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

Ned has this theory that humans will eventually be replaced with digital creations once the animations and the real life figures can’t be told apart. Philip M. Parker is taking the digital creation of characters into the book world digitally authoring books.  Mr. Parker is an “author’ only in the loosest sense.  He compiles information available on the internet and with the help of 60 to 70 computers and a few programmers, puts the results into a book.

So far, most of the books are non fiction resources such as “The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Acne“ or “The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India” but Parker is readying to enter the fiction world:
And he is laying the groundwork for romance novels generated by new algorithms. “I’ve already set it up,” he said. “There are only so many body parts.”
Parker admits that his books have little value to anyone who is internet savvy so I don’t think that the romance authors have much to fear here.

NYT.

The Society of Authors, an author organization in the UK, has cried that literary piracy is going to lead to the demise of literature because authors will eventually stop writing.
“For a while it will be great for readers because they will pay less and less but in the long run it’s going to ruin the information. People will stop writing. There’s a lot of ‘wait and see what the technology brings’ but the trouble is if you wait and see too long then it’s gone. That’s what happened to the music industry.
Chevalier is right that the music industry has been trying to catch up instead of capitalizing on the market but she isn’t right that the music industry is dead or that it is dead because of piracy. There are still musicians playing long after Napster and iTunes swept the market. The truth is, though, that while the music industry profits have been shrinking, it’s hard to link that to the piracy issue. Koleman Strumpf argues that there is no empirical evidence that file sharing has harmed the music industry.

The question comes down to whether the publishing industry can change with the changing times …

Part Two of the three part series on promises in romance. Part One was the delivery of promises and Part Two is about the promise itself. Part Three is about the breaking of promises or what I like to think of as When Good Authors Go Bad.

Branding is an important concept for a business person. A brand is not the author name, logo, marketing package, or label. “A brand serves to create associations and expectations among products made by a producer.” (Wikipedia). Essentially, a brand is the promise an author or publisher makes to the reader through the books themselves. As a reader, I have associations and expectations of authors and publishers. It is the brand of an author or publisher that drives my buying decisions and the buying decisions of many other people.

Romance publishers create associations and expectations or “promises” to readers that they will publish romances first and foremost. On the back of a 1986 Jayne Ann Krentz category book, I found the following:

What the press says about Harlequin romance fiction..

“When it comes to romantic novels… Harlequin is the indisputable …

Stay tuned for some exciting features at Dear Author (exciting for us at least). The week of October 2nd through October 8th we will be featuring an interview and several reviews of an author that the Two Ja(y)nes and Janine love. Today marks the first of a three part series on Romance Publishers Promises to Romance Readers. Today’s articles addresses Advertising (the delivery of the promise), next week will feature an article on Branding (the promise), and finally we’ll end with What to Do When a Good Author Goes Bad (or when the promises are broken).

Advertising is the one way that the promise of an author or publisher is delivered to readers. Of course, the writing is the ultimate delivery of the promise that authors and publishers are making but to get a reader to read the promise. In romance, the promise is that there is a committment, a love, between a core group of people. In mainstream romance, generally one woman and one man overcome obstacles to achieve a lifelong togetherness. Publishers deliver the promise a couple of ways:

spine labeling
bookstore placement
advertising online, in trade …