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

Romance gossip I picked up in New York (unattributed to protect the innocent).

The next hot thing appears to be the straight contemporary patterned after the Virgin River series by Robyn Carr.  Several houses are trying to capitalize on this through marketing and repackaging.  Mariah Stewart of Ballantine and Toni Blake from Avon are examples of [...]

According to an RWA Hot Sheet, RWA has changed the way that it will recognize publishers and authors.
Taking into account emerging trends in publishing that may offer opportunities to writers, the task force recommended that RWA adopt methods used by other trade shows and conventions and to shift its method of evaluating publishers [...]

Jason Pinter wonders whether being online and so accessible removes the mystique of an author and thereby reduces one’s ability to sell books.
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More authors are getting into the casual gaming platform.  Orchid Games released Heartwild Solitaire Classic and recruited a few authors to write short stories that players are allowed to read after winning a [...]

First up is the news that Random House wants to claim ebook rights for all books that are under contract. Random House took this stance in the early 2000s against Rosetta Books and sued Rosetta twice. Rosetta won both cases but the legal battle essentially froze Rosetta’s business. In order to forestall [...]

Explicit sex is hard to write well and even if you do write it well, it means you are just packaging up pornography for women. Also, bla bla bla, romance books are killing romance bla bla bla. All according to this  article by Alan Elsner.  I don’t plan to comment over there because Alan [...]

I received a letter today from RWA indicating that I would not be able to renew my membership when it expires at the end of the month. I have posted the letter for you all to read it. While it says that I am a General Member, this is an error that RWA has [...]

TBIResearch believes that Amazon is losing quite a bit of money on the ebook market as it tries to drive down prices of books. Publishers are trying hard to maintain a higher price, but researchers and retailers believe that consumers will not pay a high price for ebooks. The good news according to [...]