August 16, 2015

Can a subscription service ever afford romance readers?

JaneLetters of Opinion32 Comments

In the space of a month, Scribd dropped over 70% of the romance catalog and Amazon retooled the way it paid authors under the Kindle Unlimited program. Both Scribd and Kindle Unlimited’s movements signaled (to me) that the cost of romance readers was too damn high for these subscription services. ... more >

JanineLetters of OpinionHolocaust / inspirational romance / Jewish characters / Nazis118 Comments

ALL THE TRIGGER WARNINGS Janine: I asked Sunita, who read this book in its entirety, to join me for this discussion. As one whose relatives died in Auschwitz, I could only bring myself to read 35% of Breslin’s novel, the first 145 pages. So there are questions I can’t answer, ... more >

SunitaEssays / Letters of Opiniondiversity / reading67 Comments

Note to readers: This column was originally posted at my small personal blog. We thought it might interest DA’s readers too. Reading diverse books and diverse authors (in terms of non-white and non-straight authors) has been a goal of quite a few online readers, in romanceland, SFF, and mainstream fiction more ... more >

July 14, 2015

Taste, Bias, and Loving Problematic Books

JaneLetters of Opiniongenre critique / Reader Habits13 Comments

Longtime readers of this blog are aware that I am a huge sports fan and specifically a fan of the Green Bay Packers. For those unfamiliar, the Packers are a football team located in Green Bay, Wisconsin. It is one of the most storied franchises of the National Football League. ... more >

JanetLetters of Opiniondigital publishing / readers / Self-publishing / traditional publishing8 Comments

  Do you know that it’s only been five years and change since Harlequin announced that it was going to start offering self-publishing services? By comparison, digital-first publishing seems downright ancient. I don’t know if you remember how that Harlequin announcement blew up the internet, or how contentious the discussion ... more >

JanetLetters of Opinion25 Comments

I don’t know if familiarity breeds content, but it definitely breeds myopia, and nothing crystallized this for me better than Amazon’s recent announcement that they would begin paying Kindle Select authors who participate in Amazon’s subscription service, Kindle Unlimited, by the number of pages read, rather than by the number ... more >