Honestly Mrs Graves (I noted you’re not an ex wife ;) ) I wasn’t sure if this novel would work for me or not. You see, I’m one of the few Americans who has never watched an episode of “Desperate Housewives.” Yes, yes, I know it’s hard to believe but it’s true. Anyway, I read [...]

Fictionwise uses a rebate system whereby you are given back dollars for purchases which you can then use for future purchases. Each Monday they offer three books with a 100% micropay rebate, meaning if you buy the book, you get the entire amount back to be used on a book in the future. [...]

The April 23, 2007, issue of Time magazine contained an article on buzz marketing. Proctor & Gamble signed up 500,000 mothers to evangelize P&G products. P&G sends those women marketing materials and coupons but the volunteers can say anything they want, even negative things, about the products. Recent research has indicated that [...]

At the Center of the Storm is George J Tenet’s way ofstriking out against the Bush Administration’s war on Iraq. The book is released today by Harper Collins. Problematically, Tenet’s stance is taken at a time that it is politically convenient for him but not for the soldiers who have lost their lives [...]

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Lisa Marie Rice was one of the first ebook authors that I recall garnering a large internet following. Her Midnight series– Midnight Man, Midnight Run, Midnight Angel are some of the most [...]

I received an email this week from a reader who wanted to buy an ebook reader. She wasn’t very familiar with ebooks other than the epublished ones and didn’t know at all about DRM (digital rights management). She wasn’t aware that when you bought a Sony Reader, the books you bought for the Sony Reader [...]

Dear Mrs. Mueller,
Once again you deliver the goods. A hot story, well told in under 40 pages (on my IPAQ). I’m still trying to find out information about this battle which Kybele took part in which resulted in her capture and eventual sale to our hero, Orestes, in Greece. So far Thessius is only [...]

Not at all romance related, but tres cool.

Dear Ms. Linden,
A while back, Jane reviewed your second novel, What a Gentleman Wants, and gave it a B. After enjoying your debut, What a Woman Needs (a B- for me), I thought I'd give your second book a try. I wish I liked it as much as Jane did, but for me, [...]

I never was interested in werewolves until I read Bitten by Kelley Armstrong. Her evocative tale of a girl lost suffering the worst betrayal at the hands of her lover but ultimately growing strong enough to take back her life and accept the beast within her was seductive and I became part of her web [...]

Dear Ms. Lynne:
Fellow blogger Karen Scott emailed me yesterday and said I should go and buy Ben’s Wildflower. I obediently went and bought it. About 10 pages in, I emailed Ms. Scott back and asked her if I had done something to offend her because I thought she and I were pals.
Katie Crawford is [...]

The Baltimore Sun had an article criticizing the selling of books online at ABE and Amazon by the not for profit organization, Book Thing. Under the name, Boards & Wraps, Russell Wattenberg has over 4,000 titles listed for sale online. These are books that Wattenberg receives in the form [...]

The Children of Hurin, a Tolkien book published posthumously, popped in at No. 2 with Rhonda Byrne’s , The Secret, remaining at the number 1 spot. Jodi Picoult’s book, Nineteen Minutes, about school violence reappeared on the list at No. 19. Romances did not appear in any great numbers with romantic [...]

Dear Mrs Carsen,
Thanks for sending us a copy of your ebook “Not Quite Dead.” I think it’s the first time I’ve read a book featuring this particular type of paranormal hero and to be honest, I’m still trying to name him. Is he a zombie? Or should we just settle on the term “undead?”
He’s [...]

Dear Ms. Burton:
When you sent me this book to review, you said that your plan was to eventually convince me of your writing genius. I thought to myself, this is one foolish chick because previous reviews have shown that my taste and your books don’t always run in synchronicity, but your devious plan is [...]

Booksales are up but bookstore sales are down. Perhaps the difference can be explained by Amazon who reported a profit of $111 million for quarter ending March 31 with sales up 32% from a year ago.
I remember when reports said that Amazon book sales only account for 5% of the book market. [...]

Despite fears of a dwindling readership, February book sales were up. Ebooks had the strongest gains, rising 44.7% with sales of 2.5 million. Adult hardcovers followed close behind with sales of $111.9m and Children/YA hardcovers rose 43.4% with sales of $37.4 million. I read a great young adult book yesterday by Melissa [...]

Dear Mrs. Gregory,
Having read and loved “The Other Boleyn Girl,” I hurried out and bought “The Queen’s Fool” when it was first released three years ago. Then….life happened and despite the fact that it sat on a table right in front of me for that long, it’s taken me until now to pick it [...]

The RITA finalists were announced last month. We wanted to devise a contest that would allow readers to feel more connected to the RITA Award which is considered by romance authors to be the Oscar of the romance genre. Any reader can fill out a ballot and submit their guesses [...]

Dear Ms. Chase,
Your books have provided me with hours of happy reading over the years. I rejoiced when you began writing the Carsington series and for the most part have enjoyed them all. Not Quite A Lady will easily take its place beside them but the grade will Not Quite be up to Lord Perfect.
Lady [...]

What can I say? Readers must like Atlantis.
USA Today bestselling author Alyssa Day’s ATLANTIS UNBOUND plus two more novels and a novella in her Warriors of Poseidon paranormal romance series, about a race of Atlantaen warriors tasked to protect mankind in its darkest hour, again to Cindy Hwang at Berkley, in a [...]

Authors have been able to blog on Amazon and the results were then fed to your personalized blog which Amazon called a Plog. The problem is, apparently, that few posts ever made it to the reader’s Plog.
Amazon has now eliminated the blog and implemented Amazon Daily. Amazon Daily is available to all visitors, [...]

Reader Azure noted in the forum that the entire Black Dagger Brotherhood series is now in ebook format. After doing some searching, here are the locations, prices and formats.

Ebooks.com, $6.99 (Adobe, Mobi and MS Lit)
Mobipocket, $6.99 (Mobi only)

Diesel Ebooks, $6.99 (MS Lit, Palm, Adobe)
Ebooks.com, $6.99 (Adobe, Mobi and MS Lit)
Powells, $6.20 (MS Lit, Adobe, [...]

Bob Mayer, the male half of the writing team of Crusie and Mayer, wrote in an interview with All About Romance about the difference between a male writing and a female writing male characters. In Don’t Look Down, the hero, JT, is faced with a naked starlett and does, according to Mayer, what any [...]

Dear Ms. Schwab:
I remember when The Lily Brand was release in 2005 and many were shocked by its dark tones. I had to read it because it sounded different and back a few years ago, we weren’t really getting the variety that we have today. Like many dark books, in The Lily Brand [...]

;Sybil is doing some innovative Guest Author Days this month and next featuring Jennifer Estep next Monday and Kelley Armstrong the following day. Today, she’s hosting Claire Cross, author of All or Nothing, whose book I thought was touching and romantic. You might mosey over there and comment. She’s giving away 6 [...]

Publisher’s Weekly reported that The Penguin Group, publisher of books by Nora Roberts, Jayne Ann Krentz, JR Ward, Nalini Singh and Meljean Brook, has finally created a digital director position and named someone to (wo)man it. Genevieve Shore is now the global digital director for Penguin worldwide. She reports [...]

Scholastic CEO, Richard Robinson, was interviewed by NYTimes and hinted that there would be future Rowling books. When questioned about the future of Scholastic without Potter, Robinson replied “We can believe this is the last book on Harry Potter.” In following up on that the Times asked whether Scholastic [...]

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Sandra Schwab first came to my attention with her provocative first book, The Lily Brand. It was a dark, unconventional romance that shocked many romances readers. Castle of the Wolf is her [...]

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 [...]

Dear Ms. Kenner:

I started becoming a Julie Kenner fan with the The Givenchy Code whose title was not only a clever play on the blockbuster, The Da Vinci Code, but also a creative take on the chick lit oeuvre: a heroine who loved shoes and code breaking. In The Prada Paradox, the last in the [...]

Go vote for the DearAuthor May Bookclub selection. The Ja(y)nes will picked a number of books and everyone who is registered at the forum can vote. The Bookclub selection will receive a review from Jayne and a video review from Jane. Click HERE to see the nominations and HERE to vote.
We [...]

I’ve got a hardcover copy of this book to giveaway to a random commenter. You just need to post the best bad date/bad prom night story in your memory banks. The comments will close on Sunday, April 22.
My worst date was in college. I hadn’t much dating experience. My parents were [...]

The Atlanta Journal Constitution has terminated the position of Books editor, Teresa Weaver. The Constitution says that in the future, it will use freelance writers. However, a publicist for Little, Brown based out of Atlanta believes that this is the sign of the book section being eliminated by the paper like so many [...]

The Annual Cover Contest is now open for voting. Voting closes on May 11, 2007, so it will behoove those interested to go over and vote now.

You’ll have to forgive me, but I didn’t realize that it was Friday until about three minutes ago. My nose has been in a book since yesterday and I have been reading it non stop. I think my Thursday and Friday melded together in my mind. Essentially, this could be sub titled, [...]

Dear Mrs Lovelace,
I’ve read and heard on numerous occasions that there is at least a 50% divorce rate for Special Forces marriages. Which is why I’ve always looked at these SEAL, Green Beret, Delta force, Whatever romances with a degree of skepticism. And when an author tries to get a whole squad married off, well [...]

Dear Ms. Dean:
I thought the premise of your story was quite fun. An average girl decides to pen a self help book on how to pick up guys, provocatively titled “The Average Girl’s Guide to Getting Laid.” In the process, she gains self confidence and a man to die for. Overall, the [...]

Dear Mrs Frankel,
This has to be every woman’s nightmare. The details have been haggled over for months, the $$$ dress has been bought, guests are gathered, the shrimp is marinating, the ice sculpture is being chiseled into shape and the groom is a &^%$#@ no show. And if the wedding is costing her parents a [...]

I could virtually copy and paste last week’s list, there are so few changes this week. Rhonda Byrne’s unshakeable book, The Secret, remains at the number 1 spot. Remaining true to the age old thereom that art is better recognized when the artist dies, Kurt Vonnegut appears on the list at No. 34 [...]

Dear Ms. Piñeiro:
Blood Calls is Book 6 in the Calling series. This vampire novel raises some interesting philosophical questions such immortality being weighed against the continual loss of loved ones; the sexual fetish of S&M due to psychological ties to torture; being the object of affection by another man; and infidelity. The problem [...]

Dear Mrs. Beverley,
At last, Rothgar’s story. I think that you did a good job considering the fact that you’d built Beowulf Malloren, the Marquess of Rothgar into an almost superhuman figure over the course of the other four books in this series. He needed a strong woman to balance him and he got it [...]

Publisher’s Weekly reports that the London Book Fair is ripe with gossip about the Amazon Reader. It is reported that Amazon is to release the reader this spring, dependent on content. Amazon Reader will likely run Mobipocket which Amazon purchased a few years ago.
Publishers have already been looking at it for months. [...]

Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston purchased the rights to The Time Traveler’s Wife when they were still married. After the divorce, the rights went to Brad Pitt’s Plan B company. Production for the movie will start in August with Eric Bana playing Henry and Rachel McAdams, Clare. Robert Schwentke will direct. [...]

Dear Ms. Hart,
Elle Kavanagh wears only black and white. She counts things — not just money at her prestigious accounting job, but also stars, marbles, ceiling tiles. She buys her boss’s wife candy to assuage her guilt for sleeping with him years before. She has been celibate for three years, but before [...]

Prom Nights from Hell is a thoroughly entertaining collection of stories from five of the top teen writers in the business. The fresh and fully realized worlds will engage the entire spectrum of readers from tween to adult. While not all of the stories are self contained as some appear to be introductions to future [...]

Melanie Lynn Hauser, author of Confessions of Super Mom andSuper Mom Saves the World, has put her first book, an unpublished work, online. It’s available for free and can give readers a taste of what Hauser’s writing is like. Which, of course, is the whole point of free fiction. If I [...]

American Technology Analyst Shaw Wu believes that there are signs which indicate Apple is considering a rebate in the range of $50-$150 to help subsidize the cost of the IPhone. According to the report, AT&T expects to make approximately $1800-$2400 bi annually on an Apple IPhone customer with a 2 year agreement [...]

It seems pretty innocuous but to those in the business, doing a little photoshop editing of a journalism photo is pretty egregious. Allan Detrich, formerly of the Toledo Blade, was found to have photoshopped prints submitted for publication. Most of the editing was done to remove backgrounds according to [...]

No Humans Involved is the latest entry in Kelley Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld Series. Jaime Vegas, necromancer, confronts her past while trying to literally put some ghosts to rest. Armstrong brings a new twist to the necromancer mythology by making Vargas one of the weaker paranormal creatures. She can’t [...]