Dear Author: Romance Novel Reviews, Industry News, and Commentary

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Earlier I sat here at desk, looking out to a window, thinking that it was great the vast expanse of the world is out there with its rich and varied cultures and peoples. If I had the money and the time again, I would travel for as long as possible to enjoy the sights—some may be memorable and some upsetting—and to gain insights—deep and shallow—from the surroundings and the encounters with strangers. I think many of us were born for such an existance.

Adventuring is part of my family’s lifestyle; almost a way of life. I left home at sixteen because it was expected of me. All my relatives, at least once in their lives, have travelled abroad and some lived there for months and even years. They have returned home when they have felt ready to hang up their travelling bags.  Some of us remain transplanted. I haven’t yet to return home because I feel like I still have much of my journey left.

As it stands, I don’t have the money or, more importantly, time or opportunity.  I’m deskbound these …

A couple of weeks ago there was a lot of contention on Dear Author because of an F review for Trinity Blacio’s The Claiming. In the midst of the usual cache of mean girl accusations were also a lot of intersecting issues related to the elements that we each take into consideration when deciding whether a book is good or bad, works for us or doesn’t. And one of the reasons I think conversations like the one over The Claiming become so heated is that we don’t always separate out the various quantitative and qualitative measures that go into our responses, the overlapping issues of correctness, style, and taste, especially when there are so many people talking around and through so many nuances of our specific responses.

I tend to be a somewhat analytical reader by nature, so when I endeavor to review a book, one of the first things I do is start breaking down each of these categories as they relate to the book, weighing and measuring how each worked for me and how much of each shaped my experience of reading.

Correctness

Correctness is a measure of how well the author conforms to basic rules of …

Diane Pershing’s stance, and one that she is taking on behalf of the RWA, is that digital publishing model of high royalties v. no advances is not a legitimate business model. This post discusses why digital publishing is legitimate and offers insight (I hope) for whom digital publishing might benefit.

The digital publishing model.

The digital publishing model is characterized by a few elements:

1. No advance
2. High royalty (usually between 35-40%)
3. No returns
4. No resale market
5. Monthly payments

The print publishing model.

1. Some advance from $2000-$1 million or more per book which is a prepayment against royalties. These advances are usually paid in increments. Most contracts are for more than one book and therefore you get some amount of the advance when you sign the contract, some amount when you deliver the first book, some amount when your second book is accepted, some amount when you deliver the second book. (This may vary from contract to contract and author to author, but generally you do not get the entire advance in one lump sum).
2. Low royalty. Most print authors receive 6%-10% on mass market sales, 8-12% on trades, and 15% or higher on hardcover sales.
3. Reserves held against returns. In a royalty statement, the author’s royalties are

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In the most recent RWR, a monthly publication put out by the RWA, Diane Pershing’s president’s letter contained a very wordy assessment of RWA’s commitment to its 10,000+ membership which can be condensed into this: digital publishing is not a legitimate business model and those who are in digital publishing are not sufficiently “career-focused”?

How do we accommodate changes in the publishing industry environment without diluting RWA’s focus on “career-focused” writers and standards for professionalism?

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In other words, that publisher’s business model is of benefit to all its authors (RWA members). The fact that a publisher might not offer an advance but pays a 37.5 percent royalty rate is inconsequential; that business model is only favorable to the few—or even the several— who manage to sell enough books to make decent money, or at least the $1,000 required for Published Authors Network (PAN) membership. It is not favorable to the rest of its authors (RWA members) who earn very little money, if any at all. When an individual author (What is good for me and my career?) posts on a loop that she’s earned thousands of dollars, really likes her publisher’s royalty rate, and doesn’t see the need for an advance, good for her. RWA

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Last week, we hosted Harlequin’s Executive Editor, Marsha Zinberg, as she toured blogland talking about various writing insights from the authors of their Famous Firsts’ collection. To celebrate 60 years of publishing, Harlequin re-released 16 books representing the “first” titles of 16 different, famous authors.

As I was reading Uneasy Alliance by Jayne Ann Krentz (review later today), I was struck by how it appears that Krentz was attempting to negotiate the romance conventions of the day in contrast to her own feminist point of view. I’ve read most of Krentz’ backlist, even her Harlequin Temptation titles that are out of print and available only in used book stores. (My favorite is Lady’s Choice).

I don’t think I would be alone in my opinion that Krentz’ writing has come a long way from Uneasy Alliance. Her heroes are more subdued in their Neanderthal behavior and her heroines not as easily cowed (nor so indecisive). In later books, Krentz plays up on the quirkiness of her characters extending those traits beyond a mere introductory scene, as …

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KristieJ contacted me a week or so ago with a link to an article posted by Pamela Clare. Clare had found that her works were being pirated on various internet sites and this incensed her, rightfully so. The first thing that anyone has to acknowledge is that piracy will always be with us. It will never go away, not matter how much we rant, rage and fume. The second thing is that there are ways to reduce piracy and this post is about the ways we can go about reducing piracy.

There are four key ways to reduce piracy: Education, increased availability, price, and ease of use/interopability.

Education:

The best thing that authors can do (other than sending DMCA Cease and Desist letters) is to educate readers, both at their own sites and at the sites where the pirating is taking place. This is best done in a reasoned tone if at all possible. It is absolutely right for an author to be angry over pirating but if the goal is to reduce piracy, you must ask yourself what …

It’s hard for me to tell exactly how many of the readers of Dear Author are from outside North America, but it is not insignificant despite the fact there is no localization of the blog. In other words, we are an English blog that can be run through a translator but is not translated directly.   Likewise, on a much greater scale, books have international appeal even without translation.  

In this age of digital publishing, books can easily be transmitted from one country to another. In the digital publishing world, there are no borders.  This is a wonderful thing.  It means that the market for a creator’s works is not merely limited to an aging, dying, decreasing number of North American readers. It means that those who live in the UK, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Africa, India, China, and other countries are potential markets for publishing growth.

Yet publishing operates under an antiquated rights system that divvies up rights primarily according to geographic territories despite the fact that translation rights have long been a part of the contractual bundle of rights. Given the mobility of the economy, particularly when it comes to digital books, hewing to artificial geographic limitations is harmful …

Earlier this week, we posted an author online don’t list and to be balanced, Maili suggested we do a reader/reviewer online don’t list. Brilliant idea, I said.
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Taste is subjective.
When someone criticizes or slates one of your favorite books, they aren’t criticizing you or your taste, they are making their opinion heard. Don’t ever suppress the opinion of another. If you disagree with their view, there’s nothing to stop you explaining why it works for you and how. Vigorous disagreement can be a thing of beauty.

I love the smell of constructive criticism in the morning

Constructive criticism is always good in a book discussion, but remember this golden rule: do not make it personal. As in, do not attack a person’s IQ or personality. If a character is stupid, it doesn’t mean its creator is stupid as well. Likewise for readers you disagree with.

Don’t assume some readers are uneducated if they couldn’t build coherent responses. Don’t pick on posters’ grammatical errors during a heated debate. It’s a pointless distraction. Don’t try to intimate them by waving your college degree or your ‘I’m an Academic!’ flag. Not only it makes you look a pompous ass, it defeats the point …

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At RWA, I along with SmartBitch Sarah, Ann Aguirre, Barb Ferrer, and Carrie Lofty (ABC Girls) will be giving a seminar regarding online promotions. I’ve been paying attention to online promotion around the internet so I can say something worthwhile at the panel. I’ve been online, perusing the online community and bumping into authors here and there since 1997. Here are few of my observations regarding Author Online Promotional Don’ts.
1. Don’t say that most the novels in x subgenre are awful and that’s why you decided to write a novel in x subgenre. You are just asking for everyone in x subgenre to rip your work apart.
2. Don’t enter a reader discussion regarding a) books they like, b) books they don’t like, and c) topics they are interested in reading with a recommendation for your books. It’s intrusive and rude.  The readers are engaging in a discussion and if you haven’t participated before it looks like you are hijacking a thread for your own selfish purposes instead of engaging readers in a conversation….

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Update: Pam Jaffee, Avon’s Publicist, responded to the AAR interview here. As stated in my article below, I have had a good relationship with Avon’s publicists.

Dear Avon Books:

I’ve come to understand that you don’t have much of anything good to say about the “online world”. Yesterday Katiebabs pointed me to an interview that two editors from Avon Books did with All About Romance. During the interview, your editors a) were dismissive of the impact that the internet had on sales and b) evinced no understanding about the ability of publishing to harness the internet to create brand identity and loyalty.

First, let me address the concept of ranking because according to Lucia Macro, she’s shocked at how low some blogs rank. I’m not sure what services that you are using but the fact that you use ranking to determine the value of a blog misunderstands the internet community and how it works.

I’m not sure that the vast majority of readers recognize all the online sites. When checking their rankings I’m often surprised at

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Sherry Thomas is a Bantam historical author whose latest release, Not Quite a Husband, is in stores today.  

In the summer of 2007 I picked up Shana Abé’s The Smoke Thief and The Dream Thief from my local public library. I loved them so much that I immediately went out and bought those titles for my home library. Around the same time I also bought the paperback release of Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s Match Me If You Can. I’d been reading SEP a long time, checking out her books from the library. With Match Me If You Can I finally made the leap from simply reader into buyer. I bought her release, Natural Born Charmer, in hardcover. And just a few days ago, after reading and loving the library’s copy of Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen, I purchased my own copy at Target.

The library is–for me and probably a good segment of the romance reading population–a great way to try out new authors and new books. It is risk-free. It is cost-effective. And if the first book I read of an author …

Amazon announced last week that it was launching AmazonEncore. AmazonEncore plans to bring well received self published books to the mainstream reading audience. It is starting with the book Legacy by Cayla Kluver. Kluver wrote this book two years ago at the age of 14. With her mother’s assistance, Kluver self published the title under her own imprint, Forsooth Books.

The book won several awards and had good reviews, but “achieved only modest sales” according to Amazon’s press release. Amazon has purchased Kluver’s rights.  The book will under go revisions with the help of an editor and will be released for national physical distribution via third party wholesalers.    Amazon intends to pursue other self published titles as well as books of authors that are out of print.  (Something both Sourcebooks and Belgrave House do currently).  The Kluver title will enjoy a worldwide release suggesting that she sold “World” rights instead of merely “North American” rights along with her digital and audio rights. It is unknown whether she sold film and non print rights but it might be safe to assume that she did.

Kluver’s title was probably chosen for its sensation factor. A 14 year old …

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Back during our April Fool festivities when I pretended I was an agent and had stolen Ann Aguirre away from the fabulous Laura Bradford, I posted Ann’s faux deal involving a story featuring weredeer. Courtney Milan joined in the fun and blogged about how wereruminants had already been done by Tessa Dare, author of an upcoming 3 book back to back to back historical series from Bantam.
It was claimed that Dare had written a story for Samhain called Legend of the Werestag. In order to soothe our ruffled feelings over this preposterous claim, Samhain sent Ann and I a gift in the form of a review copy of Legend of the Werestag.  It was not, as I thought the title and cover conveyed, a paranormal nor does it feature any shapeshifting ruminants. Instead it is a wonderful historical short story.  I devoured it as if I had come out of the wilderness after fasting for forty days and forty nights. I could not wait for a taste of more Dare writing.
According to the presentation …

Sunday Pop Quiz

How many books are currently in the public domain and available online?

1. About 10,000
2. About 50,000
3. 100,000 +

Another easy one? The answer is C, at least according to Project Gutenberg, where you can access more than 100,000 books between PG and its various partners and affiliates. I don’t know about you, but I find that a mind-boggling number of free, digitally-available volumes. Especially since it feels like with the more recent copyright extensions that virtually nothing is passing into the public domain these days.

In my last installment of this informal series, I introduced the idea of balance in copyright law – more specifically balance between the rights of a creator and the rights of the public to intellectual property. I want to follow that up here with a very simplified discussion of how that balance has been struck by the US Supreme Court. While that may seem counterintuitive, since copyright law is Congressionally controlled, I am sticking to the Court decisions here because I think they’re a) easier to understand than …

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(I could not have written this post without the help of Maili aka McVane and her near encyclopedic knowledge of the history of internet community on romance)

One thing that does not get enough acknowledgment is how past communities on the internet have blazed new trials in romance criticism and readership involvement in books. Michelle Buonfiglio’s piece about good communities and bad communities wasn’t just a swipe at Smart Bitch Sarah but it was an indictment of all communities that foster robust discussion. It raised old and tired arguments and worse dismisses or refuses to acknowledge the communities that formed the foundation of internet communities that we have today.  The main reason why internet is good for romance? Because the community keeps us loyal to and passionate about the romance genre and that results in greater sales. The basis for my post today is threefold:

1. to honor and give due to those who went before us.
2. to recognize that critical discourse leads to strengthening of the community.
3. to enforce that romance needs an internet community of vibrant, contrary, smart readers.

The romance community didn’t start with …

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Dear Ms. Buonfiglio:

This is not a traditional review, per se, but I could imagine no other appropriate way to respond to the public posting of your recent presentation at the Princeton Romance conference, especially since you seemed to make a fundamental distinction between your Romance B(u)y the Boook blog (RBTB) and the rest of the online Romance community.  In the spirit of intellectual exchange, as one of those readers and bloggers in that great morass also known as NOT-RBTB, as a formally trained literature scholar working on genre Romance within the larger context of scholarly pursuits, and as someone who is not afraid of a little “heat” in the online community, I feel compelled to offer a different perspective.

First of all, congratulations on your new gig at BN.com – presumably one of the “big gigs with major companies” to which you refer in your talk.  You are obviously and rightfully proud, and I do not want that to go unacknowledged.  As you point out yourself, we all have as much to learn as we potentially have to teach, and it is …

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I remember reading historicals in my teens.  I checked out Whitney My Love from the Library and hid it under my head. I loved the Iris Johansen Loveswept historicals.  I introduced myself to Amanda Quick at the age of 19 and started a life long love affair with her writing.  Many of my favorite books of all time are historicals:  Black Silk by Judith Ivory; Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase; Betrothal, Chieftan, Border Lord by Arnette Lamb; Honor’s Splendor, The Lion’s Lady by Julie Garwood.  The list could go on and on.  All of these books were published in the early 1990s.  Their popularity, for the most part, seems timeless as many are still in print.

In my romance world, historicals are the backbone.  They are my comfort read, my true love.  I am far more lenient with historicals than I am with most other sub genres, in part because I want to believe.  There is a sense of fairy tale …

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I worried that this would happen. Amazon offers up some plausible excuse - oh my it was an overzealous cataloguing error - and everyone assumes that this issue is over. But it’s not over, or at least it shouldn’t be, because the #AmazonFail episode is an example of how easily one company can make content essentially disappear from consumers. 

Between the 2 year span of 1999-2001 Napster enabled millions of music lovers to download their music and started a revolution that changed the music industry forever. Instead of adapting to this, the music industry fought it. Taking advantage their ignorance and lack of initiative, Apple stepped in and grabbed a hold of a huge majority in the digital download business.

With market share comes power. Apple dictated to the music industry how music would be sold (by individual song and not album) and for how much ($.99). This is the danger of that Cory Doctorow spoke of in his speech at the Tools of Change conference when discussing the Kindle’s DRM. To wit: cede control of your product to …

Amazon Rank

UPDATE: Just in case Amazon argues that this was a technical glitch, consider these facts: (Oh, and here is Amazon saying that it is a glitch). Also, see why I think that Amazon is deranking based on category metadata provided by publishers.

1. Craig Seymour first complained about his book being adversely treated by Amazon back in February.

2. Mark Probst got a response two days ago that his book was being adversely treated by Amazon because it was deemed “adult content.”

3. If you search “homosexual” on Amazon.com, your first search result is “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality.” This is because other books with the term homosexual have had their sales rank stripped.  The previous algorithm is supposed to show the top selling books in the search result.  If the book has no sales rank then it won’t appear in the search results.  Or, as a better example:

But the fact that Joseph Nicolosi and Linda Ames Nicolosi’s A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality is still ranked when Heather Has Two Mommies isn’t, says it all.

4. If you write exclusively books with erotic content (or content tagged erotic …

UPDATE No. 2:  Amazon executive customer service email is: ecr@amazon.com and the customer service phone number is 1-800-201-7575. You can use Robin’s template:

Dear Amazon,

It has come to my attention that you are de-ranking books, supposedly on the basis of “adult content.” Apparently, according to the Amazon Dictionary, this is defined as books that have anything at all to do with GLBT characters, authors, issues, or references, with some general erotically-oriented works being roped in, as well. In the meantime, however, books on the illegal, inhumane, and horrifyingly violent sport of dog fighting remain ranked and appear on a first page search under “dog fighting”: http://bit.ly/18l70B. Further, a search under “playboy” yields as the first return “Playboy: Wet and Wild Complete Collection,” followed by “Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds,” and so on. At what point did “adult content” exclude nude women and dogs killing other dogs for sport?

This is nothing short of discrimination; this is nothing short of censorship. This is nothing a business that claims commercial integrity at even the most basic level would do. Consequently, as a longtime Amazon customer, I look forward to an immediate reversal of this ridiculous and unconscionable policy. Otherwise, I will purchase elsewhere and encourage everyone

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Earlier today I read this report Photos and Video From the National Federation of The Blind’s Kindle 2 Protest at the technology news blog, Gizmodo, about a street protest held by members of the National Federation of the Blind against the Author’s Guild.
As Gizmodo reports:

“Basically the story is this: the Author’s Guild raised issue with the Kindle 2’s new robotic text-to-speech feature, which can read any Kindle book aloud in a synthesized voice—naturally, a feature that would be an absolute delight for the vision impaired. The Author’s Guild, however, saw things differently, stating that eBooks are not sold with “performance” rights and that the Kindle’s read-aloud feature would cut into the sales of audio books. And last month, Amazon caved to the Guild, giving individual publishers the ability to disable the text-to-speech reader for specific books.”

I have an issue with the Guild for classifying the Kindle 2’s text-to-speech feature as “performance”. There’s a world’s difference between an audio book and a text-to-speech feature of an ebook. The key difference is there’s no voice actor in the text-to-speech feature. It’s deprived …

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Alternatively, I suppose you could title this piece How Jeff Bezos Pwned Publishing.  A few weeks ago, a number of mainstream publishers attended SXSW, a festival of music and media culture.  SXSW is peopled with macbooks and iphones and music fans.  SXSW started out as a musical festival and has grown to include seminars on new media.  SXSW held a publishing panel called New Think for Old Publishers.  The publishing panel did not go well as the panelists were idea bereft and turned the seminar into a mini focus group.

What struck me most out of the controvery that erupted wasn’t the lack of new think for old publishers but that the publishers were seeking new ideas outside it’s corporate structure. In other words, it doesn’t seem that there are forward thinking individuals at the helm of mainstream publishing.  Jeff Bezos, on the other hand, is a long range, innovative planner. Say what you want about Amazon being an evil empire (and they are and can be) but Bezos is a visionary and he has created an internet retail empire in just over 15 …

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Dear RWA Members*:

Can we talk about the RITAs? I don’t mean to harsh on the nominees. Indeed, some of my favorite authors were nominated this year and some of my favorite authors have won in the past. Oh, we all have our quibbles about who was left out and who was included, but those are subjective decisions. No, I don’t want to talk about the specific nominees but rather the categories themselves.

I know that you are a large group and one would say, even, a diverse one, but I have to tell you that I get the sense you aren’t happy with the direction that romance in general is taking. In the past, I’ve said many of actions of RWA that adversely affected erotic romance were primarily targeted toward epublishing and that erotic romances suffered because epublishing in romance is often associated with erotic romance. I posited that if inspirational romance were to be primarily associated with epublishing that it, too, would be treated differently. In looking back, though, I can’t help but wonder now if I was wrong.

By having …

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In this year’s Top Chef, a Bravo Reality cooking show, one of the challenges was to create the last supper for a number of culinary dignities. To a (wo)man, each chef requested a simple, classic dish. Wiley Dufrense, one of the leaders in molecular gastronomy (mixing chemistry and cooking), is a lover of eggs. He requested eggs benedict. Jacques Pepin whose book La Technique is part of fundamental teaching for French cuisine, requested roast squab and peas. Lidia Bastianich wanted roast chicken and potatoes. You get the idea. At least one recapper of the episode noted how boring the “last supper” requests were.

Comfort food is not exciting. It’s rarely innovative, but it touches something at the core of a person and resonates so strongly that the person returns to that dish, that food time and again. And, as seen in the Top Chef episode, comfort food done right takes skill and an understanding of what comprises those seemingly simple dishes.

Everyone that I have spoken with who has read Smooth Talking Stranger, Lisa Kleypas’ March 31, 2009, …

This isn’t a formal poll, but rather a copyright pop quiz.  But don’t worry, it only has one question.  And no penalty for the wrong answer.  Plus it’s multiple choice.

Who said the following:

Most artists, if pressed, will admit that the true mother of invention in the arts is not necessity, but theft. And this is true even for our greatest artists.

a)    a torrent site owner
b)    an admitted downloader of pirated books
c)    an anti-trust attorney

Okay, the fact that I included the last answer kind of gives it away, but again, the point isn’t the answer, it’s the question.  And more specifically the statement made by Carl Sprigman, an anti-trust attorney who wrote a fascinating article, “The Mouse That Ate The Public Domain,” on the dangers of stricter copyright codes.  The rest of the statement I quoted above is as follows:

If we know little about the utility of longer copyright terms, there is abundant evidence regarding the vital importance to the progress of our culture of a robust stock of public domain works.

Most artists, if pressed, will admit that the true mother of invention in the arts is not necessity, but theft. And this is true even for our greatest artists.

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