EC has obviously treated its authors badly and sales must reflect it when some of there best and brightest authors leave.

The readers miss out when the series they have been hooked on – Wizard Twins, Oath of… and Trek (why not finish this Jaid Black?) for one reason or another never seem to get finished.

And – Im not sure why having read about the awful conditions they have been writing under, but I think some of the writers who have left wrote some of there best books under Ellora’s Cave.

The reason for my post though is to say this is a great blog and I have learned a lot from it.

Lora Leigh, Angela Knight, Diane Whiteside, Kate Douglas, Cheyenne McCray, Sarah McCarthy, Delilah Devlin, Shiloh Walker, Lisa Marie Rice and several others are now contracted with big New York houses. Your best bet is to visit their respective websites to keep up to date (Lisa Marie doesn’t have a website though, so she’s tricky to track). Others moved to other epublishers or are mostly published by other epublishers i.e. Stephanie Burne and Kate Hill you can now find at Changeling Press. Treva Harte (co-owner of Loose Id is, of course, publishing her books at Loose Id). Louisa Trent can be found at Loose Id as well.

EC does not have a good track record with a good deal of their former authors. I will not go into detail as the story is long drawn, it has sub-plots, and is not mine to tell.

New Concepts Publishing doesn’t edit the work of their authors. This is widely known and if memory serves, they are clear about this in their Submissions page. I do have a couple of autobuy authors there, namely Jaide Foxx and Kaitlyn O’Connor, but their books are not exactly examples of good editing though they are not godawful, all things considered. However, a lot of people are not willing to buy their books for that reason. Additionally, they have been known for unprofessional and borderline unethical business practices, which created a lot of issues for them, and my guess is that they are now keeping a low profile for that reason.

Samhain Publishing has high standards, has an excellent reputation, and is a good one to check out. Their erotic romance line is named Red Hots! Though they have very hot romances in their other romance imprints.

Liquid Silver Books and Amber Quill Press have been around for over 5 years so they are quite established, and both have good stories and put effort into their editing. They are a bit hit or miss for me though, but worth looking into.

Bottomline, you have many options out there, and you can still find your former EC favorites, but published by big NY houses or in other indie epubs. It’s a matter of looking around a bit.

My Opinions

Samhain Publishing is the best all round quality at the moment

I go to Changling Press and Loose Id for the more outragous but fun books, more ‘out of this world’ crazy ideas etc – both companies have good editors.

Torquere Press and MLR Press and Dreamspinners are my favourite M/M publishers.

Liquid Silver is a company that is quickly growing and I have some authors from there I have started to collect. New Concept Publishing are very high quality in their standards for books and I have some awesome authors that I read from there, they however dont advertise much and arnt as well known in the epub world (I think its the name LOL those of us that know it call it NCP but this doesnt help people looking for new epubs)

hope this helps, Check out Samhain it will blow you away compared to EC now :)

Mainstream publishers like Berkley offer some pretty spicy books (Maya Banks, Lauren Dane, Anya Bast, Beth Kery all write for Berkley Heat).

Hope that helps. If you have more specific tastes, maybe we can do a better job at recommending books/epubs to you.

I do have to agree with other readers, I have noticed that my fav authors (Jaid Black being one of them) are not being published on a regular basis. I’ve given up on Trek series. Now the most important factor is WTH did all the good EC authors go? I need a new ebook site to buy from!

@Tanya
“Then it went on to reviewing. My two cents worth, if a reviewer finds errors in a book, that reviewer needs to contact the publisher before posting the review.”

I’m still almost convinced you had your tongue in cheek when you wrote that. I’ll pretend you didn’t have your usual morning drink at the time because otherwise, you wouldn’t suggest it. Let alone entertaining such a crazy concept of having a reviewer doing an (presumably, paid) editor’s job.

“There are far too many reviewers out there doing it for the sake of a free read.”

Free read? Oh, please. Let’s see…

A) It takes two to three hours to read a novel and perhaps another hour to sort out notes that were made during a read.
Maybe an hour to write a draft review and roughly two hours to knock the draft into a (hopefully) readable review. Half an hour to format the review along with a book cover image and the details on where to purchase a copy.
Then, after publishing the review, two or three days to deal with initial responses, questions and feedback from readers.

Three days and few hours’ worth of work, for a “free” book? Give me a break.

B) Authors almost always benefit from reader reviews in terms of publicity and promotion, especially when a typical reader reviewer has a good, working relationship with regular readers who know or trust her reviews.

“As mentioned before, most of them are not professional reviewers, but merely readers.”

I’ll tell you what I think makes a professional good reviewer: an ability to offer some good and honest constructive criticisms of a novel while respecting a fact that reviews are for readers, not authors or publishers.

Authors write stories with readers in mind while writing in a way that suits them. Reviewers write reviews with readers in mind while writing in a way that suits them, too.

It’s true there are some bad reader reviewers that do it for “free” books, but they tend to be the ones that authors and publishers love. I wonder why.

I think speaking up is a matter of personal preference. At the time you think is right, when the topic is essential for you, and at a place you think you will be heard. If you have issues with your publisher that are important to you and you think important to others (other than “I don’t like my editor because her hair is blue”) you have a right to bring them out publicly. It’s your experience. You can’t worry about what anyone else thinks.

:-)

The only question I have is regards to when is it a good time or place to speak about your bad experiences. So many times I’ve come up against “you’re unprofessional” for saying MY experience was bad. When is it okay to say it? Where is it okay to say? How many authors were saved during the Triskelion (sp?) fiasco because someone was “unprofessional” and spoke up. This is the only gripe I have. You’re either applauded or black-listed.