Dear Author » romance_ebooks

2009 RITA/Golden Heart Contest Controversy: Ebook Authors Need Not Apply

Jane — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:55:15 +0000

This past fall RWA announced its new RITA / Golden Heart eligibility rules. I actually blogged about it when it was announced but apparently authors did not pay attention/read the rules/understand what they were reading.

The new rules are thus:

Contest Rules Specific to the RITA

Books entered in the 2009 RITA contest must:

·                    Have an original copyright date (printed on the copyright page) or a first printing date or a first North American printing date of 2008.

·                  Not have been previously entered.

·                  Be mass-produced by a non-Subsidy, non-Vanity Publisher in print book format.

·                  Meet the requirements for the category in which it was entered.

·                  Be a work of original fictional narrative prose.

http://www.rwanational.org/cs/contests_and_awards/rita_awards/contest_rules

This means that books that are print on demand are not eligible nor are books that are published by what RWA considers to be a Subsidy or Vanity Publisher. So some authors who are members of PAN submitted their books and now are out the contest fee and cost of the copies of the books (around $250+ for some) because the books submitted are not “mass produced.”

This has led to some hard feelings and authors pulling out of the contest as judges and generally stirring up a lot of controversy. I guess my feeling is that if an author is PAN member then she should be able to submit books to the RITA contest. An online petition can be found here in support of changing the rules.

What Is the Future of E Publishing?

Jane — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 09:00:11 +0000

Last week I made a few statements that conflated fetish fiction publishing with shady fly-by-night publishing. As Emily Veinglory pointed out on her blog, this really isn’t an appropriate charge. The conflation of unsucrupulous publishing and the content of the publishing matter was wrong and I apologize for that. A house that does publish what I term fetish fiction can still be an ethical place of business.

I do wonder, though, what the next five years of e-publishing will hold. Will epublishing be about the margins of erotica and erotic romance? Will it be about niches that fill gaps in mainstream publishing? Will houses like Samhain, Loose ID, Amber Quill Press become major players in the publishing market because of the rise of ebooks? I think that e publishing is at a crossroads.

It was about eight years ago that Tina Engler started Ellora’s Cave. It started to take off in 2003 with a reported $1.2 million in revenues. With seemingly no start up revenue, Engler turned an e publishing business into a multi-millionaire dollar concern. There was no question that once that news got out, the erotic romance publishing industry ramped up.

Now, though, it appears that the erotic romance marketing is leveling off. For one thing, e-authors have been leaving in droves for New York. First it was authors like MaryJanice Davidson, Lora Leigh followed by authors such as Shiloh Walker, and Anya Bast. More recently Lauren Dane and Lorelie James got signed to NY houses. Angela James lamented that pretty soon she’ll have no one else to edit because the NY publishers have razed her stable of authors. Secondly, erotic romance isn’t selling what it used to. Donald Maass of the Donald Maass Literary Agency commented in an interview that Erotica is selling half what is was before. At the RWA conference this summer, Jessica Faust indicated that success and sales for an erotic romance author is capped.

It seems the current focus of e-publishers is to find the books with the most kink and even some books seem to be straining for the kink. A recent EC blurb had my reviewing group turning on its head to decipher whether there was sex between a sister and a brother and a friend or a sister setting up the brother and a friend. There was another lovely ebook titled “Double Entry.” As I forwarded the blurb to the DA reviewing group, I commented that it didn’t even need a blurb, the title was so explicit in itself. I understand that sex sells but surely sex isn’t the only thing that sells. Or that the only market in epublishing is increased kink or filling the niches that mainstream epublishers like Samhain and even EC won’t serve.

Why not take a tack like Harlequin Historicals and choose different time settings. Instead of seeing how many orifices on one woman can be filled and how close in sanguinity her partner is, why not explore different time periods like the Roman time (which was purportedly a time of orgies), the Edwardian time (early 20th C). Why not different locations like Russia, the Far East, Central America? What happened to the Mayans, the generals in the army of Alexander the Great, etc. etc.

There seems to be a ton of niche areas outside of fetish fiction that can be explored yet instead of finding new locales, new fantasy regions, new whatever. Instead, the majority of new epublishers seem to find the niche in epublishing to be selling more and more outre erotic content.

Belgrave House publishes regencies. It buys out of print books, scans them in, and publishes them in e-form. I noticed that Joan Wolf’s old regencies are being picked up which is great because some of her best work was published under the Signet Regency line. Belgrave House has a niche. Niche does not necessarily mean doing something kinkier than the person before. It’s carving out an area that no one else does really well, and doing it very well. If it is kink, fetish fiction, or erotic romance for the margins of the romance reading public, then so be it. But surely that isn’t the only ebook market out there.

As I sit here at the end of 2007, I wonder what lies ahead in e-publishing? Will epublishing eventually push an ereader like myself and my blogging partner, Jayne, out of the e-market because the niches are for erotic romance margins? Or will it also serve mainstream romance readers who yearn for something different than what the NY houses choose to put out there?

I am hopeful that there will be room for everyone, but I see epublishing contracting rather than expanding, particularly as NY gets in the epublishing game.

Next week: Jayne and I put together a top 10 ebooks of 2007 list.

REVIEW: Ebookstore Review: All Romance Ebooks

Jane — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 10:00:41 +0000

Angie W, Executive Editor of Samhain Publishing, brought a new ebookstore to our attention last week: All Romance Ebooks. All Romance Ebooks or “ARe” opened its doors on November 1, 2006, and while it took a while to get my attention I appreciate it didn’t go around and spam comment on all of our blogs like another ebook company did a couple of months ago.

This ecommerce site offers ebooks from all the major electronic publishers except for Ellora’s Cave. I started with its FAQ section and its suprisingly complete, even bringing up issues I hadn’t thought of such as whether they are selling our personal information to any third party (NO) or whether the “tell a friend” section is a way for them to harvest more emails (another NO). Here’s why I love this idea. As a consumer, I like to go to one place to buy all my books, particularly ebooks. I cannot remember all of the ebook publishers out there and bringing all the epublished romance books together in one location makes for easy browsing and even easier purchasing.

Publishers who are reselling through ARe:

Aphrodite Unlaced, BooksForABuck, Champagne, eXtasy, Freya’s Bower, Linden Bay Romance, Liquid Silver, loveyoudivine, Mardis Gras, Midnight Showcase, Phaze, Samhain, Siren, Uncial, Writer’s Exchange, Zumaya, and others.

***

Website layout – The home page features the covers of “What’s New” and “What’s Hot”. I figured out that “What’s New” referred to newly added, but I was unsure what “What’s Hot” meant. On the lower left side, there is a list of the “Top 10 Bestsellers” and the “Top 10 Highest Rated.”

According to the FAQ, bestselling status is calculated by the average sales per day for the past 30 days. The ratings are given by those who have purchased the book.

There are links to “Home”, “My Library”, “Discount Books”, “FAQ”, “Logout”, and “Cart”. You can browse by category (Vampire/Werewolf, Shapeshifter, Inspirational, Multiple Partners, and so on). Within the category pages, you can sort the list by Bestselling, Top Rated, Recently Added, and Word Count. You can also search by “Author”, “Title”, or “Publisher.” If you click on a title, you will also be given the option to look at all the books by that particular author. Some books have excerpts and some have reviews from review websites.

Rating- There is a 5 flame heat index with one flame representing books wherein love scenes either without consummation or without details of consummation. Five flames contain explicit love scenes using graphic and direct language and subject matter than some find objectionable. The “heat” index is on each page right under the word count.

Information about each book - Clicking on a book title will take you to a page which shows the book cover, author, link to other books by author, publisher, ISBN no., Word Count (on every book!!!), Heat Index, and format options. There are sometimes

* * *

Navigation – By category. Having chosen a category, you can browse by bestselling, top ranked, recently added, and word count. On a book page, you will have the option to browse that particular author’s other works. You can search by title, author, or publisher.
Excerpts – One page and dependent upon the book. Not all books have excerpts.
Reviews – None by book purchasers but book purchasers can rate the books.
Series -Not identified.
Wishlist – None.
Cart – After clicking on “Add to Cart”, a new page shows up showing your cart contents and suggesting additional books for purchase. You have the option to “Continue Shopping” or “Checkout Now”. The next page shows your billing information and requires you to enter your credit card number. When the purchase is complete, you are given a link to your library page where you have the option to download your book in whatever format the book was available in.
Bookshelf - Eternal bookshelf with the option to redownload your book, only in the format which you originally choose. In other words, you get one chance to determine what format you want and there is no going back.
Payments – Visa and Mastercard. NO Paypal.
Downloads – Immediate upon payment.
Confirmation – Email sent with details of purchase (book and price). There is no download link.
Account set up – Must register. The billing information is saved, but the credit card number is not.
Formats – Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Reader, and HTML. Some books also offer Mobipocket and Rocket.

* * *

While every commerce place has room for improvement, ARe is doing a lot of things right. It has a great discount program: buy 10 books and get 1 free. It has an “eternal library” meaning that you can redownload your books at anytime. You don’t have to wait for a confirmation email to download. The FAQ was very detailed and provided an answer to almost every question you could think of. I really appreciated the word count information on each page (versus no word count or some cutesy name disguising words count). I loved the ability to browse by word count as well.

Irks -No paypal. Can only download a book in one format. The category pages default to an alphabetical listing which I think is unfair. I would prefer the default listing be “bestsellling” or “top ranked” or even “recently added” versus the alphabetical listing.

Overall, if you are an epublishing reader, All Romance Ebooks is a great new service. There is definitely room for improvement and it’s catalog of offerings doesn’t appear to be a full complement from the publishers but it’s a good start and definitely a decent alternative to Fictionwise. I’ll be using it again.