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

Sadly, the marvelous Melanie Murray, editor of one of Jayne and my new favorite authors, Elizabeth Hoyt, is leaving Warner Publishing for other endeavors. Goodbye Ms. Murray. Best of luck. I hope Warner can find someone to fill your shoes.

Grand Central Publishing (formerly Warner Books) is an all-format, all-genre trade publisher. We're the house of Nicholas Sparks, David Baldacci, Brad Meltzer, Lolly Winston, Preston & Child and many others. We have several imprints including 5 Spot, where we publish smart women's fiction and nonfiction such as Knitting Under the Influence by Claire LaZebnik, and the Forever imprint, where we publish romance.

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We've got a very exciting fall coming up for romance!

Die for Me by Karen Rose: For those of you who love edge-of-your-seat suspense, Karen Rose is the perfect author for you. Her books are gritty, tightly-plotted, and action-packed. She began her career on our Forever list, and is now published on the GCP mass market list (where we also publish Sandra Hill and Dorothy Garlock, among others.) We're also repackaging Karen's backlist to reflect the new, edgy look of Die for Me. (September)
The Serpent Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt: This is the third and final book in Elizabeth's "Princeâ€? series. They're historical romances, taking place in the …

Dear Ms. Pickens:

I almost didn’t read this book. It was a Regency, with a spy. The blurb used word like “sultry body” and described the hero as “sinfully sensuous.” Groan. However, the editor was Melanie Murray, and Murray was interviewed by us a few months ago so I thought I should give it a try.

Within the first chapter, I knew that this was something different. The heroine, Siena, was a street urchin who was observed to have good instincts and the ability to get out of trouble, even at the age of 12. Marquess of Lynsley trolls these streets to unearth girls such as Siena. He takes them to his school and trains them to be assassins, spies, anything that the crown needs. Many of them do not make it, but the few that do become one of Merlin’s Maidens. Women who will do anything, use anything, to get achieve their objective.

Siena has been training in the arts of seduction, society parlance, hand to hand combat and sword fighting, all to become one of those …

After today, Warner Books will now be called Grand Central Publishing to coincide with its move to a new physical location just north of the train station. Hachette Books bought the imprint from Time last year. As part of the purchase, Warner Books had to pick a new name by 2011. The official launch will occur at Book Expo in June and the first books to be released under the new imprint will be in the fall of 2007.

Warner has been behind the other publishers in digital publishing initiatives. According to Neil De Young, Warner currently publishes 15 titles in digital format across all publishers and imprints. Compare this to Harlequin that releases almost 70% of its line in eformat. The lack of “books” in the imprint name recognizes that there are “other emerging forms of publishing that go beyond ink and paper.”

Julie Ann Long, a favorite of DearAuthor bloggers, moved from Warner to Avon. I can’t help but speculate if there is more change in the water at Warner than just its name.

Via New York Times

After I moaned and wailed about not finding Annie Solomon’s books in e-format, I contacted the publisher as to what Warner was doing about getting its books into e-format. Here’s the answer I received from the man in charge, Mr. Neil De Young, Director of Digital Media.

Generally speaking, we try to get as many romance titles on the list as possible, it's a top selling category in eBook form. However, we are currently limited to about 15 total titles across all publishers and imprints a month due to limited resources (that's about as much as our conversion house can do and we can accurately traffic in any given month). We are slowly ramping up production and think we can push the list to about 20 titles a month by the fall, which will allow us to publish more Forever titles in eBook form.
 

If you have any questions for Mr. De Young, he did indicate that he would be willing to answer some so go and post. It probably won’t be until this week that …

Dear Ms. Solomon:
To say that I was impressed by this book is an understatement. You always know, as a reader, that a book is good when at the close the book, you immediately get the yen to go to the bookstore and find more on the author's work. Which is what happened to me and I blogged about that on Sunday. In fact, while I am generally opposed to epilogues, I thought this one could have used one. Or more rightly, I wished I could have read more about the couple. I guess there is something to be said for always wanting to leave your fans wanting more.

While this story is a romance and it is a suspense, it is about something more. It's about facing your demons, even if that demon is you. It's about moving on when your entire life is being controlled by the past. It's about two people, imperfect and incomplete going through life but not really living it, finding understanding in each other.

Gillian Gray is a famous photographer whose work portrays grisly death …