Archive for the 'Features' Category
 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). 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. 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 …
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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I couldn’t resist the wordplay for the title. 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. 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. 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. Harlequin Horizon books are labeled with the Harlequin brand (although we don’t know what the badging will look like). 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. Each student will be provided a Sony Reader with all the textbooks preloaded. 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. Indigo books is estimating that …
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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 …
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.
Generation Y women like social networking and sharing their thoughts on the products that they buy. This is, apparently, news. It is not something that ebook manufacturers have caught on yet, though. The current ebook reader enthusiast is a 47-year-old married man with a household income in excess of 6 figures. But! researchers believe that the ebook market won’t take off until the women get a hold of it. Frankly I think the current ebook reader is the 47 year old male because that is whom the product was initially marketed toward. 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. Meriam Goderich responds that any …
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. This wooing of the agents seemed quite odd (has it ever been done in the past). One nugget was that agents and Amazon seem to be in agreement that publishers can make more money selling ebooks than hardcovers. I don’t know if that is true but it seems like publishers may be headed that route regardless. Certainly Harlequin has been able to be profitable without a hardcover division. 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. It notes that authors for Carina Press will need to play an active role in promoting their books and included this line about DRM. 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. In romance novels, the women titter about the rake’s scandalous reputation while parading their young in front of him. The adage “rakes make the best husbands” is passed as truth. In this post, I am making the case that the rake isn’t a very heroic trait.
What does a rake really signify? 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. A rake is a man with few scruples. 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. A rake is really a man with little honor. By sleeping with married women, he engages in cheating. By seducing the young unmarried women, he …
Today Harlequin is announcing the creation of Carina Press, a digital only epress from Harlequin. 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. 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. The plan is to launch in Spring/Summer 2010. Carina Press will release DRM FREE!!! ebooks on a weekly basis. The books will be available for sale at Carina Press and through other etailers. 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.” 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. In short, it seems like Carina Press has few restrictions for authors in terms of genre, length or subject …
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. In taking a quick poll of my family, only my mother, a former teacher, really cared that a book was perfect in its proofing. 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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‘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.
‘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 …
I ordered a bunch of Harlequin Stationary goods that feature the vintage covers. 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. My favorites are the little matchbook notepads. They come three to a box. 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%. The improvement in sales was offset by “higher write offs of advances for author royalties” which …
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.
The winners of the CL Wilson, Queen of Song and Souls are as follows:
- Pamk
- stephanie
- Rexe
- Julie
- Sharon
I have sent you an email.
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Inside the Higher Ed blog has another piece on technology and scholarship. This time, Alex Golub laments the shift of readers from paper texts to digital texts arguing that scholarship includes making the texts part of your physical environment, something that the current slate of ereaders do not foster:
Except textbooks. I have to admit I am scared silly by the idea of a generation of students so alienated from material they are supposed to be immersed in that they rent digital textbooks that they do not intend to keep, cannot dog ear and underline, and otherwise feel totally alienated from. Even the current trend of students not underlining in books so as to preserve their resale value strikes me as appalling. Taking ownership of your education — and indeed, just learning how to read closely — means making your books part of your physical environment.
I never marked up my textbooks. I always took notes in a separate notebook and was religious in keeping my texts as clean as possible. The digital textbook would have appealed to …
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Robin talks about this all the time. A short cut is a romance convenience, not just a convention. All genres have them but I’m most familiar with the romance genre and thus my attention is placed on its foibles.
Shortcuts are when an author relies on an archetype or trope in order to draw upon the collective memory of a romance reader to fill in the necessary motivation or backstory for a character. This often results in anachronistic behavior which confuses the reader and results in accusations of the reader not understanding. It can also result in distance between the reader and the story because the reader simply isn’t provided enough information to relate to the characters.
Despite how silly it may appear, JR Ward appears on her boards in character from time to time. She knows her male characters intimately, down to the type of liquor that they like to drink; whether they wear jeans, tailored slacks or leather pants; and if they are a boxer, brief, commando guy. Unfortunately, her heroines are not so well …
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. Sabrina Darby introduces her own brand of erotic romance with her single author collection, On These Silken Sheets (link to excerpt), available in stores now.
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 I remember getting The Call really well because I was sitting with my dad in front of my computer, watching CNN.com as John McCain introduced Sarah Palin as his running mate. I hadn’t thought too much about where or when it would happen––if it would happen––but I never would have imagined my father being the first person to know simply from the way I said hello on the phone. It was August of 2008 and it had been three months since I’d emailed the complete version of my book to Avon Red.
And I say complete, because they had already seen two of the novellas of the single author anthology I had submitted.
In January of ‘08, I had the idea for a short erotic story, which started with this one vivid interlude. From those …
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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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