Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

DeBeers settled the class action suit against it for a reported $295 million to be repaid to wholesalers, retailer and customers. If you bought a piece of diamond jewelry between January 1, 1994, and March 31, 2006, go fill out a claim form online. The amount of your refund depends upon how many people make a claim and how much the claim is made for.

Here’s how refund eligibility is figured:

Item
Purchase Price
Recognized Claim Percentage

Mixed Stones Jewelry
Less than $200
6% of the retail price

Mixed Stones Jewelry
$200 or more
14.5% of the retail price

Diamonds Only Jewelry
Less than $200
10.5% of the retail price

Diamonds Only Jewelry
$200 - $999
27.5% of the retail price

…

The mantra going around last week amongst author blogs was “buy new”. At least one author says to readers

Don’t gripe about how they aren’t publishing anything you like if you aren’t buying new books because you gave up your right to vote on what’s being published.

Another author said

The “swap readers” appeared, in fact, baffled when I explained that their “free” enjoyment of the book is hurting the authors’ livelihoods and skewing the publishers’ impressions of what people enjoy reading.

When I was recording my purchases the month, I was a bit shocked at how much I was spending. What really breaks the book budget are the hardcovers and the trade paperbacks. This month I bought two hardcovers: PJ Tracy’s Snow Blind and Stephenie Meyer’s New Moon. I bought three trade paperbacks (albeit in ebook format): Karin Tabke’s Good Girl Gone Bad, HelenKay Dimon’s Viva Las Bad Boys, Sylvia Day’s Ask for It and the rest were mass market.

Maybe three or four years ago, I don’t have more than a handful of purchases from the hardcover and trade format. Nowadays at least half of …

I was so conflicted over the video to post. Pirates of the Carribean comes out today and I am as a big a lover of Monsieur Depp as anyone, eyeliner, pouffy shirt, long fingernails, natty hair and all. But it is also the weekend of the World Cup Championship. So to be fair to both of these monumentous events, I offer up two! videos

Dear Readers and Authors:

We often get offers of free books related to this contest but we decided that we would buy all the books we chose so we could remain objective. We have no problem in receiving books from publishers but at this time feel uncomfortable receiving books from authors for this CONTEST. (author submissions are accepted otherwise).

We are opening up the July ebook contest which was inspired by Cece.

Sometimes sequels are best left unwritten

We did a site revision (in anticipation of the new theme) and it appears there might be some linkage problems. If you do have a linkage problem, I suggest that you do a hard refresh which is holding the shift key down while clicking the refresh button. Post a comment if you have other problems. Thanks!

Amber Quill Winners are announced. When we did our ebook weekly review of Amber Quill’s post, Amber Quill offered up two free books to dearauthor readers. Those readers have been picked by AmberQuill and the readers will receive their free books today.

#34 — Keishon: Smuggler’s Bride by Darlene Marshall
#177 — Phyllis P: A Most Unsuitable Bride by Jane Toombs

Thanks to Amber Quill for their contrbution and thanks to the readers to participate.

On Friday, I posted a video of David Hasselhoff in a terribly cheesy music video. The video is quite entertaining from an “I can’t believe this is real” sort of way. Perhaps this video is so over the top that it is actually good. Perhaps this is the Shatner effect, where something uncool hits the lowest level of uncoolness and starts to circle around. It’s like the opposite of jumping the shark. Or perhaps it is where you can go after you’ve jumped the shark.