Two male authors were chosen as the winners of the Gather.com’s First Chapters Writing Contest. Simon & Schuster’s Touchstone imprint will publish Terry Shaw’s, The Way Life Should Be, featuring a reporter who investigates his friend’s death, and a historical thriller by Geoffrey Edwards titled, Fire Bell in the Night.
Yes, I pulled the sex [...]

Dear Ms. Vincent:
I was excited about your book after Angie W blogged about it a few months ago. It is an urban fantasy, shapeshifter romance and I really like those books. It’s told in the first person. With a first person narrative, we readers have to WANT to root for the character’s [...]

Phyl sent me this picture last week and I meant to blog about it. She said
I've passed this truck a couple of times on the freeway and today saw it parked out in front of Hobby Lobby and managed to snap a picture with my phone camera. It's an ad for a number of [...]

Khaled Hosseini’s sophomore effort, A Thousand Splendid Suns, won the No. 1 position. This book is the subject of a huge promotional push but that doesn’t always guarantee placement on a list, let alone the number one position. Hosseini’s debut book, The Kite Runner, is selling briskly and at No. 11.
Susannah’s Garden by [...]

Dear Ms Law,
When Jane sent me a bundle of June release books, I immediately picked yours off the pile to try. I’ve long been a fan of your historicals (please say you haven’t given up writing Westerns) and I wanted to see how you’d handle a contemporary. Well, if you must give up historicals, at [...]

Dear Ms. James:
Maybe I am not your audience. I love your writing which is full of historical detail and great dialogue. Each scenes is amazing. The theme that everyone wants what they perceive that they cannot have wove under and around each character and their interactions. What then, when that is [...]

Okay, so now maybe the weird publicity material that Harlequin does emphasizing romantic relationships instead of books makes sense. It announced today that it would be publishing a line of non fiction books such as self help, diet, inspirational, memior and biographies. Its first non fiction book, Friends: A Love Story by [...]

Meljean Brook follows up her debut effort with Demon Moon, another smart take on the vampire mythology. Colin is a vampire without compare. Made from Nosferatu blood, he is powerful but cursed. He cannot drink from someone without driving them to madness. And he must drink to survive. When the [...]

This past week, I’ve not been returning emails in a timely fashion. I’ve ignored commenters on the website. I’ve been weak about adding “news” to the “news section.” In essence, I’ve been a bad blogger. But I am not the only one. Look around the blogosphere and there are some [...]

There is usually a great hue and cry raised about review copy sales. One reviewer is taking an in-your-face point of view and sells them direct from her site. I’ve got some highly prized ARCs sitting in my curio cabinet. How much does anyone want to give me for Creation in Death?
MJ [...]

If You Deceive, the third and last installment in Kresley Cole's entertaining MacCarrick brothers series, gives the oldest and most difficult brother, Ethan, the chance to find his "forechosen mate . . . For his true lady alone his life and heart can save.� Not surprisingly, the most difficult brother also proves to be [...]

Over the weekend, Gail Northman resigned from Triskelion. This has led to a flood of authors demanding their rights back as Northman, regardless of the questionable email, was considered by some authors to be the backbone of Triskelion. Let’s hope that Triskelion doesn’t go the way of Venus Press. [...]

This was originally posted last August. The book, however, was not in print anywhere as the author had moved publishers. I received notice that this is now available from Mundania Press in both print and ebook form. This is a favorite series of Jayne and mine [...]

First its USAToday with its co-branded books and now it is author Nora Roberts. She has moved into icon status, if she wasn’t already before, with her very own bobblehead to be given away at the July 6th Hagerstown Suns baseball game. Hagerstown Suns are the single A affiliate of the Washington Nationals. [...]

In March 2007, RWA decided to review the Publisher Recognition standards. Currently the standards require the following:

publisher pay royalties
not a subsidy or vanity presss
length of business minimum of 1 year
sold at least 1500 hardcover or trade paperback or 5,000 of any other format of one romance book

Selling to the publisher qualifies a member for [...]

Houghton Mifflin is setting up shop at BEA mimicking a bookstore. Inside, it will play videos of its authors and books that can be used by bookstores to promote author signings. I think that this is a great idea and would love to see book trailers and author interviews [...]

Although it is not in fiction books, yet, USA Today announced that it will work with 6 major publishers to release co branded books. These are mostly puzzle compilations. Examples of these are as follows:

NOLO business an legal guides co produced with USA Today to be released in February 2008.
Sports Publishing [...]

BookSense.com has launched a program that allows its stores to sell e-books to customers’ computers or handheld devices. Ingram Digital Ventures will fulfill e-book orders in three formats: Palm OS, Adobe and Microsoft Reader.
Last winter, the ABA signed an agreement with Ingram to allow affiliate bookstores to sell ebooks. This [...]

Jo Leigh is a woman of varied talents. Unlike the common thinking behind the jack of all trades term, she is not a master of none. She does just write books, she writes award winning books. She doesn’t just play pool, she wins 8 ball championships. She has also written [...]

Dear Ms. Pickens:
I almost didn’t read this book. It was a Regency, with a spy. The blurb used word like “sultry body” and described the hero as “sinfully sensuous.” Groan. However, the editor was Melanie Murray, and Murray was interviewed by us a few months ago so I thought I should [...]

Dear Ms Cummings,
Thank you for finding and taking the time to edit and publish what might have remained a little read glimpse into the daily life of David Day. Day, though a middle aged man at the time and also one having a wife and four children to support, didn’t hesitate to answer his country’s [...]

I installed the Alex King mobile plugin at Sybil’s blog (The Good, The Bad, The Unread) a week ago because I was tired of trying to access it from my smart phone and having to wait five years for the home page to load. According to Business Week, 80 million smart phones were shipped [...]

Dear Ms Kenner,
Two years ago I got swept up in your Play.Survive.Win world. The scavenger hunt plot with death as the booby prize for those who lost plus smart protagonists sucked me in and didn’t let go until the last page. “The Prada Paradox” closes the three book story arc and, while not as good [...]

Dear Ms. Marr:
This story probably has one of the best opening scenes I’ve read. Keenan, the Summer King, has wooed countless of girls throughout the centuries, hoping that each is the one who will return Summer to the faeries. The Winter Queen, Keenan’s mother, has been slowly overtaking fairyland and the cold power [...]

I can’t remember when I first started reading Meg Cabot, but it was before she started publishing her Princess Diary series. I met her once at a book signing. She wasn’t quite as famous, but she was just as endearing then as she is now. Her effervescent personality, which shines through even a [...]

Dear Ms. Kelly,
I have enjoyed several of your books in the past, so I rejoiced to hear that you had a new book coming out. Beau Crusoe is the story of James Trevenen, a naval officer shipwrecked on a deserted island where he spent five years in isolation. To hold on to his [...]

It was a short stay at the stop for Patterson. Rhonda Byrnes, The Secret, wrestles her number one position back from Patterson’s, The 6th Target.
It was a slow week for romance book sales. Only the really big names and Hannah Howell’s, Highland Savage, are on the list.
***
Susannah’s Garden, Debbie Macomber (Mira), [...]

One of the first and most popular group blogs, Squawk Radio, is closing its doors. It’s all speculative about why right now. It’s hard to blog every day and think of new topics. It’s a little surprising since they recently moved to this website and since they seem [...]

According to Shelf Awareness, libraries account for 10% of book sales. Apparently what libraries choose to buy is a mystery. We should Wendy, The Super Librarian, and Devon, come talk about library sales. I know that Wendy buys for many, many libraries. Hmm. [...]

Dear Ms Didion,
I found your account of your first year after the sudden and tragic death of your husband, all while dealing with your critically ill daughter’s many admissions to various hospitals, to be deeply moving yet in some ways offsetting and disjointed. I guess that’s due to intermixing the two narratives in a [...]

Dear Ms. Callen:
When I first picked up your book, The Viscount in Her Bedroom, I was certain I knew exactly what would be inside. Just another Avon Regency historical. Ho hum. The back cover blurb doesn’t do much to differentiate the book from the rest of the pack. The truth, though, [...]

The Association of American Publishers estimate that there is a total drop in sales from 2005 by 0.3%. Trade paperbacks increased by 8.5% ($8.28billion) and ebooks were up 24.1%($54.4million). Audio book sales were down 11.7% along with religion and book clubs. Maybe Amazon’s acquisition of Brilliance will lead to a surge in [...]

ShelfAwareness reported this morning that Amazon is on the verge of acquiring Brilliance Audio, U.S’s largest independent audiobook publisher. It puts out 12-15 audiobooks each month and is located in Grand Haven, Mich.
Amazon is no stranger to acquisitions. Two years ago it purchased Mobipocket which has the largest library of ebooks; last month [...]

Dear Ms Thornton,
“The Vagabond Duchess” winds up your trilogy about a set of cousins who all find love around the time of the Great Fire of London in 1666. As such, it’s set in one of my favorite time eras, the lusty and bawdy court of King Charles II. Men dressed like fops but carried [...]

Cipher by Narita Minako. Published by CMX. Retail $9.99. Rating: Teen (some heavy issues, but little to no sex or violence; I’d say high school age personally). 7/12 volumes released in English, complete in Japan.
Dear CMX,

I think you are my favorite shoujo manga publisher. I’ve only tried a few of your series, [...]

Fictionwise is celebrating its 7th year in business by lopping 25% off all the books. For multi format, you get 25% off right away. For the secure books (the ones with the horrible DRM), you get a 25% micropay rebate. What does this really mean? Apparently, it means that all the [...]

Ashley
Rhonda

First one to email me at jane at dearauthor dot com gets choice of paper or ebook.
Winners of the RITA Balloting Contest:

mekool
rlbayne

If you don’t know what the Reader Ballot Contest is about, read here and here. Essentially, you fill out a ballot and have a chance to win a ton of books.

Sometimes I’ll blog about information that seems to be directed straight at writers and I wonder if some readers think to themselves, but this isn’t for us. It doesn’t affect us. Aren’t you guys a readers’ blog? We are, but sometimes industry changes have a great affect on we, the readers.
Simon & [...]

Dear Ms. Shalvis:
I can’t exactly recreate how I found your book, but I did a websearch about something, ended up at your site and read the excerpt for Shadow Hawk which led me directly to Harlequin’s website. I thanked the internet gods and Malle Valik for offering up the June releases a month early.
Conor [...]

Alan Johnson, Britain’s education secretary, has launched a campaign to create a bookshelf for boys in every secondary school in England. The list has over 160 books from which to choose and each school is allotted 20. The list was compiled by the School Library Association and are primarily adventure books that the [...]

Do you remember that we are having a RITA related contest? Well, we are. If you fill out a ballot with your guesses as to who will win the RITA, you will be entered in our contest. The winner of the contest (US Residents only because of mailing costs) will recieve a [...]

Author Jill Shalvis is a USA TODAY best-selling, award-winning author of over three dozen novels. She's been on the Waldenbooks Bestsellers list, the Barnes and Noble Top 100, the Amazon bestsellers list, and also Ingram's. She's a Rita Award nominee, a three-time National Reader's Choice Award winner, and has been nominated for Romantic Times's Career [...]

Jaid Black, owner of Ellora’s Cave, mentioned in her previous interview that she thought the NY move into e-publishing would have difficulties because authors want to see themselves in print. In the Triskelion drama of the past week, one thing was clear and that was Triskelion appeared to over extend itself in attempting to [...]

Dear Ms Munro,
For a book as short as this is, with three main characters, lots secondary characters and several long sex scenes, I should have gotten the feeling that every word was being used for a purpose, that every scene counted, that maximum use was made of the entire story. Instead, what I felt [...]

Dear Ms James,
Yippee, hooray, happy days. It’s a plain, hot, contemporary from Ellora’s Cave and something I thought was a thing of the past: an EC novel that does not feature a storyline about joining a bondage club or suddenly finding oneself hooked up with a fated alien/vampire/whatever mate! Bless you.
Paige Holister had hoped that [...]

Dear Ms. Holcomb:
There were many other bloggers who enjoyed Rock Star, but I admit the blurb put me off. I think that there is some bias that movie stars, athletes, and rock stars are incapable of fidelity and therefore a happy ever after. I was convinced at the end of the story that [...]

The AAP reported that net sales are on the rise–1.7% for March and 7.8% year to date. The big gainers were audiobooks (33.6%); adult hardcovers (27.5%), children’s/YA Paperbacks (13.7%); ebooks (12%). The losers were children’s/YA Hardcovers (2.2% decline); scholarly books and university press books; adult mass markets (5.8%); and religion books [...]

Prize-winning multi-published British author Portia Da Costa had her first book accepted for publication way back in 1990, and has since gone on to have over 20 titles published and over 100 short stories included in magazines. She's principally known as one of the original Virgin Black Lace pioneers. Her most recent title is [...]

Fushigi Yuugi by Yuu Watase. Published by Viz. Retail: $9.99 18/18 Volumes released in Englis. Rated T+ for older teens (sexual situations, attempted rapes, pretend rapes, lots of death). D-.

 
Dear Readers,
Imagine if you will being stuck in the middle of the Gobi desert, thirsting for anything to drink, when [...]

Just as a prefatory matter, I want to explain a bit about copyright law and how that works in relation to authors. Authors create a unique work to which they own a copyright. That copyright gives them the right to copy and distribute that work. Authors sell that right of copying and [...]