in app purchases is because Apple takes a 30% cut of every purchase. Think of how this affects Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo.

Right now, about 70% of the books purchased are published by the Big 6. Of the Big 6, 5 of them engage in “agency” pricing. This agency pricing dictates that the retailer like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo gets 30% and the publisher gets 70%. If the retailers have to offer in app purchasing and Apple is going to get 30%, how will Amazon, BN, Kobo et all make money on book sales? Really, they could only do it if the publishers allow them to RAISE the prices on books (and then agency pricing would have to go away).

Apple is supposed to have a media presentation in February to launch the iPad2 and it is possible we may get more details but frankly, Amazon and others have been pretty shitty about communicating things prior to any changes. Agency pricing fell upon our heads with the deletion of the buy button for Macmillan books and then it was a scramble in April to actually buy books as contracts had to be renegotiated and new deals struck. Please, book gods, don’t screw with us this year.

****

Finally, something remotely amusing. I think this page was tweeted by REBYJ but it is a dummies.com post about writing fiction and the romance section is awesome, and by awesome I mean horribly outdated:

Romance is a huge category aimed at diverting and entertaining women. In romance novels, you have elements of fantasy, love, naïveté, extravagance, adventure, and always the heroic lover overcoming impossible odds to be with his true love. Many romances, especially the gothic romance, have an easy-to-follow formula -’ a young, inexperienced girl living a somewhat remote existence is courted or threatened by an evil man and then rescued by a valiant one.

Other subgenres include regency, historical, bodice rippers, and contemporary. If historical detail and settings interest you, try writing a regency or historical romance. If tempestuous relationships are more your cup of tea, bodice rippers are for you. However, if you’re interested in more modern stories with sexual candor, then consider writing a contemporary romance.
…

First-class romance writers include Barbara Cartland, Jude Deveraux, Victoria Holt, Daphne Du Maurier, and Danielle Steele.

****

In even better news, Maya Banks’ Coulter’s Daughterbecame the first digital book to ever make it on the NYTimes Bestseller list (ebook list at 18) and the USAToday list. Congratulations Ms. Banks.

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*****

A new website, Shameless Yonis, is devoted South Asian women writing, exploring and discussing all things erotic. Most of the women who are writing for this site are authors of multicultural erotic romance.

****

Dominique Raccah of Sourcebooks has been putting herself out there to explain what exactly a publisher might offer to authors who are debating whether to go the self published route. This is a recap of what she spoke about at Frankfurt bookfair.

Unsurprisingly, Raccah rounded on the idea that e-books should be “free or $0.99″. She said: “It comes from the concept that we are not adding any value, and I feel we are adding a lot of value, and it's not cheap.” She added: “Book publishing is not book printing, let's be really clear about that: if you think all publishers do is print, you have a problem.”

Raccah also wrote an article for RWR (Romance Writers’ Report) which she republished on the Sourcebooks.com blog.

This deluge of books has, I believe, two big implications:

1. It devalues content-’there's too much of it and too little time. So there's increasing pressure to keep prices low and to give readers more for their money. Not necessarily a bad thing, by the way.

2. It also creates an overwhelming sense of constantly being sold to, which, when combined with the fragmentation of media, makes marketing increasingly difficult. No one likes being sold to. And today there are fewer and fewer mass market media outlets.

….

For me, the real job of a publisher is many, many things, all of which center around the incredibly rewarding challenge of connecting authors and readers. In the end, whether physical or digital, the role of the publisher is to create an audience for the author. It's to bring the author and the book to market. It's never really been about printing. And that's really clear now, isn't it? It's always been about connecting authors and readers.

****

Sony is finally bringing its content to the app market. In December iThing and Android users will be able to use Sony Reader App to read their books and it looks like the Sony Reader store will be web based and will not require a software download. I think this signals that Sony intends to stay in the reader market for a while.

****

Gawker published 21 pages of Sarah Palin's upcoming book and this made Sarah Palin unhappy. HarperColliins has responded by filing suit. On Saturday, a temporary injunction was issued and Gawker was ordered to remove the content. I'm not sure whether the reason for this is because the content had not yet been published and therefore republication would not be considered fair use or whether the republication of 21 pages is considered to be beyond fair use.

Interestingly the pre publication of Palin's books by conservative sites have not been targeted by HarperCollins.

I think litigation of fair use is a valuable activity and I am very interested to see the outcome of this.

I saw the Gawker suit on NBC Today show so the Nick Denton media network is getting a lot of airplay as a result of these suits (Apple's suit against Gizmodo for the acquisition of the iPhone 4 pre release and now this one).

*****

A couple of other really important copyright cases that are going on include the suit against mp3tunes over the safe harbor provision of the DMCA. According to the DMCA, an internet service provider or a hosting service isn’t legally responsible for the illegal content hosted on its servers until it receives notice of the illegal content and fails to take prompt steps to remove such content. EMI sued MP3Tunes, which allows users to upload content, because users were uploading illegal content. Youtube won a similar suit against Viacom but in the Ninth Circuit. The MP3 case is in the Second Circuit.

The second important copyright case is the Costco Wholesale Corporation v. Omega SA. Costco went overseas and bought a whole bunch of Omega watches and sold them at a discount in the Costco warehouses. Omega sued Costco for copyright infringement. This case was argued to the Supreme Court of the United States on November 8, 2010. The ruling in this case might have impact on geographical restrictions, among other things.

****

Amazon introduces the PriceCheck app. News of this had leaked a few weeks ago, but the App is live today. If your phone has a good enough camera, you can take a picture of an item's UPC and then price check using Amazon's app. You can also speak the product's name and Amazon will look up the price of the product. The results that are returned are from Amazon and other online merchants.

****

Borders will be closing 17 superstores after the holidays because they don't fit in with Borders' business objectives. Whatever those may be.

****

I thought this article in the Guardian about how the King James Bible has influenced the secular language was fascinating.

As well as selling an estimated 1bn copies since 1611, the KJB went straight into our literary bloodstream like a lifesaving drug. Whenever we put words into someone’s mouth, or see the writing on the wall, or go from strength to strength, or eat, drink and be merry, or fight the good fight, or bemoan the signs of the times, or find a fly in the ointment, or use words such as “long-suffering”, “scapegoat” and “peacemaker” we are unconsciously quoting the KJB. More astounding, compared to Shakespeare’s prodigal 31,000-word vocabulary, the KJB works its magic with a lexicon of just 12,000 words.

The word scapegoat is a great closing argument in a trial. The story goes that the word scapegoat is derived from an Old Testament ritual described in Leviticus 16. In order to atone for their sins, a clan would gather together each year. Two goats were chosen from the herd, perfect and without blemish. One would be sacrificed. On the head of the other, however, the clan would cast all its sins, hurts, jealousies, aggrievements (is that a word?), misdeeds. This blameless goat would then be driven out into the desert, alive, to suffer alone and die as atonement for the wrongs of all the clan.   (then you appeal to the jury and say something like “this is what the opposing side would have you do, heap all the wrongs and misdeeds of an entire corporation on the head of one person, and drive that blameless person out into the wilderness, alone and helpless, a scapegoat for someone else’s wrongdoing.”)

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Overzealous copyright enforcement results in harmful and crazy results. First example is OK Go. EMI, the record label of OK Go, disabled the embed ability for OK Go’s famous treadmill music video, much to the dismay of OK Go. For OK Go’s next video, they partnered with State Farm to produce it, allowing for embedding. Yes, they had to get away from their record label to allow for embedding.

In another example of how bad it would be for ISPs to be required to police content is the chilling account of the silencing of Laurence Lessig.

But, really, the fact that Lessig has had two separate videos — both of which clearly are fair use — neutered due to bogus copyright infringement risks suggests a serious problem. I’m guessing that, once again, this video was likely caught by the fingerprinting, rather than a direct claim by Warner Music.

John Sargeant wrote a blog post about pricing.   I asked a question and he answered.

The high mass market pricing is a legacy of the old model. Under the agency model trade paperbacks will be $9.99 and lower. Mass markets will probably be at the price of the physical book or lower. We may do some experimenting on price here since digtal will be paperback format agnostic. Some books exsist in both formats-

What his answer means, I am not entirely sure.   He says that at the end of March, the new pricing models will engage and all the books published in print will be available digitally.   It is the beginning of March a) still books not in ebook format (i.e. Louisa Edwards’ On the Steamy Side) and books that have the super premium pricing (Julia Spencer Fleming’s entire backlist is priced at $14.00 even though there are mass market print editions selling for $7.99).   Hopefully, at the end of March, books will show up and at equal to or lower than print prices.   No discounting will be available, however, through retailers.

The definition of the book itself, as far as we can see, is up for grabs. We don’t understand at the moment what the consumer is prepared to pay for them. We have opportunities to do more product marketing, by including a sales message at the end of every e-book for example.

We’ve recommended in book upselling for some time here at DA.   I suggest these CEOs hang around the readers at MobileRead.com and other like places if they want to know what readers want.

Shares in Pearson hit an eight-year high yesterday after the publisher of the Financial Times and Penguin books announced a 13 per cent increase in pre-tax profits.

Part of its success was driven by the huge number of bestsellers:

Bestseller success across the Group: Penguin enjoyed bestseller success around the world with a record number of New York Times bestsellers (243 with 30 hitting number one) in the US and, in the UK, Penguin had 46 Top Ten bestsellers. Bestsellers came from across a wide range of imprints highlighting the depth and breadth of Penguin’s publishing around the world and included titles from debut authors such as The Help by Kathryn Stockett, which was named the USA Today Book of the Year and now has more than 1.7m copies in print, and The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee in the US, and Horse Boy by Rupert Isaacson in the UK, plus well-established author brands such as Charlaine Harris, Nora Roberts, Jamie Oliver, Jeremy Clarkson and Marian Keyes.

Ebooks sales in 2009 were 4 times the number in 2008.

Harlequin closed the year very well. Including favourable exchange impact, Harlequin achieved annual growth in EBITDA of $15.7 million or 22% versus prior year despite the difficult global economic environment. This represents Harlequin’s third consecutive year of growth.”

Driving the demand is the country’s continuing economic boom – 6.7% growth in 2009 despite the global crisis – and the tastes of the new Indian middle class.

“It is a forward looking generation,” said Singh. “The low hanging fruit for us is the single working woman who has money in her hands, the liberty to read, no responsibilities yet, no husband, children and so on.”

I mentioned to other readers on Twitter that I can’t wait to read the four novels from India Mills & Boon writers and would love to see Russia Mills & Boon writers, Korean Mills & Boon writers, Turkish Mills & Boon writers. Maybe this globalization will lead to the diversity that some of us readers hunger for or maybe we’ll realize we are much more alike than different.

"Like most artists I am inspired by work I admire. There are certain similarities between some of my work and the work of others. This was simply meant as an homage to artists I respect, and I definitely want to apologize to any Manga fans or fellow Manga artists who feel I went too far. My inspirations reflect the fact that certain fundamental imagery is common to all Manga. This is the nature of the medium.

I am a big fan of Bleach, as well as other Manga titles. And I am certainly sorry if anyone was offended or upset by what they perceive to be the similarity between my work and the work of artists that I admire and who inspire me."

In true irony, Nick Simmon’s livejournal starts with this entry:

If you steal my artwork, you will pay. In cash.

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She prefers not to lose a potential sale because an ebook version is not available and also does not want to “create an adversarial relationship” with ebook readers or “train those readers that instead the best way to get that digital copy is to download it for free.”

But she also sees the need to maintain control over pricing but admits that publishers have very little pricing knowledge, primarily because they don’t have a relationship with the end user.   Interestingly, the article suggests that publishers will vary price according to perceived demand which means that authors with lesser demand will be priced lower than those with higher demand.   This could work to benefit and hurt the author. It will be interesting to see how ebook royalties will be structured given that the list price (usually the basis for the royalty) may fluctuate a good deal.   In any event, this was a great article and I know it’s a paid subscription but it’s worth it.

In the comments to that article, Robert Gottlieb of Trident Agency, argued that windowing was important and that maybe agents should sell erights first and then print rights. For big name authors, it’s possible that they would have the power to decouple the digital from the print. After all, would Macmillan really want to lose an author like Janet Evanovich over that issue? For most authors, though, this might not be realistic. Of course, the entire battle is over the big name frontlist sales so it may not matter what “most” authors would be able to negotiate.

Under Amazon’s Kindle publishing platform, Gottlieb could garner his author 70% of the royalty off a $9.99 priced ebook. Or he could go through Rosetta Stone and perhaps have a 50/50 profit sharing deal for the ebook alone. One question is whether the ebook would be windowed before or after the print publication. If it is before, then I would think agents would be contacting NYTimes and USAToday to get all pre-print sales counted toward the bestseller list.

Authors are probably more sensitive to demand and pricing than the publishers are due to the direct contact authors have with readers.

Simon & Schuster has been quietly laying off people for the last few weeks. PW reports that Beth Wareham, director of bookbook and lifestyle, is the latest casualty. Wonder if Amazon is hiring editorial staff yet.

A word about Amazon. This has been a very difficult time. Many of you are wondering what has taken so long for Amazon and Macmillan to reach a conclusion. I want to assure you that Amazon has been working very, very hard and always in good faith to find a way forward with us. Though we do not always agree, I remain full of admiration and respect for them. Both of us look forward to being back in business as usual.

"We don't like the Amazon model of selling everything at $9.99," Murdoch said. "They pay us the wholesale price of $14 or whatever we charge," he said. "But I think it really devalues books, and it hurts all the retailers of the hardcover books."

Touchco uses a technology called interpolating force-sensitive resistance, which it puts into displays that can be completely transparent and could cost as little as $10 a square foot. The capacitive touch screens used in the iPad and iPhone are considerably more expensive. Unlike those screens, the Touchco screens can also detect an unlimited number of simultaneous touch points.

This is pretty interesting. I would not have guessed that Amazon was going to invest heavily in the hardware, but this move signals a serious intent to compete, not only on a platform basis, but an entire delivery system. I think it also signals that Amazon is not likely to open its doors to epub books or go DRM free. AllThingsD says that this might be the end of Amazon as a dominant force in book retailing.

Related posts:

1. Monday Midday Links: The Macmillan Amazon Fight Post Mortem Continues
2. Game On: Amazon Removes the Buy Button for All Macmillan Books
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1. Old pricing scheme in which it would sell to Amazon at list and Amazon would decide at what price point to resell to consumers but Macmillan would engage in “deep windowing” which means Amazon wouldn’t get the content for 6-7 months or maybe longer.

2. New pricing scheme wherein Macmillan sets the price and Amazon merely serves as the facilitator in the sale between Macmillan and the reader.

Amazon balked and expressed its disappointment by removing the buy it now button for all the Macmillan titles.

Authors became quite angry with Amazon, starting with John Scalzi and including others like Tobias Buckell, Scott Westerfield, and the like.

Scalzi believes that the fans of an author will abandon Amazon and that Amazon completely lost the optics of the weekend.

They feel somewhat connected to their favorite authors. So when their favorite authors kvetched on their blogs and Facebook pages and Twitter feeds about the screwing Amazon was giving them, what did many of these fans do? They also kvetched on their blogs and Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. So in pissing off a myriad of authors, Amazon also pissed off an exponential number of book readers, many of whom followed their favorite authors' leads in complaining about Amazon, and who themselves were read and followed by an exponential number of others.

If Scalzi and authors could convince their readers to buy en masse from a particular vendor, they have enough power to sell print and e direct.

Tobias Buckell accuses Amazon of price fixing which is sadly so incorrect given the price fixing requires collusion (in other words, Amazon can’t price fix by itself).

If Amazon were a smaller retailer, this probably wouldn't be a big deal. But Amazon pretty much, right now, has a monopoly on online bookselling. They're huge. As a result, this becomes nearly a form of de facto price fixing.

Indie author, April Hamilton, wonders why Macmillan authors are happy about the outcome:

Macmillan authors are rejoicing, and I'm shaking my head. Would musicians cheer a decision on the part of their labels to raise the price of their music on iTunes by 62%? I think not. Yet despite the fact that their books will cost 62% more than other Kindle bestsellers, and their royalty on those sales won't be even one cent higher, the Macmillan author "victory" dance continues apace on the interwebz.

Mike Shatzkin and Kassia Kroszer point out the authors in this situation are really losing out in the form of reduced royalties.

From idealog:

The proposed Agency Model will have publishers setting a price lower than the established retail they had before but higher than the deep discounts Amazon led retailers to sell at. The publisher intends to pay 30% of that established price to the retailer and 25% of either the full consumer price or of the 70% "net" (still to be determined) to the author. This means that the retailer will get a higher price from the consumer and a better margin than they realize now (even though a lower percentage of the "established" price). The author's cut per copy could actually be reduced!

From Kassia Krozser at Booksquare:

So what does all this mean? I imagine the next huge debate will be between agents and publishers as the new model is mapped to real money for the people who write books. Other retailers will be demanding similar terms to Amazon (and perhaps breathing a sigh of relief). Consumers will be sniffing at the new pricing model and voting with their dollars (one doesn't have to read between the lines of Amazon's statement to know where the retailer hopes this ends). DRM will remain on the horizon.

Richard Curtis believes that ebook royalties must increase as a result of this:

If, as a result of negative publicity, Amazon relents on its rigid pricing formula, e-book revenues will increase and it will be so much harder – indeed, it will be intensely embarrassing – for publishers to continue parceling out the mingy royalty they now proffer.

This is a debate that has emotions running high. A thread concerning this at Amazon has 807 posts and counting.

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1. Game On: Amazon Removes the Buy Button for All Macmillan Books
2. Summary Post of Reba’s Amazon Fight
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Dear Customers:
Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!

Thank you for being a customer.

The onus will be on Macmillan to provide reasonable pricing. I have my doubts.

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For 97 years, the Supreme Court had deemed RPM as per se illegal.   This meant that if a supplier was engaged in it, they were in violation of the antitrust law.   But in a 5-4 decision with heated dissents, Leegin made RPM legal, under some circumstances. (For lawyers out there, vertical price restraints were changed from per se illegal to being judged under the rule of reason).

The argument made in the Leegin decision by the manufacturer (or supplier) was that RPM was necessary to protect a manufacturer from “free riding”.   Free riding is where a consumer would go to a high end store and learn all about the product from trained and specialized customer support individuals and then go to a discounter and buy the product.   The discounter would not have invested in the specialized customer support that the high end retailer had.

As an example of this, Nine West proffered the instance:

For example, in one instance an independent retailer with minimal floor space who provided little customer service offered Nine West styles at rock-bottom prices, taking advantage of a nearby retailer’s superior customer service, displays and advertising.

Or from the Leegin decision:

If the consumer can then buy the product from a retailer that discounts because it has not spent capital providing services or developing a quality reputation, the high-service retailer will lose sales to the discounter, forcing it to cut back its services to a level lower than consumers would otherwise prefer. Minimum resale price maintenance alleviates the problem because it prevents the discounter from undercutting the service provider.

In Amazon’s case, however, it provides more service than most retailers. It is not in the position of the deep discounter who benefits from the training and service of the high end retailer.    The danger of free riding isn’t necessarily there. Often people use Amazon’s database to provide information about upcoming books, covers, and consumer reviews without actually purchasing from Amazon.   Books are not a product that require expertise to purchase.

The majority of the Justices in Leegin, led by Justice Kennedy, felt the RPM could increase interbrand competition. Interbrand is the competition among manufacturers selling different brands of the same type of product. Interbrand competition is, generally, what the antitrust laws target.

Resale price maintenance also has the potential to give consumers more options so that they can choose among low-price, low-service brands; high-price, high-service brands; and brands that fall in between.

In terms of the book market, this would mean that Amazon, and others, would promote the low-price brands like Samhain, self published authors, authors using Amazon’s publishing service, independent publishers, and the like. The high-price products would be those of Macmillan and other publishers who would seek a price floor.

Of course, books are a unique product in that each book is its own tiny monopoly. No one else can produce and publish a Stephen King book. There are other mystery books and other horror books but there is no other Stephen King. So is Macmillan attempting to use RPM to gain monopoly profits improperly?

The Supreme Court gave little guidance as to what would be deemed improper. It said that the following factors are relevant:

• Number of manufacturers that are engaging in RPM
• Source of the restraint (i.e., if it came from the retailer versus the manufacturer)
• Manufacturer’s market power

The agency model and the RPM is good for new entrants who don’t have the market power of Amazon.   Mike Tamblyn of Kobo Books and Bob Livosi of Books on Board have both said that $9.99 price point isn’t sustainable for them, as retailers, presumably because they couldn’t afford to suffer the loss that Amazon could.   In fact, one retailer of ebooks informed us that they purchased ebooks at Amazon so that Amazon would take the loss instead of their company.   New entrants into the market is a pro competitive aspect even if price increases are anticompetitive (antitrust is supposedly all about protecting the consumer).

Amazon itself could be engaged in anticompetitive behavior by refusing to allow access to 90% of the ebook market by tying the print sales to the ebook prices.

Justice Stevens noted the dangers of RPM in the dissent:

In doing so, they can prevent dealers from offering customers the lower prices that many cus-tomers prefer; they can prevent dealers from responding tochanges in demand, say falling demand, by cutting prices; they can encourage dealers to substitute service, for price,competition, thereby threatening wastefully to attract too many resources into that portion of the industry; they caninhibit expansion by more efficient dealers whose lower prices might otherwise attract more customers, stifling the development of new, more efficient modes of retailing; and so forth.

RPM has served to increase prices for consumers.   Comparing the States who had allowed for RPM versus the States that had not,  the Department of Justice argued that minimum resale price maintenance had raised prices by 19% to 27%.   There are several other sources that note that RPM results in higher prices:

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) staff, after studying numerousprice surveys, wrote that collectively the surveys "indicate[d] that [resale price maintenance] in most cases increased the prices of products sold with [resale price maintenance]." Bureau of Economics Staff Report to the  FTC, T. Overstreet, Resale Price Maintenance: Economic Theories and Empirical Evidence, 160 (1983) (hereinafter Overstreet). Most economists today agree that, in the words of a prominent antitrust treatise, "resale pricemaintenance tends to produce higher consumer pricesthan would otherwise be the case." 8 Areeda & Hovenk-amp  ¶1604b, at 40 (finding "[t]he evidence . . . persuasive on this point"). See also Brief for William S. Comanor and Frederic M. Scherer as Amici Curiae 4 ("It is uniformly acknowledged that [resale price maintenance] and other vertical restraints lead to higher consumer prices").

"[A] contract, combination,  or conspiracy that establishes a minimum price below which a retailer, wholesaler, or distributor  may not sell a commodity or service is an unreasonable restraint of trade or commerce.

The question of whether State laws can override federal antitrust interpretations is still up in the air (this is called preemption).

To further complicate matters, the Fourth Circuit found that if there was a true agency relationship, this defeated any claims of improper price fixing after Leegin.   In true agency relationship, the manufacturer (publisher) holds the ownership of the book and sells it to the consumer directly.   The bookseller, like Amazon, only assists in the sale.   Amazon would not be a reseller in this circumstance.   Instead the sale is made from the publisher to the consumer.   An example of this would be real estate agents. These agents facilitate the sale between the owner of a house and the buyer of the house.   The real estate agent doesn’t buy the house and then resell it.

In a true agency relationship, one wonders whether Macmillan would have to source the digital file and provide the DRM as well because Macmillan must be in control of the book, must remain the “owner” of the digital file until the ownership transfers to the reader.

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I told them they could stay with their old terms of sale, but that this would involve extensive and deep windowing of titles…Our plan is to price the digital edition of most adult trade books in a price range from $14.99 to $5.99. At first release, concurrent with a hardcover, most titles will be priced between $14.99 and $12.99. E books will almost always appear day on date with the physical edition. Pricing will be dynamic over time.

Macmillan wants to be in control of the prices and will not allow discounting beyond a certain point. This is called retail price maintenance. It used to be illegal for years and years, but in 2007, the Supreme Court in Leegin said that RPM was okay. Many states are opposed to this and have sought Congressional help in overturning Leegin. It will be an evolving legal issue.

Amazon clearly wants to sell books for $9.99. It has created consumer expectation at this price point. Because Amazon won’t agree to Macmillan’s pricing, Macmillan won’t allow the sale of Kindle versions of its ebooks. In response to Macmillan’s desire to dictate minimum pricing, Amazon has removed the buy it now links for the paper books although all the books appear to be available from the secondary market on Amazon.

The reason for Macmillan’s position isn’t that they want to bring reasonably priced ebooks to the market. The reasoning is that $9.99 ebooks devalue the hardcover and move consumers away from being willing to pay a hardcover price (although very few people pay full retail for a hardcover). Teresa Nielsen Hayden (Tor publisher, division of Macmillan) puts it this way over at Boing Boing

I was just explaining over at Making Light, while a fixed $10 price point would undoubtedly be good for Amazon’s ebook business, it would take a shark-sized bite out of the market for hot new bestsellers, which is trade book publishing’s single most profitable area.

This certainly isn’t the end of the Macmillan and Amazon story. It is merely the beginning. As an avid ebook reader, I know I’m getting the shaft here by both Macmillan and Amazon. Amazon cares about creating market dominance. Macmillan cares about pricing ebooks as high as possible to preserve the exalted hardcover (and Macmillan’s business model).

Other publishers can follow suit although they can’t collude together to blackball Amazon. This would be clearly anticompetitive but there’s nothing improper about Macmillan signalling its intent to do something in hopes that all other publishers will follow suit. The more publishers that do what Macmillan is doing, the less power that Amazon has to create its own market price for ebooks.

In the meantime, what does a Kindle owner do in order to keep using the device but still avail themselves of the books out there? There is a fix that don’t involve stripping the DRM. One is to figure out what your Kindle PID is and use that to download Mobipockets at other stores. The second step is to fix the mobipocket so it can be read on the Kindle. This does not strip the DRM but rather merely replaces one code for another.

Of course, the best thing for the reader is to strip the DRM and there are many, many tools out there to do this.

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On Friday, blogs noted an exchange between Walt Mossberg and Steve Jobs about ebooks.   Steve told Walt that publishers hate Amazon and that they would be withholding their ebooks from Amazon.   Late Friday, the “buy it now” button has disappeared from books by Julia Spencer Fleming, Lisa Kleypas, Louisa Edwards, Lora Leigh, and virtually every author who publishes through Tor, St. Martin’s Press, and other Macmillan imprints.

A fight occurred between Hachette and Amazon in 2008 in the UK.   Hachette wasn’t happy with some of the terms that Amazon wanted (or so was reported) and thus Amazon removed the Buy It Now button. The dispute was settled and the Buy It Now button restored.

The reason that this hurts the publisher is because the only option that is available to readers is through the secondary market.   Consumers who want the print version can easily get the title from a secondary seller, both in new and used versions.   But the secondary market means no royalty for the publisher or the author.   One publisher person told me that Amazon could comprise up to 15% of sales which, for a publisher, could mean the different between a profitable year and a non profitable one.

John Sargeant, CEO of Macmillan, is not an ebook fan.

But some publishers worry that the convenience of borrowing books electronically could ultimately cut into sales of print editions.

"I don't have to get in my car, go to the library, look at the book, check it out," said John Sargent, chief executive of Macmillan, which publishes authors like  Janet Evanovich,Augusten Burroughs and  Jeffrey Eugenides. "Instead, I'm sitting in the comfort of my living room and can say, "Oh, that looks interesting' and download it."

As digital collections grow, Mr. Sargent said he feared a world in which "pretty soon you're not paying for anything." Partly because of such concerns, Macmillan does not allow its e-books to be offered in public libraries.

Macmillan has had a very negative attitude toward ebooks.   It has charged 50% more for the digital equivalent of the mass market paperback (usually $9.99 versus a paper copy which sells for $6.99-$7.99). In this link, the list price is $14.00 for a mass market.   It delays the release of ebooks. Some books aren’t released in ebook format at all (Tor books).   Prices of ebooks aren’t reduced even after the mass market versions are released. (I still await Julia Spencer-Fleming’s books to be reduced).

What will Kindle owners do? Will they blame Amazon? Will Amazon tell them that Amazon wants to sell them the book at a good price but that the publisher is demanding that Amazon raise the price? This is a serious battle and I can’t guess who will win.

UPDATE: I called customer support at Amazon and was told that if the Kindle version of the book was removed it was either because there was an error in the book or the publisher removed it.   Amazon would make it available to Kindle owners if it could.   I was told to click the “Tell the Publisher” button so that Amazon could relate to the publisher how many Kindle readers would like the book in Kindle format.

I asked about the missing “Buy It Now” button and asked if Amazon was in some dispute with Macmillan.   I was told that sometimes Amazon likes to promote the Amazon Marketplace.

See more at

• NYTimes Blog
• Publishers Marketplace (reg requ’d)
• John Scalzi’s Whatever

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I think Amazon has the right idea. A change to the html css stylesheet, for example, could randomly create some kind of near invisible change that would allow the source of the pirated material to be tracked down. Courtney Milan suggested something like an italized period as that would be virtually unnoticeable. You could place the substitutive words in the Author’s Note or in the ordering of the metadata tags.

This type of social DRM could create an impediment to that “casual piracy” that content creators fear. I.e., how many people are you going to share a book with if that file contains something that can be tracked back to the original user. While the Amazon concept might seem like an anathema to some authors, I do think it’s a step in the right direction. I hope publishers and vendors can work together to create something like this that would remove the impediment to legitimate uses of an ebook while placing a staying hand on oversharing.

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Kristen Nelson puts out some disturbing news for authors. Fewer books are being bought today.

If editors don’t see something as a big book, they are passing. Or my other recent favorite, if it doesn’t fit into a very narrowly prescribed genre of what has worked for them (oh let’s say something like dark YA angsty romance), then they are also passing.

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Macmillan is signalling something here but we are not sure what. Macmillan, the parent company of Tor and St. Martin’s Press, among other imprints, is moving to a standard contract. The ebook royalties will be 20% off the net, instead of 25%. Additionally, direct to consumer sales will result in a higher royalty. 10% off the first 10,000 sales and 15% for sales in excess of 10,000. In the past, that royalty rate was 5%. Tor already has a direct to consumer sale mechanism in place with its Tor Store. This leads me to wonder if there will be more publisher imprint stores? One thing I do know, free shipping is often a deal breaker for me. The direct to consumer sale has to offer a good price and free shipping or there won’t be a reason for me to break away from buying in store or at Amazon or Book Depository.

Of course, if Macmillan tries to undercut the pricing at Amazon, it might result in Amazon trying to punish them. Will Macmillan be willing (or able) to suffer economic loss for long term gain? Amazon was willing to suffer through 7 years of loss in order to gain its market dominance today.

I’ve often thought that one way to increase profits in a market that is moving away from brick and mortar purchases to online retailing is to cut out the intermediaries.   SB Sarah has some words for Macmillan regarding their ebook strategy.

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Karen Scott has another lovely letter from New Concepts owner and president, Madris De Pasteur. I wonder, like the commenters, why any author would publish with New Concepts.

We’re currently working on designing a new webpage for NCP to be launched early next year. Due to the fact that the unhappy have made a nuisance of themselves reminding us repeatedly to remove their books upon expiration, we’ve inadvertently removed some books by authors who wanted to roll over.

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The nook won’t be available at every Barnes and Noble store, merely the ones with high traffic/volume. You might want to check with your local store to see if they are going to get the display and/or the devices to sell.

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Film Studios are looking to block DVD Rentals for the first month of the release, hoping this will force more purchases. Rental companies are filing suit.

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The next Stephen King book won’t be released as an ebook for almost one month after the release of the paper format and it will be priced at $35.00. SW Vaughn notes that King has stated the $35 ebook price is incorrect.

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Random House has caved to threats of a lawsuit by the NBA over the tell all book by Tim Donaghy regarding star treatment (yes, it happens); fixing of a game to get to the holy grail of ratings (game 7); petty bets controlling referee behavior and basically how the NBA is no better than the WWE only the WWE admits that it is selling entertainment and not unadulterated athletic endeavors.

Random House was prepared to sell this book up until 2 weeks ago when the NBA came knocking.   Either it didn’t fact check or its caving under pressure.   Either one is a black eye on Random House.

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