The rules for Author Promo Night Open Thread are as follows:

• The book has to be released in that month (i.e., anything released during the last week of October would be a November release)
• You can post for yourself or you can have a friend post for you if the idea of posting about your book paralyzes you .
• No self published authors unless you write romance. No, I am not a POD hater, I am just thinking about the manageability of the thread.
• Think about the readership. I.e., does your non fiction book about psoriasis really fit?
• This one is more of a guideline than a rule, but be smart about your comment because if it is just a link to your website and the title of your book, I doubt you are going to get any interest.

DA reserves the right to delete the post if it promotes objectionable content (i.e., no daddy/daughter incest recommends are going to be allowed. Sorry.)

That’s it. Post away.  (Please note that our spam filter is very aggressive so wait a couple of hours before reposting).

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• April Open Thread for Authors (Author Promo)
• March Open Thread for Authors (Author Promo)
• Author Promo for February
• Author Promo Thread, January 2009 Edition
• Open Thread for Authors (Author Promo) December

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So thank Eros for two Americans, Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan, who dreamed up Mavis for their book Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels. It’s an unashamed celebration of their great passion, and they make no apology for it. “There’s nothing like a beautifully executed romance novel or the afterglow upon finishing an especially good one,” they write.

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Wall Street Journal op ed piece scoffs at the FTC regulations that are pointed at bloggers arguing that mainstream journalists receive so much swag that the office closets are groaning under the weight.

The specter of freebies has long haunted journalism. In the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons was famous for her swag intake. Come Christmas Eve she would “unwrap an avalanche of gifts” from Tinseltown royalty, according to screenwriter Anita Loos. “Two secretaries used to stand with notebooks to keep score so that Louella could remember the next day who had sent what.” Those notes weren’t taken to help her make proper disclosures to her readers.

Eric Felton, the author of the article, isn’t convinced by the FTC reassurances that bloggers aren’t the target.

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Romance Novel TV has decided to close its doors. It’s sad to see them go. Marisa and Maria were real fans of the genre and were some of the first to bring video to the online romance world. Video interviews with authors seem to proliferate every site, but Romance Novel TV was really the first to break out. We’ll miss them and good luck to their future endeavors.

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The Bookseller wrote a critical piece of Waterstone’s distribution center. In retaliation, Waterstone has blocked employee access to The Bookseller. Stay classy, Waterstone. Your inept attempts to make bad press stop only serves to generate more bad press.

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Barnes and Noble is purportedly in talks with publishers to allow a “lending” feature with its device and the ebooks. This would push me toward buying an ebook reader from Barnes and Noble. I have doubts as to whether BN could pull this off. After all, publishers can’t even get the pricing situation worked out what with St. Martin’s Press refusing to allow all of its books released in digital format and when they are available in digital format, SMP is charging a 100% upcharge for the digital copy. I’ve heard some noise about charging more for an ebook that comes with a lending ability. I don’t like that at all. I’m not going to pay a few extra dollars to be able to share my ebook.

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• Tuesday Midday Tech Links: BN’s Reader Is Called Nook. Not a Joke
• Wednesday Midday Links: JA Konrath Posts a Must Read Article and Dear Author Has Neat News
• The International Digital Rights Mess (or Amazon’s Cock Up)
• Thursday Midday Links: FTC, one more time

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I suggested a warning and opportunity to cure and Cleland liked that idea. He said that they have used it in the past in the health product field except they are called advisory letters.

I asked about the issue of the fines. Cleland stated that this is something the AP took out of context. The FTC has no ability to levy fines. A charge must be made and taken to an administrative law judge and a cease and desist is requested and provided if the FTC fulfills its burden. If the C&D is ignored, then a civil penalty can be requested for up to $11,000.00. The full explanation of enforcement and penalties for all FTC violations can be read here.

No case would be brought in federal court unless it involved a very serious fraud else the FTC would likely be frowned upon by the court for wasting judicial time.

We discussed the issue of Twitter and whether each and every positive statement about a book that had been received for review would need to carry a disclaimer. Cleland was of the opinion that it would however we did discuss the issue of the product itself. In many other industries, the review product is nearly always returned and not kept by the reviewer. In the book industry, it is common for all reviewers, regardless of whether they review for mainstream publications or whether they review for a personal blog, to keep the books that are reviewed. I also brought up the issue of e-arcs and how any blogger could prove that the product had been deleted or kept.

I’m fairly certain that Cleland is not familiar with the book industry or the book blogging industry. He certainly was open to hearing more from us. I plan to continue to discuss this issue with him.

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• Would I Lie To You?
• Coming Out of the Closet
• Weekend Links: Goodbye Romance Novel TV
• Monday Midday RoundUp: The Brave New World of Reviews
• How to Get Into Book Reviewing as a Blogger

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1. The Members’ Forum on the IASPR website is a standing messageboard where IASPR members (and non-members) can interact, sharing news of and discussions about popular romance studies. Anyone can register as a member of the board but members of IASPR will have access to a members only section of the forum.

2. IASPR has a Cafe Press store where you can buy shirts, mugs, and pins with our logo as well as fun slogans like “Romance Readers Make Better Scholars,” “Romance: Think About It,” “In UR bodice, analyzin UR literachur,” and many more.

3. A few IASPR Officers and members will be at the annual conference of the Romance Writers of America in Washington D.C. next week at various events:

• President Sarah Frantz, Vice-President Pamela Regis, and NYT best-selling author Sabrina Jeffries will be presenting “If you like the Classics; Or, How to recommend romance to Literature Snobs in your library” at the Librarians’ Day on June 15, 2009.
• Sarah, Pam, and IASPR member, Jessica Lyn Van Slooten, will be presenting on “The Wit, Wisdom, and Writing Advice of Jennifer Crusie” on Friday, July 17, 3:15-4:15pm, in Washington 3. IASPR Board Member Jenny Crusie herself will be responding to the panel!
• After this panel, IASPR will have a get-together from 4:30-6:30 in a room to be announced. Watch the IASPR Twitter page for announcement.
• IASPR will have a table at the Moonlight Madness Bazaar on Thursday, July 16, 8-midnight. We’ll be handing out IASPR swag to members: a tote bag, a membership pin, pens, a lanyard, bookmarks, etc.

4. The first IASPR conference will take place next month in Brisbane, Australia, 13-14 August, 2009 with a truly international list of speakers. Registration is open. The conference has been generously sponsored by Samhain Publishing, the Romance Writers of America, DePaul University, the University of Queensland, Queensland Institute of Technology, and the Fryer Library.

5. The IASPR conference next year will be in Belgium, 5-7 August, 2010, on the theme of “Theorizing Romance.” The Call for Proposals has been posted.

6. We plan to have our 2011 conference in New York City, NY on the theme of “The Business of Romance,” and our 2012 conference in Los Angeles, CA, on the theme of “The Music and Movies of Romance. If you are interested in being involved in the planning and organization of either of these conferences, please email Sarah Frantz.

7. The Journal of Popular Romance Studies has posted its Call for Submissions. Our first volume will be released on February 14, 2010.

8. Finally, do you know anyone else working on popular romance studies? Don’t forget other fields: anthropology, sociology, art, film, business, marketing, computer science, philosophy, psychology, etc., even neurobiology? We’d love to hear about them or have them hear about IASPR. Post about them here, or send them the web address of IASPR so that they can discover who we are and what it is that we do.

9. As always, feel free to email any questions about IASPR. You’ll get a quick response.

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The consumer will be offered the choice of paying full price for the book or accepting ads to reduce the price of the book.

The ads will be based on both the content of the book, metadata for the book, and user profile information that is either freely given by the user or mined from the users’ past purchases.

For example, if the customer has a history of interest in travel as indicated by the associated user profile, the advertisement component may include, in the printed content, advertisements related to travel, even though such advertisement may not be directly relevant to the requested content.

Depending on the agreement with publishers, Amazon could conceivably roll out advertising for ebooks right away with POD ad supported books coming soon.  Still to be resolved would be whether publishers and content creators a) have any right to control the ads (to some degree it seems that they would not) and b) whether they would be entitled to any ad revenue (off hand, again, I’m thinking that content creators would not be entitled to ad revenue so long as Amazon met its payment obligations such as remitting 30%-40% of the retail cost of the product to the publisher no matter for what price Amazon sells the product).

The danger to consumers is that books will begin to be priced in such a way as to force readers to buy the ad supported books else incur a premium cost.

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• Friday Midday Links: To Heaven and Back Again, the Ebook Saga
• Friday News Roundup: Positivity in the face of poor quality is cruelty of its own

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• Michael Nielson’s long post on how publishing is failing and how smart parts of publishing can reinvent itself. It’s definitely worth reading but it’s not an article that can be read and absorbed in one sitting.
• John Green talks about advances versus royalty rates. Like many a good blog post, the topic inspires many good comments.
• The Espresso Book Machine is becoming a favorite of patrons in an independent bookstore in Vermont but it’s used mostly to publish self published works.
• Chris Anderson and Malcolm Gladwell are arguing on the issue of free. Seth Godin weighs in.

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• The Lost Art of Publication (or why ebooks haven’t degraded print at all)

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Here is the info I got from them in their weekly email yesterday.

• All new eBooks are $9.95 or less.
• No eBook over $12.95. They aren’t moving all ebooks to $9.95 or less, only newly published ones. Cutting to $12.95 is a substantial cut for many older books though.
• All books on the New York Times Bestseller list are $9.95, whether it is new or has been there a while.
• 15% rewards on each purchase.

Via Publishers’ Weekly.

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http://daily-deals.iconico.com/software/liquid-story-binder/

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• Bookseller picked up on the debate here.
• GalleyCat gives a “beginner’s guide” to the discussion here.
• SmartBitch Sarah explains why she loves RWA and doesn’t want to leave.
• Katiebabs gives voice to her opinion.
• Azteclady of KarenScott’s blog wonders why RWA gets to decide who is having a legitimate career in publishing and who is not.
• Kassia Kroszer notes that suppressing information about digital publishing isn’t the way to decrease disinformation among the members.
• Heather Massey points out how many authors started in epublishing.
• Don Linn questions the need to ghettoize digital publishers.

Need more information? Check out ESPAN, the electronic publishing chapter of RWA (I know, it’s totally ironic) and the growing RWA for Change yahoo group.

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• 2009 RITA/Golden Heart Contest Controversy: Ebook Authors Need Not Apply
• EBooks Getting the Shaft from Writing Awards
• Blogging at RWA Nationals
• OMG Yes and Finally! Can Courtney Milan Put an End to the “Will Made Me Do It” Plot Device?

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