Here’s my hypothesis: The romance genre is about the one true love. The one true love is most obviously displayed in the soul mate stories that abound in the paranormal subgenre. In historicals and contemporaries, the trope is evident in the failed past relationships of the protagonists. How many widows and widowers have had a marriage that was miserable? How many heroines have never had an orgasm before the hero? How many heroes have had the one evil woman in his past that made him eschew real relationships?

I’m not being critical of this. I think I read the genre for the idealized form of the one true love, the O’Henry sacrifice, the idea that love can be so deep and abiding that it lasts for all time.  I recently read a book that challenged the one true love concept and I had a hard time buying into the HEA. The male protagonist had been in love with two women and choose one. The relationship ended badly and he took up with the other woman. He tells the second woman that he would have loved the first woman until death do them part, but for relationship problems.

When writing this piece, I thought of the Jennifer Haymore book, A Hint of Wicked, a story centered around a true love triangle. The heroine, Sophie, believed her husband to have died. After a period of mourning, she remarries her husband’s best friend and heir. Her husband returns, seemingly from the dead, after eight years.

During the story, Sophie is torn between the old husband and the new husband, loving each man and struggling up until the last couple of chapters between either one. Sophie says that the one that she is left with is the one “who understood her, who made her happy. Who completed her.” She kissed him “with a thousand times more need and passion than had ever occurred between himself and [her].” Did Sophie choose the one true love? She loved both men and was happy with both of them. One reader at Amazon commented:

Hopefully, the next woman will be the REAL love of his life–and I hope Haymore delivers a fantastic love story for him. After what he’s endured and suffered for so long, I just want him to find the happiness that he truly deserves.

Sophie’s decision left one man out in the cold, one man without his true love. He believed that Sophie was his true love. In the next book, he will likely acknowledge that the feelings that he had for Sophie do not match those that he has with the heroine of “their” book.

In romance, there doesn’t seem to be room for a character to love, fully and completely, more than once. Upon meeting the true mate, the character must justify past feelings for another as not as complete or full or passionate.

In C.L. Wilson’s Lord of the Fading Lands, the hero, Rainier vel’En Daris had one mate, Sariel. When Sariel was killed, he went insane and torched the land, killing thousands. His love for Sariel is commemorated in song and art. “Ellie couldn’t count the number of times she’d stood in front of Fabrizio Chelan’s immortal Death of the Beloved and wept at the unspeakable anguish the great master had depicted on the face of Rain Tairen Soul as he held Lady Sariel in her death swoon.” Yet, even Sariel had not been his truemate. “Sariel had joined her life with his, even knowing their souls would never follow where their hearts had lead.”

In The Arrangement by Joan Wolf, Gail is a widow. She loved her husband and they created a wonderful world together but after his death, Gail falls in love with the Earl of Savile. “This had never happened to me before. Making love with Tommy had been sweet, but I had always been content to let him be the one to initiate it. Much as I had loved Tommy, I had never burned for him the way I burned now for the Earl of Savile.” When Gail decides that she is going to leave the home that she made with Tommy.

Tonight, as I stood alone in the middle of the place where we had once been so happy, I realized that the girl I had been when I married Tommy was buried here along with him. I was a woman now, a woman who had learned to rely on her own capabilities and strengths because she had a child depending upon her and no one else to turn to.

I’d like to think that if Tommy had lived, the two of them would have matured together and the Earl of Savile would have gone on to marry someone else. That Sophie would have been happy with either man. I’m not convinced that she had one true love.

Can there be equal love a second time around, only different? Can a previous marriage or previous love been good and still make you believe in the HEA of the next, second love? What books can you think of that glorified the past relationship, making it the equal to the current one? Does the romance genre

Value, value, value. That seems to have become one of those buzzwords invoked in defense of corporate publishing’s status quo. But what is value, exactly?

Of the “agency model,” Hatchette CEO David Young has said, “It allows Hachette to make pricing decisions that are rational and reflect the value of our authors’ works.” Harper Collins CEO Rupert Murdoch echoes with, “There is no doubt we have been at the forefront of the global debate about the value of content.” Okay, so value is related to content. Clear enough.

And as a reader, consumer of books, and paid writer, I see it as a foregone conclusion that creative content should be solidly valued. However, I also don’t believe that either publishers or readers actually value books based on content alone. Rather, I believe that the valuation of books, inclusive of the original creative content, is an accumulated evaluation. As many have noted regarding digital devices and digital books, each gives the other meaning and functionality. It is the same with all of the components that comprise a book, from format to author branding to the actual words on the page/screen. Reading is an experience, and it is shaped by how one reads just as much as by what one reads. And that experience begins even before the reader has the book in hand.

Clearly price is associated with value in a somewhat delicate balance. If people are asked to pay too much for books, we will buy fewer books and less content will be sustainable in the marketplace. If we pay too little for books, content can be perceived as de-valued, either because the creator gets little or no financial benefit for writing or because there is simply so much content available that consumers cannot or do not make discriminating choices. Macmillan CEO John Sargent expressed this concern in reference to digital library lending:

“I don’t have to get in my car, go to the library, look at the book, check it out,” said John Sargent, chief executive of Macmillan, which publishes authors like Janet Evanovich, Augusten Burroughs and Jeffrey Eugenides. “Instead, I’m sitting in the comfort of my living room and can say, ‘Oh, that looks interesting’ and download it.”

As digital collections grow, Mr. Sargent said he feared a world in which “pretty soon you’re not paying for anything.” Partly because of such concerns, Macmillan does not allow its e-books to be offered in public libraries.

Incentivizing sales seems to be at the center of Sargent’s logic here, in that from his perspective, digital lending provides a disincentive for people to buy books (I’m not sure how this argument applies only to digital book lending, but that’s a different piece). Rather than seeing the convenience with which people can download books, either in a library lending or online purchasing capacity, Sargent views the convenience and the lack of price as devaluing books: “pretty soon you’re not paying for anything.” For Sargent, value is explicitly connected to price and to the paying customer. Free is perceived as valueless. And it’s not a coincidence, in my opinion, that a publisher’s profitability depends in part on how many and at what price books are sold.

As I’ve said elsewhere, I think books are both typical and atypical commercial products. They are subject to the same costs as other consumer products – of acquisition, production, distribution, marketing – and are clearly part of the stream of regular commerce. But many people do not see books as mere products, but rather as works of art (commercial art, perhaps), as entertainment, as collectibles. And there is a tension inherent in valuing and pricing a product that is part of the stream of commerce but comprised of original creative content.

To the author, the value is likely far beyond any commercial compensation. To the publisher, value can be connected to many things, all of which ultimately relate to profitability and sustainability (more on this later). And for readers, value is variable.  A book that fails to interest, educate or entertain (depending on its purpose for the reader) can be perceived as absolutely valueless, regardless of the price paid. A book that offers premium characteristics, from well-crafted and produced illustrations to rarity, can be perceived as particularly valuable. And so on.

What makes things so complicated from the reader’s perspective is a) different readers will value books differently, and b) value and price are not necessarily connected in the way Mr. Sargent seems to think they are. And even more problematically, these two variables are intertwined and mutually reinforcing.

Different readers value different books differently. In fact, the same reader values different books differently. Some readers focus expressly on the content of a book. The work of author X is inherently worth more to them than the work of author Y. Or the writing in one genre is inherently viewed as more valuable than the writing in another genre. Some of these valuations are made on the physical book itself, while others are not.  And perhaps most difficult to parse is the way value is calculated both at the point or acquisition or purchase and after consumption (reading).

For example, I was happy to pay the trade price for Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union because it has such a beautiful cover, illustrated inside and out, and because it has deckled-edged pages and seemingly high quality paper. Consequently, the physical packaging of the book made it more valuable to me upon purchase, increasing the price I was willing to pay for it. And fortunately, I’ve been loving the novel, which means that the value I place on the book as a whole will definitely match or even outweigh the price I paid. I’ve also been known to pay a premium for relatively thin hardcover books, although according to a survey Jane conducted a few months ago, I am in the vast minority on that. There are other cases where I am loathe to pay the mass market price for an ebook, or where I refuse to buy a new book at all.

But in all these cases, the decision to purchase or not is most often based on a pre-purchase valuation of the book relative to price and a number of other factors. That is because for the most part the reader cannot know how to value the book’s content at the point of purchase; rather a host of other factors influences the decision to purchase: price point, paper quality, cover imagery, format (hardcover, trade, digital), convenience of purchase, presence of DRM in digital books, etc. The valuation of content is something that happens after the book is consumed, while the decision to purchase is largely driven by non-content related factors.

For example, when Jane started talking about how great Karina Bliss’s What the Librarian Did was, I knew I would love the book. She told me about it on the phone, she tweeted about it, building my anticipation. By the time I purchased the book from eHarlequin.com, I knew I was going to love that book so much that I downloaded in a format I generally don’t like (secure epub, aka ADE). And I did love the book. But I also loved being able to talk about how much I loved it with Jane and recommending it to other people I knew were looking for a well-written, emotionally poignant Romance. My reading experience of that book started days before I even purchased the book and continues to this day, as I talk about how much I enjoyed it. And I value the whole experience, even though the book is clearly at the center of my experience. By the same token, a negative experience, with anything from purchase to format to content, can make me regret everything connected to that book, from the moment I decided to buy it to the second I was finally done with it.

Which is part of what makes those arguments from publishers like those I cited above even more frustrating for me. Because I don’t feel as if I’m being urged to value content for the sake of content. Rather I feel as if I’m being asked to accept the publisher’s valuation of books based on the publisher’s set price. Even more importantly, I feel as if I’m being asked to keep my focus on content value when the publishers themselves are admittedly influenced by a whole host of factors in how they value and price books. As Motoko Rich’s recent article in the New York Times illustrated, costs of production influence price, and those costs are connected as much to the content as to the marketing, packaging, printing, and distribution costs of books. Advances are paid to authors in widely varying amounts And are we supposed to believe that the content of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue is comparable in a positive or negative way to the content of Audrey Niffinegger’s Her Fearful Symmetry or Andrew Young’s The Politician? That a midlist author’s creative content is less valuable than that of a John Grisham or Nicholas Sparks? That the work of literary fiction is more valuable than that featured in mass market? And if content is key, why the valiant push to hold onto the hardcover-centric model of corporate publishing? If the goal is to encourage readers to value content, why not put out as many books in as many formats simultaneously as possible?

Because, perhaps, just like the reader the publisher values the book based on many different things, many of which have nothing to do with the content itself. And I think that’s natural and good. Moreover, I think a better understanding on the part of publishers about how readers value books will lead to better risk-taking on their part and on better valuation of content at the point of publisher acquisition. For me, as a reader, the issue is not so much the devaluation of content, because both good books and bad have both sold and sat on shelves since the beginning of bookselling. And if publishers really want readers to be the stewards of content valuation, I suspect supply would have to be extremely curtailed.

I don’t begrudge a publisher’s superior valuation of profitability; that’s a core value of the free market. However, I do think corporate publishers need to understand that the way we all value books is a comprehensive and dynamic process, one that changes from reader to reader, and from book to book. That it encompasses more than content, even though content may be the most substantial element of the reader’s experience. Because the reader cannot value the content upon purchase, however, valuation may initially be made substantially on non-content related factors. That doesn’t mean readers don’t value content; it simply means we value more than content, just like the publisher. When I buy a book, I am buying an experience, and it encompasses everything between searching/browsing for that book through purchase, reading, and sharing my responses to the book via review, Twitter, and other online and real-life discussions.

This is definitely an unsettled and exciting time for both storytelling and technological innovation. And for all of the differences publishers and retailers and readers have when it comes to how we value books, we will always have the books themselves in common. We just need to figure out how better to capitalize on those commonalities.

In looking over AAR’s Annual Reader poll results, I was struck with the fact that I still have not read Meredith Duran’s Written on Her Skin.  This is remarkable to me because I loved Bound by Her Touch and it is my book of the year 2009.  But there is something so perfect for me about Bound by Her Touch that I am afraid to read anything else by Duran.  I think I’m afraid nothing can live up to Bound.

I fully recognize that this is some kind of crazy.  Even if I did read Written on Her Skin and it didn’t live up to my expectations, it wouldn’t diminish my previous reading experience. I only think it will.  Yet, there is some mental block that I can’t seem to surmount.

I want to read it.  I see it in my ebook reader and just…skip over it.  I’m not always this way.  When I read Michelle Reid’s The Brazilian’s Blackmailed Bride in WeWriteRomance.com HP collection, I immediately ran to Fictionwise and bought all her electronic backlist titles.  I’ve gone the extra effort to buy used paper copies of the titles that have not been digitized.  I did the same thing for Susan Napier.  And I’ve read them.  And some of those books by Napier and Reid, I’ve read over and over again.

When I read Nalini Singh’s Slave to Sensation and found that she had written other books (they were Silhouette Desires), I ran to buy those. I am a confirmed glommer – I buy backlists of authors whose voice I really love.  Yet for some reason, I cannot bring myself to read Written.

I have other reading neurosis.  For example, in non romance series, I start getting very nervous when a couple is in a happy spot.  I’m certain that something bad is going to happen to them and it makes me afraid to read the final book.   Like in Julia Spencer’s Fleming series, Russ and Clare are kind of in a good place in their lives and I’m anxious about the future of their relationship.  I call this the Karin Slaughter Syndrome. (It used to be the Charlaine Harris syndrome, but what Slaughter does in her Grant County series far exceeds what happened in the Roe Teagarden series).

I’m interested in the final book in the Catching Fire trilogy by Suzanne Collins but I’m a Gale/Katniss shipper and if it ends up with Katniss & Peeta, I think I would be disappointed.  I call this the Megan McAfferty syndrome.   I suppose my illness is the Stephenie Meyer Syndrome which is the name for the feelings you get when you read subsequent books in a series which get progressively worse and make you regret having read the first one.  I’ve read enough reviews of Written to know that it’s not going to end up in a Twilight induced nightmare with spine shattering pregnancies but knowing is different than knowing. Or something.

These syndromes are all variations on the same thing.   I’ve committed to the author’s creations and her creative decisions make me regret reading those books.  It’s a trust thing.  I think that is why I enjoy reading romance.  There’s a certain sense of freedom, as a reader, to really lose yourself in the text because you know that the author isn’t totally trying to break you or if she is, you’ll be put back together by the end.

I’ve read about other reading paraylsis.  Some readers have commented when a book gets too much hype, it turns the reader off from the book altogether.    Does anyone else get this way about books? What causes your paralysis?   Or I am just really, really strange?  Because that could be the answer.

In Linda Howard’s book All the Queen’s Men, Louis Ronsard plays the villian.  He’s a wealth arms dealer who is portrayed as completely amoral.  He is targeted as the middleman who sells stolen arms to terrorists.

Ronsard was a shadowy Frenchman who gave his allegiance to no one group; he was the conduit, however, for many, and he had made an enormous fortune providing what was needed. He probably wasn’t behind the development of the explosive, but he would be the logical person to approach as a middle man, one to handle payments and shipments-for a fee, of course

He was, though, not without some standards:

The maniac who wanted to explode a bomb in a school as a protest for world peace was not going to purchase that bomb or the materials through him.

But he facilitated getting dangerous weapons into the hands of men who would do terrible things, like bring down an entire airplane to get one man.   Despite this, there are a number of Howard fans who have found Rosnard interesting and would like to see him star in his own book.  After all, Rosnard had an excuse.  His daughter is sick and he’s amassing this wealth to save her.  Or at least that is part of his justification.

I never saw the appeal of a Rosnard, a man who helped terrorists.  I found that to be irredeemable.  His was not a book I’d want to read.   While it is just fiction, there are lines I have drawn, particularly in romance about the type of person I want to spend time with and even with some of my favorite authors, there are paths I can’t, or won’t, travel with her.   I note that it is generally within romance than I have more of a black and white view of the main protagonists (although in fantasy, I’m looking for the good v. evil fix as well).

There are tropes that are acceptable outside of romance that I think romance readers have a hard time accepting within the genre.  Incest is one of those.  V.C. Andrews’ famed Flowers in the Attic features a love story between the two eldest children.  Locked up in the attic for years, the two teenagers begin to explore their burgeoning sexuality with each other, knowing that it is forbidden.   This story is a horror story and the children suffer tremendous emotional and physical abuse at the hands of their grandmother and mother.  Perhaps in light of all that the children have suffered, the love of each other is a minor sin.

Within the romance paradigm, however, I can’t help but think such a story would not be countenanced.  More than one blogger has been so outraged by even the advertisement of a book containing incest that I cannot imagine the uproar that would exist if a legitimate publisher put forth an incestual romance.

Having said that, there are plenty of brother and twin menage stories and there is the famed Men of August series by Lora Leigh wherein the brothers had to share their wives with each other in group sex acts to feel whole and loved due to the fact that the brothers were mercilessly tormented as children.  (Shades of Flowers in the Attic?)

One area I have a problem with is infidelity.  In Promise in a Kiss is the story of Devil Cynster’s mother and father.   The problem is that Devil’s father cheated on his wife with a Scottish woman and brought home the bastard to be raised by Devil’s mother.

 While Promise in a Kiss is written by an author who holds a strong grip on my reading emotions, the love story of the unfaithful Sebastien and Helena is one I simply couldn’t bring myself to read.

Yet, I’ve read books that feature infidelity within the genre trope that I’ve enjoyed.  I recently enjoyed a Michelle Reid glom and one of her backlist titles is The Ultimate Betrayal which features a husband who was unfaithful (to a certain point).  The infidelity happens off screen and before the start of the book.  Amy Garvey’s Pictures of Us is about a couple who had a picture perfect marriage only to find out that during a very difficult time in their relationship, before they were married, the heroine drifted away from the hero and the hero had a sexual relationship with another woman resulting in a pregnancy.  It wasn’t infidelity, technically, but the characters feel like they were being untrue to the other.

Then there is rape.  Forced seduction is an acceptable trope in the genre and some might even say that it is making a comeback.  I was surprised reading the March Sara Craven title, The Innocent’s Surrender.  I am a big Sara Craven fan but this one features a rape scene, or at least what I would term as a rape scene, in the beginning of the book.  Hero has heroine kidnapped and brought to his bedroom. His henchman lock the door and the heroine is not allowed to escape.  Hero tells heroine that she is not permitted to leave until she has sex with him. She begs him to allow her to leave, but he tells her that he has a letter indicating that she wants to engage in lascivious acts with him and that is what she will do until he tells her that she may go.

But what about Molly Sommerville in This Heart of Mine who raids Kevin Tucker’s shaving kit, climbs into bed with him, and while he is sleeping, proceeds to avail herself of his equipment and have sex with him while he is senseless.

The romance genre has con artists like the characters in Judith Ivory’s Untie My Heart, Jennifer Crusie’s Faking It, and Courtney Milan’s Proof of Seduction.   We’ve also had batterers, redeemed ones, in romance.  The Burning Point by Mary Jo Putney attempts to rekindle the marriage of a reformed batterer and his wife.

While I’d like to say a good author could make me accept anything, I know that is not true.  There are lines that I draw for characters and if they cross that line, it makes me hard to find them redeemable. I never enjoyed The Burning Point.  While I appreciated the writing in Ivory and Crusie’s books, I was never able to fully immerse myself in their stories.  In re-reading the Michelle Reid backlist, I’m not likely to revisit The Ultimate Betrayal.  I still have the willies after reading the first two Men of August books (could never make it to book 3) but I am able to read the twinsie/brother menages (because they aren’t touching!) although even that is losing its appeal the more that I contemplate it.

How about a bad mother? Could a mother who has abandoned her child, maybe even treated the child cruelly, be redeemed?  How about a pedophile?  A serial rapist?  An animal abuser?  Are there clear lines between the good guys and bad guys in your mind?   Are there lines that you draw in fiction?  Or is it all dependent on how good the author is?  Does it matter if it is romance or literary fiction? Why or why not?

Straight off the top of your head, do you think that authors have any ethical or moral responsibilities beyond the book?

I’m guessing that the vast majority of you answered this question the same way I did for a long time, with a fully articulated, deeply resounding NO.

As I said, this was my reaction for a long time, duly influenced, I am sure, by the paradigm of literary scholarship in which I still so often work, where everything is merely “interesting,” and where social issues are examined without judgment. But purely as a reader, my view on this question has evolved in tandem with the emergence of numerous issues related to but not limited to the books themselves.

And things have gotten most complicated lately around the issue of appropriation, particularly in terms of white authors who write about people of color and straight women authors who write about gay men.

While I don’t want to suggest these cases are identical, I think they share two essential characteristics: a) there is an issue of commercial profit based on the experience of historically marginalized people, and b) in both cases there is sometimes a falsity perpetuated in the process of selling the author’s work (a male pseudonym or a white character featured on the book cover). And both of these larger issues have raised the issue of whether authors have any ethical or moral responsibilities outside the confines of their writing.

All art requires appropriation – whenever we imagine the experience of another we must embody that person to grasp the differences from our own experiences. I absolutely believe that the construction of alternative realities and personae in fiction charges both its diversity and creativity. And while I do not believe that art must have moral or ethical or social purpose, I do think that fiction can bridge the chasm of difference between people of different experiences and backgrounds, promoting understanding, compassion, and edification. Even those books any of us might find insulting, offensive, unworthy, whatever, have a basic right of expressive existence in the vast realm we refer to as creative freedom.

But what about outside the book; what about the author, as a person, as a name, separate from but attached to the book?

When it comes to pseudonyms, they are as old as writing itself, I daresay, especially these days when privacy is a concern for many public figures. But they’ve had other uses as well. Mary Anne Evans became George Eliot so that her writing would be taken seriously and even chided other women authors for being “silly” and writing silly books. Harold Lowry writes genre Romance as Leigh Greenwood, one of more than a handful of men who write pseudonymously in this female-dominated genre.  And increasingly, some female writers of m/m Romance are donning male pseudonyms, as well. On a superficial level, the reason for this is obvious: it creates a sense of confidence in the reader that the author knows what s/he is writing about. Which, as blogger Sparky argues, is exactly the problem:

HOWEVER when you use a MALE pen name (and, to a lesser extent, but still very telling, a gender neutral or initialled pen name) in the m/m genre you are doing so in a context where authors do try to fake being gay men for the sake of “authenticity”. When you use a male name in the m/m genre you are implying that you are a gay man – you are implying knowledge and life experience you do not have, you have not suffered for and you have NO RIGHT to claim. This is an appropriation of our identity and is one of the most grossly disrespectful parts of the m/m genre. Women using pseudonyms in the Romance genre don’t feel the need to suddenly use male names – so why do they in the m/m?

But all writing is appropriation, right? Didn’t I just say that at the beginning of this piece?

Yes, I did. But I’m not sure all appropriation is created equal, especially if the appropriation extends beyond the writing and into the public face of the author. We all know about the various cases of fake memoirs, from Angel At the Fence to Love and Consequences to Forbidden Love, where the story itself is presented as authentic and the author a witness or participant. But authenticity attaches to fiction to a certain extent, as well, or pseudonyms aimed at a specific gender or cultural affiliation would be deemed unnecessary. Yet they persist.

And in some cases (especially with men writing Romance under female pseudonyms), the author does not try to hide the “real” person behind the pseudonym. But if, say, a female author publicly presents herself as a presumably gay male, if she hides her true gender in order to sell books, isn’t that essentially an attempt to commercially profit off of someone else’s life experience? But that’s what all writing is, I said! And it’s all a fantasy, anyway! It’s about the story!

Okay, but we’re not talking just about the writing here – we’re talking about selling an identity, an experience in the form of a public authorial identity. We’re talking about selling authenticity, which is where one holds out an identity for the purpose of getting others to trust in that identity in buying/reading a book. And, as Sparky suggests, when the group that constructs the author’s pseudonymous identity has been traditionally marginalized and oppressed, isn’t an attempt to profit off of that group’s experiences by publicly claiming that identity inherently exploitive?

I am asking this as an open question, by the way.

Another manifestation of the appropriation and authenticity conundrum we’ve seen lately is the cover debate, sparked by Justine Larbalestier’s Liar and more recently by Jaclyn Dolarmore’s Magic Under Glass, both books published by Bloomsbury and both undergoing cover renovations after representing white girls in place of the protagonists of color. In the midst of the debates about Dolamore’s book, Larbalestier blogged that

Sticking a white girl on the cover of a book about a brown girl is not merely inaccurate, it is part of a long history of marginalisaton and misrepresentation. Publishers don’t randomly pick white models. It happens within a context of racism.

Blogger Editorial Anonymous said

And also for the record: those of us who objected to the cover were not objecting on the author’s behalf. We were objecting on the readers’ behalf. And especially on the minority readers’ behalf, because some of us understand how excruciating and demoralizing it is to children to be made to feel that they are the wrong color.

In both these cases, the darker-skinned heroine was being represented on the book’s cover as light-skinned. Whether or not the context here is one of out and out racism, it is clearly one of race and one of commercial profit. However, unlike the female to male pseudonym situation, here we have something of the opposite: the commercially viable position is one of white, and the perpetrator is the publisher.

So why even implicate the author in this? She has no control over her cover art, right? Karen Healey went so far as to suggest that authors are “endangering” their careers by speaking out against a whitewashed cover:

But there was one response from people who were justifiably angry that I do not think was practical, and that was the expectation that the author should have spoken up publicly and denounced this cover. Even if, these people said, even if authors really have no control over their covers and it’s all the publisher’s doing, she should make a stand!

This is roughly equivalent to expecting someone who has just acquired their dream job to curse their boss for doing something wrong. In front of a packed press room. While the boss is standing beside them on the podium.

First, in response to the persistent employer/employee analogy Charles Petit of Scrivener’s Error makes the following correction: “Bluntly, under the 1976 Copyright Act, there is no real question that the publishers’ rights are subordinate to those of the authors (excepting, of course, works made for hire… in which the patron/publisher is wrongly defined as the author).”  I don’t know where this whole “employee” model of authors came from, but if authors are employees, then they would likely be producing works for hire, and not creative works over which they own the rights. They couldn’t be complaining about piracy disrupting their copyrights, etc.

Rarely have I seen this employee analogy forwarded except in cases where the author is being asked by the reader to question or protest against the publisher on behalf of the reader (not on behalf of the author herself, as was the case during the protest against Harlequin). But I am willing to accept the idea that speaking out against a whitewashed cover may place the author in the position of “rocking the boat” and being viewed as “difficult.”

My next question, though, is whether that means the author has no ethical or moral responsibility to take a stand against whitewashed covers, especially when the author in question is white.

I am a bit more ambivalent about this situation than the pseudonym case, in part because the author is not directly or initially perpetrating the whitewashing. However, if the author supports the whitewashing, either overtly or tacitly, is the author participating in the erasure of those very characters of color she created? And more importantly, is there an added responsibility in a white author writing about characters of color, in appropriating the experiences of non-white peoples in a commercial – hopefully, profit-yielding – work of fiction?

In an industry where authors of color – in Romance, at least – are shelved separately from other genre books, where being an author of color – especially a black author – can automatically land her books on a separate, ethically-designated shelf in the bookstore, white authors have much more mobility within the genre. Beyond the book, there is a definite privileging of whiteness in Romance, combined with a fetishization of race, that extends to the race of the author and the way the book is represented to the reader.

So why shouldn’t the white author who appropriates racial otherness have some responsibility to represent those like her characters outside the book, too?

Again, an open question.

Personally, I am adamant about protecting an author’s creative freedom. I generally do not believe that authors explicitly owe individual readers anything outside the book. And I have read numerous objections to this idea of authorial responsibility beyond the book with the admonishment that perhaps authors will stop writing about characters of other races, sexual experiences, etc. But you know, I don’t think it’s a bad thing for authors to think good and hard about what it means to write about people of color, about people of different sexual orientations and practices, about people of different cultural, ethnic, religious backgrounds. Just as I don’t think it’s a bad thing for readers to approach these stories mindfully. How can mindfulness be a bad thing, especially when we’re talking about commercial work aimed at yielding economic profit?

I do realize that, especially in the case of covers, there are some significant intersections between how characters are represented on covers and how they are represented within the books themselves, and how much more complex questions of authentic representation within books are. Also, I deliberately did not frame this inquiry in terms of what authors owe readers or what readers can expect from authors, because I’m not sure to whom I’d say authors specifically owe these ethical or moral responsibilities. I believe these issues are related to core community values, and by extension, to larger social values.

Even if an author does not believe that s/he has any responsibilities beyond the book, I would suggest that when an author endeavors to represent the experiences of another group, particularly a historically disenfranchised group, and further, if an author aims to suggest membership in that group through a pseudonym, then the author should be prepared to meet the criticism of readers who do believe that the author has some off-page responsibility, either to them, to the genre, to the marginalized group, or to society at large. And if authors do not respect that readers may buy the full implications of what authors are presenting to them for purchase, they risk losing the respect that those readers have for their work.

So back to the original question: should authors be held to a higher responsibility beyond the book when they choose to appropriate the experience of historically marginalized peoples? Should they be expected to deal with reader anger or protest (boycott, letter writing, etc.)? Beyond the creative freedom artists expect, what ethical or moral responsibilities, if any, do they have?

Fear of criticizing one’s publisher evinces a certain lack of faith in one’s work. If speaking out on an important issue like one’s cover might cause an author to become unpublishable, I wonder how saleable that work really is. If the author’s voice is so easily replicated or replaced, why should it make any mark in the marketplace?

By coincidence, during last week’s controversy, I received an email from Barry Eisler, whose French publisher, Belfond, has repeatedly chosen covers Barry finds weak. Barry’s past attempts to persuade Belfond to change course have been fruitless, and Barry found their latest proposed cover so insipid and inappropriate that he decided to pen them an open letter. Would I post it, he asked? In a word: yes.

Will authors ever feel free to criticize publishers? Should they?  Should a conspiracy of silence be maintained? Does that help or hurt?  Is is unprofessional to air out criticisms in public?  If yes, what kind? If no, why?

Dear Belfond,

I’m grateful that you like my novels enough to buy the French publishing rights. And I hope it goes without saying that I want you to succeed with those rights, and succeed wildly. In fact, I think I can safely say to all publishers, on behalf of all authors, that we want nothing more than to help you succeed.

But damn, you sometimes make it hard.

The cover you plan to use for my seventh novel, Fault Line, pictured below, is inexcusably bad. It’s not just bad for my book; it would be bad for *any* book. It wouldn’t even work as part of a brochure from a surveillance camera equipment supplier (although at least there it would have some logical connection to the underlying product). Yes, it’s that meaningless. That boring. That unlikely to cause a potential customer to do anything but overlook it and move on.

Before we go further, let’s acknowledge two things. First, two percent of people are going to love your cover. It’s their favorite color, they find garage doors strangely erotic, whatever. It doesn’t matter. Such reactions are idiosyncratic and will exist in two percent of the population for any cover imaginable. Unless your goal is to appeal to only two percent of your possible customer base, you need to do better. Second, I understand different things work in different markets. But what you’ve chosen isn’t a violation of a particular market sensibility. It’s a violation of the fundamental principles of marketing itself — principles that apply across cultures. We’ll discuss those principles below.

Now, I grant you, Fault Line isn’t an easy story to capture in a cover. Two brothers — a soldier and a lawyer — riven by an old family tragedy. A conspiracy that forces them back together. A beautiful Iranian-American woman each desires and distrusts. Sex, violence, exotic locales. Suspense. A backstory right out of the headlines.

Did you notice how, in describing the book, I’m also describing its potential selling points, the points that might induce a potential reader to buy it? For some books it’s harder, for some it’s easier, but this is always what you need to do.

Now, can you identify even a single *one* of the selling points I mention above in your proposed cover?

I didn’t think so.

Let’s look at it another way. If you knew nothing about the underlying book and could judge only by this cover image and title, what would you guess the book is about? Related and equally important, what would the cover suggest the book feels like? Sexy, gritty, funny, phantasmagoric, scary, thrilling, fast, slow… you get the idea. A cover should convey sellable mood as well as sellable story points.

What you’ve proposed for Fault Line looks like a closed garage door with a couple CCTV cameras top right. The title suggests there’s some kind of fatal connection here, but in the absence of anything else, that’s not much to go on. So you’d have to guess, “The book is about closed garage doors. Or maybe surveillance cameras.” Of course, you’d be wrong — in fact, the book is not about garage doors or surveillance cameras, or even about concepts suggested by garage doors and security cameras. There is some (incidental) surveillance in the book, but even if the pictured cameras appealingly conveyed this notion, is surveillance really one of this book’s key selling points? Really the reason someone might want to buy this book? Is surveillance the reason *you* bought the book?

The proposed cover doesn’t even offer higher-level clues. Sex? Action? Exotic locales? Is a single one of these more general selling points even hinted at in this proposed cover?

As for the mood your image conveys, I’d say: Closed. Impenetrable. Inert. Dull. Lifeless. Empty.

Are those qualities that attract you to a story? Do you expect they will attract readers?

Of course not. In fact, if someone deliberately sought the most insipid, inert image possible, it would be hard to beat what you’ve proposed. I can only conclude from this that you don’t understand what makes a cover work, or what principles you ought to apply in choosing one, and that you’re therefore picking images more at less at random. That’s not good — you’re in the business of selling books, after all — but it would be worse to just accept this level of performance and give up. So I hope the following will help.

You need to start by asking yourself what *you* liked about the book. Why did you buy the publishing rights? What about the book made it special to you? Why are you excited about it, what moved you, what do you talk about when you talk about the book? If you like, you can approach this step instead by trying to articulate to a imaginary customer why he or she would like the book, find it exciting and satisfying, etc.

Next, once you’ve articulated these things and refined them, list them, in order of importance.

Third, try to identify imagery that suggests these things. You can do this yourself, or through a design firm to whom you’ve conveyed the list above (but don’t outsource the creation of the list itself. You might wind up with… well, with a picture of an olive-hued garage door). The imagery you or the designer selects will form the basis for the cover.

Finally, pressure check the proposed cover by asking the question I mention above: If you knew nothing about the underlying book and could judge only by this cover image and title, what would you guess the book is about? If the cover provides the correct answers — that is, the very things *you* liked about the book — you’re doing well. If you want to be thorough and do this test properly (and why not?), show the cover to people who really don’t know the first thing about the book and ask them what they think the book is about, what they think is the feel or mood of the story within.

A good cover will engage the potential customer. Eye-catching is fine, but it isn’t enough — otherwise we could just slap on florescent colors and zebra stripes and call it a day. As a general rule, there should be something in the cover that suggests a story, that makes the reader wonder about something hinted at but not revealed, that causes the reader to want to pick up the book to investigate further, something that’s like a whispered promise on which the book will then deliver. If a cover doesn’t interest a potential reader enough to at least cause her to pick the book up and flip it over, you’ve lost the opportunity to get her to take any other steps that might end with her carrying the book to the cash register. And if a cover doesn’t help you sell books, whatever else it might be doing, it’s a failure.

Stated simply, you must keep two things in mind: what a cover is for, and how your cover will achieve it. If you can’t clearly and persuasively answer both these questions, your efforts are likely to be substandard.

For what it’s worth, you’re hardly the only publisher that finds itself, shall we say, book packaging challenged. See, for example, Stephen King excoriating FSG for their inexcusably anodyne packaging of Mischa Berlinski’s Fieldwork. Or browse the shelves of any bookstore and see how few books are packaged effectively. Or consider this example of a publisher’s proposed author bio. But why not be better? After all, a poorly thought-out cover doesn’t cost less than a well conceived one. Mediocrity doesn’t save you money. It only costs you. And with so many poorly-packaged books out there, it’s easier for a good one to stand out.

Forgive me for discussing your packaging shortcomings in public, but I’ve tried before in private and to no apparent effect. I hope that by addressing you in this context, I might finally get your attention. And though I recognize this kind of communication might irritate you, a reaction authors generally fear, what do I have to lose, really? If you go ahead with this cover, you’ll have killed the book in France anyway (not for the first time, let’s be honest). So for me, there’s not much to lose in beseeching you to do better. And even if you don’t listen, others might learn from your mistakes. A conspiracy of silence on ineptitude in this business is slow suicide for everyone involved, and I’d like to see other authors push back harder when their publishers propose ineffective packages. If this letter encourages or enables other authors to improve their own publishers’ efforts, it would be some measure of consolation for stillborn sales of Fault Line.

But come on, you can do better than this. My British publisher did. Their initial covers for the UK Rain books were almost as bad as what you’ve proposed for Fault Line, and my sales in the UK reflected it. But to their great credit, the Brits acknowledged how poorly they had done, did a complete rethink, and dramatically repackaged the books with stunningly good covers (images below). My UK sales immediately shot up, I earned out, and my UK publisher is now firmly in the black with me. You can do the same, if you want to. I hope you’ll let me help.

Sincerely yours,

Barry

	First British cover for Rain Fall, looking like… a thriller about cloud formations?
	First British cover for Hard Rain, looking like a thriller about… the color mustard yellow?
	Now we’re talking.  Apply my test for a book package to this cover and to the previous British covers:  If you knew nothing about the underlying book and could judge only by this cover image and title, what would you guess the book is about?  Related and equally important, what does it *feel* like?
	Again:  what does this cover convey vs the first British Hard Rain cover?

Chart from Bowkers

In Bowker’s 2008 PubTrack Consumer Survey, the activity in which largest amount of time that READERS spent doing any one thing was browsing online. Reading books came in a distant fourth, right behind reading newspapers and magazines and far behind TV viewing. The good news is that in 2009, the National Endowment for the Arts found that more adults were reading, reversing a two decade downward trend. The growth was attributed to an increase in young adult reading and in fiction, both novels and short stories.

It used to be that I couldn’t even imagine a world without books but now, with the internet, there seems to always be something to entertain me. I can go over to view one video on Youtube and get stuck there for 2 hours watching music videos and home edited vlogs. I feel like I have lost whole days at Etsy.com and it’s step sister site, Regretsy.

There is nothing quite like losing oneself in a long form narrative, though, and that’s why I love reading books, but I do wonder if I am reading less today than I was ten years ago. Of course, ten years ago, I didn’t have a child and I could laze away all evening doing nothing but reading and eating Doritos. I know that blogging and social media like Twitter, Goodreads, and Facebook take time away from reading. One nice thing about tv watching is that I can often multitask. I can update my Goodreads page and still catch the worst and the best of the auditions on American Idol, particularly when Ned is at the remote where I essentially am treated to a condensed version of every show.

Books don’t lend themselves to multitasking. You read and nothing else. I can sew, surf the web, and even page through a magazine while watching TV. Books take a time commitment. It’s one that I am happy to make, for the most part, but I find myself gravitating toward shorter books. I’ve noticed that there is a trend in digital publishing to provide more short form fiction than novel length fiction. Category length books represent 40% of published books (at least in 2006). Recently, Harlequin category books popped up on the USA Today list, in part because the books are tracked individually now, but also because for a certain period of time, they sold better than their long form narrative counterparts. Of course, part of the reason for the sales could be price but it could also be that readers are gravitating toward shorter fiction. I was never sure if the move by publishers to cut word count was a cost thing or a consumer response thing. (I thought it might be cost).

I certainly don’t think I am buying fewer books than I did before, but I am buying more category books. It’s easy to get a quick emotional fix from a category book. In a couple of hours I can read the courtship, the consummation, the drama, and the conclusion.

There are so many forms of entertainment out there to compete with the time set aside for books. Reading is almost a luxury given that I have to devote exclusive time to do so.

Does anyone else feel like their overall consumption of reading has declined? If so, what other forms of entertainment is replacing your reading time? If not, is it because you eschew other forms of entertainment consciously or because reading is still your first choice for entertainment? Where do you rank books in your overall entertainment options? First, second, third?

The second is that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is on the verge of collapse. It’s Irish investors were funded largely by the Anglo Irish Bank which is now owned by the Irish taxpayers. It sounds like a horrible ugly mess.

If you didn’t enjoy a certain novel, well that’s great as well! Of course we want every title to be a home run with readers, but when they aren’t we want to know why. The only way we can continue to bring our readers consistent and quality fiction is to receive honest and unbiased feedback from them. We’re not asking for positive reviews in return for free review materials. We’re simply asking for complete objectivity.

I’ve heard there are some authors are demanding that positive reviews be republished around the web at various social media sites or  authors requiring that no 3 star review or below be posted until after the publication of a book. I hope bloggers know that there are plenty of books to review out there not to be strapped down by these ridiculous requests from authors or publishers.

We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech.

In my last piece, Morality and Romance, I suggested that the genre reflects a historically entrenched double standard around female sexuality, namely that what is largely tolerated or even embraced in male protagonists – rich and varied sexual experience – is disparaged in female protagonists. So-called Dukes of Slut can be heroic, but not Duchesses of Sexual Liberation.

A small debate broke out in the comments – as often around this particular issue – over whether Romance is merely reflecting nature’s wisdom and biology’s programming:

Growly Cub suggests,

The fact that there are biological differences between the genders does not negate the fact that cultural imprinting is alive and well. If one gender gets to have indiscriminate sex and the other doesn’t that’s a double standard regardless of whether one gender’s biology might predispose them to it. Especially, since we pride ourselves of not being ”all animal” but civilized and able to overcome our instinctive behavior.

To which Dick responds,

I don’t disagree with what you wrote, actually; society does impose constraints on its members. The question really is whether society develops those constraints, given the biological, emotional, physicological differences between men and women, because they are pragmatic recognitions of those differences or because it wants to give women fewer opportunities for sexual expression.

Although there are several manifestations of the argument Dick makes, they all seem to proceed from the rather uncontroversial premise that men and women are physically and emotionally different. From there, the conclusions range from assertions that men are biologically destined to “spread their seed” as widely as possible to arguments that women are programmed to bear and nurture their young, resulting not in a sexual double standard but rather the reinforcement of biological and evolutionary programming that posits males as naturally promiscuous and females as naturally monogamous.

Despite whatever scientific and social data exists to contravene these assertions (not the least of which is the impressive rate at which female infidelity is climbing), let’s put that aside and accept these precepts as true. Let’s embrace the idea that men are naturally predisposed to polygamy and women to monogamy and then proceed with a consideration of Romance. A genre that celebrates romantic love, primarily monogamous love.

Okay. So if in the main genre Romance has traditionally been aimed at celebrating monogamous romantic love, and men are biologically programmed to be sexually polyamorous, then the substantial threat to the success of the monogamous love relationship would be the hero’s basic nature, right?

Except how many Romances have you read where the heroine has to worry about the hero’s cheating, especially after she’s worked the magic of the magic hoo haw on him?

Yeah, me neither. And I would suggest that’s because it’s not the hero’s sexual nature that’s at issue in the genre, but the heroine’s (and obviously I’m talking about hetero Romance here). Further, I would suggest that the heroine’s sexuality is one of the most valuable, and therefore vulnerable, forms of currency in the genre.

Historical Romance is often open about this, what with so many of its heroines virgins and so many of its heroes compelled to marry a virgin (or marry the heroine after he has taken her virginity). In Loretta Chase’s Don’t Tempt Me, which a number of people defended in the comments of my last post, what urges Lucien to ask Zoe’s father for her hand in marriage is a somewhat belated sense of honor that kicks in after he has hastily and precipitously rid her of her inconvenient virginity. While in Carolyn Jewel’s Indiscreet, the heroine’s alleged loss of virginity, to a man who is not the hero, is launched as a weapon to destroy her reputation and put her beyond easy eligibility for a good marriage. And in Mary Balogh’s The Secret Pearl, the hero feels free to use the heroine when he believes her to be a prostitute, but once he realizes she is a virgin, he is beset with a terrible guilt that develops into the forever kind of love we look for in Romance.

Whether or not this equation of a woman’s worth to her sexual status is historically sound logic (and there are many, many layers to this analysis that do not all yield a conclusion that it is), it is a standard construct in historical Romance, with the couple rewarded by true love, often against a tradition of marriage for economic gain or family alliance.

Contemporary Romance, though, is more of a challenge, because practically speaking, women should not have to rely on the currency of their sexual purity to make a good marriage match. And yet, we know this not to be the case. Take Victoria Dahl’s first contemporary, Talk Me Down, which garnered a review in which the reviewer compared the heroine, Molly, to “a dog in heat.” As if a woman who enjoys sex and embraces her sexuality with abundant enthusiasm is not only inhuman but mindlessly obeying a biological imperative to reproduce. That’s an interesting conflict, to say the least.

It echoes the now infamous Facebook “hookup list” revelation, where a teenager who was busted by his sister for having beer in his room took some public revenge by posting his sister’s blowjob fantasy list, comprised of guys from her school. And if that were not humiliating enough, the comments have been astonishingly crude and cruel, ranging from, “She got what was coming to her,” to “I kinda like the little Skanks [sic] style!” to “She defo deserved it. No one likes a tell tale… Or a whore. ROLF.” Someone else pointed out the obvious, namely that

About 15% of the comments here are about how terrible this is for the girl… And yes, there is a double standard with men and women. A girl who does this is a slut. A guy who does is a stud. Complain about this all you want, but that’s the way people will look at it until the end of time.

To which another commenter responded with what is not, apparently, quite so obvious, namely, that “The reason it will never change is because people choose to perpetuate this bullshit, dude.”

Let’s put aside the question of whether this is a double standard and focus specifically on the question of value. In this example, the girl’s value is being expressly equated with the perception of her sexual promiscuity. A male member of her family has put this at issue and has put this young woman at risk on several levels. And note, too, that we don’t know what the girl’s sexual status is – merely the creation of a document suggesting sexual polyamory changes her currency as a female. And because she is being judged a “whore,” it seems we can elicit a conclusion that sexual polyamory devalues a woman’s reputation.

So going back to the question of whether these views mirror some biological or psychological or historical imperative, even if all that were true, I don’t think it’s the critical issue. For me, the critical issue is that as a society we continue to value a woman’s sexual status and we give value to women (or take it away) based on this status. Society justifies whether a woman deserved sexual assault or even rape based on whether she appears sexually demure enough. We judge a teenage girl as “whore,” all the while young teen girls are giving young teen boys blowjobs in junior high playgrounds. It’s the age-old paradox in which the boys love these girls when they’ve got the goods in their mouths, but afterwards, not so much. And for the grown-up version of this scene, check out this story at Jezebel about a “glamour competition” in England and what they call the “hook-up culture.” I find particularly compelling the call to focus on “the question of whether we’re freely choosing our behavior, and how we can help younger women do so,” and to move away from the notion of “promiscuity” and all of its negative connotations.

So what does this mean for Romance? In many ways, the idealization of love in Romance functions as socially subversive, especially when at any given moment, more than 50% of couples are divorcing. So why is it that in Romance, where enduring love and happiness comes to the brooding, depressed, disfigured, sexually promiscuous hero, the heroine still has to avoid becoming “a dog in heat”?

Men and women may be different, but is it really biology that leads us to value a woman by the currency of her sexuality? And how does Romance perpetuate or challenge this valuation?

One thing I’m seeing more of in the genre is heroines who have been damaged by sexual promiscuity. Elle, from Megan Hart’s Dirty, for example, punishes herself with emotionally disconnected sex (and yes, I absolutely consider a Romance, especially since Elle and Dan end up married, living in the suburbs, and contemplating a family). Jane, from Victoria Dahl’s Lead Me On, is suffering the shameful effects of teenaged sexual promiscuity as a reflection of low self-esteem. In one sense I appreciate the willingness to investigate the darker connections between self-esteem and sexuality in Romance heroines. But I also think it’s interesting that the sexually promiscuous woman written within a construction of romantic love often endures a great deal of shame or punishment (inflicted by others or by herself) before she receives the gift of romantic happiness. Those heroines who are unashamed of their sexual polyamory may, more often than not, be pushed into erotica, where there is no expectation of a romantic happy ending.

While there is rarely ever a question around whether the hero – the one who is supposedly more at risk of resisting monogamy – will be a faithful spouse, do we, as women ourselves, distrust that the heroine will be? If not, what are we doing by perpetuating this evaluation of a woman’s worth by her sexual status? What are we saying, as readers and writers of Romance, about how, why, and under what circumstances, women can be, should be, will be, loved?

2010 came upon me so fast that I feel like I have whiplash. I feel like I barely touched the tip of my to be read pile which grows exponentially every month as I receive more books to review and I buy even more books for my ever expanding digital library. For some reason, despite all the gloom about publishing in 2009 with its layoffs, its reduced print runs, the attempts to game ebook releases, the Twilight mania, I enter 2010 really excited about romance books and the romance genre.

The online community is burgeoning. There seem to be new voices popping up everywhere. Raven at Raven’s Reviews is a new blog focusing on African American romance. Tyrion Frost has a thoughtful blog about the fantasy subgenre. Rosario came back to reviewing regularly after taking a year or more off to do real life things like study. Keishon helped readers to tackle their book pile with her TBR challenge. I lasted three months but I hope Keishon does this again.

For all the online contretemps, I feel like the online community is really doing a great job of representing the best of the romance genre and by that I mean showing others that intelligent and articulate women read romance. Ending the year reading the diary on DailyKos about being a romance reader, unashamed, was wonderful.

The rise of digital marketplace presents an exciting opportunity for readers and authors. New devices are being released to shock and awe us. PixelQi’s innovative transreflective screen will make its appearance on several devices in 2010. I’m engaging in my own personal countdown for the iUnicorn (also known as Apple’s iSlate Tablet) even though I know that it’s too pricey at $1000 to be anything but a niche item.

The 2000s was a mixed bag of books for me. I fell into a serious reading slump in the mid 2000s, right before I started Dear Author. There was a sameness about the books I was reading. I didn’t feel like my tastes were being reflected in the market and I felt like I was seriously out of step with the majority of readers. I fell out of love with some of my favorite authors, some of whom decided romance was no longer for them and others who were trying to redefine romance genre as something unfamiliar to me.

But the later years in the decade have brought some wonderfully promising young authors to the market like Nalini Singh, Meljean Brook, Ilona Andrews, Julie James, Courtney Milan, Victoria Dahl, to name a few. I’ve discovered how talented category authors are like Sarah Mayberry, Kathleen O’Reilly, Molly O’Keefe. I’ve been purchasing out of print books from Susan Napier and Sharon and Tom Curtis. I’ve read some really marvelous books to be published in 2010 like Nalini Singh’s Archangel’s Kiss which I think I’ve read about five times already and the beautiful love story in Pamela Clare’s March release, Naked Edge.

I don’t know of a time in the last decade that I’ve felt as hopeful and as excited about the genre and the romance community as I am now, at the beginning of 2010. I would love to hear from you what you expect to see in 2009 in terms of publishing, the romance genre, the romance community. Are you excited? Full of trepidation? Both? Neither?

Star formation from Chandra X-ray Observatory

Short answer is yes, but…

In wake of the recent controversy regarding Harlequin and it’s partnership with Author Solutions, it was clear to me that the advance paying model of traditional publishing is viewed as the only path for serioius authors. Look at the language, for example, of the SFWA “advance paying” or the guidelines of the RWA which does not recognize publishers who do not pay a $1,000 advance or greater. To a large extent, those that are in power at these writing organizations are published through the traditional way – advance and royalties.

The advance/royalties is the least risky path for an author. The author puts out nothing but her own hard work. Her expenses can include improving her craft through lessons and research. Post publication, the author can (and should) put forth her own marketing efforts which can be as cheap as a few bookmarks or as expensive as funding her own author tour, purchasing a book trailer, running contests. The traditional path to publication, however, is available only to a small few.

In order to sell, you must comply with the guidelines that the advance paying arms of publishing have demeed to be the parameters for a saleable book. In romance, that generally is hetereosexual love relationships between Anglo Saxon individuals with a word count of under 100,000. (with a few exceptions).

So while the traditional advance/royalty model is the least risky for authors, its open to only a limited few within a limited framework.  Publishers are buying books that they can sell to bookstore buyers and distribution partners.

The benefit of digital reseller market is that the filter is not the bookstore buyer or the distribution buyer because there is no artificial limitation set physical boundaries.  The digital bookshelf is infinite and endless.

This is both a boon and a curse.  It’s a boon because it means that more books of a greater variety will be available to the reader. It’s a curse because that means more books a reader must filter through to find new reads.  Quality will vary wildly.  But the fact is that there is a number of books out in the marketplace that are of low quality, poorly edited, with horrible covers, that aren’t worth your time or your money.  When I looked at the free list of books that All Romance eBooks were promoting during the holidays (probably because those publishers participated), it confirmed what I thought already: the dross is already here and in large number.

What does that mean? It means that despite the terrible books published out there, we are still finding good digital books to read.  This is one reason that in digital publishing, the publisher brand name is so important.  We’ve come to trust that certain digital publishers have standards even if we don’t agree with the publisher tastes.

The fact is that if the digital marketplace does indeed pull in $500 million in 2010 as Forrester Research predicts, then individuals who want to make money will come to the market and those people will realize that making money off digital publishing means providing a decent product.

A large and vibrant digital market does not mean the elimination of publishers. It merely changes the  model.  In the future, we may have a consortium of authors selling their books similar to what CJ Cherryh, Jane Fancher, and Lynn Abbey are doing with Closed Circle.  It might be an editor based brand that we follow.  For example, Anne Sowards edits Patricia Briggs and Ilona Andrews, among others. Or Cindy Hwang edits Meljean Brook, Nalini Singh, and Christine Feehan.  It might be something that we haven’t even envisioned yet.

There will be filters because filters will be a way to make money and only good filtering systems will make money.  Metadata will become far more important.  Resellers like Amazon, Fictionwise, Barnes and Noble will have to increase the way a consumer interacts with the metadata by more powerful searching functions (i.e., the consumer will want to find all 4-5 star rated books with keywords “alpha male” “paranormal” “strong hero” “unusual settings” released in the last two months).

I think that this year is the start of a new wave of publishing that will bring readers more variety and more choice.  I’m certainly excited.

• The current publishing business model which relies on advances against royalties and the consignment method of selling cannot be sustained.
• A robust publishing industry is good for the reader.
• Yog’s law is not immutable.
• Writing is a creative act but selling one’s writing and making a living off one’s writing is a business act.

The reason that I advocate for alternative models of publishing is not because I want authors to get paid less or because I only want books for free.  I advocate for alternative models of publishing because democratization of access to distribution can create profitable business models for authors of all positions on the list.  With publishers like Random House claiming erights retroactively and other traditional publishers branching out into digital publishing and subsidy publishing, the landscape is clearly changing.   Authors are signing contracts now for books that will come out in two or three years so it’s good to take a look down the road to see what the evolving marketplace may offer.

Currently I see four basic business models for publishing.

1. Traditional advance paying publishing
2. Digital publishing
3. Publishing services companies
4. Self publishing

Traditional advance paying publishing

In traditional advance paying publishing, a publisher provides an author an advance against expected royaltiesin exchange for up to 94% of the revenue generated by the author’s intellectual property.  The author receives a guaranteed amount of royalties in the form of an advance payment from $1,000 per book up to millions per book and a promise that any royalties that exceed the advance will be paid in the amount of 6% up to 15%, with some contracts containing escalating royalty rates depending on units sold.  (Other authors may have a profit sharing agreement with the publisher).   In other words, the author relinquishes up to 94% of the revenue generated per book in exchange for editing, brand recognition, publisher advertising, and access to distribution channels such as placement in retail bookstores and big box stores and discounters like Wal-Mart, Target and Costco.

Digital Publishing

The current digital publishing model is one that eschews advances in favor of higher royalty rates.  An author receives a higher percentage of revenue generated by her book.  Most ebook royalty rates are between 30 and 40%.  Thus, an author relinquishes up to 70% of the revenue generated by her intellectual property in exchange for editing services, publisher brand recognition, publisher advertising, and access to distribution channels such as placement in etailers like Fictionwise, Kindle, and the like.

Publishing Services Companies

There will be a rising number of publishing services companies when distribution access becomes even more democratized than it already is.  Subsidy publishing is a model wherein the author does not get an advance nor does she get any publisher related services unless she pays for it.  If the author wants to avail herself of editing services, some sort of brand recognition, and access to distribution channels, she must pay for it with money up front and some equity sharing.  In other words, the author relinquishes up to 50% of the revenue generated by her intellectual property plus some up front money in exchange for editing services and access to distribution channels.

Another type of publishing services company is like the one offered by Troubador in the UK.  Matador is a publishing services company whereby you can contract with Matador to access a number of different levels of service.  Matador works with only a select number of self published authors per year and actively markets them.

Subsidy publishing makes sense if the subsidy publisher has a reputation for being able to provide the ability to package and sell books in significant numbers (such as 10,000 copies or more).  Jane Friedman’s presentation on Open Road Media continually emphasized ORM’s marketing platform and specifically mentioned self published authors as benefiting from this platform.  While there are no concrete details, ORM could be some type of subsidy publisher or publishing services platform that is paid in up front monies and/or an equity investment or both. (NOTE: this is speculation so please don’t run around saying that ORM is a vanity press).

I would expect to see more publishing services companies in the future and many different variations of this type of business model which could simply be cash payment, equity investment or some combination of the two.  NOTE: I’m not making a moral judgment on the application of the business model which could be predatory or unsavory or unethical.

Self Publishing

Self publishing is a model wherein the author retains all of the revenue generated by her intellectual property but must contract with other entities to gain cover art, editing, and other publishing services.

The difference in the four publishing models is how much risk is the author willing to absorb versus the revenue she would like to retain from her intellectual property.

Because the physical distribution channels make up the majority of book sales, the traditional publishing model is the least risk, highest reward for aspiring and published authors today.  This is changing however.  At least 1/4 of the sales of print books were online in 2008.  There is a point at which the advance is so low that an author should consider other publishing models because print on demand technology serves the online retailing model well.

When the electronic distribution channel makes up a significant portion of book sales and the funnel of distribution widens, the alternative modes of publishing should be given greater consideration because at that time the risk/reward equation will change.

At some point, authors who want to make a living from writing should ask themselves whether it makes sense to continue relinquishing up to 96% of the revenue generated by their intellectual property.   How many existing authors would forego a) an advance and b) actual pay money up front from a publisher to gain 40% more of the revenue generated from each book.  It is true, that there is no publishing services company in existence that has that value but it’s not impossible to think that there will be someday.  Maybe it will be someone like OR Press or Open Road Media.   I don’t think we’ve seen it yet.

I think that self publishing, true do it yourself publishing, will exist but that there will be more authors that move to digital publishing or publishing services model than we can envision today.  Digital publishing which provides no cost of entry by the author may replace the traditional advance model once the digital market hits 35% or greater.  It makes sense for publishers to experiment now with differing models so that the business can be ready to adapt with the changing  market.  Publishing is not likely to go away, but it will be different in five years than it is today.

The benefit of the lack of reliance on physical brick and mortar stores is that there is a greater panopoly of options for authors to make a living writing.  Individual authors should be able to avail themselves of a number of different publishing opportunities that suit their risk level, their need for control over the final product, and other factors.

I’m ever hopeful that the various business models, both traditional and emerging, will provide us readers with the a robust publishing environment that can serve the niches as well as the mass markets.

Digital Book World held an online seminar entitled Marketing in the Digital Age. The panelists included Dan Blank, Director of Content Strategy & Development, Reed Business Information (owns Publishers’ Weekly); Patrick Boegel, Director, Media Integration, Media Logic; Jane Friedman, Publisher & Editorial Director, Writer’s Digest Community; and Diana Vilibert, Web Editor, Marie Claire. The moderator, Guy LeCharles Gonzalez, showed a slide with 8 book covers including Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. None of the panelists knew all of the publishers of the book and none of them could even identify Dan Brown’s publisher.

I began to think about the branding (or lack thereof) by publishers.

What Is the Brand?

Brand is that name or logo with which consumers identify certain attributes, either positive or negative. The same brand can mean different things for different groups of people. For example, Fox News equal fair and balanced for some segment of the population. For others, it is simply a media arm furthering the political views of Roger Ailes.

Author Branding

Most traditional publishers brand by author.  The goal of the cover is to evoke some coded message for the reader but it hardly ever includes a publisher brand message.  Look at the following three historical covers.  Can you identify the publisher of these books?

Compare the above covers with the following:

Each of these three print books have some signifier of the publisher attached to the front. Publisher branding is cheaper for a publisher. Instead of advertising for each individual author, the publisher can spend money on pushing its brand and its collective group for authors. Epublishers use this effectively, creating a consistent visual image for its covers so that if a reader enjoys Author A from Brand Publisher A, she can look for books with the same brand. With Author focused branding, the reader goes and looks for the Author’s backlist.  Of course, if a reader has a poor experience with an author, she’ll be reluctant to try that author again hence the Author Pseudonym.

Harlequin is a leader in publisher branding (and perhaps after whom Ellora’s Cave and others patterned themselves). Their branding, however, is primarily by line.

I believe that Harlequin’s branding by line is why the categories are so strict in their guidelines. The publisher is trying to deliver that same spirit from book to book. Thus the downside of publisher branding is that it can be more restrictive. If a publisher is well known for doing one thing well, readers might not seek them out when looking for something else, something different.  I think this might be where epublishers made some missteps.  Romance epublishers are synonymous with erotic romance.  Tamer romance doesn’t sell as well.  I think this is because readers aren’t familiar with those books within epublishing. If Ellora’s Cave or Samhain had created different looks for separate lines of sexual explicitness, they could have created a brand identity for readers looking for the less eroticized books.  Ellora’s Cave attempted to do this with Cerridwen Press, but instead of keeping the Ellora’s Cave brand, they created a separate distinct unit instead of merely extending the brand.

The current setup of author focused branding is very advantageous for authors. When JA Konrath posted the results of his Kindle publishing, many noted that the effort his publisher had put into marketing his Hyperion books was helping him sell the self published ebooks.  That’s exactly why authors who are traditionally published are in a great position.  They can leverage the brand creation and promotion that their publishers are putting forth on their behalf as well as solidifying their direct connection to readers.  When the digital market is the right size, the traditionally published author can decouple from the print publisher with their brand intact.

As a reader, the Author focused brand is challenging because once you are done with Author A, who do you read next?  With publisher branding, the curating is done for you.  You can go to Harlequin Presents for the agnsty, overpowering alpha male set in glamorous international locales.  You can buy a Blaze for the sexy contemporary.  Where line branding hurts is when a reader associates something negative with the brand.  One reader told me she didn’t buy Harlequin Superromances because she thought they were “issue” books. Another reader told me she just wouldn’t buy Harlequin category books because she didn’t have any positive associations with them.   The negative association can prevent a reader from trying the publisher branded book.

With an increasing number of books on the market, the biggest challenge a reader has is finding a good book to read.  Do you rely on Author branding? Do you look to see who the publisher is? Does it matter to you?  How long does it take you to associate something (either negative or positive) to a book brand, whether it be author or publisher (i.e., 1 book, 2 books, etc.)?  Did you get all the publishers right?  If not, here’s the key:

Publishing Key

• Paranormal Books: Grand Central Publishing, Kensington, Pocket
• Historical Books: St. Martin’s Press, Kensington, Bantam
• Contemporary Books:  Grand Central Publishing, Bantam, Berkley

One thing I’ve noticed in the recent months is while I’ll download every free book available at Kindle, I rarely read them. Conversely, I also take advantage of the low price specials from Grand Central Publishing and Harlequin and I almost always at least start, if not finish, those books. These books are priced anywhere from less than $1.00 to $1.99.

As I was reading my fifth book this past holiday weekend, I realized that it was a book for which I had paid money even though I had also downloaded three more expensive books that had been priced at zero. I always intend to read the books that I’ve downloaded for free and I do think that giving away books is a great way to seed the backlist and frontlist titles. I’ve been told that this promotional pricing have had success and at least one independent study has evidenced some positive results (the original post has been taken down, presumably because the data is part of a research paper to be made available at a later date).  The fact is, though, I still have not read all 16 books offered by Harlequin as part of its 60th Anniversary celebration.  Alison Kent’s With Extreme Pleasure was available for free last week.  I’ve yet to crack it’s virtual cover.

But time and again, I’ll download these freebies to read at some point while proceeding to read the books I’ve purchased. I believe I choose to read the books I’ve purchased over the free books because I’ve some personal investment in them, no matter how small. I simply can’t let my $.50 or $1.99 go to waste by allowing that book to languish on my iPhone or Sony Reader. I will, at least, start the book that I purchased. I feel the same sort of obligation toward books I get for review. I will, at least, start those books. (I say “start” because I probably read the first chapter of some 50 books in a month but will only finish 15-20).

There is a certain tangible quality about having the physical book sitting on your shelf or nightstand.  It’s constant presence reminds you to read it.  A digital file is somewhat hidden, particularly with the primitive software reading programs which don’t allow you to mark whether a book is read or unread.  Self discovery is much harder for digital files.

So while it might not be in my best interest to suggest this, I think authors and publishers should charge a nominal amount of money for their promotional books. This nominal amount of money will encourage readers to actually read the book instead of merely hoard the free digital file. If the book can be made available at the author’s website, it should be free, particularly if the retailer is charging some amount. This can serve to drive readers directly to the author’s site but also avoids the charge of the author “ripping off” the reader if the retailer is giving the book away for free. At retailers like Amazon, Sony, and BN, however, it makes sense for the retailer to charge some small amount. The reader feels like she is getting a huge deal and she has some incentive to actually try out the book.

I know that every reader is not like me and clearly the free reads have actually been read and resulted in sales. The question is by what proportional rate will downloads decrease because of a nominal charge but actual reading of the material would increase.

What do you readers think? Do you try every free book you can download? Would you be more likely to read the book if you had paid some amount of money for it? What’s the upper end of a “nominal amount” (mine is $1.99)? Authors, how do you feel about the free download?

Note: I use the word “book” in this post and by that I mean full length novel and not novella or short story. Those I think should always be free as a promotional item.

Dear Ms. Litte,

On November 30, 2009 your General membership with Romance Writers of America will expire. We are unable to renew General membership for individuals who have indicated in writing that they are not in serious pursuit of a career in romance writing.

General membership in RWA is open to all persons “seriously pursuing a romance fiction writing career” (Section 4.1.1 RWA Restated Bylaws 2007). On September 11, 2009, you wrote, “I have not written a book nor do I have plans to write a book…” Staff is unable to allow renewal of General membership for individuals who publish statements such as the one cited above.

In most instances, we are able to offer Associate membership to individuals who do not qualify for General membership. However, Associate membership is offered to individuals, “who support the organization and its purposes but do not meet the requirements for General membership” (Section 4.1.2 RWA Restated Bylaws 2007). We have been made aware of numerous posts on your blog and on the “romfail” thread on Twitter that indicate you do not support RWA or romance authors.

This decision is not one that we would have chosen. We feel that authors’ and readers’ interests are closely related and that both have much to gain by a harmonious and mutually beneficial relationship. In light of the evidence on file, RWA is not offering you the option to renew.

It is true that I have publicly stated I have no aspirations to write. (See blog post referenced in letter here). It is also true that I make fun of bad books (or what I consider to be bad books). Examples can be seen here.

It is also true that I have been critical of RWA and its inability to provide its members full information on the panoply of ways that publishing is changing for the membership.

It is also true that I have been critical of authors.

I do find it interesting that the justification for blackballing me from RWA is because of my blog posts and #romfail thread on Twitter indicate that I do not support RWA or romance authors. I have supported RWA but I have also been extremely critical of them. I don’t support romance authors individually, but I do support the romance authors in general; and, of course, I support the romance genre and romance books.

I actually had not planned to renew my membership. I joined because it gave you a discount for the RWA conference and you received the RWR but over the past three years, I’ve read the RWR only a couple of times and I decided that this year I would go to RomCon instead of RWA.

I have had a lot of supportive emails sent to me over this. I hope that none of you jeopardize your own membership or standing or position in RWA or with your fellow authors over this issue because I do not want to be the cause of any more disharmony for authors. And I can apparently still be an RWA member if I choose to publicly state that I am seriously pursuing a writing career.

Anyone who reads this blog will know that RWA’s actions will not change my conviction that true advocacy requires a conversation among many different — often contrary and conflicting — views. I will never believe that bad books are a necessity about which we must remain quiet, nor will I relinquish my critical views of a genre I love and an industry in which I have taken an active interest. Hopefully authors know that whatever they get here at Dear Author is candid, honest, and a product of my faith in good books and the readers who love them.

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 book to publishers. Only a very small percentage of writers become published authors through this route. The hope, of course, is that through the traditional publishing process someone is weeding out the poor quality books or improving on the quality before the story gets to you, the reader.

Through the vetting process, however, books that publishers don’t seem commercially viable can be excluded from publication.  Some writers become frustrated with this and turn away from traditional publishing.

Q: I am a writer who wants to be published. Is Harlequin Horizons right for me.

Traditional Publishing Route

Only you can answer this. If you want to make a career out of writing, the traditional path is through acquiring an agent and selling to a print publishing house such as Harlequin, Random House, Penguin, and the like. Some writers cannot sell to these publishers because their books do not conform to the guidelines of a traditional publishing house, whether it does not conform for quality reasons or some other concern. Not all publishing houses offer the same advantages in terms of ability to market and sell your book. This is true for agents as well. You will need to do hard research when shopping for an agent.

Digital Press Publishing Route

Another path to making a career out of writing is through digital publishing. Under the digital publishing model, you do not get an advance but in exchange you get a higher royalty. (If you don’t know what these terms mean, please educate yourself by reading up). As with anything you need to do your research to ascertain what are the most reputable digital publishers out there.

Self Publishing Route

A final path to making a career out of writing can be through self publishing. Self publishing is where you, the writer, controls all the aspects of your work and you sell directly to the public or through retailers. There are many self publishing programs out there.

Vanity presses are for the self publisher who wants to pay someone to do the work for them. Vanity presses can be a costly and non profitable form of publishing for a writer.

Please do your research before committing to a venture like this. It is possible that self publishing or vanity press publishing is the right solution for you, but you must do your research. Do cost comparisons. Sit down and figure out how many books you would need to sell to make your investment worthwhile and the likelihood you can sell that number of books.

You can read more about vanity presses at Writer Beware blog or visiting the forums at Absolute Write or Romance Divas.

Some of the commenters also have important information regarding self publishing and vanity press publishing and the dangers therein.

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 aren’t moved by her are the exact reasons why I connect with her work.

Shuzluva had these thoughts:

After tweeting with you briefly about this, I gave a lot of thought to the topic. I came back to the following thought: regarding those authors that I don’t like to read, do I really wish I did like them? I’m not sure if the answer is yes. I have quite a large stable of authors that I go back to time and again for everything, including writing outside of the romance genre (shocking, I know). And I am certainly willing to try out new or unexplored authors. There is always more room for love in my backlist. However, if I have found that I don’t like the writing style, characterization, plotting, worldbuilding or what have you, should I feel compelled to continue reading that particular author’s books just because everyone else is? Then again, I sit on the sidelines when certain authors have a big release and simply can’t be part of the hoopla, which makes me feel like the kid that wasn’t invited to the party. Here are a few examples:

Jo Goodman. I admit, I bought If His Kiss Is Wicked on your recommendation, and I can’t remember a thing about the book. I even went back and re-read your review. Nope, nothing. Not even why the characters are together. Let me curtail the inevitable suggestion that I probably read this back in 2007 and then had another baby and *POOF* there went my brain. That is not the case. I purchased this last spring while casting around for something to read. I remember reading the book relatively quickly. However, the author failed to elicit any sort of strong emotion from me one way or another. As a result, I am reluctant to make a foray into her backlist or new releases. People adore her, and I feel like I missed something.

Alex Beecroft. False Colors was a total drag for me. I felt that every time the story began to accelerate, the topic or scene would change and the momentum would come to a grinding halt. Then the entire cycle would begin again. In addition, while I thought that the historical settings, recounting of British Naval life, and extreme prejudices of the characters were fascinating and enjoyable to read, I failed to feel the connection between the two main characters on any level. I felt that there was a lack of intimacy between John and Alfie, and couldn’t see their physical or mental connection. Sure, it said they were attractive and attracted to each other, but for me, that didn’t come across through their thoughts or actions. This book was an extreme disappointment, especially after so many waxed poetic. The feeling that I overlooked something here continues.

L. L. Foster. Lori Foster was pretty much my go-to in the early stages of mass market red-light writing. I can’t call it erotica, but it was certainly hotter than the run-of-the-mill contemporary. Remember Wild and The Winston Brothers? When Dionne Galace asked me to review a stack of books including one by L. L. Foster, I was very excited to see how the writing style would change with the subgenre. Suffice it to say I wasn’t pleased with the outcome. I know a lot of people are thrilled and floored by Ms. Foster’s foray into urban fantasy. Unfortunately I am not one of them. From my review at www.dionnegalace.com:

I had a major squick issue going on here. To me, Gabrielle reads like a 15 year old delinquent. And her total innocence about sex in what is supposed to be an urban fantasy world creates a giant disconnect. I also don’t see any of the redeeming (or attractive) qualities that Luther sees in her, other than she’s hot.

Ms. Foster has legions of fans, and people are rabid for the Servant series. Along with about 1/3 of the vocabulary in the books, I don’t get it.

Do I really wish I liked what these authors are producing? It would be nice to have that visceral happy dance reaction to these authors that so many others have. I want to be a part of the majority, damn it, and to look forward to collecting backlists and jumping on new releases and tweeting and commenting with the rest of the romance reading community. To get over it, I’ll just go cry into the box of books I bought from BN today.

I’m with Shuzluva. It’s not so much I want to part of the majority, but it’s about wanting to be part of that community. When there is great love expressed for a book and I read it and didn’t feel the same way. Conversely, I want people I like to like the same books I have enjoyed. In fact, in emailing with a friend last night she confessed she hadn’t read either Nalini Singh or Patricia Briggs. Half jokingly I said something like “don’t email me again if you aren’t expressing anything but joy over these authors’ works.”

What about you? Do you feel a bit glum when you are out of synch with readers you like? Do you want others to like the books you like? Any suggestions on why you think that is? Any authors you wish you liked more but don’t?

(Special thanks to Shuzluva for allowing me to reprint her email to me in its entirety!)

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 mass market.

It frustrates me to no end that St. Martin’s Press and Simon & Schuster place what I like to call an ebook tax on its digital copies.  I would love to access Ellora’s Cave books outside of Ellora’s Cave. I find the checkout process to be unwieldy and frustrating. Oftentimes the site will not load or the login process takes several attempts or the book won’t download and so forth.  But to charge twice as much at a third party site is not only frustrating but seems short sighted.

The core readership of Ellora’s Cave is not likely to switch their buying habits to accessing books via a third party site, knowing that the prices at Ellora’s Cave are cheaper.  Readers who do buy via  a third party but learn later that they paid twice as much will become very frustrated.  But will the ire be directed at the publisher (Ellora’s Cave) or the individual author?

Digital publishers are heavily publisher branded.  I think readers associate heavily with the publisher identity rather than individual authors when it comes to digital publishing.  When you look at the covers of Ellora’s Cave books, Samhain, Loose-Id, and Liquid Silver, to name a few, the publisher brand is carried on the front cover itself.  I sometimes think that EC and the digital publishers that came after them were inspired by the Harlequin category lines and its heavy publisher branding.

Interestingly, over at Barnes and Noble, readers are upset with the ebook prices at BN, arguing that the BN prices are too high in comparison with Amazon.

For most readers, though, the face of a book is the author. If the reader doesn’t like the title or the cover or the price, the reader often blames the author.  If there are typos and grammatical errors that occur in the post author stage because some copyeditor gets his hands on the manuscript last, the author gets blamed.   So, in the case of ebook pricing, does the reader blame the author, the publisher or the retailer?

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 discounts.

Authors can also designate creative commons use/reuse rights, free distribution and removal of any display restrictions.

Orphan Works

Still a central feature of the Google Book Settlement is the treatment of Orphan Works.  Orphan Works are works that are in copyright but the owner of the copyright is not found.  This usually occurs because the original content creator has died and has no direct heirs or the heirs do not know of their right to copyright.

The new agreement proposes to set up an Unclaimed Works Fiduciary.  This person would be appointed by a supermajority vote from the Books Registry Board and be subject to court approval.  The Unclaimed Works Fiduciary will be vested with the power to grant use licenses for these Orphaned Works.  The money generated from the use of the Orphan Work license will be held in trust until such time as the rightful owner can be identified.  After the 6th year of existence, the Registry can authorize the use of up to 25% of the funds in that trust to locate the rightful owners.  After 10 years, the Registry can apply for court approval of distribution of funds to literacy based charities.

Essentially, the Google Book Settlement wants to create a Blackwater for Orphan Works.  Blackwater is a private company that contracts with the government to offer various military related services.  Blackwater serves as a government contractor to carry out the duties of the government that it cannot do itself.  The government engages many, many contractors.  Medicare program is administered by private contractors throughout the country.  Individual public works projects such as highway repair or building construction are also carried out by contractors.

While the Copyright Agency could carry out the tasks that are being offered by the Registry and the UWF, it doesn’t have the funding nor staffing.  Nor is there a legal structure which would allow the Copyright Agency to carry out the role of the Registry or the UWF.

The Registry and the Unclaimed Works Fiduciary wants to stand in the shoes of the government to administer a program that would allow the use of orphan works, collect money, and hold the money in trust.  If the money goes unclaimed, the Registry and the UWF would distribute the money in way that would ostensibly assist the public.  Google profits off the use of Orphan Works by establishing a larger database of searchable works than any other company.

In theory, the offering of orphan works to the public is is a social good.  Google wants to create a world library that would permit the public access to books that it would not have in the past.  However, the approval of this settlement sets this precedent.  Where the law is lacking, private organizations with money and power can come together to create a private solution and change the law without legislative process.

Let me draw this example.  Every year, real and personal property goes unclaimed primarily because people die without wills and heirs are not easily located.  This property such as land, uncashed checks, stock certificates, or jewelry or other goods is taken by various States and then kept in trust until the property can be claimed.  What if, instead of the property being turned over to the State, a private company came in and collected the unclaimed property up.  They cashed the checks and use the interest for their own benefit, but never spent the principal.  The company maybe even developed some of the land and placed a museum on it and made it open to the public so that the could see the property, enjoy the land.  If some heir came along and was able to prove ownership, the company would give it up.

What’s the problem with this?  The taking of someone else’s property for one’s own use is just fundamentally contrary to the rights of ownership upon which our legal system is based.  The government may not do this without complying with specific legal guidelines (it’s called eminent domain).  Further, laws are created and changed through legislative process, not through private agreements.  Finally, under this agreement only Google would have the unfettered right to be free of suits from Orphan Work heirs (and any other copyright holder). Only Google would be able to create a worldwide library because other companies would be subject to the lawsuits of copyright holders.

The question that Judge Dennis Chin, the judge overseeing the Google Book lawsuit, must answer is this:  Is the social good of creating a mechanism to deal with Orphan Works (an issue long ignored by the legislative process) greater than the requirement that laws are changed only through legislative process? I’m uncertain.

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 places his desires in front of their reputation, the most important thing a young girl had.  By dallying with servants, he takes advantage of someone who really can’t say no.  How many books have we read about the beautiful governess who is hassled by her employer.  The fact that a man is a rake doesn’t mean he is good in bed, it mainly means he’s indiscriminate.  Yet, for some reason, being a rake is something virtually celebrated amongst romance books.

One of my least favorite Suzanne Enoch books (and she’s an author I like quite a bit) is Sin and Sensibility, published in 2005.  The book opens with the hero getting a blowjob at a ball. He’s drinking whiskey while getting serviced, as if it isn’t anything more commonplace that sitting in the waiting room waiting for one’s oil to be changed.  As he is drinking his whiskey and observing the crowd, he presses his hand to the back of the neck of the married woman fellating him.  The coldness in this scene had a visceral impact on me.  I literally, from the first page, began to hate the hero.  Later, after he walks around the ballroom, he notes:

As he left, he glimpsed several young ladies following him with their eyes.  It was something he was used to, and offering the chits a slight smile, he memorized the faces for future reference.  One never knew when one might become bored with faro.

The heroine’s brothers are good friends with the hero.  Why? I’m not sure.  Why would you allow this person into the bosom of your family?  At least Deverill, the hero in Sin and Sensibility, displays his rake-like nature for the readers.  Oftentimes, the rake never acts on his rakish past during the pages of the book. He’s just given the “rake” trait as others talk about him. In other words, the readers are told that he is a rake but we aren’t shown he is a rake.  Because a rake’s actions aren’t very heroic.

I can’t remember when I started turning against the rake, began to see this usage as something dishonorable rather than attractive, a trait from which the hero must be redeemed.  In One Forbidden Evening, Cybelline seeks out Ferris because he has the reputation for being a rake.  She wants anonymous sex with someone who won’t ask questions, who didn’t care to know her identity, who wouldn’t have any real moral qualms about the setup of having sex with a woman at a masquerade when she doesn’t even want to take her mask off.  Ferris wants to be offended by this but he knows he’s at fault for building up the rake reputation because it provided a decent camouflage.

Carolyn Jewel has two books wherein the hero’s “rake” behavior actually works against him.  In Lord Ruin, the hero is found in bed with the  heroine and even if the brother would like to prevent the marriage, the hero’s reputation is so scandalous that if the heroine doesn’t marry him, the hero will be ruined.  In Scandal, the hero’s penchant for whoring and cheating prevents him from having the one woman he really wants.  The entire book is given over to him changing his ways, trying to become more responsible, convincing the heroine that he is worth the chance.

Many readers dislike Sebastian in To Have and To Hold by Patricia Gaffney because he acts despicable.  He basically rapes Rachel.  He says that she can either sleep with him or go to the gallows.  He hands her over as a sexual gift to one of his dissolute acquaintances.  He is, in short, a villain.  The story is of his redemption; his climb from the very depths of execrable character to become a person worthy of Rachel’s love.   Sebastian is a true rake, someone so dissolute that buying a woman from the gallows to serve his sexual needs is nothing.

I think the “rake” is one of the examples of shorthand in the romance genre where authors use it to make the hero exciting, dangerous, and virile.  It’s something an author tells us but what does the author show us about a rake hero?  How is being a “rake” a good thing? and if it isn’t a good thing, then shouldn’t the fact the the hero is a rake something he should overcome/come to terms with?

Do you like the rake hero? What does it mean to you?  Do you think my interpretation of the rake is wrong? or too extreme?