Archive for the 'Letters of Opinion' Category
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This is the third in a three part series of what part the author plays in the marketing of a book. In the beginning of Crystal Hubbard’s book, Mr. Fix It, Hubbard’s heroine suffers a crisis of confidence. She is a romance writer but has stopped believing in love, let alone romance. Because of this, she doesn’t know that she can be a writer of romance books anymore. She feels that she is a fraud, writing about love and togetherness and happy ever after when she doesn’t believe in those concepts anymore.
The question is a great one. Does an author have to be in love to write romance? Extrapolating this a little further, does an author who writes from a male point of view be a man to have an authentic voice; does an author have to be gay to write the m/m books for the stories to be authentically homosexual; does an author have to be married, wildly in love and a parent in order to write romance; does an author have to experience the out of the mainstream lifestyle in order …
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 Loading ... It seems only yesterday we were reading about various “traditionalist” attacks on Erotic Romance. Remember the graphical standards debacle? Or how about the accusations that GBLT and polyamorous Romance weren’t real Romance? But the intervening years have shown that Erotic Romance is not only a viable subgenre, but is, in fact, as much real Romance as any other “respectable” subgenre. Oh, I know not everyone is thrilled with some of the more explicit directions the genre has taken, but the Romance community and genre is large enough that the diversity can be pretty easily accommodated.
One of the reasons I think Erotic Romance has faced so much controversy is the way it can sometimes blur into straight erotica or even pornography - that is, away from the emotional journey of lovers and into the sexual odysseys we generally associate with pure erotic narrative. And indeed, depending on how a reader connects to a book in question, arguments about how to label specific works are not uncommon. Yet structurally speaking, the boundaries of Erotic Romance are clear, or at least as clear as the formal boundaries for …
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This is the second in a three part series about the author as a consumable part of the book. It’s a look at how readers respond to current marketing tecniques and why. This series is more a reflection of the reader and the reader’s mindset and not meant to be a criticism of the authors themselves. (As an aside, I find it interesting that no matter how many times I say this, some authors still take this as a personal attack. It’s not, I swear.)
Off the top of my head, I can think of three authors whose publicity photos differ according to their pen name:
Jessica Bird v JR Ward
Nora Roberts v. JD Robb
Eve Silver v. Eve Kenin
In these six publicity photos, a reader is being sent a different message. Essentially, in the first set, the authors are warm and friendly. In the second set, they all have an edge to them. Presumably the message here is …
I am still digesting and working on a post regarding the Google BookSearch Settlement. If you have thoughts on it, feel free to email me (jane at dearauthor.com). I’m fairly concerned about the future impacts and my initial feelings are ones of concern. Today, though, I thought I would give some bullet point items about ebook technology and some brief thoughts about the current slate of ebook reading programs for the iPhone. I’ll be doing the annual eBook Reader Purchase Guide in the last two weeks of November (after the Google BookSearch Settlement post next week).
Dorchester eBooks
There are three major romance publishers who either do not release their books in ebook format or do it irregularly. Those are Dorchester, Tor, and St. Martin’s Press. Keishon noticed that Shomi books were appearing in the Kindle and Sony stores. Upon further searching, many Dorchester books are available for the Kindle. There are C. L. Wilson’s books in Kindle format and more. I have heard that Tor will be coming out with eBooks, first in Kindle and then other formats.
I asked one print publisher why Kindle is getting so many books first and was told that …
 There I was, sitting at my computer, reading a review copy of Pepper Espinoza’s gay male triad novella from Samhain, Falling in Controlled Circumstances. I’m feeling pretty nifty that I’m reading a review copy—like, OMG, people are actually giving me free books in the hopes that I’d write something nice about it. And I’ve got that warm, flippy, rolling feeling in my stomach because the romance is THAT good, the characters that well-written, their story that heart-warming. I’ve got the beginnings of a multiple review post started in my head: I was going to suggest that the answer to the question that’s been bopping around Romancelandia in the last few weeks about “Where have all the good contemporaries gone?” was that they’ve all migrated to gay male romance e-books. After all, you’ve got Madelaine Urban and Abigail Roux’s Caught Running and Love Ahead, and Jules Jones’ Lord and Master series, and you’ve got this book, all fabulous, gentle, emotional, just plain GOOD romances. They’re not trying to be clever—they’re just trying to tell a love story. They’re not trying to make a …
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This month of November, I’m going to explore some marketing issues I have involving literature. Essentially, I want to explore with you authors and readers whether the personalization of marketing converts writing into a performance art. While it may seem like some of these opinions tread close to the personal attack grounds, I want to make it clear from the outset that what I am examining and what I am inviting you to examine is the author as an advertisement for her own books and not the author as a person.
Today’s topic is author biographies. Almost every book contains some sort of author biography whether it is a page devoted to “About the Author” or whether it is simply a one paragraph on the book flap or on the inside of the back cover. Knowing something about the author is evidently important for readers. Why is that?
In other words, if a book is all about the book regardless of the creator then why the need for the “About the Author” information? I always find it fascinating to read the bios because of what they say. …
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Ihave to confess that I have had a hard time constructing this post. If my thoughts seem muddled and my position incoherent, it is because I am having difficulty articulating this topic myself. I will be anxious to read the comments to see how I can flesh out my feelings on this matter.
Essentially, I am conflicted as to whether I am being hypocritical about this. I don’t think I am. I want the romance community to be robust. I want us to debate and dissect without repercussions. Maybe that is an illusory construct.
As I read more comments by authors both at this blog and in blog posts and comments to other blog posts over the last couple of years, I am amazed at the pressure that authors assume upon themselves from readers. Authors feel pressure to promote their books in a constant fashion whether it be blogging, making book trailers, networking, or even maintaining a website. Authors feel pressure to write more books faster or perhaps to write in a different genre or to write like …
 One book that I’ve read that has really challenged my own personal belief system is Natural Law by Joey Hill. It changed my perceptions about BDSM and won me as a reader for life for Joey Hill. She really has a gift of making a reader accept something that might be previously unacceptable. Her newest book, Mermaid’s Kiss, is due in bookstores on November 5, 2008. It’s a lighter book from Joey Hill (although that’s kind of a qualitative statement), still sexy, still different, and doesn’t have BDSM if that turns you off. But if you are curious, try out Natural Law. It might be an eye opener.
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The Power of the Male Submissive
‘service’, not ‘servile’
Months ago, before I entered the submersible known as “Deadline Hell”, Jane asked me to write an article on this topic. I was flattered to be asked. I assume she thought I’d have good insight because my Female Dominant/male submissive erotic romances have crossed the intersection and proven themselves appealing to female romance readers who traditionally prefer alpha males. In preparation for this article, I put the question …
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Last week, Jordan Summers and Kassia Kroszer engaged the romance community at Romancing the Blog in a debate over author blogs. Summers felt hamstrung, in the past, about voicing strong opinions, particularly political ones, for fear of losing readers. Kroszer argued against the milquetoast bloggers. One response that I saw and have seen argued in the past is that our community is fettered by its femininity.
It’s not an uncommon complaint - “you wouldn’t see this if we were all men.” (This is something that is asserted by a good blogger friend of mine, in fact). First, it’s a false dichotomy because the forum itself would not exist if “we were all men.” Second, it raises up male discourse on the internet to be qualitatively superior to that of female discourse on the internet. Would the community be better off if we addressed things like men? How would men interact about romance books? Or books in general? Let’s look at one popular male author/professor/blogger.
Karen Scott uses the term “fucktard” quite a bit. She says she …
It’s long puzzled me that there are individuals out there that want to prevent the gay and lesbian community the joys of divorce, boring sex, and marital infidelity by enacting constitutional amendments to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Why should the gay and lesbian community get all the benefits of being in a committed relationship without the legal entanglements? They should be punished by the law for making marital mistakes just like heterosexual couples.
This is why I am glad that famed sex advice giver, Dan Savage, is offering up a contest for those who donate to the cause to stop these constitutional amendments.
The six biggest Savage Love donors to either www.noonprop8.com or www.sayno2.com will see their letters in print, and everyone who makes a donation of at least $25 to either group—send me your donation confirmation e-mail along with your question—gets a personal reply from yours truly. The cutoff date for eligible letters is October 16.
Who else wants to give money so that gay and lesbians can be unhappy divorcees?
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Open Threads at Dear Author. Want to know what new releases are out this month and what readers are excited about reading? Check out the threads below. 
We don’t like to censor comments nor do we endorse the comments of any poster. We do reserve the right to moderate comments but most of the time will not, believing, as Justice Brandeis did, that the greater good is in “more speech, not enforced silence.”
