As you all probably know (ahem. Blatant self promotion warning ahead) I’m being published by Harlequin Spice later this year, and
As you all probably know (ahem. Blatant self promotion warning ahead) I’m being published by Harlequin Spice later this year, and
I have turned in my revisions for My Dangerous Pleasure (Book 4 of my My Immortals series) and am now FREE, FREE AT LAST for a while and can totally concentrate on The Next Historical, which is shaping up to be awesome. I am hoping I get to keep my malfunctioning door hardware scene.
I have my rights back for two of my historicals, Lord Ruin and The Spare, and hope to be hearing something on another in about three months. My exciting news is that I am in the process of getting new cover art for Lord Ruin and hope to have that available in digital formats and POD by the end of this month or early February.
It’s always been interesting to me that publishers and other industry professionals like to point out that Publishers make quite a lot of money on backlist titles. But they’re always talking about Books We’ve Heard Of. Makes sense, since many of these titles sell a lot. To Kill a Mockingbird, anyone?
But there’s a hidden backlist that publishers have not been taking advantage of, and that’s the vast pool of genre fiction. For the purposes of this post, let’s limit the discussion to Romance. There are out of print (OOP) titles that consistently show up on lists of reader favorite, years after they were first published. The only way to get these OOP books are to find them used (if you haven’t saved your copy) or find a pirated version.
There is a pent up demand for a lot of OOP Romance titles but it’s largely invisible to publishers because the titles were mass market and intended to have a short life and, to my knowledge, publishers aren’t tracking demand for used books– which is (almost) the only way to get your hands on these OOP titles.
The reality is that publishers were wrong about the short shelf life. This might be true for certain titles or certain authors — the book or writing is mediocre, let’s say. (and this is true of literary fiction, too.) The reality is that there are genre authors who are talented, amazing writers and their stories are worth re-reading. I bet Amazon has the data that proves this, and I bet that data would be very interesting to see. I bet that data shows there are certain OOP titles that are in demand.
I believe Publishers have missed a revenue stream with genre fiction. Popular OOP titles are sitting there, entirely unmonitized except for used book dealers. Digital publishing has created a whole new way to monitize that wide pool, but publishers are in a difficult situation now because 1) they’re blind to the demand and 2) the current system isn’t suited to the digital reality. (And that’s a whole other post!) They’re also not looking at authors with backlist as potential partners in a different publishing scheme, again, a whole other post.
Meanwhile, savvy authors are moving faster.
Until recently, there was nothing authors could do to satisfy continuing demand for their OOP backlist, other than hope readers could find used copies. There wasn’t much point in asking for a rights reversion, because, what would you do with the rights if you had them?
The Kindle changed everything.
Now authors can do something with backlist titles that publishers allow to languish. Now there’s a very good reason for authors to get rights reversions for OOP titles. Those books can now be reintroduced into the author’s stream of commerce, whether as a book that can be purchased or offered free as a way to seed front list sales. Or both.
If publishers were more agile and wired into their authors, maybe they would be thinking of ways to help send that stream of commerce their way. Right now, Amazon is doing that instead. From what I’m seeing and hearing from other authors, there’s another disruption on the way, and that’s the reintroduction of OOP backlist into what is a frontlist-like commerce stream.
I can’t wait for the time when I can sit around yakking about great romances from the past and if a title being discussed intrigues me, being able to pull out my iPhone or eReader and get my hands on that book within seconds. I can’t wait to read a book I love and be able to get my hands on ALL of that author’s backlist within seconds.
Opine in the comments.
I love starting a new year with good news! I found out my second series writing as Laurel McKee has been accepted, so happy early birthday to me. (My b-day is this Saturday, and I will probably spend most of it working on the Mary Queen of Scots WIP, which is moving slowly along. But if anyone wants to drop by and have a glass of champagne, I could be distracted!). The new series is Victorian-set, 1840s and ’50s (a new time period for me!), centering around a scandalous family of actors, gamblers, and all-around rogues, scoundrels, and charmers (even the women!). I am very excited about it.
I also found a fun book on my weekly trip to the library, Bound to Last: 30 Writers on Their Most Cherished Book. I love the “writers talking about favorite books” genre, because I often find new books I never came across before (like in this one–one author mentioned Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art). But mostly I love them because they give me such a sense of–well, of belonging. Of being part of the Tribe of Readers.
This is also the #1 most fun thing about writing–connecting with like-minded people and finding true friends. (Well, that and watching North & South over and over and calling it research work). When I was a child and a teenager, I was sometimes considered rather odd because I read so much and was so daydream-y all the time. I would just as soon read in the library (or on my closet floor or in the hammock) as do anything else, and most of my friends were either theater geeks or closet romance novel junkies like me. (We would sneak out to the parking lot to illicitly trade Johanna Lindsey and Virginia Henley paperbacks at lunch time). Teenage dating was a disappointing thing, due to the complete lack of dark, sardonic dukes at my high school (thanks so much, Barbara Cartland!). But there was no Internet yet, and I had never heard of RWA, so had no way of discovering the fact that My People were out there. Now I do, and I’m grateful for that every day.
I was trying to think of what my ‘most cherished book’ would be, but I just can’t narrow it down. I remember the first book I read all by myself (Eloise in Paris), my first romance novel (Marion Chesney’s At the Sign of the Golden Pineapple, picked up at a garage sale because I liked the cover girl’s pink-striped dress. Little did I know I was about to fall into the Regency…). My first Austen (Emma), first Bronte sisters (Jane Eyre), the so-called “orphan porn” books I adored (Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables, and anything that featured a boarding school), stuff like I Capture the Castle, Gone With the Wind, the Sunfire YA romance series–they all changed my life. Every book I read changes my life in some way.
If my house was on fire and I could only grab one book, what would it be? After much careful consideration, I think it would be Janet Arnold’s Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d, because 1) it’s an expensive book, hard to replace, and an invaluable research source, and 2) it was a a gift from a very dear friend who has since died. But I would mourn the loss of the other books, like that battered first paperback of Jane Eyre, a college copy of Middlemarch with all my underlinings and notes, an old book about Waterloo that was my grandfather’s (who never read a book that wasn’t about war or presidents!), Shakespeare’s sonnets given to me by an old boyfriend, the list goes on and on and on.
What is your most cherished book?? Do you have a favorite memory of books?
One of my favorite TV shows is I Survived… on the Biography Channel. On this show a person sits against a black background and tells their story of survival. There’s no reenactment, just flashes to photographs and videos of the locations where the story took place. It is surprisingly effective. Some people tell stories about surviving the elements, a snowstorm, the ocean, the jungle. Others tell stories of surviving abduction or assault by robbers or strangers. Too many stories are told by women who survived attempts to kill them by husbands or lovers.
This weekend I came across an “I Survived” story in a book I’m reading, London’s Sinful Secret: The Bawdy History and Very Public Passions of London’s Georgian Age by Dan Cruickshank. This book tells about the Georgian and Regency sex industry, the world of courtesans and prostitutes in which young and innocent girls were enticed or trapped by shrewd bawds.
In 1753, eighteen year old sevant Elizabeth Canning was abducted by two men and taken to a house where a gypsy woman tried to coerce her into prostitution. Elizabeth refused and was imprisoned in an attic room and given only bread and water to eat in an effort to wear down her resolve. The gypsy woman threatened to cut her throat if Elizabeth tried to escape. After 28 days, Elizabeth managed to remove a board from a window, to climb out and jump to the ground and to find her way back home. Her ordeal outraged the citizenry. The authorities made an effort to locate the house where she was imprisoned. Elizabeth identified the house and the gypsy woman who was arrested.
Here’s where the story turns strange in a way that could only happen in this era. The gypsy woman vowed her innocence and soon the citizenry were taking sides. Who was guilty and who was innocent? The gypsy had an alibi and Elizabeth’s story had inconsistencies. Ultimately, the gypsy was acquited and Elizabeth was convicted of perjury and was transported to New England.
But Elizabeth survived even this consequence. She eventually married a great-nephew of the governor of Connecticut and had five children.
This story was much more complex than I’ve described here, with Henry Fielding and others involved, but even if Elizabeth’s story was not as she described (and never wavered from), she had survived something. Her condition when she escaped was “deplorable.” Her hands and face were black, her ear was injured and bleeding. She was dressed only in a shift and petticoat.
I love survival stories. I love hearing about how people can endure the unendurable and make it through. We humans can be a tough lot, whether we live in Georgian England or in our modern, sometimes dangerous world.
This weekend, as the events of the Tucson shooting were unfolding and the fate of Congresswoman Giffords was uncertain, I thought of I Survived…. and the stories of so many people who had managed to survive shootings, stabbings, shark attacks, subzero temperatures, etc. Perhaps if they could survive, so would Giffords and the other injured victims. I pray so, and I pray for those who did not make it. My heart goes out to their families.
Do you like survival stories? Do you know of a good one?
Some of my favorites include the duct tape episodes (they even built a boat out of it) and the one where they (sadly!) proved that Captain Kirk could not have built a bamboo cannon to defeat his Gorn Opponent in the “Arena” episode. Star Trek and black powder—what’s not to love?
Biscuits appear to have arrived in one of three states: hard, jaw-breaking and alive with maggots, as Napier indicates forcibly enough, or crushed to crumbs and mouldered to dust, or sometimes good but old. One day in November 1813 each man in the 43rd Light Infantry secured a biscuit of American make: nearly an inch thick, they were so hard as to require the stamp of an iron heel or some such hammer to break them. These American biscuits were even thick enough to save a man’s life. During the march to La Petite Rhune a fortnight before Christmas 1813 the officers of that regiment ate some for breakfast at two o’clock in the morning, when Lieutenant Wyndham Madden remarked that their thickness would turn a bullet aside, at the same time stuffing one into the breast of his jacket. ‘Never was prediction more completely verified,’ wrote a brother subaltern, ‘for early in the day the biscuit was shattered to pieces, turning the direction of the bullet from as gallant and true a heart as ever beat under a British uniform.’
Mythbusters has boards on www.discovery.com where one can submit new myths. In the historical myths section, I found someone has posted something similar related to the American Civil War, so I added this Napoleonic bit to that thread. It would be fun to see this one tested!
Do any of you enjoy Mythbusters? Have any favorite episodes? Any myths, Regency related or otherwise, that you’d like to see them try to bust?
Elena
