Historical and Contemporary Romance Author
A natural consequence of writing books with the intention of making a profit from their sale is that the author and publisher (sometimes different entities, sometimes the same) tend to think of the books as having an intrinsic dollar value. In other words, if selling books is your business, you tend to associate a “reasonable” price with those books. What…
By now, I don’t suppose anyone is terribly surprised by the news that some authors (notably self-published “sensation” John Locke) have paid to have reviews posted on Amazon in the hopes of boosting their books’ visibility. (NYT article here.) The fact that it isn’t surprising doesn’t make it any less unethical, but it does make me look at my own…
I’m trying to work my way up to writing 5,000 words every Friday. With my current work schedule, Fridays have become the writing days. I’ve never yet managed more than about 4,000 words in a single day, but I’m hoping with practice, I can exceed that and get to the 5,000-word mark. As part of this, I thought it might…
Once I get the third Lords of Lancashire novella (Thomas’s story) completed and published, I’ll be putting together a print edition of all three novellas as well as a digital “box set”. Of course, the collection needed its own cover art, and I decided to go in a bit of a different direction for the anthology than I have for…
A few weeks ago, RWA (Romance Writers of America) announced that, beginning in 2014, there will no longer be a Rita or Golden Heart category for “Novel with Strong Romantic Elements.” These are books in which there is a romantic arc, but it is not the main focus of the story. Lots of books categorized and sold as women’s fiction…
Okay, maybe I shouldn’t promise “soon.” People’s definitions of soon vary greatly. That said, I do have a vision and I plan to implement it as soon as humanly possible, which, given my life and other priorities, probably means late this year or early next. In a nutshell, what I’m hoping to do is improve the website branding to represent all three…
Last week, I became tangentially aware of a fairly new website/service called LendInk. The concept behind this site was pretty simple: people with lendable Kindle or Nook books could sign up for the site and list the books they owned that had an available “lend.” They could then also use the site to search for books they wanted to borrow…
Ever since the meteoric rise of Fifty Shades of Grey began, I’ve been watching the publishing industry’s response with a combination of bemusement and dismay. The dismay comes mostly the form of me shaking my head every time a book is marketed as being “for” readers who loved Fifty (hm, guess it’s not for me, then, huh?) or given a monotone…
I’m working on cover art for my next historical series, the first two books of which should be out in the first half of 2013. I’d already approved the cover for the second book in the series (Unashamed), but when I got the comp for the the cover of the first book (Unbridled), it was apparent that the font that…