Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Ask the Editor: Questions and Answers, Part V

We're back with more answers from the editor who is living a very fine life in my basement. She installed a wine cellar, and says it's a job requirement. I presume editors everywhere are nodding at that idea. 

Tessa asked: 

How much do the business considerations drive your acquisitions?  I expect it varies by publisher, even by the imprint, maybe by the quarter? Do you often find yourself reading ms you love, but are unable to purchase, because projected sales don’t meet a minimum?  How are those numbers derived?

Ask the Editor:

We don’t acquire to lose money. We acquire so that we can publish books we love and so everyone can keep their jobs. Have I bought books from authors who didn’t sell so well because I loved them? Yep. One author. For small money & small print run and they at least had a proven track record. And I didn’t lose money on the deal.

However, we often find ourselves unable to buy particular projects (the ones that got away!) It’s part of the day to day. That can be because without rights to certain countries (perhaps the project sold to UK… read more »

Ask the Editor: Questions and Answers, Part IV

The editor I kidnapped is still in my basement, though I've moved a wine cellar and some fruitcake down there so  my sequestered editor has plenty to eat. And she's consented to answer more questions for you, in the fourth edition of "Ask the Editor."

Taylor L. asked:

What tips a book from the maybe pile to the yes pile as far as acquisitions go? How much more scrutiny do you give a first time author than an author you’ve worked with for a while?

Ask the Editor:

Voice, honestly. And how much more scrutiny? I hope I’m being equally hard, but I know in some cases I haven’t been. (Because there’s the ‘trust me, you know I can deliver’ factor.)

Kim asked:

There’s a big name author that signed a 3 book contract in 2004. She published book 1 under the contract in 2005, but the second one has been repeatedly delayed. How much time does a publisher give an author to complete the terms of the contract before they ask for part of the advance… read more »

Ask the Editor: Questions and Answers, Part III

Don’t worry - I do let the editor locked in my basement come outside for fresh air and a nap and some wine and whatnot. She’s a freerange editor when she’s not answering reader questions here!

J9 asked: How has the explosion of the e-reader and e-book market changed publishing, especially acquisition, marketing and sales expectations?  And related, has the e-book market caused editors’ job duties to change?

Ask the Editor In a nice way, it’s given us other avenues in which to find readers. And in another it makes it insanely easier for us to bring books home to read. Every editor I know has a manuscript bag. (In the case of my old roommate, Kate Spade, paid for by a nice author) Now, fewer of them! It hasn’t really changed our job duties except that the negotiation for digital rights can take longer as part of a contract negotiation, and of course social media exploration/use is part of what we do too. And as I said, it’s now another area to review for potential authors.

And a last positive point—some types… read more »

Ask the Editor: Questions and Answers, Part II

She’s still in my basement (which is dry, thank heaven) and I’ve still got a lot of wine for bribery purposes, so Editor X is happy to answer more questions. Here we go with installment two of “Ask the Editor.”

Anony Miss asked: My question: why aren’t there more scratch-n-sniff contemporary novels? I think it’s a whole niche market being totally ignored.

Ask the Editor  Speaking as a person who had to research the embedding of a music box thingie in a book cover, I can say that it’s too expensive. We’d print in China/Singapore, which means it’ll take me a year to make that book, and scratch & sniff won’t store well on a shelf with all the anklebiters in Walmart scratching away at books they don’t buy. Lord, I’m grumpy today. I need more wine!

Ask the Editor: Lots of Questions, Lots of Answers

Remember that editor I have tied up in my basement? She’s been fed and I shared my wine supply because I’m not TOTALLY evil, and she’s consented to answer some of your questions from our original entry. I’ve got quite a few answers - she’s really freaking wordy, my GOD - so I’ll break them up in to several posts.

Kim in Hawaii asked Do you read bloggers’ reviews and readers’ comments?  If yes, does their feedback influence how you acquire and edit future books? 

I think readers do grow frustrated that they take the time to express their displeasure with a trope, plot, character, or even cover to the point that readers do not want to see “it” again.  Yet “it” appears again in the following year’s crop of books as if readers’ opinions don’t count. 

Ask the Editor We do read some of the reviews—those our author forwards to us and those we find online—I’ve read the PW, Booklist, Library Journal,  Amazon ones and the B&N, etc. ones on the books I work on too.

However,… read more »

Lending Kindles at the Library

I admit, I’m terribly curious to find out what the Kindle on-device library lending will look like, whenever it arrives this fall. But I learned recently of another library lending program that totally knocked my socks off. At the Cudahy Family Library in Cudahy, Wisconsin - where is that, you ask? It’s right here - the librarians have the Most Interesting Lending Program.

They lend Kindles.

No, really, they lend Kindles. Preloaded with a ton of books, each device devoted to a different genre.

I will let Michelle Gibbs, the Adult & Administrative Services Librarian (or, as I called her, Superpowered Librarian), explain the program.

Michelle Gibbs:  We’ve got 6 Kindles that we loan out for 3 weeks at a time, and each is pre-loaded with 30-50 titles within a particular theme: Mystery and Suspense, Romance, Book Club Favorites, Nonfiction and Memoir and two Young Adult (different titles on each one).

Each Kindle has unique content; we made sure that we only loaded one copy of each book that we purchased, and if we had wanted the… read more »

Interview with Courtney Milan: Self Publishing Her Next Novel

Yesterday when I was formatting my review for Courtney Milan’s Unlocked, I put the author’s name in both the “author” and “publisher” field. I have a feeling I will be doing that more and more often, and I know I’ll be doing it again for Milan. Read on for an interview (as usual, a nosy one) about Milan’s decision to self publish the third book in her trilogy.

So what’s the story? You’ve shared why you’re choosing this option: Your readership, your fans, and your dislike of the digital royalty rate. What you think a publisher could have offered to bring you a print contract you’d be interested in?

I would very much like to discuss your point of view and reasoning however you’d like to share it publicly.

Milan: The digital royalty rate (8% of digital cover price for Harlequin) was a sticking point. And under the terms of the contract and the current market, this would have given them the rights to my backlist for the rest of my working life. You can see people break down the math elsewhere as to how that works out… read more »

Questions? Questions? Upcoming Live Event Interviews with Gena Showalter and Nalini Singh

Two interview events, one now and one coming soon!

First, as I mentioned last week, this evening at 6:30pm, I’m interviewing Gena Showalter at the Apple store in Soho, New York City (103 Prince Street). The interview will be about 40 minutes with time for Q&A, and will be taped for a podcast to be released later.

Also: Tuesday, 24 May at 10:30am in the Sourcebooks Booth, #4356, I will be signing advance reader copies of Everything I Know About Love, I Learned From Romance Novels. After that, I’ll be haunting the romance publisher booths. One year at BEA I wandered into a Gail Carriger signing and the clamors for books via Twitter led me back to the Carriger tea twice to send copies to people. That was fun. 

Not at BEA this week? Not to worry - here’s another event to plot and plan for! It’s in early June in NYC, so you can start planning now. 

Nalini Singh is going on a World Tour (which means she’s leaving New Zealand and coming here and other places, including, I… read more »

One Was a Soldier: An Interview and Giveaway

Are you breathlessly anticipating the next book in Julia Spencer-Fleming’s series? Curious to see how Clare and Russ survive her deployment? Well, over the past few months, Julia and I have been working on an interview (really, this email has been going back and forth for AWHILE) and she’s got

5

8 ARCs to give away this weekend. She’ll ship them out anywhere so you’ll get a copy zippy fast.

Just leave a comment below to enter - and add to the Julia Spencer-Fleming Series Drinking Game (or, if you’re not so inclined, just leave a comment and tell us what you’d do for a copy of the book). Drinking Games make a little fun of things that appear frequently in a series or movie. Here’s some sample items for the JSFS Drinking Game:

Any mention of Clare’s haircolor: 2 sips Any mention of Clare’s haircolor by Russ: 1 sip Any mention of Clare’s haircolor in terms of alcoholic beverages: CHUG.

Russ cleans his glasses: 1 sip Russ pinches the bridge of his nose: 1 sip Russ asks where the facilities are: 2 sips Someone tells Russ to see a doctor… read more »

The Blind Teaching the Reader: An Interview

One of the sessions I attended at Tools of Change was from BeneTech, which works to make books accessible to those with significant physical obstacles to reading, such as visual impairment or learning disability. Listening to that presentation, I tweeted some of it and heard back from a reader named Sassy Outwater, who agreed with some of the points and offered to school me on what blind readers need and have to facilitate their own reading enjoyment.

I know absolutely squatnada about blind readers. And so I asked a bunch of really ignorant and obvious questions, and Sassy was kind enough to humor me - as she said, “no question is ignorant or not. The more in the publishing/review biz who know, the more I get to read.”

Boy oh boy howdydamn, did she ask for it.

What do you like to read, romance-wise?

Sassy: Blame it on a short attention span, or a career where I have to hang out with a lot of men… but I like romance when it’s woven into something else. My… read more »

Behold! A Video Interview with Jesse Petersen!

Jesse Peterson won the author interview I offered for the Brenda Novak Diabetes Auction, and she wanted to talk about her book Married With Zombies, which comes out 1 September 2010.

I decided it might be fun to do a goofy video author interview, and ask Jesse about her book, and what’s next in zombie fiction. She totally went along with my bizarre questions during the RWA conference - we’re in the lobby of the hotel, which fit the odd and silly finished product. Enjoy!

Winners of Liu and Armstrong Books

The winners of the newest books from Kelley Armstrong and Marjorie M. Liu are:

Kaye and Jen H.

Please contact me at sarahATsmartbitchestrashybooksDOTcom with your mailing address - congratulations!

I’ll reopen the comments so anyone who would like to talk about the new Liu and Armstrong books can have at it - thanks for entering the contest!

Three Way Interview with Kelley Armstrong and Marjorie M. Liu

Today, I have an interview with two authors, Marjorie Liu and Kelley Armstrong, and as a twist, they asked me some questions, too. Kelley and Marjorie both have books out today, so happy book release day to them both!

Armstrong’s new book, Waking the Witch, is the 11th book in her Women of the Otherworld series, about a witch, Savannah, who pairs up with a private investigator to figure out a pattern of murders that seem more than merely humans-gone-killing-each-other. Liu’s new book is part of her Maxine Kiss series, and is very chilling: in A Wild Light, Maxine wakes up hours after a family dinner alongside the bloody body of her grandfather with no memory of what happened, and a lot of fear of what she might have done.

On with the nosy questions!

SARAH: What’s the absolute most awesome thing about your upcoming books that you want to share with your readers, the thing you’re most excited about?

KELLEY: Most awesome thing about Waking the Witch?  The foil used for the title on the US cover.  It’s oddly iridescent and transfixing.  It’ll jump off the shelf at… read more »

Susan Donovan, Save the Contemporary, and Gettin’ Lucky: An Interview

When Jane Litte and I hosted a session on “Save the Contemporary” at RT this year, in the middle of a discussion, we discovered that in the audience was contemporary romance author Susan Donovan. I think my literal response was, “Oh, cool!” So when she got in touch with me later, I suggested an interview, because I was curious what she thought of the contemporary market, and romance in general.

You visited our Save the Contemporary panel and we were very excited to meet you - thank you for coming. What do you love most about contemporary romance, reading and writing it?

Susan: I visited the “Save the Contemporary” panel at RT because I was alarmed to see the title of the workshop, plus I was hoping to get a free t-shirt. The truth is, I had no idea anything needed saving!  I’ve been so busy sitting at my laptop making up stuff set somewhere in modern-day America that I didn’t realize there was any kind of crisis with this type of fiction. I’m out of the loop, as usual.

Why do I gravitate toward contemporary romance? I’ve always been a here-and-now… read more »

Romance Writers, Fiction & Nonfiction

Romance writers have, or have had, a myriad of jobs. One of my favorite things about romance writer bios is how one snapshot of a writer’s career history could include everything from taxonomy to tax preparation. And, surprise, surprise, romance writers often write… other stuff.

Jenny Gardiner, whose book Sleeping with Ward Cleaver was the American Title III winner, has a new book out - but it’s non fiction. And it’s a memoir. About her psychotic parrot. No lie.

Alyssa Day, whose newest book, Atlantis Redeemed, just come out last week, also wrote a nonfiction memoir several years ago about her husband’s deployment and her correspondence with him. I got all nosy and asked them both about writing stuff that’s outside of romance.

Which came easier to you: romance novel writing or nonfiction memoir?

Jenny:

I came to the table trained as a journalist, so I can easily transition from genre to genre, which is handy ;-). I also have a column in our local paper, and have been writing creative non-fiction for years. I really was writing that before I wrote fiction even.

I joke that my… read more »