Jane
 is a long time romance reader whose passion is, you guessed it, reading. She's currently loving contemporary authors like Sarah Mayberry and Kristan Higgins but her first love will always be the historical. Some of her old time favorites are Amanda Quick and Johanna Lindsey and some of the new favorites are Sherry Thomas, Joanna Bourne and Claudia Dain.
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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. 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. 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. The new settlement agreement was released yesterday.
For Consumers
There were quite a few positive changes. 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. This is really a win for consumers and for Google. Google now has the sole right to set prices and will do so using an algorithm developed based on market pricing. Authors might not like this because pricing of ebooks is trending downwards but it’s a plus for consumers. 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. It has removed the requirement to arbitrate one’s cases. 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 …
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.
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 …
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