Dear Author: Romance Novel Reviews, Industry News, and Commentary

I was at Barnes and Noble the other day and there was a display by the kids’ play table of two pop up books: one about dinosaurs and one about sharks. The covers are hard but slightly padded and they had a kind of old fashioned illustrated look to them. The interior featured wonderful 3D imagery with each page featuring one large pop up and several small ones at the outside corners of each page. I was sure that these books were $60 or more but instead, they sold for under $20. It seemed like a bargain to me and it is. The production costs are 2-3 times that of an average book . The tot isn’t quite old enough for these but I was tempted to buy them and save them for when she is.

The Wall Street Journal had a write up about these books in today’s online journal. The original publisher of these pop up books on steroids was Candlewick Press and it began with Dragonology in 2003. …

Cafescribe is trying to make its ebooks more appealing by sending all purchasers a scratch and sniff sticker to place on their ebook reading device. The smells include old books and coffee. I admit to having my share of scratch and sniff stickers and minus the grape ones, they all smelled horrible. Plus, who wants to clutter up their ebook reader with a bunch of stickers? Is this like the bumper now? Or has Cafescribe too many fond memories of the Trapper Keeper?

Via Endgadget.

Award-winning author Patricia Sargeant knew from the age of 9 that she wanted to be a writer, but her dreams of being a published one didn’t come until after rejections and long waits. Despite six years passing between the completion of her first manuscript and her first sale, Sargeant persevered. Her hard work has come to fruition and with one book under her belt, September sees the launch of her first trilogy featuring firefighters with On Fire.

Her first romantic suspense, You Belong to Me,won third place in the 2006 Reviewers International Organization’s Award of Excellence in the Favorite Debut Novel Category.

Born in the West Indies and raised in New York City, Patricia now lives in Ohio with her husband.

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I’ll always remember my first sale call. It was around 9 a.m., Wednesday, March 1, 2006. I was at work in my office trying to figure out how to get rid of a co-worker who’d turned a two-minute question into a 30-plus-minute impromptu meeting. To my great …

Dear Mrs Sorenson,

Way back in the mists of time when I was a college student, I was part of the Honors Program at UNC-Chapel Hill and one thing we had to do was take one Honors course a semester. My sophomore year, I picked one about Istanbul. Now that was a great class: Interesting, not too much work and an easy A. Not at all like my organic chemistry classes. So, in a roundabout fashion, that’s why when I saw where your book was set, I knew I had to give it a try.

Travel photographer Connor Stark captures the inanimate beauty of Istanbul from behind the safe distance of a camera lens. But it’s the lively tour guide Natasha Plakouris that captures his imagination. He is destined to work alone while she’s tethered to her group of tourists, until a twist of fate changes their itineraries.

Connor has what many would consider a dream job. He can go anywhere he pleases, gets paid to take beautiful pictures of fabulous places and no one is riding him to be here a certain day or go …

You can’t keep a good wizard down, not even with a love triangle between a needy teenage girl and two supernatural heroes. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows moves back into the number one position.

Only two new books on the list of note: Play Dirty by Sandra Brown, debuting on the list at No. 8 and Suzanne Brockmann’s Force of Nature showing up in the 22 slot. The mid month release date works well for authors. I understand Eloisa James’ next book, An Affair Before Christmas, is to receive the mid month release (November 13) in an effort, likely, to move her out of the extended NYTimes list and into the top 15.
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling, art by Mary GrandPré (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic), $34.99, No. 1 (Peak 1).
Eclipse, Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown), $18.99, No. 2 (Peak 1).
Play Dirty, Sandra Brown …

Dear Ms. Laurens:

In the early days, I read your books the moment that they came out but after the 8th or 9th Cynster book, they began to lose their appeal to such a degree that when you made the move to hardcover, I left myself behind. Since the hardcover move, I’ve read only three Laurens books. I think that it was the breather that made me appreciate in Beyond Seduction what made me a fan in the first place.

Your historical romances are richly detailed and your characters are well thought out. I can see you making conscious decisions about even what types of clothes your characters wear and what type of gifts they would find appealing. I believe that type of writing shows a lot of respect for the reader and the genre. At your best, you show us why these two individuals, Gervase Tregarth and Madeline Gasciogne, belong together. While Beyond Seduction is not your best (Devil’s Bride and A Secret Love will always …

Dear Ms. Novik,

I’ve now found out that even a lesser Novik book is still pretty good. But this one should come with a warning to load up on lots of chocolate, a glass of wine or some Prozac before starting. Jaysus, there were a lot of depressing events to read and, for a while, every time I started a new chapter things just seemed to get worse for our intrepid British Aviators and their marvelous dragon, Temeraire.

The story starts off well enough in China were book two had ended with Temeraire and his crew, including his Captain Will Laurence, defeating the sinister plans of a Chinese prince to overthrow the throne. By doing so, they’ve made an implacable enemy of Lien, the Celestial dragon companion of the prince. Her rage extends past Laurence and Temeraire to include anything British. While waiting for favorable winds, Temeraire’s dragon transport is badly damaged by fire soon followed by a letter instructing Laurence to proceed to Istanbul with all speed to collect three dragon eggs which the British government has bought from the Sultan. What follows is …

Wal-Mart positions itselfto be a force in the digital music business in which Apple ITunes holds a more than 70% market share. To challenge the big gun who is now third in the overall music sales, Wal-Mart has begun to sell high quality (256 ) songs from EMI at a lower price point. While Apple is selling DRM free EMI songs at iTunes for $1.29, these same songs at Wal-Mart sell for $.99 and are also DRM free.

With Wal-mart offering DRM free music clearly in an attempt to lure customers away from Apple, it seems to make sense that it would offer lower priced ebooks in the future to complement its print based book business. I can hope that the future also holds DRM free ebooks.

According to an Associated Press-Ipso poll held in August, one in four American adults did not read a book in 2006. The demographics of who reads falls largely by class and gender lines. Women who are better educated with higher incomes tend to read more, with those who are liberal reading slightly more than conservative Republicans. The 27 percent of non readers tend to be men (nearly a third compared to a quarter of women), older, less educated, lower income, minorities, from rural areas and less religious.

The most read type of book? Popular fiction, histories, biographies and mysteries were given by half while only one in five said that they had read a romance novel. Poetry, politics and classical literature were read by only 5%. Men prefer non fiction while women read more in nearly every other category.

The book business sold approximately 3.1 billion books last year worldword which was an increase of less than 1 percent. This article made me quite sad, not for the book business, but for the state of reading in the US. With the aging baby boomers, this number could decline dramatically in the upcoming years …

Dear Ms. Boyle:

I haven’t read many of your books, but each time I start one, I think to myself, why haven’t I gone on a Boyle glom and then I get to the end feeling one part happy and one part dissatisfied and I think its the latter feeling that drives my buying decisions. Love Letters From a Duke was a fun, sweet, and humorous romance whose flow was interrupted by frequent summary monologues but worse, we weren’t privy to many of the love letters which purportedly exchanged between the hero and heroine.

When Felicity Langley was 17, she wrote to the Marquess of Standon, the future Duke of Hollindrake, and suggested that they were a well suited pair and should marry. The recipient of the letter was not the Marquess of Standon as he was off fighting for his country. Instead the Marquess’ grandfather and current duke received the letter and with his secretary embarked on a four year letter writing exchange with Ms. Langley which culminated in an expectation of marriage.

Upon Hollindrake’s ascension to the title …