My Next Historical is done and turned in and now titles Not Wicked Enough. The book that follows will be Not Proper Enough.
I leave you with this picture because in the post deadline haze it’s all I’ve got:
My Regency Historical title from 2004, The Spare, is now available on Kindle, Kindle UK and Nook. It’s a little bit of a Gothic tale in that it has a castle and a ghost (or does it?) There’s also amnesia (not total amnesia) and a hot Navy captain and a little (grown up!) red-headed girl. Here’s the cover, which a friend of mine called an erotic watercolor and Disney Does Dirty. I’m going to do some cover research with this title by switching out the cover in a bit and seeing what happens to sales.
What do you think? Different, yes, which is good. But too different?
Regardless, my long Out of Print title is now available! Yay!!!
My TBR. OMG. And this is just the pile I can reach from my chair, in absolutely no order. There are more, but I’m not getting up to look.
And that doesn’t include eBooks, except for Rothfuss.
The pile is only going to get bigger and deeper as my deadline approaches because I can’t stop buying books.
What’s in your TBR (print or eBook)?
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.
This is the week the Riskies traditionally talk about our favorites of the year, books, movies, maybe even TV shows. I’m the world’s worst read Riskie, but this year I do have a few favorites to discuss. Self-Help books!
I’m fond of self-help books, any kind of self-help books from diet to motivational to inspirational. This past year I’ve been on a happiness kick and the book world has been kind enough to indulge me.
I’m a great believer in happiness. I think we can choose to be happy by choosing the way we think and the way we act. These three books just reinforced my belief and offered me some new surprises as well.
Happy For No Reason by Marci Shimoff presents a series of interviews of happy people. Each illustrates an important aspect of achieving happiness. The lessons are practical, but it was the stories themselves that I found inspirational and sometimes downright moving. For example, she tells of a young, blue eyed, blonde-haired woman stranded by a flash flood while on a bus traveling through Bangladesh. All of a sudden she was in the midst of nearby villagers dying of starvation and dysentery. Inspired by a “Smiling man” for hours she wound up moving through the crowd, singing to the dying people, comforting them, and stroking their foreheads, offering some comfort and peace as they died. Afterwards she never forgot the power of a smile.
59 Seconds: Think a Little Change a Lot by Richard Wiseman is not confined to discussing happiness, but achievement of happiness is a part of the book. What I love about this book is that it is research based. The research behind every “technique” Wiseman discusses is explained before he goes into its practical application. Again, for me the research is the fascinating part, not the “how-to.” For example, in a debunking of positive thinking Wiseman described research in which one group was asked to write down and focus on a description of an ideal future and the other group was asked to write down and focus on the happiest experience of their lives. The happiest experience group wound up significantly happier with their lives three months later.
What Happy People Know by Dan Baker, Ph.D. Baker is a psychologist who has used the science of happiness in his clinical practice. He avoids the “disease model” of psychiatric problems and shows through a series of examples how having patients discuss and dwell on their unhappiness actually impedes their improvement. Instead he builds on their successes and their strengths. He tells of working on a anorexia unit and realizing that he could not change his patient’s self-hatred. Instead he focused on what she loved most-her dog. By focusing on her love and her strengths, she lost her self-hatred and worked on eating normally again. I loved this approach to psychotherapy (possibly due to my past life as a psychotherapist) and I loved reading his “case histories.”
Do you read self-help or motivational books? Do you have any favorites? Any recommendations? I received $150 in Amazon cards for Christmas and they are burning a hole in my pocket. If I could buy only one book, self-help or not, what would you recommend I buy?
I am back from visiting the awesome Risky Megan in Brooklyn. My son and I had a great time. We went to see Wicked at the Gershwin Theatre on Broadway, and it was fun and funny and possibly the highlight of the trip, aside from seeing Megan.
I met with my Berkley and Grand Central editors and did a Q&A recording and also read two excerpts from the paranormals while at GCP. I often dressed in black. Megan and I discussed the possibility of a fashion difference between left and right coasts, in that I observered that boots are big on the right. Many women wear awesome boots and maybe I’ll have to get some. Here on my part part of the left coast, the only women in boots, by and large, just came into town from riding and are also wearing riding pants; sometimes jodhpurs and but often heavy leggings with a suede lining on the inner thighs.
. I forced the progeny The progeny and I went to the Met to see, among other things the Jan Gosset exhibit. Gosset is a Renaissance painter and I am particularly interested in the period because I have a project that will be set in a Renaissance-like world and I wanted to find out more about clothing etc. When I have an extra $80 lying around I’ll buy the exhibit book.
My son pointed out several times after the exhibit that there was an old lady with cane who was going through the exhibit faster than I was. I needed to really study those portraits, for one thing and for another the portraits were amazing. His religious paintings I found to be far less interesting and at times downright disturbing. The face of an adult on the body of the Christ child is just . . . creepy.
But the portraits. Oh my.
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| Portrait by Jan Gosset |
They were just astonishingly good. Fantastic exhibit.
Some of you may recall my post about exploding pencils from September 2009. Well guess what?
Seriously. Guess.
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SPOILER
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OK, I’ll tell you.
I’m going to use a phosphorus pencil in The Next Historical, and I’m thinking maybe it will start a fire.
Watch out!