Anyway, I appreciate that the editors were honest and said what they thought about where the market is currently. Personally, I rarely buy based on cover quotes, but when I glance through them, I never think to question author endorsements. I do raise an eyebrow when there’s a quote from a review site/magazine I’ve never heard of. I always wonder if that’s because DA/SBTB/Some other site I frequent didn’t have anything good to say about it. So it can go both ways.

In the next couple of years, IMO you’re going to see the influence of online communities — not necessarily in terms of sales, but in recognition that collective of voices is not coming from the margins — as much more easily discernible. But even now, if you don’t consider the fact that the Walmart buyer might have browsed online for reviews, even if it was just RT, you’re ignoring and/or missing out on the implications of the increasingly close relationship between online communication and off-line life for so-called “average” people. And I think that view is as distorted as the one that would insist online communities rule.

I resent, deeply resent, the quite obvious assumption of these PR folks and editors that they can serve us any old crap and that we will be too dumb to catch on to their tricks.

As to that, there are a lot of dumb people around, including myself, who are willing to buy books that you don’t seem to like. When I stop liking them, I stop buying.

One thing, though. I wish we knew who edits each book, so we can make book choices based on the editor. I think that info would be just as valuable as, say, knowing with DA reviewer likes/dislikes similar books that I do.

Page count inflation and hardcovers…well, that’s a totally different issue. (Yes, I paid $55 for a hardcover book. I AM DUMB!)

And it serves no purpose for them to stuff up the method intentionally.

Sure it does. They don’t actually have to do it, they just have to say they have the data that show that readers don’t want to read longer books forex. Voila, saved 20-40k worth of ink and paper but let’s raise the price by a buck. Or let’s talk about those novellas that are printed with unbelievably large margin and super large fonts and thrown on the market in HC for 25 bucks a pop…

Cynical? You betcha. I’ve been watching the romance industry for 25 plus years and their shenanigans are getting worse with every year that passes. And I resent, deeply resent, the quite obvious assumption of these PR folks and editors that they can serve us any old crap and that we will be too dumb to catch on to their tricks.

Btw, I’m not only talking about the Avon thing any longer, but what I’ve seen throughout of which the Avon PR debacle was just a more obvious offshoot.

Then *say that*, for heaven’s sake, don’t make it a matter of “it’s what readers want.”

That’s just semantics to me. I always translate that in my head to: “it’s what OUR readers want”. And really, most companies won’t say they don’t want to be the market innovator. Even if they don’t.

@GrowlyCub: I’m saying that not everything in statistics needs cause and effect to get you a result that you can use.

Furthermore, using your individual buying habits is misleading because publishers don’t care what your individual habits are–they care about the behaviour of a significant sample of their target market.

I’m not quite as cynical as you are of the publishers’ market data. Sure, they could have flaws in their methods, but it would be stupid of them to skew those numbers so WE READERS can be pacified. That’s not what market research is about. They want to sell those books. And it serves no purpose for them to stuff up the method intentionally.

I mean I haven’t heard too much from them since they are not back until Tues but I agree with a lot of what Laura Kinsale said and still wonder how much of this has been blown up to more than it should have been.

When harpercollins laid off lots of people… most of my avon contacts stayed the same. I don’t know about you guys but it looked to me like the Romance div did ok. So they are doing something right at least for them.

And they are online, they are trying to change and do things differently maybe not at the speed we would like or in the ways we want but we can hope that will continue to change.

as far as I’m concerned we are back to the chicken or egg question.

If there are no books published that I like, I have two choices:

I can either buy no more books

or as an addict to the written word

I can buy books that aren’t what I really want, but are the closest approximation to what I want that’s available.

If there are only books with horrid covers and idiotic titles, but the content therein is what I want to read, I may still buy the books, but I bet you Avon’s marketing department now says, ‘look, shiny, those covers SELL and we have PROOF’.

And if I don’t buy the book, they don’t say anything at all, because they don’t *know* I didn’t buy the book because their horrid title and even worse cover insulted me.

Yes, we buy, but we can only buy what’s out there. Is that our fault? I don’t think so.

They go around telling us ‘readers don’t want historical accuracy’ and they tell us ‘readers have short attention spans, they don’t want 400+ page books’ and they say ‘the word billionaire and mistress in the title sell loads of books’. And I say, any set of statistical data can be falsified to tell you what you want to hear.

I’m sure it’s just totally accidental that publishers are perfectly happy to have editors spend less time editing and doing other related jobs, and that publishers had no vested interest at all to sell fewer pages for a higher price and that millions of customers have told them they hate those titles and covers, because they have data they can massage any way they want to do justify their shoddy business practices.

Your breast cancer example doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to me and I have no clue what you were trying to say.

ut maybe that’s not their business strategy. Not everyone is out to be the market innovator. Maybe they’re happy for others to find a trend that they can then run with.

Then *say that*, for heaven’s sake, don’t make it a matter of “it’s what readers want.” That’s what galls me. Just say, ‘hey, this and this sells, and that’s what we’re interested in, so we’re happy doing what sells.’ And if you don’t want to be that crass about your intentions, then maybe soft pedal the dismissive comments, at least publicly.

And let’s not forget the famous ‘it all starts with “The Virgin”‘ vision of Romance from Avon, either.