Archive for November, 2009
Dear Ms. Hartman:
 I think this is your first book. I was thrilled when I found it on Mill & Boon in digital form because I could immediately buy it (along with all your other titles) after the thoroughly enjoyable Boyfriend: Plan B (review to come).
Nathan Delaney is a famous children’s writer using the pen name of Chris Senso. Nathan is a recluse, though, because he had a brush with fame back in his early college days which turned him into a near hermit. The only picture on his books is a childhood picture and he lives a very isolated life.
Unfortunately a popular daytime talk show host has decided that she will unmask Chris Senso and she begins a daily hunt for him, asking for her viewers to call in with tips and clues. She ratchets it up on a daily basis from using an age regression analysis to hiring a profiler to look at the books to determine the race, age, geographic location.
Nathan is spooked. He had writer’s block since he and his fiancee broke up. Nathan decides to get out of his current town. …
In all the drama of the week, I forgot to announce winners of last week’s giveaway. Â First up are the winners of the print version of Caroline Linden’s free book short. Â You can still download the PDF from this link.. Â Caroline Linden’s latest release”For Your Arms Only” will be out next Tuesday.
1. Jane O November 11th, 2009 at 12:38 pm edit comment
Caroline Linden is one of my favorite new authors. I suppose I should be honorable and bow out so someone can try her for the first time. But I’m not all that honorable, and I would love a paper copy.
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2. Kim November 11th, 2009 at 3:27 pm edit comment
I like reading paper, so please enter my name in the drawing. Thanks.
3. Lorraine November 11th, 2009 at 3:36 pm edit comment
I’d love a chance to try a new author. Please enter me into the drawing for a paper copy.
4. Susan/DC November 12th, 2009 at 11:00 am edit comment
If the drawing is still open, I too would love a paper copy (I wanted to be a paleontologist when I was little, so perhaps that’s why I don’t mind being a technological dinosaur).
5.
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The Swan (1956)
Genre: Historical Dramedy
Grade: B-
Here’s a golden oldie, or moldy oldie if you don’t care for it. The movie is based on a play written by Ferenc Molnar and was filmed twice before this final one was made. It’s Grace Kelly’s next-to-the-last film made before her marriage to a real Prince and she never looked lovelier.
It has always been the overriding ambition of Princess Beatrix (Jesse Royce Landis who also played GK’s mother in “To Catch a Thief”) to see her daughter Princess Alexandra (Grace Kelly) become a Queen. Their family was forced from the throne of their tiny middle European country by Napoleon (whose name Princess Beatrix will not allowed to be mentioned in her presence) and she’s aware that it’s probably their last hope to regain some stature by cementing the ties between their dispossessed family and their cousins, the reigning royal family headed by Queen Maria Dominika (Agnes Moorehead) and her son and heir Prince Albert (Alec Guinness).
When Beatrix gets word that Albert is on his way to visit them, she immediately pulls out all the stops and whips the palace staff, and her family, into a frenzy in order to present Alexandra in …
Dear Ms Allain :
 Thank you for sending me this book for review. I am a big fan of the traditional regency which is what I would categorize this novel as. The key to a successful traditional regency is the total immersion of the reader into the time period which is well done in Mr. Malcom’s List. Like other traditional regencies, the hero is not a lord, but a man of great means and the second son of an Earl which, during that time, was sufficient to make him a marital catch.
Selina was a paid companion who was left comfortably well off after her companion’s death. She does not want to return to her vicerage with her family and writes to her old school classmate, Julia, with a request to visit her in London. Julia is living the life of parties with other young people that Selina longs to enjoy. Julia ignores this request for months and then, out of the blue, Selina receives an invitation to visit.
Julia Thistlewaite had her sights set on marrying The Honorable Jeremy Malcolm, second son of the Earl of Kilbourne. He was the catch …
 Loading ... Robin (aka Janet here) wrote a great piece for Access Romance Readers’ Gab blog about value and creative content.
In the commercial world, we are used to thinking of value in the context of price. A “good value” is often defined by some quotient of quality and price, specifically as relatively high quality for a relatively low price. But the value of books, while commercial art and commercially marketed products, is not so easy to define.
I admit to be one of those people who equate value to length (among other things). Â Going into a purchasing situation, I will be willing to pay more for a longer work than a shorter work even if at the end of the reading both, my positions would have flipped because the shorter work was of higher quality than the longer work. Â But buying decisions are made on the front end so I balk at paying a higher price for novellas or short stories than I would for full length novels.
Does the length of a story affect how much you are willing to pay for it?
Q: I’m a reader and I’ve heard about Harlequin Horizons but I don’t know what it is or what it means for me.
Harlequin Horizons is a vanity press where aspiring authors pay to have their books published and put into stores, whether it is a physical retail location like your local Borders or it is online retailer like Amazon.
Authors using this service may or may not have their books professionally edited. Some authors who are self published have very high quality standards like self published author Moriah Jovan whose epic romance books aren’t well suited for traditional publishing. Other self published authors or authors who use a vanity press will not put as much care into their books as Ms. Jovan. Therefore, the quality that you read from books published through Harlequin Horizons can be very uneven.
Q: What do you mean by traditional publishing?
Harlequin is not the publisher, the author is the publisher and therefore solely responsible for the quality of the content. In traditional publishing, authors go through a rigorous vetting process. First, their works must make it past a person called an agent. The agent then has to sell this …
Dear Ms. Harris,
 I have been anticipating the release of What Remains of Heaven, the fifth book in your Sebastian St. Cyr mystery series, for several months. I’ve come to expect a new book in this series every year, and while I’ve liked some of the offerings more than others, each has been satisfying (with grades ranging from A- to B), and the continuing turmoil in Sebastian’s personal life has held my attention from book to book.
Just a quick note: I think it’s probably going to be hard to entirely avoid spoilers for earlier books in the series in this review, so if you haven’t read the series, intend to, and are fanatical about remaining spoiler-free, you might want to stop reading now.
Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, has rather inadvertently and reluctantly become known as a murder investigator (don’t you hate when that happens?). His imperious aunt comes to him accompanied by her friend, the ailing (but still formidable) Archbishop of Canterbury, to request Sebastian’s assistance in finding out who killed the Bishop of London, Francis Prescott. Bishop Prescott had been summoned to the village of Tanfield Hill one night …
Dear Ms. Green,
 I had heard about your book, The Husband She Couldn’t Forget, back in September and made a mental note to myself to purchase it, partly because I want to encourage more diversity in the genre, and buying a Silhouette Special Edition that features African American protagonists is a good way to do that, and partly because I have a soft spot for amnesia stories.
Unfortunately, like many mental notes I make to myself, this one went astray, and it wasn’t until your book was mentioned again during our recent discussion of cultural appropriation in romance that I bought the book and began to read it.
In the book’s prologue, we are introduced to Melanie Bishop. Melanie is holding a pregnancy test stick bearing negative results when her doorbell rings. She opens the door to be served with divorce papers. Melanie’s husband, Deion, has left her.
Melanie and Deion have been trying for years to have children, without much luck. Deion has done very well in an investment firm, and he and Melanie have all the trappings of success, but the emptiness of their home has made Melanie miserable. Melanie …
I emailed Malle Vallik to ask her three questions which pertained the biggest question I had about brand dilution:
- Will the books be sold through the eharlequin store?
- Will there be any HH branding on the book, either on the cover or in the copyright page?
- Are you (Harlequin) concerned about brand dilution?
This is Ms. Vallik’s response. She said she would be around to answer a few questions.
1.       The books will not be branded Harlequin.
2.       The books will be branded HH (see nice logo on website) attached
3.       The copyright is not associated with Harlequin.
First, why is Harlequin launching a self-publishing business? Bowker reported in 2008 that more titles were published through self-publishing than traditional publishers. Self-publishing is a fast growing and vibrant part of the publishing industry today. Harlequin has decided to provide a romance focused self-publishing business for those that choose to go down the self-publishing road.
Brand – Harlequin put its name on the Harlequin Horizons site to clearly indicate this is a romance self-publishing site. The books published through Harlequin Horizons will not carry traditional Harlequin branding. The self-published author will be the brand and the Horizon double H logo will appear on the spine of the book. Harlequin is the gold standard in romance
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Dear Ms. Thompson.
 I’ve had numerous people recommend your books to me as examples of good BDSM romances. When James Buchanan recommended you yet again, I broke down. I’m glad I did. I really enjoyed Submission Times Two and look forward to reading more of your books.
I started with Submission Times Two because how could I not?! It hit all my buttons: menage, m/m, and BDSM. But especially the menage. Cam and Ethan are desperately in love with each other. They’ve been living together for just under a year. They’re committed and focused on making their relationship work no matter what. The problem is, they’re both submissive, and unable to dom each other convincingly. So they’ve worked out a deal: on the weekends, they each go to different clubs, scene with doms there, get their pain-play needs met that way, and then go home and fuck like bunnies. So far, it’s been working out for them. Then Ethan hooks up with Maestro and starts thinking about how he needs more than just weekend scenes — he needs a full-time dom, which of course starts getting in the way of his relationship with …
Dear Ms. Stang,
 Me loves a good American Civil War novel but unfortunately, most publishers today don’t agree with me so pickin’s have been slim lately. So when I was perusing the new ebooks at Fictionwise a few months ago, I decided to buy your book and give it a try.
With her three older brothers gone for soldiers, Cassandra Beaumont has taken charge of the family plantation. She, her younger sister Rachel and her sister-in-law Ellie are the only adults there. Things are grim and looking to get worse when a troop of Union soldiers arrives with orders to commandeer the place for use as a hospital. Cassie makes a bold but thwarted stand against Major Joel Bradshaw before realizing she needs his medical expertise to help deliver Ellie’s breech baby. Needs must and the two work out an agreement: his help with the delivery for her help as a nurse once the hospital is set up.
Baby Joel James Beaumont is delivered, everyone settles into the arrangement and the wounded begin to arrive. A Colonel who dislikes the fact that the Beaumont women are still there arrives too and Joel makes …
I couldn’t resist the wordplay for the title. Â In any event, it appears that authors really are unhappy with the announcement of Harlequin Horizons. I’ve heard that some published authors are asking for the RWA board to examine whether Harlequin should be a recognized publisher.
Essentially it appears that Harlequin is lending its name to a self publishing venture that will be sourced by AuthorSolutions Inc. Â My guess is that Harlequin will use this to monitor sales and move authors who are selling well from Horizons to one of its print/digital lines. Â HarperCollins UK does this with Authonomy but it isn’t a profit making venture, yet.
As I see it authors have three basic complaints:
- dilution of house brand
- possibility of unsuspecting authors spending money on the chance of getting the notice of Harlequin.
- the choice of POD partnership.
Dilution of House Brand
This one is the most understandable to me. Â Harlequin Horizon books are labeled with the Harlequin brand (although we don’t know what the badging will look like). Â If a number of works in circulation carry the Harlequin brand and the quality declines, one assumes that the Harlequin name brand also declines.
Authors also refer to this as a loss of prestige (which …
Harlequin is launching Harlequin Horizons through a partnership with Author Solutions, Inc.
Through this strategic alliance; all sales, marketing, publishing, distribution, and book-selling services will be fulfilled by ASI; but Harlequin Horizons will exist as a division of Harlequin Enterprises Limited. Harlequin will monitor sales of books published through the self-publisher for possible pickup by its traditional imprints.
My guess is that if an author is selling well by herself, then Harlequin will see that and offer to bring it to a larger audience. It’s like a reader run slush pile. Some authors are dismayed by this, feeling it will hurt the publisher brand.  I’m not so sure that they are wrong about this.  From a reader point of view, since I buy primarily by line and author, I’m not certain if it affects  me.  Thoughts?
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A Canadian high school is the first to go all digital. Â Each student will be provided a Sony Reader with all the textbooks preloaded. Â The students will be using the Sony Reader Touch edition which has a 6″ touchscreen and the ability for a student to write on the device. Â Indigo books is estimating that …
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
I was reading Rosario’s blog the other day and she was blogging about how much she enjoyed Linnea Sinclair’s Down Home Zombie Blues. As I was reading Rosario’s review, I was thisclose to buying the book but the fact is that Linnea Sinclair’s books just don’t work for me. I’ve tried her in the past (and on more than one occasion) because so many readers I admire love her work.
There are times when I read reviews by other readers, particularly readers like Rosario who I like and whose tastes I think are similar to mine, when I want to love that author’s work but I just don’t. I think its because when another reader articulates a love for a particular author or a particular book I find myself wishing to be in agreement with them.
I know Jo Goodman is like that for many people. I’ve heard complaints that her work is too dry or she is too wordy. Her books are too languorous. To some extent, the very reason people don’t like her or …
Dear Ms. Haynes:
 Dr. Brooke Magnati has come out as the face behind the prostitute Belle Du Jour. Dr. Magnati was finishing up her PhD and running low on cash and decided that having sex for money would be a way for her to keep her day job, make ends meet, and presumably have time to herself. Magnati as Belle du Jour wrote a number of bestseling books regarding her life as a prostitute and Showtime has an adaption of this series called Secret Diary of a Call Girl.
Why bring this up? The social messaging of this book is that sexual commerce can be an empowered female concept. Problematically, the stories really don’t play out that way. Instead, as one person mentioned to me, this is Pretty Woman done three ways. Each story in this collection is about a high class courtesan/prostitute/call girl who leaves the empowered life of hooking when a fabulous looking guy who happens to be super rich marries her. A woman is matched with the client. The client pays a fee to the company and the woman gets paid through “tips” …
Romantic Times is blogging about Carina Press. The blogger, Nicole, says that the manufacturer limitations is what has prevented her from adopting ebooks. What Nicole is talking about, however, seems to be limitations by the publisher and not the manufacturer:
I know that one of the reasons I have resisted a Kindle or a Nook is because of the limitations put on it by the manufacturer. I want something that allows me to upload and read any document I so chose, regardless of origin. I also want to be able to manage my own electronic products, move them around if so desired.
Stephenie Meyer is burnt out on vampires and her next book is likely to be a follow up to her adult novel, The Host and maybe a fantasy book. Sounds like she doesn’t have anything written. Maybe look for Meyer in 2010 or 2011?
Publishers’ Weekly has an article entitled “Romancing the Recession” and it talks about the vibrancy of the romance genre. Paranormal leads the pack with historicals selling strong but what is surprising (but encouraging for me) is the rise of the contemporary. Long time readers will …
 Welcome to the My First Sale series. Each Monday, Dear Author posts the first sale letter of bestselling authors, debut authors, and authors in between. Like the hero of The Cutting, James Hayman is a transplanted New Yorker. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manhattan, he spent more than twenty years writing TV advertising for clients like The U.S. Army, Lincoln-Mercury and Procter & Gamble. He moved to Portland, Maine in 2001. Four years later he decided to scratch a lifelong itch to write fiction and began work on his first suspense thriller featuring homicide detective Mike McCabe. St. Martin’s/Minotaur bought rights to The Cutting and published it in July, 2009. Hayman is currently at work on the second McCabe novel which is due to be published in July, 2010. The tentative title is The Chill of Night.
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I took my first crack at writing a novel at an age when my most of my contemporaries were figuring out their Social Security benefits and considering the merits of taking up golf full time.
Not to put too fine point in it, I was more than a little gray. …
Ellora’s Cave is finally selling its ebooks outside of its own portal, jasminejade.com.  Strangely, though, Ellora’s Cave is setting its list prices at third party vendors at twice the rate of the ebook price at jasminejade.com.  For example, Jade Black’s After the Storm sells for $7.99 in unencrypted PDF, HTML, MS Reader, Mobipocket, and Rocketbook at Ellora’s Cave but at Amazon, the Kindle version has a digital list price of $18.99 which is kindly discounted by Amazon down to $9.99.  The digital list price is the price that is set by the publisher.  Devil in Winter, a novella by Diana Hunter is at Ellora’s Cave for a price of $4.45 and it is at Amazon for $8.99.  Alien Overnight by Robin Rothman sells for $5.95 at EC and $11.90 at Amazon.  You get the picture.
St. Martin’s Press and Simon & Schuster are notorious for selling its ebooks at a super premium price. Â Simon & Schuster lists several of the backlist titles at $9.99 ebook price even though these books are currently available in a mass market price. Â St. Martin’s Press lists ebooks as high as $14.00 for books that have a comparable print version in …
Google and the Plaintiffs (Authors’ Guild and representative authors and publishers) went back to the negotiating table to craft a new settlement agreement that would address the concerns of the Department of Justice and other critics. Â The new settlement agreement was released yesterday.
For Consumers
There were quite a few positive changes. Â To address the concern of price fixing that the DOJ had expressed, the Books Registry no longer has any say in the pricing of books. Â This is really a win for consumers and for Google. Â Google now has the sole right to set prices and will do so using an algorithm developed based on market pricing. Â Authors might not like this because pricing of ebooks is trending downwards but it’s a plus for consumers. Â Additional revenue models have been changed to be limited to POD and PDF/EPUB downloads.
For Authors of Books in Print and Under Contract
The revised agreement also resolves many concerns that authors of books in print and under contract may have. Â It has removed the requirement to arbitrate one’s cases. Â Authors are allowed to dictate how a book is displayed through Google Book Search and can remove the book from sale if she disagrees with pricing or …
Welcome to First Page Saturday. Individual authors anonymously send a first page read and critiqued by the Dear Author community of authors, readers and industry others. Anyone is welcome to comment. You may comment anonymously.
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It had been two years, eight months and twenty-three days since Ella Lucas had last done the horizontal rumba. And even then it hadn’t been very good. With the powerful Harley throbbing between her legs, she was acutely aware of every minute. The vibrations pulsed against her taunting places that hadn’t seen action in a long time making her excruciatingly aware of her complete asexual existence. Was it possible to orgasm on the seat of a Harley? Alone?
She revved the engine. Lock up your husbands, Huntley, Rachel’s kid is back in town.
Her red lips twisted in a bitter smile. Nearly two decades since she’d been back in her hometown and it was still making her nuts. Seventeen years she’d spent in this speck on the map trying to do the right thing, trying to be her mother’s opposite. Playing the good girl. Until she’d cracked under the pressure and just walked away.
And still …
Dear Ms Dee,
 Thanks for offering Dear Author the chance to review your latest historical from Liquid Silver. And then for following up with me to be sure I got the book. I do fall behind on my reviewing at times.
After the death of her fiancé, Catherine Johnson, a New York schoolteacher in 1901, travels to Nebraska to teach a one-room school and escape her sad memories. One afternoon, violence erupts in the sleepy town. Catherine saves deaf stable hand, Jim Kinney, from torture by drunken thugs.
As she takes charge of his education, teaching him to read and sign, attraction grows between them. The warmth and humor in this silent man transcends the need for speech and his eyes tell her all she needs to know about his feelings for her. But the obstacles of class difference and the stigma of his handicap are almost insurmountable barriers to their growing attachment.
Will Catherine flout society’s rules and allow herself to love again? Can Jim make his way out of poverty as a deaf man in a hearing world? And together will they beat the corrupt robber baron who has a stranglehold on
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Over at Library Job Postings, there is a gallery of repeated images on covers. Oh, the dangers of using stock photography. Via SmartBitches.
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Gawker mocks Newscorp in its fight against Google. Murdoch plans to stick it to Google by selling his content to Bing, the Microsoft search engine. It reminds me of publishers. They don’t want to have Amazon in control of their pricing, but they seem more than happy to get into bed with Google.
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How costly will it become for vendors and retailers to provide free wifi? Motion Picture lobbying group, the MPAA, got a town’s free wifi network shut down after discovering a possible, not yet confirmed, illegal download. Barnes and Noble, Borders, McDonald’s and the like are easy targets for piraters not wanting their illegal activities to be traced back to their home networks. Google, by the way, is giving free wifi away at airports this christmas.
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PW looks at Amazon’s Vine program. This is where Amazon sends out a monthly email with all the products vendors are offering for review. It’s not just books. …
Loading ... I know that this will vary from book to book but generally I finish a book in one day if not in one sitting. I generally start a book after I’ve put the tot to bed and finish it before I go to sleep. If it is a particularly good book, I’ll read into the wee morning hours. Who needs to sleep when you can read right? Libraries give people 21 days to finish a book (which is why it is the high end of the poll). I’m curious about your general reading habits, knowing that occasionally you’ll spend longer or shorter depending on the book.
Latter Days (2003)
Genre: Gay Romance
Grade: B
I’m an absolute sucker for coming out stories and especially, apparently, for “religious twink overcoming his background to accept who he is” stories. This film delivers quite nicely. I came to it oddly: I stumbled across a novelization of the film while cruising (so to speak) the gay and lesbian fiction section at Barnes & Noble. Being what I am, I read the end and loved it, so streamed the movie on Netflix. The ending in the novelization was actually better than the ending in the movie (a little more dialogue, a little more emotional depth), but I still wasn’t disappointed in the movie.
Christian is your typical — one might even say stereotypical — gay LA party boy: a gym rat who fucks a new guy every night and has a job as a waiter while he tries to break into acting (I think — not super-clear). (Jacqueline Bisset, BTW, still gorgeous, moonlights as his wisdom-dispensing, snarky boss.) Aaron is a Mormon from Idaho on mission to LA. He lives with three other Elders in the same apartment complex as Christian and Christian and his friends make a bet that Christian can seduce one …
Dear Ms. Howard:
 I confess that I was at first taken aback by the length of this hardcover. I remember thinking unkind thoughts about this format when Janet Evanovich put out her first Christmas hardcover. Those have sold like crazy so I guess that readers are unfazed by the length of the story and the cost. After all, a story is a story, right?
When I started ICE, I began to get excited. A good category length Howard is worth hardcover pricing. I know that I would have paid quite a bit to read the Diamond Bay trilogy because it was so good. The first and second chapters read like a vintage category Howard romance and if it had kept in that vein, I would have been able to recommend this unreservedly. However, in keeping with your current writing voice, this book is far more focused on the action/suspense than it is on the characters and their relationship with each other.
The story takes place, mostly, over the space of one afternoon. There is an impending icestorm and military policeman, Gabriel, is home on leave. His father, the local …
Blogcritics.org had a nice article on why you should be reading debut authors. One thing I remember about debut books is that these are novels that authors usually labored over, for years. This sometimes explains the sophomore slump whereby the second book just isn’t as good as the first. The first two debut titles that spring to mind aren’t even romance. The first is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (her first and only published novel) and the second is Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.
In romance, you also have a unique situation. Writers like Nalini Singh who publish in category are considered a “debut” author for the purposes of their first mass market. Her “debut” book would then be Slave to Sensation. I think this would probably be true for ebook authors moving into the print publishing market for the first time. Probably my favorite romance debut (that is until the comments jog my memory) is Manhunting by Jennifer Crusie.
For the purposes of this post, I ask that you give a shout out to your favorite debut novels and if they’ve been previously published, either in category or ebook, identify that. …
Dear Ms. Davitt and Ms. Snow.
 I love the title of this book, because it’s so true to the characters and to the book. I’ve been disappointed, sometimes even sickened by some of Loose-Id’s titles recently (no, I didn’t review them, I couldn’t bring myself to do so), so I was happy to be intrigued enough by the excerpt to buy Bound and Determined. And I’m so glad I did. This book, while lacking slightly in the pure romance department, is a fabulous look at a BDSM relationship with some amazing characterization and some really hot sex.
First a warning for readers, though: the characters in this book are a masochist and a sadist. Yes, much of the relationship is about dominance and submission, which many people have less issue with than with pain play, but the sadomasochism in this book is strong. Not violent and visceral like Anah Crow’s (brilliant) Uneven, but it’s there, its unabashed, and if that bothers you, don’t read this book. However, if you’re intrigued by the psychology behind masochism, this is the book for you, because it’s beautifully depicted.
Sterling is a college senior. He figured out that he …
Dear Readers,
 Back in July of 2008, I reviewed Tangle XY, an anthology of short speculative m/m stories. Earlier this year, Blind Eye Books, the publisher of Tangle XY, came out with Tangle Girls, an f/f anthology. As with Tangle XY, some (not all) of the stories are multicultural, and many have fairy tale or science fiction elements, but in this anthology the commonality all the stories share is the focus on girls who love other girls. Here are my reviews of the six stories:
“Raccoon Skin” by J.D. EveryHope
In “Raccoon Skin,” Sophia, a college student, arrives at her parents’ home on a pre-dawn morning. After seeing that her parents’ trash can that has been upended by a raccoon, Sophia goes outside to put it back up, and while there, she sees crows attacking a golden eagle. The eagle falls to the snowy ground, and Sophia chases the crows away. Just as she is debating whether to take the eagle inside, the bird shifts shape and turns into a human girl — and not just any girl, but Sophia’s girlfriend, Caterina.
Caterina and Sophia met …
Generation Y women like social networking and sharing their thoughts on the products that they buy. Â This is, apparently, news. Â It is not something that ebook manufacturers have caught on yet, though. Â The current ebook reader enthusiast is a 47-year-old married man with a household income in excess of 6 figures. Â But! researchers believe that the ebook market won’t take off until the women get a hold of it. Â Frankly I think the current ebook reader is the 47 year old male because that is whom the product was initially marketed toward. Â Ironically, as the article sent to me by Leah notes, women and romance fiction is pushing the ebook market forward.
But to go truly mass-market, e-books will have to appeal to women, who tend to be warier of new technology and more price-conscious, Epps says.
Harlequin, purveyor of those lusty supermarket bodice-rippers, has dipped into the market with an e-book subscription service for some series, like Silhouette Desire, “delivering the provocative passion you crave.” And no one can see you put it in your shopping cart!
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GalleyCat asks the question of whether an author needs an agent in the future. Â Meriam Goderich responds that any …
 Caroline Linden and Avon are giving away a free sample of her work in the form of a free short story. Now we know not everyone reads digital books so Caroline Linden is having a few of these printed up to give away for free. If you want a taste of Caroline’s work and would rather read paper, leave a comment. We’ll pick a random five. If you want to read the story for free, right now, you can download the PDF from this link. This short is a companion piece to “For Your Arms Only” which is due out in December.
Dear Ms. Teglia:
 Thank you for sending this novella to me for review. I know, having read erotic romance* for several years, that here is a real skill in delivering believable and sexy consummation scenes. You have that skill and I appreciated the delivery of that content. The overall construct, perhaps because of the length, was problematic.
Maggie Parker and Adam Richards were a couple until Maggie up and left one day, leaving Adam sleeping and a post it note breaking up with him. She moved to Chicago to take a job with a magazine. When Maggie’s sister gives birth to a son alone and abandoned by her husband, Maggie returns to her hometown near Washington, D.C.. Of course, that puts her back into proximity with Adam.
Adam feels like there was unfinished business between them and proposes that Maggie have sex with him until she leaves for Chicago again. Adam wants to sex Maggie out of his system. Maggie is given a remote assignment to come up with a story about Adam, race car driver who leaves it all behind to start a mechanic shop.
I wasn’t sure why Adam and Maggie started …
Dear Ms. Sheridan,
 When Tina submitted a list of new books to Dear Author for possible review, “Falling Through Glass” grabbed my attention. Hmmm, time travel to 19th century Japan in the waning days of samurai warriors. Can’t get much more different than that.
Since I’m feeling lazy this morning. I’m just going to steal the blurb at Liquid Silver.
Los Angeles
Present Day
Japanese-American Emiko Maeda set aside her film school studies following the sudden death of her father. At odds with her mother and burdened with the guilt over her role in the tragic accident, she moves in with her uncle Jake and comes into possession of an antique mirror. While accompanying Jake to Japan on a film shoot, Emmi is caught in a freak storm and plunged through time–into Feudal Japan and the world of samurai.
Kyoto, Japan
1864
The city of Kyoto is ablaze with violence and on the brink of civil war. Nakagawa Kaemon is a young samurai with a secret. He gathers information on those who claim to “Revere the emperor” but harbor their own agenda to control the country. Kae is honor bound to execute anyone who poses a threat to the throne
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Avon put together this really lovely giveaway to celebrate the start of the new Stephanie Laurens‘ series, The Black Cobra Quartet. The premise of the Black Cobra Quartet is that there is a British traitor who is the head of the Black Cobra cult, an organization that is terrorizing villages and setting up a reign of fear in Bombay. Evidence has been gathered to deliver to the England but given the scope of the Black Cobra influence, it is determined that the four British officers who have this information will split up and make their way back to England separately in hopes that at least one of them will be able to deliver the incriminating evidence and put a stop to the Black Cobra.
You can read the prelude to the series here and the first 20 % of the launch title,
Untamed Bride, here.
The winner of the backlist and the bag is: Â BELLA
The new draft of the Google Book Settlement was due yesterday but the parties asked (and was granted) until Friday to present a new settlement agreement. Given that the biggest part of the GBKS were orphan works and that was what drew the biggest complaints, I wonder how any new settlement could address this.
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Amazon engaged in a “charm offensive” by flying out a number of top flight agents to its Seattle headquarters last week, as reported by Crains. Â This wooing of the agents seemed quite odd (has it ever been done in the past). Â One nugget was that agents and Amazon seem to be in agreement that publishers can make more money selling ebooks than hardcovers. Â I don’t know if that is true but it seems like publishers may be headed that route regardless. Â Certainly Harlequin has been able to be profitable without a hardcover division. Â But what to make of Amazon wooing agents? It means something.
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Speaking of Harlequin, Quill & Quire wrote up a piece about Carina Press. Â It notes that authors for Carina Press will need to play an active role in promoting their books and included this line about DRM. Â Q&Q, …
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There is not a more common hero archetype in historical romance than the “rake”. In my early days of reading, I always viewed the “rake” as a sign of virility of the hero. Â In romance novels, the women titter about the rake’s scandalous reputation while parading their young in front of him. Â The adage “rakes make the best husbands” is passed as truth. Â In this post, I am making the case that the rake isn’t a very heroic trait.
What does a rake really signify? Â There’s the saying “every man wanted to be him and every woman wanted to be with him.” To be a rake meant that you really made no effort to turn anyone down. Â A rake is a man with few scruples. Â He sleeps with widows, married women and often engages in dalliances with young unmarried women and certainly has sex with courtesans and maybe even whores of a lower class. Â A rake is really a man with little honor. Â By sleeping with married women, he engages in cheating. Â By seducing the young unmarried women, he …
Dear Ms. Gray (aka Ms. Aguirre):
 In reviewing my emails (because my memory, as you know, is terribly spotty), I see I received the book for review from you. I had enjoyed Grimspace and heard that this book was fresh for the romance genre and it is. Kyra is a grifter, working with her father, until he is beaten and left for dead by a casino owner named Serrano. Kyra runs a long con on Serrano, not just to take his money, but to humiliate him. She does this by learning what Serrano likes and transforms herself into the perfect woman, luring him in, and then ultimately humiliating him by gambling away his engagement ring, taking his money, and publicly admitting she just dated him for the money.
Serrano has his security guy hire a hitman to retrieve the money and kill Kyra, in that order. Reyes is one of the best but he’s a hitman with scruples. He is meticulous about who he kills and for whom he kills. He agrees to take down Kyra because she allegedly killed her father. A woman that kills her …
Dear Ms. Smith,
 Your comedic trad Regencies are always a delight for me. There are some that have had me cackling with glee as I read them since I love it when an author can turn the standard Regency conventions upside down – or at least twist ‘em a little.
Miss Marion Mathieson takes no prisoners and doesn’t suffer fools gladly. She followed her English Army father across the Peninsula then after he died and she got shipped off to boring relatives, she got a secretary, Ronald Kidd, and took off for parts more interesting which she detailed in a book. Her daydreams are for the three romance novels she’s penned under another name. So when she and Ronald are traveling via coach to a speaking engagement and it gets held up, she’s eager to see what happens so she can add it to her next manuscript.
To her utter disgust, she displays more gumption then any of the men with her including one Corinthian who is merely either bored or more bored throughout the whole event. But something about it strikes her as odd and she eventually bullies Lord Kestrel …
Today Harlequin is announcing the creation of Carina Press, a digital only epress from Harlequin. Â On a personal front, this news is exciting because Angela James is a friend of mine and will be the Executive Editor of this new line. Â On a reader front, I think this move signals how important the digital space is becoming.
You can read all about Carina Press at its website: Carinapress.com. Â The plan is to launch in Spring/Summer 2010. Â Carina Press will release DRM FREE!!! ebooks on a weekly basis. Â The books will be available for sale at Carina Press and through other etailers. Â Carina will be publishing steampunk, sci fi, futuristic fantasy, multi cultural books – “if readers are blogging about a genre with passion and interest, we’ll publish it.” Â A whole list of genres can be seen here including thrillers, mysteries and erotica in addition to romance.
The Press will consider nearly any length of novels including short stories, genre novels between 50,000 and 100,000 and “complex narratives” of over 100,000. Â In short, it seems like Carina Press has few restrictions for authors in terms of genre, length or subject …
In light of the very gracious post by Handyhunter about cultural appropriation, it seems that we should compile a list of books that feature multicultural characters. Please note whether the book is a young adult (YA) or romance as well as whether the multicultural characters are main or secondary. Â Please also be respectful of other people’s recommendations. Â This is not to say that you can’t disagree with them, but let’s keep the comments as civil as possible.
Here are a couple to start the thread:
- Eileen Wilks, Tempting Danger featuring Lily Yu, of Chinese descent. Â Main protagonist. Â Urban fantasy romance.
- Meljean Brook, Demon Moon featuring Savi Murray, of Indian descent. Â Main protagonist. Urban fantasy romance.
- Jade Lee, The Concubine, historical set in China featuring two Chinese protagonists. Historical.
- Anne McAllister, Antonides’ Forbidden Wife, featuring Ally, half Japanese.  Main protagonist.  Straight contemporary.
Loading ... There has been some talk of publishers moving to a digital workflow based on xml markup language. The benefit of this is that it cuts down on the errors as a book moves through production. Currently books are typeset for a printer using a desktop publishing software program. When these books are converted to digital, the resulting file can have errors.
In reading the Audacity to Win, the errors started in the warning stage:
Throughout the book, I found several errors, the most egregious of which I screenshot for this post. However, there were frequent missing periods or quotation marks, usually at the beginning of a sentence.  I waver between laughter and frustration.  To some extent, I’m becoming inured to these errors.  They are present from small independent epublishers like Belgrave House to the largest publishing houses like Penguin and Harlequin.
I am of the opinion that a book should be error free, but I don’t think that the casual reader really cares about this. Â In taking a quick poll of my family, only my mother, a former teacher, really cared that a book was perfect in its proofing. Â The three others, all big readers, shrugged.
I know that some …
Welcome to First Page Saturday. Individual authors anonymously send a first page read and critiqued by the Dear Author community of authors, readers and industry others. Anyone is welcome to comment. You may comment anonymously.
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â€Em? Emily, is that you?’
Emily Standish sat down hard on the little wooden chair with its faded floral needlepoint cushion. She barely registered the small cloud of dust it gave out in protest. Her heart was racing and her breath was short. It couldn’t be. It must be nearly fifteen years – and this really wasn’t the moment for that kind of complex mental arithmetic. If someone had asked her, Emily would have claimed she barely remembered him. She certainly wouldn’t have expected that she could recognise his voice on the end of a crackling phone line in just five words.
â€Hello? Can you hear me?’
She could hang up, of course. For all he knew, she was on a train heading through a tunnel at just the wrong moment. Right moment. Whichever.
Or perhaps she could pretend he’d got the wrong number. He wouldn’t be able to tell …
Dear Ms. Mayberry:
 I think this might be your most emotional romance yet.  I certainly felt a little misty eyed (damn you) at the end of the story.  Hannah Napier and Joe Lawson meet under inauspicious circumstances. Joe is exhausted and all he can hear is the loud sound of an engine next door. It’s keeping him from enjoying some solitude and it’s bound to wake his kids.  Hannah is working on her motorcycle.  Once it’s finished, Hannah is going on a long awaited road trip, escaping her ex fiancĂ©Â and her sister who have found love together.  She thinks Joe is good looking but a jerk and Joe, well, he doesn’t appreciate Hannah’s physical attraction either.
Joe lost his wife, Beth, in a car accident a couple of years ago and he is left to parent their two children.  He feels like he is losing control over his kids. He does not want to be over his deceased wife Beth. He resents his body’s attraction to Hannah.
Worsening the situation is that the one place where Hannah felt safe, a bar/restaurant called The Watering Hole, has been purchased by Joe. It was …
I ordered a bunch of Harlequin Stationary goods that feature the vintage covers. Â The stationary goods include little matchbook notepads, bound composition notebooks and address books. I liked the address books the least. They have a spiral binding and I found them to be a little too bulky. Â My favorites are the little matchbook notepads. Â They come three to a box. Â The composition notebooks are nice as well and feature very hard cardboard front and back covers so it would be easy to write on a non hard surface.
The postcard tins are a great gift item but I don’t have anyone to send snail mail to. Should I start up a prison correspondence?
I’m going to give the notebooks and the address books away on the blog (am keeping the notepads myself). Just as a disclaimer or non disclaimer, I purchased these myself and Harlequin, which does many nice things for Dear Author, did not pay for them or give me any kind of discount.
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Simon & Schuster saw sales increase in the last quarter to $230.4 million which is up 2.4%. Â The improvement in sales was offset by “higher write offs of advances for author royalties” which …
Dear Frankie (2004)
Genre: Drama
Grade: A-
Gerard Butler, please stop acting in rubbish films that have heroines put in vibrating underwear and do more like this one. This film is wonderful. And it’s wonderful without overdoing the important moments or slathering on the pathos in order to yank on our heartstrings.
Lizzie Morrison (Emily Mortimer) has carried on a deception for years. When her son was a baby, she took him and fled her abusive husband. Living with her mother, Nell (Mary Riggans), they’ve moved from town to town to avoid Davy. But she’s kept all this from Frankie (Jack McElhone), instead telling him his Da is a merchant sailor and writing to Frankie as if the letters come from his father.
Their latest move has taken them to Glasgow and unintentionally brought about the thing Lizzie has always worried about. The name she randomly chose for the ship Davy supposedly serves on is actually the name of a real ship and it’s coming into port soon. When Frankie’s new classmate bets him that Frankie’s Da won’t come to visit while his ship is docked, Lizzie sets out to find a stranger to play the part for a day. But the Stranger (Gerard …
Dear Ms. Fielding:
I’m not sure if you were inspired by Roman Holiday starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck but there are a lot of similarities. Audrey plays a princess who, struggling under the strictures of her position, decides to flee. Princess Ann falls asleep on a park bench and is rescued by Joe Bradley, a reporter. He takes her back to his apartment. Over the course of a day or so, Ann and Joe fall in love, but they can’t be together because of Ann’s duty to her people. Cue bittersweet ending. (I always thought that Ann shipped Joe in for regular loving because what’s the point of being a princess if you can’t bone your lover from time to time?)
Roseanne Napier is the daughter of the Marquess and Marchioness of St Ives who died during a humanitarian effort when Rose was 6. Lady Rose, or Annie to her intimates, grew up to be the people’s princess. Unfortunately all that Annie does is smile, shake hands, smile, kiss babies, smile, go to parties. Her only skill is looking good and being polite. Every part of …
How good is Harlequin doing? Pretty good. In a dismal economy that sees revenues at its parent company dropping, Harlequin is bringing in the profit. David Holland, the interim CEO at Torstar, said that the decline in newspapers and digital were offset by continued growth at Harlequin. (Actually Holland stated it the other way around but I decided to put the positive spin on it). Harlequin posted $122.5 million in revenue which was up 3.7% from third quarter of 2008.
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After a dismal few quarters, HarperCollins experienced a small rise for the fiscal first quarter. Sales were slightly down (1.5%). Sales of ebooks accounted for 4% of the adult group revenue. Most of the profit came from restructuring and not from sales.
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The Wall Street Journal accuses Amazon of stockpiling cash by paying late on its bills by up to 72 days or longer. I understand that late payment is fairly standard in the industry and the writer of the article asserts that Amazon has never made a profit, something the SEC filings for the past five years would dispute. However, if Amazon’s posted profitability rests …
Loading ... Keishon, avidbookreader.com, linked to a discussion at copyblogger which debated whether the theorem that talented authors write badly when they are trying to express an idea and conversely write well when they are trying to touch an audience.
Now, the qualification in the copyblogger post is the term “talented” which can have a whole gamut of interpretations. But setting aside that term, should the author be writing for the reader or writing for herself? Unlike many of the commenters at the copyblogger forum, I believe an author should write for herself.
Interestingly, I think that there is a big difference between “writing for the market” and writing to touch an audience. The commenters, to me, are discussing creating an emotional connection with the readers (which I think is very important, thinking back to the post by Chloe and why she reads). So I’d ask you when voting that you think about the poll in terms of the development of a relationship with the reader through writing and not writing to the market.
Dear Ms. Dunlop,
 A friend of mine married her Frenchman so when I see books with French heroes, I check them out. Since I’ve found that the Desire line tends towards less assholic heroes, I decided to give “Transformed into the Frenchman’s Mistress” a shot.
If there was anything Charlotte Hudson had learned in her twenty-five years, it was how to be proper. So how had the ambassador’s granddaughter ended up on a wild movie assignment, ensconced in a centuries-old Provençal castle with notorious French playboy Alec Montcalm? While her relatives from Hudson Pictures were busy filming at Chateau Montcalm, the real drama was going on behind the antique wooden doors–beneath satin sheets. Charlotte knew their crazy, scandalous secret liaison wouldn’t last. And then she discovered she was pregnant….
This is a hard book for me to grade. There are some things about it I loved and other things that drove me nuts.
Charlotte actually has a backbone and is fairly intelligent. When she arrives at the Montcalm chateau to ask her school pal Raine Montcalm
if her family can rent it for a movie location and finds she’ll have …
Dear Ms. Monroe:
 Is it too corny to say that this book delivered for me?  I’m not a huge fan of the Navy SEAL books anymore because I think that there are so many of them and I worried about the machismo level of the hero but nothing about the book  was very expected.  That was a good thing.
Hailey Sutherland and her sister have taken over the family business, a San Diego institution that was once the place for social events like showers and parties and small receptions. Â Hailey was not as excited about the revitalization of the family business as was her sister for although she had been engaged three times, she doesn’t really know much about party planning. Â Because she was engaged three times, had her heart broken three times, she really isn’t in the mood to celebrate others’ newfound love.
When a SEAL team exercise plays out in front of a shower party and the women are drawn to the beach like George Clooney to brunette cocktail waitresses, Hailey recognizes that the Sutherland’s position on the beach could present some unique marketing opportunities for The Sutherland.
Lt. Commander Nate Peterson is stateside helping to train …
Grand Central Publishing has these November deals. Â If you haven’t tried Elizabeth Hoyt yet, it’s a safe bet at $1.99. Â Even if you don’t like it, you haven’t spent too much money on the try.
I thought about not posting this because I really dislike Macmillan’s ebooks policies. Â Most of the prices for ebooks by St. Martin’s Press are $9.99 and above for mass markets. But alas, it is a deal.
- Marked by PC & Kristin Cast for $2.99
Random House has been releasing freebies for months now. Â This month we have the following:
- A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K Hamilton (Sony is supposed to replace all the files you buy through the Sony eBookstore with epub files so even if you don’t have a Sony, you might want
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Open Threads at Dear Author. Want to know what new releases are out this month and what readers are excited about reading? Check out the threads below. 
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