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[music]
Jane: Welcome to the Dear Bitches, Smart Authors podcast!
Smart Bitch Sarah: I’m Smart Bitch Sarah from smartbitchestrashybooks.com, and with me is Jane from dearauthor.com.
Jane: Following up on our conversation last week about mainstream digital publishing, today we have the opportunity to talk about small print digital publishing. We’ll have Angela James from Samhain on later today, but first let’s talk about what eBook publishing has done for the romance genre.
Sarah: And most specifically, what eBook publishing has done for romance novels featuring two male protagonists.
Jane: First, I think that eBook publishing really fills what are niche markets that mainstream publishing is not, and that’s how I think eBook publishing for romance really got started back in the early 2000s with Ellora’s Cave, Tina Engler, bringing to the romance reader highly eroticized romances. And now I see the, since mainstream publishing, New York publishers have these kind of similar lines, I think you see more readers in digital going to the m/m or male/male romances that are being offered, so another example of niche marketing making small print publishing a success.
Sarah: I completely agree with you there. What fascinates me about male/male romance is that it seems almost politically opposite to the climate of homosexual acceptance in this country coming off of the November elections where an enormous number of, of amendments were passed to constitutions of different states banning same-sex marriage, banning same-sex couples from fostering and adopting children, making sure that same-sex couples did not receive the same tax and marital benefits as heterosexual couples. There’s this huge amount of, of basic homophobia and homosexual discrimination, and yet, at the same time, there’s this hugely growing – ha-ha – market of male/male romances that are read by, and often written by, straight women.
Jane: Well, I think that what we might be seeing is just a very politically powerful group organizing and getting their votes out. For example, I think everyone wanted to drink in the ‘20s –
[Laughter]
Jane: – but Pro-, but politically powerful people got Prohibition passed. Boy, was that the alliteration? [Laughs] It’s the alliteration contest.
Sarah: That’s pretty good. [Laughs]
Jane: But, so I, I don’t necessarily always think that laws reflect the majority population. I think, in fact, that there was some recent polling that indicated that, like, sixty percent of Americans felt comfortable with same-sex couples, so to that extent, perhaps what we see here in the digital publishing is a filling of a need that seems politically incorrect at the time.
Sarah: I think the fact that it’s a, a growing – ha-ha – genre is, is, is important. I know that sounds really lame, like I’m some, you know, douchebag pundit on C-SPAN, but I think that the fact that that particular subgenre is so, you know, so well, selling so well right now is, is important because it’s going to indicate another change, like you said, to mainstream New York publishing, where they’re going to have to get on board with, with m/m romance.
Jane: Speaking of mainstream publishing in regards to m/m romance, a division of Perseus Books, Running Press, will be putting out, starting in late March, early April, m/m titles which will be shelved in the romance section, and I know that Running Press already has a commitment from Barnes and Noble to do, to do that shelving, so you will start seeing m/m fiction in your local bookstore right in the romance section. So we’re seeing some – and I hate to use this term in regards to this, but – market penetration of –
Sarah: Excellent!
[Laughter]
Jane: – of m/m romance into mainstream marketing.
Sarah: That’s excellent. What, what I will, what I will be watching is whether or not the bookstore segregation and discrimination charges come up again, where Black romance is so often shelved with African-American books, and up until recently, most gay romance was shelved in the gay books, the gay book section, so you’d have a, a book about, you know, two men falling in love right next to how to write a will that doesn’t leave your partner out in the cold, as an author once said to me. The shelving is just as important as the publication of the book, so I’m interested to see male/male romance in the romance section, to see if that, that cross-pollination will, will affect sales.
[music]
Jane: With us is Angela James, executive editor for Samhain Publishing. Thank you for coming to talk with us today, Angela.
Angela James: Oh, thanks for having me!
Jane: Why don’t you tell the podcast crowd who you are and what you do?
Angela: I’m Angela James. As you said, I’m the executive editor for Samhain Publishing. What I do, I could probably take up the whole podcast talking about that. In addition to editing a full complement of books every month, I’m also in charge of overseeing the editorial department of Samhain. So I’m in charge of hiring all the editors and final line editors. I oversee the quality of books, answer any questions about editorial and style guides. In addition to all that, I also do a lot of traveling, going to national and international conferences, promoting both Samhain and e-publishing in general. And I do a lot of things online as far as promotion and representing the company.
Jane: Not everyone maybe knows, but Samhain Publishing is an exclus-, is an e-publisher who also offers print versions of some of their books, so can you tell us a little about your print program and how books get from the eBook to the print version?
Angela: Sure. When we describe ourselves, we usually say that we’re a small press publisher specializing in digital but that we also do print. So what happens is, we would sign a book, and it would go into digital format, get released in digital format. From there, approximately ten months later, we put the book out in what we call print on demand, and essentially we work with Ingram’s print services, and we upload our print file to Ingram. The bookstores place orders. Ingram has a sales team which goes out and markets our books to the sales team, to the booksellers at places like Borders, Barnes and Noble, and many independent bookstores, and then they do a print run based on those orders but also have enough stock in their warehouse so that we can send out to people who are ordering, you know, from online place like Amazon; again, Barnes and Noble online; and other places online. So it’s print on demand, but it’s not what people think of as the book of one, where you order a copy and some guy in the back room is printing it out on his printer. It doesn’t work quite like that.
Sarah: I agree; print on demand definitely has a negative reputation. Can you, you know, give us a, a tiny little bit of, of what, what, what you could say to counter that bad reputation?
Angela: Well, print on demand, I think, is really going to become more popular, especially with the state of the publishing industry and the economy, and not only that but the environment, and those are three really important factors that are going to factor into print on demand being used more because (1) print on demand is more environmentally friendly because you don’t have a lot of paper waste because you’re not running off fifty thousand copies hoping that fifty thousand people will buy the book and then having twenty-five thousand copies remaindered and, and, you know, waste all those trees. The other thing is, is that print on demand can be a better financial decision because, again, you’re not printing more stock than what you can, than what you can sell. And then there is more of an immediate factor: print on demand can be, you know, printed pretty quickly as well.
Jane: Can you tell us a little about how you’ve seen the eBook industry change in the years that Samhain has been in business?
Angela: I, I have really seen a huge change in, in e-publishing. I remember when I first started reading digital, there were no dedicated e-readers. People were reading on their, their PDAs or, I, I had a, an H, a pocket PC, and HP iPAQ I think is what it was, and that’s what I read on. People read digital on those, or they read on their computers or laptops, so those were the only options, but now, in the past three years, we’ve seen so many e-readers be developed. There’re a lot of different companies coming into the market, getting an interest in digital, and not only that, but when we first opened, I don’t think there were any major publishers who were doing digital. I think Harlequin was one of the very first to really jump on board with that and to really throw their energy and time and money behind it and do it successfully, and that has really brought to even more readers the viability of digital technology and e-, e-publishing. So it’s been a really exciting three years because the growth has been tremendous, and I think we’re going to see that continue in the next three years.
Jane: How ‘bout in terms of content?
Sarah: Oh, good question!
Jane: Has that changed at all?
Angela: That is a really good question. Small press has always had a diverse content. Even in digital publishing, there has been diverse content, but I think it, digital publishing really came to the attention of readers and publishers with the erotic press, with the erotic books, the erotic romance books, and now that e-publishing and digital content have caught on, you really see that it’s more diverse, and people are seeking out eBooks not just because they can get the erotic content or their, whatever niche market that they’re interested in, but because they can just get more content in general and because it’s easier; it’s, you know, it’s more like instantaneous gratification. You know, it’s right there at your fingertips.
Sarah: Jane and I wanted to ask you, as an editor – outside of e-publishing and outside of being a small press – as an editor, what tip would you like to give anyone who’s listening that is an aspiring writer?
Angela: Oh, you know, that’s a really good question, because there’s so much to know about editing. I think the important thing is to learn how to self-edit. I was just talking about this with one of my editors earlier this week, and as an editor, we want to help you polish your book. We want to help your, your book be the best it can be, but we don’t want you to rely on us to do all of that. We appreciate an author who has really good self-editing skills, and if you recognize that your self-editing skills aren’t the best, you either develop them or find a critique partner or a beta reader who can help with that. A lot of people have trouble seeing their own work objectively, so sometimes looking for somebody else to give you feedback can really help, but just learning to self-edit and turning in the cleanest possible product is, is something that will get you far ahead with all of your editors and agents.
Sarah: So you’re not so much a diamond cutter as you are a diamond polisher. You want the, the, the facets most of the way in place.
Angela: Yeah, I mean, as editors, and especially, this is especially true for the traditional publishers, editing is just a fraction of your job. So you don’t want, when you look at a book, it can get very discouraging to see a book that’s really rough that you know has great, what we would call great bones but needs a lot of work, knowing that you don’t really have the time to invest in it, and you don’t want an editor to reject your book for that reason, or you don’t want an editor to want to stop working with you because it’s just too much time investment.
Jane: Angela, where would readers or authors be able to find you on the Internet?
Angela: They can find us at our website, which his www.samhainpublishing.com [now defunct]. All of our books are right there on the front page. We also do have a submissions page which is pretty detailed. As far as submissions right now, we do accept only romance or science fiction, futuristic urban fantasy, fantasy with romantic elements. We are a, a romance publisher. Specifically, we’re really interested in steampunk right now. Futuristic and fantasy are always really big hits with us. Our male/male readers are always begging us for more male/male. We don’t get as many submissions in that as we’d like. And also, still looking for interracial and straight contemporary romances, not erotic contemporary. I mean, we’re always looking for those, but we’d really love to see some straight contemporary. And just for Jane, we’d really like to see some great contemporary sports romances.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Jane: Thank you!
Sarah: Oh, I second that one! That would be fabulous.
[Laughter]
[music]
Sarah: If you’ve got any feedback or questions for Jane or Sarah or topics to suggest, we’d love to hear from you. You can email us at [email protected]. That’s S-B for Smart Bitch, J for Jane, and podcast for podcast at gmail dot com. We’d love to hear from you if you have ideas or questions you want to ask us. We might answer them in a future podcast or answer them on our websites, but either way, give us an email; we’ll definitely read it.
[music]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
So much has changed since this podcast! I miss the wonderful collaborations between DA and SBTB. What’s Angela up to these days?