Jackie Barbosa

I’m sure this post is going to bring me quite a bit of accidental traffic, but oh well. Sometimes, things have to be said, even if they bring in the wrong sort of crowd!

We all know the truth. Romance is the Rodney Dangerfield of genre fiction: it just can’t get no respect. Those who write it and those who read it are regularly sneered at as having no talent (”anyone can write to a formula”) or no taste (”how can you read that trash?”). We do what we can to combat this sort of prejudice, of course, but in the final analysis, we all know it’s ultimately a waste of time and breath. People who are anti-romance aren’t going to change their minds no matter what we say any more than people who read Glenn Beck and watch Fox News are going to wake up tomorrow morning and think, “OMG, I was so WRONG about Obama!”

But the one charge against romance that is absolutely certain to raise both hackles and heated responses is to call it “porn” (with or without the phrase “for women” tacked on). The defenders of romance rush into the fray whenever this charge is raised, because, they insist, romance is not pornography. Romance novels do not exist for the sole purpose of exciting sexual arousal, even when they include explicit sex scenes, and there are plenty of romances that aren’t explicit at all. Romance isn’t about sex, per se, but about romantic love, with sex as one of the many lenses through which that emotion can be explored.

The thing is, this is something you don’t have to tell people who read or write the genre. We know it already. I’m just not sure that arguing against it helps improve anything. Because as I said earlier, people who don’t like romance aren’t going to change their opinions no matter what we say. Moreover, I know plenty of romance writers out there who joke that they write “smut” or, yes, “porn.” I’ve been known to say it myself on occasion.

What it boils down to for me is this: I don’t care if people who don’t read romance consider it “porn.” I’m not ashamed to say that I write books that I hope will engender a whole range of emotions in my readers, up to and including sexual arousal. The sex isn’t the ONLY thing in the book, of course, but it’s a huge component of a romantic relationship, and if I can convey that part of my characters’ relationship well, I generally feel the rest will come along for the ride.

In other words, I’m all about word appropriation. You want to call my book “porn?” Fine, I’ll embrace that label the way some in the LGBTQI community have embraced the word “queer.” My books ARE intended to arouse my readers, and if they don’t, I’m not doing it right. And I’d rather spend my time doing it right than convincing the anti-romance crowd to use a different word. Because whether they do or not won’t change what I write and how I write it. Or, for that matter, what I love to read.

Now, go ahead…tell me why I’m all wet!

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I have to say, one of the hardest things for me about having many friends who are also writers is that there are writers who I dearly love on a personal level, but whose books, for whatever reason, just don’t work for me. I actually live in a kind of perpetual dread of the release of my dearest writer friends’ books, because I want to love them, but sometimes, I don’t, and then I feel stuck. Can I tell you, my dear friend, that I didn’t like your book and STILL be your friend? Should I lie and say I loved it? Hedge? Or just say nothing at all?

Now, I have to say that if one of my friends (writer or not) told me she didn’t care for one (or even all) of my books, I would not hate her. I would not cut her off and refuse to speak to her ever again. I would still consider her a friend and be happy that she felt she could be honest with me, because I value honesty above empty flattery. And I actually believe, in my heart of hearts, that most of my writer friends feel the same way.

Still, it’s tricky, and one of the reasons I don’t review books and rarely ever really enthuse about a book online. I will do it in certain cases (Jeannie Lin’s Butterfly Swords is a recent example of a book I’m raving about, but although I’ve met Jeannie and consider her a friends, I didn’t know her before I heard about the book, so I feel a little more sanguine going ape over it), but by and large, I don’t talk a lot about the books I’ve read–whether I liked them or not–because I don’t want anyone to feel criticized by omission.

It’s a sort of crazy world I live in, then. Am I a lunatic? Too worried about the fragile feelings of others? Or just being prudent?¹ I honestly can’t decide.

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¹I strongly suspect that posting this is not prudent, but I’m doing it anyway .

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Now that we’ve had a week to digest Dorchester’s decision to move to a digital first followed by trade paperbacks, there seem to be two basic reactions:

1. The Dorchester situation is unique because it was driven by serious financial problems that have been building for some time.

2. The sky is falling in traditional print publishing and this is merely the beginning of the end.

As I said in my post the other day about digital royalty rates, I don’t think the Dorchester situation is unique, but neither do I think that print publishing is on the verge of complete collapse. I do, however, think that the digital reading revolution is upon us, and it behooves both readers and writers to think now about what we’ll gain from the new landscape rather than cry crocodile tears over what we think we’re losing.

But first, what are we losing? In my humble opinion, the first thing we’re losing, clearly, is brick-and-mortar bookstores. This is not to say that there won’t be physical stores that sell print books; it’s just that they’re going to be the Walmarts, Targets, and CostCo’s of the world that stock a limited selection of the most popular/marketable books. We may continue to have a limited number of book “superstores” in big cities and a precious few indies may survive, but for the most part, sales of print copies of “rarer” book will migrate to Amazon and other online retailers. This is due to practical realities. As the number of print book sales decrease and digital book sales increase (the trend for the past several years in most sectors of the book market), the cost of shelving a wide variety of books in multiple retail spaces so that customers can pick them off the shelves and buy them is too high. It’s much cheaper to warehouse the same books in one or several locations and ship them to customers when they’re ordered online. If you think it’s not going to happen, all you have to do is remember is the gradual demise of record stores a decade or so ago. It’s exactly the same dynamic at play.

Those of us who love bookstores feel sad about this; I know I do. But when I look at my own book-buying behavior, I realize that I’m as responsible for this as anyone else. While I do still go to a bookstore about once a month, I often leave without buying anything and when I do, it’s usually books for my children; my own reading habit is largely sustained by digital books and Amazon/Book Depository/etc. This is because I’ve stopped being as much of an impulse buyer as I once was. I’m not buying books because I happen across them on the bookstore shelf and decide they sound good. I already know before I go to a bookseller’s site which books I want and why.

Now, this isn’t to say that the average reader has migrated to this method of bookbuying. But the “average” reader isn’t buying most of her books in a bookstore, anyway. She’s buying them at a discount at the aforementioned big box retailers. Oh, sure, there are vocacious readers whose tastes can’t be adequately met by the books that the chain retailers are offering, and they’re still going to bookstores. It’s just that there are fewer and fewer of them, and they are also the readers who are most likely to adopt ebooks, especially as the price of ereaders drops.

So, where does that leave the print book market? Well, my suspicion is that, within the next 5-10 years, we’re going to see the majority of publishers going to the Dorchester digital-then-trade model for their midlist and “niche” books, although they may choose to do simultaneous ebook and trade releases rather than staggered ones. They’re not going to do this because they have any great love for ebooks, but because there won’t be enough places for them to STOCK those midlist and niche books. They’re also going to do it this way because the profit margin on trade paperbacks is so much higher than for mass market paperbacks. (There’s already a noticeable shift toward trade paperbacks in the romance genre. The reasons are obvious–it doesn’t cost much more to print a trade paperback than a mass market paperback, but the cover price is nearly twice as much, and trades don’t get stripped and pulped. It’s pretty much a no-brainer for the publishers to prefer this format, provided, of course, they can get readers to buy them.)

The bestseller titles that are ordered and stocked by the large chains will still be printed for a long time to come. There will probably continue to be a mix of hardcover, trade paper, and mass market paperback formats for these books. But these books are likely to become the exception rather than the rule.

Okay, so, that’s my prediction. What does it mean to us as readers and writers? Well, ironically, I think in many ways, it’s probably a good thing for all of us.

For both readers and writers, I think it’s on balance a good thing because the model allows for a lot more innovation and variety in the types of books that are published. The rise of digital-only publishers over the last decade has already given those readers who were willing to read ebooks a much broader choice of reading material. Topics, genres, and styles that aren’t mainstream enough to appeal to publishers who are risking huge sums of money on printing and distribution are now getting published anyway. That trend should continue and expand to more publishing houses, because the large costs of printing and distribution will be eliminated for these books. Contrary to bringing about the death of the midlist, the digital revolution may well be the midlist’s savior, and provide writers with many more opportunities for publication (including going the indie route).

Of course, there are downsides. There are already, arguably, too many books published. The digital revolution will likely lead to more books, not fewer, and this means correspondingly fewer readers for each book published. (Garrison Keillor said we’re heading toward a publishing environment where every book published has eight buyers, all of whom are members of the writer’s family. I don’t think it’s THAT bad, but I do think there’s a grain of truth in there.) By the same token, the chain retailers, who already exert a huge degree of infuence when it comes to picking bestsellers, will become even more powerful. Get into the chains, and you’re pretty much assured of big sales numbers. Fail that, and you’re going to be more or less on your own when it comes to bringing readers to your books.

But these are all things we need to think about TODAY, whether we’re readers or writers. As readers, how will we find “our” books? As writers, how will we find “our” readers? As writers, how will we negotiate our contracts today with the knowledge that, in as little a few years (or overnight, if you were a Dorchester author), you might discover your book is coming out only in digital when you were expecting a print release? It’s going to take a lot of foresight, but at the end of the day, I feel we’ll all be better prepared to truly take advantage of the brave new world of publishing if we start now.

In other words, to quote REM, it’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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A little over a year ago, I wrote a post on Digital Rights for the New Millenium, in which I urged authors (especially the bestselling ones with clout) to push their New York publishers for a bigger cut of digital royalties. I said it was important to establish a higher threshhold on these royalty rates or we’d all live to regret it.

I hate to say I told you so*, but with today’s announcement that Dorchester Publishing is converting to an ebook first followed by trade POD structure beginning in next month, I have to say I think I’m looking kind of prescient. How many authors out there have contracts with Dorchester specifying very low digital royalty rates (<25%)? I'm betting a TON. Whether they are authors who have only backlists with Dorchester or new books coming out with them, these folks are in a lot of trouble financially unless they can get Dorchester to renegotiate their royalty rates.

The Dorchester situation should be a wake-up call to authors. We've known for a while that Dorchester was having financial problems--they sold a lot of their backlist authors to HarperCollins and were recently banned from holding editor appointments or a publisher spotlight at the RWA National Conference due to non-payment/late payment of royalties. But I don't think it's remotely safe to assume that Dorchester will be the last of the "traditional publishers" to go this route. In fact, I'd lay odds that other publishers will follow suit and that, within the next ten years (if not sooner), the vast majority of publishers will be using this model for all but their bestselling authors/books.

So, I'll say it again. Digital royalty rates matter. A lot. Even if the majority of your sales TODAY are in print, the same may not be the case tomorrow. And your publisher might, at the drop of a hat, decide to go the way of Dorchester and begin releasing your books in digital only followed by a POD months later. Do you really want to be in the position of taking 15% or 20% of net in this situation? I sure as heck don't.

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*Okay, actually, that’s a lie. I LOVE to say I told you so.

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I’m thrilled today to introduce you all to my dear friend, Sarah Barimen, who has recently joined the ranks of Cobblestone Press with her short story, Pirate’s Treasure. (Is that cover gorgeous or what? I swear, I’m still drooling…and envious!) Sarah’s story won’t be released for a couple of months, but in the meantime, I wanted to tell the story of how we became friends (more than a decade ago) and how excited I am to have had a hand (however small) in her road to publication.

Sarah and I “met” on Usenet in 1997. Does anyone else remember Usenet and newsgroups? Nowadays, all those newsgroups have pretty much moved to Google Groups and most people probably access them on the web, but back in the day, we used to set up our email clients to download newsgroup messages. Sarah and I were both new moms at the time, and so we frequented the newsgroups misc.kids, misc.kids.pregnancy, and misc.kids.breastfeeding. As time went on and we each went through two more pregnancies, we became very good friends both on and off the newsgroup.

When I left the parenting newsgroup world back in about 2006 to pursue writing seriously (I couldn’t spend all that time on newsgroups AND write, after all), Sarah and I kind of lost touch. Then, a few months ago, she contacted me and we connected on Twitter and Facebook. And lo and behold, I came to find out that Sarah was writing. At the time, she was working on an urban fantasy, but a couple of months ago, she sent me the short erotic story that ultimately became Pirate’s Treasure. I thought it was very, very good and worthy of publication, and suggested she submit it to Cobblestone Press, which I knew would take manuscripts of a shorter length than many epublishers. After a few weeks and some revisions, Sarah was offered a contract! Needless to say, I was delighted for her.

So, what’s Pirate’s Treasure about? Well, here’s the blurb to whet your appetite:

Miriam Van Vorce, traveling with her older sister to a new life on a Caribbean island, makes the trade of a lifetime when her ship is looted and burned by pirates: she gives her own virtue in exchange for her sister’s safe delivery to her betrothed for a wealthy arranged marriage.

She believes she has sacrificed any hope of happiness of her own, and she is resigned, but in reality she will gain far more than she ever dreamed: love, ecstacy, and a richly independent life of her own.

I hope you’ll all be looking for Sarah’s story when it’s released. I loved it, and I hope you will, too!

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As I mentioned a few weeks ago on Twitter, I am thrilled to have been invited to contribute a short story to the Mammoth Book of Scottish Romance, due out in January of 2011. Over the weekend, the editor sent out a preliminary copy of the cover art, and I wanted to share it with you all, along with a brief blurb for my story. Hope you like both!

The Reiver by Jackie Barbosa

Duncan Maxwell, laird of Lochmorton Castle, gets the shock of his life when he discovers the reiver captured in a raid on his lands is not a boy, but a young woman. Although she flatly refuses to tell him her name or how she came to be riding with a raiding party, Duncan cannot countenance imprisoning a woman in his dungeon but neither can her release her without compensation. Unable to ransom her back to her family, he treats her as an honored—though exceptionally well-supervised—guest. He takes to calling her Reva and determines to seduce the truth of her identity from her. There’s just one problem—the reiver may steal his heart before he can reveal her secrets.

Now I just have to write it .

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I’ve meditated before on how hard it is for authors to sit on their hands and not argue with a review they disagree with. I’ve also said I think it’s the only right way to handle it. As an author, you have to put your book out there and let it speak for itself. If a reviewer doesn’t “get” it or doesn’t like it, for whatever reason, it’s appropriate to thank the reviewer for their time and then turn away. (I did recently respond to a review in which the reader said she found the POV shifts hard to follow, and because I knew we’d taken out the scene breaks that originally demarcated them in the editorial cycle, I mentioned that in my comment. But even without the scene breaks, if she wasn’t sure whose POV she was in at all times, it’s my fault as the author for not making it clearer and obviously something I can do better.)

That said, I’ve been thinking lately about what is “fair” in a review and what isn’t. In recent weeks, I’ve noticed a fair number of comment threads in which the reviewer is taken to task for allowing his or her biases, education, or preferences to “prejudice” their reading of the book. Apparently, these folks think that reviewers ought to read as if they are blank slates, with no prejudices whatsoever, and judge the book solely based upon…what exactly?

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? If a reviewer can’t invoke his or her biases, education, or preferences in evaluating a book, what the heck is left? I don’t know how anyone can ever come to a book without any preconceptions. It’s just not possible. Every reader’s response to every book is as individual as that person. If no one is allowed to bring their life experiences to their perceptions of a book, no one can ever review any book, period, because everyone’s reaction to a book is inherently subjective. There’s no such thing as an “objective” review, and I think we ought to throw the idea that they can or ought to be out the window with the baby and the bathwater.

That said, there’s objective and then there’s “objective.” By “objective” in quotes, I mean that the reviewer has somehow been “cherry-picked” and/or influenced in some manner to give a particular review, usually a positive one rather than a negative one. As an author, I always prefer reviews written by people with whom I have no personal relationship. Not that I don’t love hearing how my friends loved my book, but that’s a lot less important to me than the opinion of a reader I don’t know from Adam. I also find there are some review sites which seem to give glowing reviews of nearly every book they review. I tend to have a lot less faith in the “objectivity” of those reviews, especially when I know the publisher has provided a free copy, than of those where the ratings vary from the very positive to the very negative. (And I would be just as wary, of course, of a review site that seemed to post nothing but negative reviews.)

I also think it’s not fair to give a book a negative review because you don’t like the author personally, because you think the author is ugly or fat, or because (and this one is a little more slippery) because you hate all books of that genre. This isn’t to say that I don’t think reviewers should ever try to read a book in a genre that hasn’t previously appealed to them or to read books with characters or plot situations they usually find unpleasant or distasteful. It’s just to say that if the only reason for reading it is to confirm your suspicion that you are right and everything like this is trash, it may not be a good idea of actually write a review after you’ve read it, unless, of course, you are completely upfront about your intentions. (And by, it might not be a good idea, I don’t mean you can’t write a review. I just mean that when people accuse you of not being fair in your review, they’re probably right.) This sort of thing happens a lot with books in the romance genre (we’ve all read the opinions of people who’ve read one romance and concluded it’s all mindless drivel), but I’m sure it also happens to books in other genres as well, and that sort of blanket criticism truly isn’t fair.

But other than those situations, I can’t think about much that’s not as fair in reviews as it is in love and war. As a writer, I might like it if I could tell readers to judge the book solely by MY intentions and what I believe I put on the page, but the reality is, I know that’s impossible. One reason I know it’s impossible is because I can’t do it, either.

So, what do you think? What makes a review fair or unfair? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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So was I! I still am, a little, but having received my first earnings statement (for sales of Behind the Red Door from release through December 31, 2009), I feel a little less in the dark. And since I don’t have any boundaries when it comes to sharing how much (or little) I’ve earned from the sale of that book, I’m going to share it all with you. Down to the last detail, including how much my advance was, how many units of the book are in circulation, and so on.

Ready? Here we go.

Descriptions	List Price	Rate	Net Receipts	Gross Units	Return Units	Net Units	Earnings
Domestic Sales	$13.95	7.50%		5,566	(2,132)	3,434	$3,592.82
Foreign Sales	$13.95	7.50%		677	(57)	620	$648.68
Direct to Consumer	$13.95	2.00%		38	(0)	38	$10.60
Special and Final Sales	$13.95	5.00%	$16.74	3	(0)	3	$0.85
Subtotal Royalty Earnings				6284	(2,189)	4095	$4,252.94
Return Reserves					(1,855)	(1,855)	($1,940.79)
Royalty Earnings Net of Reserves				6284	(4,044)	2,240	$2,312.15
Deductions
Advance							($2,250.00)
Amount Due							$62.15
Earnings Other Editions							$213.87
Total Amount Due							$276.02
Earnings Other Editions (ebook)
Direct to Consumer	$11.86	25%	$66.00	11	0	11	$16.50
Direct to Consumer	$12.00	25%	$768.50	162	0	162	$192.14
Direct to Consumer	$13.95	25%	$20.93	3	0	3	$5.23
Subtotal Royalty Earnings				176	0	176	$213.87

Okay, so, let’s deconstruct this a little bit.

First of all, it looks as through 6284 copies of the print book were either distributed to booksellers or sold directly to consumers. I don’t think it includes any copies that are still in the warehouse. That doesn’t give me an initial print run figure, which I’d hoped to be able to discern from this statement. However, my editor told me a few weeks ago there were 448 copies in the warehouse, which pushes the initial run up to at least seven thousand. In addition, this is only books distributed/sold as of December 31 of last year. The statement cycle is such that you get a statement in June that reports on July to December and another in December that reports on January to June. In addition, if your book comes out in the middle of a cycle, you have to wait until the NEXT cycle to see the first statement. For example, because my book came out in June of 2009, I didn’t get a statement in December of 2009.

Okay, so, I’m guessing my initial print run was in the neighborhood of 7,000-8,000 copies. Low, unfortunately, even for a niche line like Aphrodisia, but not a surprise to me.

Next, of the 6284 copies originally circulated, 2,132 were already returned, leaving net “sales” of 4,095 copies (e.g., books that are still in circulation and could theoretically be sold). A sale, as I understand it, doesn’t mean an actual consumer purchase (except in the case of Direct to Consumer and Special and Final Sales), but that it’s available for purchase. That’s why there’s an additional line item for return reserves, because the publisher is holding back some royalties in case more copies are returned by booksellers.

Okay, so what about those return reserves? I have to admit, I can’t figure out how they arrived at the 1,855. I thought it was calculated as 40% of the number of copies still in circulation, but that (4095 X 40%) doesn’t come out to 1,855. So, I have to throw my hands up in the air and assume there is some logic being applied that I can’t see.

Another thing that’s not quite right is my advance. The statement says I was paid $2,250 in advance. That’s incorrect. My advance was $2,500. If they had gotten that right, my net earnings would only have been $26.02. I notified my editor of the error and the royalty folks said they’d just catch it up/correct it in the next statement cycle, so I don’t have to send any money back (and I’m glad, not so much because I want to keep the money as that the agency already took its 15% off the top of the payment and the accounting hassle of refunding their portion and mine would have been quite a pain).

Last, the only reason I earned out is because of those wonderful ebook royalties. I get paid 25% of net on those, and even with the relatively low net, I still earn more per copy on ebooks than print. In recognition of that, I’ve decided to add some links to the website to point you to places where you can purchase Behind the Red Door in digital format, partly because I’d like to encourage you to buy digital if you can/want to and partly because, it turns out, my book isn’t all that easy to find in digital format. The only sites I’ve found it on so far, outside of Kensington’s direct site, are (in order of best pricing) Amazon Kindle, Sony, MobiPocket, and All Romance Ebooks.

Okay, so that’s it. Now I am naked before you all (at least in the figurative sense), and I’m happy to answer any questions you might have.

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Get your mind out of the gutter. That’s not what I’m talking about! I’m talking about excerpts posted on an author’s website.

I want to know because I’m getting ready to put up PDFs of the excerpts from all my books, and I’m putting some thought into making those excerpts longer in the PDF (with perhaps slightly shorter ones on the actual website pages) to give folks a better flavor for my work before they make the decision to buy (or, more accurately, hope I can hook you in so you can’t resist buying).

What I’m wondering is whether there’s a “sweet spot” for the length of an excerpt. I’ve generally gone with the first chapter, because my chapters tend to run relatively short, but I’m considering (at least in cases where my publishers don’t object) going up to three chapters or perhaps even more when the chapters are short.

So, do you have an opinion on the matter? How much of a story would you like to be able to read before you make the decision to buy (or not)? Please record your response in the poll or, if you have more to say on the subject, leave a comment. And thanks!

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My husband took this on Sunday afternoon of our cat, Oreo, snoozing amid the clean laundry.

Naturally, I think it demands a LOLCats caption, but I’m not coming up with anything especially clever. So, help me out here.

One lucky captioner (selected at random) will win a $10 gift certificate to the Harlequin ebook store (because, hey, I have to support my new publisher ).

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