10. Digital backlist, prices, and old skool romances we love: September 14, 2011

Dear Bitches, Smart Authors, September 15, 2011

 

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Sarah Wendell: Hello again! I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches with Jane Litte from Dear Author, and welcome to the Dear Bitches, Smart Authors podcast! This week we’re talking about digital backlist, older romances that have been rereleased in digital format, and what we think they ought to cost versus what they actually cost. We, we also talk about vintage romances, older books that we loved, and books that we’re reading now. There’s a lot of titles and, as you requested, I will make a list of all of the books we discuss, good and bad, in the podcast.

Today’s music is by Sassy Outwater. You can follow her on Twitter @SassyOutwater, and you can find us on Twitter as well. I’m @SmartBitches, and Jane is @Jane_L.

We hope you enjoy today’s podcast. We’ll be back soon with more, and if you have suggestions of what you’d like us to talk about in future editions, email us at [email protected].

And now, on with the show!

[music]

Sarah: So you wanted to talk about pricing. What’s up with pricing?

Jane Litte: Well, there’s some weird pricing going on. There’s some titles put out by, I, I guess was Warner, now is Forever, a division of Grand Central, and they’re pricing these backlist titles at, like, ten, eleven dollars.

Sarah: Eh?

Jane: Yes!

Sarah: I’m not paying eleven dollars for a book that that’s old, that, that, that – I would sooner buy it, cut it, and scan my own copy!

Jane: Well, right! You can probably buy it for the penny on Amazon Marketplace, and then there’s that new book scanning service where it, they’ll do a hundred doll-, hundred pages for a dollar, so you could get your own DRM-free digital book for about six bucks if you didn’t have, instead of buying the $10.99 version.

Sarah: Why would you pay $10.99 for an old e-book? I mean, why? It just, I, I am completely baffled. Like, who thought that was a good idea?

Jane: Don’t know, but there’s a few titles – okay, it’s actually, Beauty and the Spy, actually, is mass-market priced at $22.99, but the Kindle –

Sarah: Good God!

Jane: – with a Kindle edition for $10.99. Ways to Be Wicked is priced at $20.99 with the Kindle edition at $9.99.

Sarah: What –

Jane: I have –

Sarah: I, I –

Jane: – no idea what’s going there, going on there.

Sarah: I, I, I can’t even describe the look on my face. What?!

Jane: Yeah!

Sarah: Twenty – what, is it bound in solid gold? Is that what it is?

Jane: [Laughs]

Sarah: Is it, is there, like, it, they dipped it in gold, didn’t they? That’s what it is. Isn’t gold, like, fifteen hundred dollars an ounce? That’s why this is so expensive. It’s not just the yellow border on the pages, it’s a gold border, actual gold gilding. What the – this book is from 2006?

Jane: Yeah! Now some people are saying it’s an error, but it’s been brought to their attention more than once, so if it was an error, wouldn’t it have been corrected by now? I mean, this has been the price for, like, months.

Sarah: That’s crazy. I love that there’s a one, one-star review going, why did I buy this at ten dollars? What was I thinking? [Laughs] I don’t know; what were you thinking? Holy hell! You know, that makes me feel really bad for the author –

Jane: Yes.

Sarah: – ‘cause Julie Anne Long has really good press, and you’ve been telling me how good her books are, and I have them on the, on, on my, on my to-be-read spreadsheet, which I’m now embarrassed that I keep, but I do. I, I’m, like, embarrassed for her that the book is so expensive. What the hell? Can you write a romance that’s worth twenty-two dollars in a paperback? Like –

Jane: Well –

Sarah: – is there any, is there any paperback romance that you would pay twenty-two dollars for?

Jane: Well, yes, because –

Sarah: Which one?

Jane: Well, let me, let me explain this: people buy hardcovers all the time.

Sarah: Meh, I don’t, but okay, yes, I’m with you.

Jane: So Nalini Singh’s in hardcover, Nora Roberts, Christine Feehan, J. R. Ward, so lots of people believe that these stories are worth twenty to twenty-five dollars, and they’re willing to pay it. I mean, I’m not willing to pay it, but some people are, so the, the story itself some people have deemed is worth that type of money.

Sarah: But, see, I would argue they’re not paying for the story at twenty-two bucks; they’re paying to have it right on release date in a format, a big heavy format that is not going to break down or rip or break in half. I mean, it’s kind of hard to destroy a hardback unless you’ve got a flamethrower, whereas a paperback can get hurt very easily. I always figured if you’re going to spend twenty-two, twenty-three bucks on a book you’re not only be-, paying for the right to be the first one out of the gate to get it, but you’re also paying for that durable format.

Jane: Well, I think that you’re pay-, I think that people are paying for the early release versus the format.

Sarah: Hmm.

Jane: I mean, I don’t know how many people really enjoy reading hardcovers; they’re kind of difficult to read.

Sarah: I don’t know. My dad is one of those guys who reads, like, six-hundred-page hardback novels about dead Civil War generals, and I’ve never understood that in my life, but he will only buy hardback, and I think he’s nuts. Of course, now he has a Kindle because he has arthritis, so that may be part of the reason why he switched to the Kindle. [Laughs] I, I do not understand buying hardback; I’ve never been someone who says, I have to read this book, and I’ll get it in hardback. I, twenty-two dollars, to me, represents too many other books that I could’ve bought, but when I look at a hardback for twenty-two dollars, I’m conditioned enough that that makes sense. If I look at a paperback for twenty-two dollars I’m thinking, what’s in there? Like, free software?

Jane: Well, the –

Sarah: Like, a free copy of Microsoft? What’s in there? [Laughs]

Jane: Reader JMC tweeted me last night and said that Carla Kelly’s books are being re-, here traditional Regencies are being reissued; Marian’s Christmas Wish is being reissued this Thursday, tomorrow, but it’s eight dollars and ninety-nine cents, and it’s, was a traditional Regency, which means it wouldn’t have been more than two hundred and fifty pages.

Sarah: Isn’t that what, is it Penguin is doing with the older Jo Beverly Regencies? They’re putting them in trade format and they’re, well, aren’t they seventeen dollars?

Jane: Yes. Yes.

Sarah: Maybe, are they doing the same with Carla Kelly, or is it a different publisher?

Jane: This is a different publisher, Cedar Fort.

Sarah: Yeah. That’s a lot of money.

Jane: Now, these books used to be very hard to find, and they were fairly expensive on the used market; however, I think that most people will balk at price, paying $8.99 for a traditional Regency.

Sarah: I do too. One of the things that I really like about the HarperCollins classic romance sales that they’ve had with Loretta Chase and with Johanna Lindsey is that not only are they offering backlist at a really low price, but it’s just at the border of my convenience price. I’d say between $0.99 and $2.99, I will buy a digital copy of a book I already own, just to have the convenience of having it with me wherever I am. $8.99 for something that I’m mildly curious about, I’d, I still wouldn’t buy that. That’s not convenient in any definition.

Jane: I think the problem with backlist titles is that readers – I, I think there’s a bunch of things that go into readers’ valuation of backlist titles. First, it’s a used product. I mean, it’s already been out there for years and years and years; it’s not new, and so people are just apt to spend more money on “new” things than they are on used things or old things.

Sarah: Even if it’s a new format; yeah, I agree with you.

Jane: I also think that you compete with the, the used book market. So there’s a little shop that I go to where I can buy category books for ten cents. I came home one day with sixty books, and I had paid under ten dollars for them.

Sarah: [Laughs] That’s a lot of fricking books.

Jane: Yeah, ‘cause, you know, they’re ten cents a copy, so you get ten books for a dollar! And you can get real finds there, or, like, I don’t know, does your Planned Parenthood have a book sale? Our Planned Parenthood hosts a book sale twice a year at the state fair grounds, and you can get boxes of books there for, like, five dollars! So –

Sarah: Can I just tell you how much it makes me giggle that Planned Parenthood is selling boxes of secret baby books? I find that really funny. [Laughs] We don’t have a Planned Parenthood book sale, but we do have a women’s club that sells books for scholarship money for local students, and it’s the same thing: you get a giant box of romance for, like, four or five dollars.

Jane: Right, so, as printing, so putting them out there for $8.99, I guess I’d rather go on the hunt and try to find them for ten cents at my local bookstore. [Laughs]

Sarah: Or you can find them online so easily at this point. One thing I found really interesting was, I did a review of, earlier this year, of Blaze Wyndham by Bertrice Small, which is one of the oldest romances that I remember reading, and I was so scandalized by this book – I was young enough to be shocked by what I was reading – and my copy is falling apart, so I bought a copy for ninety-nine cents, and I, and I made sure to get the same cover, because the cover’s so crazy. I made sure to get the same cover, the old mass-market paperback, and I, I think it might have been ninety-nine cents, and I qualified for free shipping. I mean, it was ridiculously cheap. When I reviewed the book, somebody commented that they were a, they were a lib-, it was a librarian, and she could not buy another copy on the used market, even though her two copies were falling apart. They’re not allowed to buy used books, so I went online and bought two books for ninety-nine cents and sent them to her library, because new, now, this book is twenty-three dollars in paperback. And it’s $17.99 for the Kindle. That’s crazy! I would sooner buy multiple paper copies like that for ninety-nine cents. It seems so strange. I think you’re very right; you, you’re, you’re competing with the concept that it’s, it’s used. It’s already out there; we can find it for cheaper.

Jane: I think that publishers have kind of done themselves a disservice, because they taught us –

Sarah: No!

Jane: – about – [laughs]

Sarah: Publishing has done itself – no! [Gasps!] Perish the thought! [Laughs]

Jane: Well, they’ve trained us. They, they’ve told us, if you buy early you have to pay a premium, and if you wait the price goes down.

Sarah: Right.

Jane: So the farther out the price, you know, the farther out from that original publication date, the cheaper and cheaper we think it should be!

Sarah: [Laughs] Yeah, they were hoisted by their own petard on that one, weren’t they?

Jane: Until the pendulum swings all the way around and you’re a rare and used book. [Laughs]

Sarah: Right.

Jane: Then your price is high, but that’s not ever going to apply to many, many, many of the romance books.

Sarah: I, I, I don’t remember – the most expensive one I’ve seen in paperback was the Christina Dodd with three hands, and even though there are copies online for four or five dollars, there was somebody who listed it for $275, and I thought, you go with your crazy self. And I know that copies of that one Nora Roberts that she won’t allow to be rereleased are very –

Jane: Promise Me Tomorrow?

Sarah: Yes. That’s like the holy grail of used romance. If you find that, it’s worth quite a bit. I’m really trying to think if there was a book that I would pay that much for in plain, old, everyday, paperback format. Now, I think that there’s a market for some authors to create special editions of their books, like, you know, the twenty-fifth anniversary of a book that was, that is still in print; you do a big edition with extras and stuff and swag and, you know, baked goods. There’s room for that type of product collection, I think, and I think that some readers would totally want to own a limited edition version of books like that, but I – come on! Twenty-two dollars? No. For a paperback, plain, old, everyday paperback. That’s crazy.

Jane: I, oh, I totally agree, and I think that there is definitely a market, a small market –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jane: – for collectible books. I, did you ever see the hardcover of Karen Marie Moning’s last book?

Sarah: No.

Jane: It’s really gorgeous, and I thought they did a great job of publishing it and in packaging it. It’s got this –

Sarah: You mean Shadowfever?

Jane: Yeah. It’s got this translucent cover, and then the hardback, the, you know, the hardcover is printed, so then the translucent cover goes over the hardback, and it has this really three-dimensional look. It’s, it’s really a gorgeous hardcover. I got a complimentary copy, and I kept it because I –

Sarah: Wow.

Jane: – just thought it was such a beautiful book. I think Nora Roberts’ last –

Sarah: The Bride Quartet?

Jane: The Bride Quartet was beautifully published with the covers and the deckled pages –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jane: – and the, you know, the cover flaps on the front and back of the trade paperback, it –

Sarah: They were gorgeous.

Jane: Yeah! I think that there’s room in, in a reader’s library for books as artifacts –

Sarah: Yeah.

Jane: – and that you’ll pay more for that, but as much as I think Julie Anne Long is a great writer, I don’t think that the, her mass market books are books as artifacts.

Sarah: No, I don’t think she’s achieved artifact status. It makes me wonder how the, the next Nora Roberts – is it a trilogy about the inn?

Jane: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: It makes me wonder how that is going to be produced, if it’s going to be the same high production value as the Bride Quartet or if – it looks, it says here that it’s trade, so it could be, it could be just as touchable – that sounds really skeevy – but it’s a book, like, you see it and you want to pick it up and touch it and feel the cover and look at the pages. I mean, it is an entirely tactile experience. There’s definitely room for collectible with Nora and with authors like that, but I don’t, I agree with you, I don’t think Julie Anne Long has really hit collectible status. Maybe someday.

Jane: I’d love to see some of my favorite books, I’d love to have the option of having them printed in hardcover, and I think that in the future, that there, there’ll be that option as Print On Demand becomes less expensive –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jane: – and we can create a more customized product. So, for example, Meljean Brook’s Iron Seas series, I’d love to have that in kind of a leather-bound –

Sarah: Yeah.

Jane: – collectible edition.

Sarah: Imagine the collectible surrounding that. It could be gorgeous! When you said collectible editions, my first thought was all these people I know who make family cookbooks, where they collect all of the old family recipes and then make a hardcover cookbook for everyone in the family with the family recipes for each holiday. If that can be done at a reasonable price, the price has to come down soon for larger pieces of, of writing. I know my, my mother-in-law every year makes Passover with recipes that she cut out from the newspaper in 1962, and they’re totally fun to look at because the advertisements are awesome, but she’s using these, these literally just, they’re like, they’re not even paper anymore; they’re more like crispy pieces of something, and you can’t even pick them up, you just have to slide them across the page. I would love to bind those in a book for her, and it’s not that expensive; I looked into doing it. It can’t be that much more expensive, eventually, to do a book, and I’m – now I’m going to make a list: all the books I want to make into hardcover collector editions for myself. [Laughs]

Jane: Like, wouldn’t it be fun if you could take, like, three or four Sarah Morgan books and have ‘em bound in one collection?

Sarah: Oooh!

Jane: I know you’re a big fan of Sarah Morgan.

Sarah: The Sarah Morgan omnibus: that’d be awesome! And there’s a couple of, of old Judith McNaughts that I would do that with. There’s some Judith McNaught novels that I – I have a copy of Perfect that’s currently in three pieces held together by duct tape. My son tried to throw it away; I nearly flipped.

Jane: See, I just think mass markets, they don’t have any collectible appeal. They’re disposable books, which is why I think that the, the format’s going to go the way of the dodo bird. But I do think that there’s room for really beautiful package hardcovers or trades that ardent fans would buy because they want to put it on their shelves.

Sarah: I’m actually looking at my bookshelf right now, and I’m trying to think: all of the books that I have that are in the, are in somewhat decent condition are all trades. All my paperbacks are falling apart. It really is a very delicate, disposable format that doesn’t last very long; even when they just sit on the shelf they get all unhappy.

Jane: I don’t even, you know, ‘cause I just buy so few paper books anymore, I, I just don’t even have those on my shelves anymore. Most of my paperbacks are in garbage bags in the basement. I’m waiting for all of the digital versions to come out so I can slowly go through and just throw ‘em away.

Sarah: Oh my goodness. Or just buy, you know, a, a high-speed scanner and scan them all in and make your own copies.

Jane: I know, but that, that would take a lot of time. [Laughs]

Sarah: It would take a long time. I, I even have a, a high-speed scanner, and I don’t think it can take more than, like, fifteen pages at once. I think that’s really its limit, so that would take a long-ass time to string together.

Jane: Plus, like, would you tear each page out one by one, or I suppose if you got, like, an industrial paper cutter that would cut the spine off?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jane: See, here, here’s what you need, the home scanning process: you need a, a, a pa-, a, a binder slicer –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jane: – that will slice the bindings off.

Sarah: I feel like we’re showing people how to make, make moonshine.

Jane: [Laughs] Yes!

Sarah: Like, Sarah and Jane Make Moonshine!

[Laughter]

Jane: Okay, so you need a binder slicer and then a, a copy, a high-speed scanner where you can stick your entire book in, and it will scan it in, like, five minutes.

Sarah: That would – I know there are some; I just don’t think I could fit one in my house. They’re big! They’re big machines.

Jane: So if the, something like that is developed for, like, a couple hundred dollars, I’m there, and I will go through my entire collection in one weekend.

Sarah: And scan it all in for your own personal library.

Jane: To sum up, I think that backlist titles need to be cheaper than frontlist titles. They need to be $3.99 or under I think, because that is, like you said, that’s the level of the, that’s the convenience price.

Sarah: Exactly. ‘Cause essentially you’re selling the book to someone who’s (a) curious or (b) already owns it in paper and wants the convenience of digital.

Jane: Right. We’re, readers are cheap bastards.

Sarah: We are! But we, we still read.

Jane: Yeah, and we still buy.

Sarah: Oh Lord, do we buy. I bought, like, four books this week, and I got the – it’s really easy! You know, and then you buy, you just click a button and it doesn’t seem like real money, and then I get the email, I’m like, holy crap!

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Sarah: Old Skool backlist titles. Ah, yes, I’m, I’m losing way too much time reading the Johanna Lindsey that is on, the Johanna Lindseys that are on sale. I never, have never read Once a Princess and, oh, is it crazy, and I’m so enjoying it!

Jane: I can’t remember that book; tell me about it.

Sarah: Okay. Well, I’m not that far into it, but there’s a made-up Eastern European country populated with really beefy alpha males, because they’re sequel bait I presume, and the prince is in the position of having his father abdicate or step down due to illness, and, and the father is insisting that the son honor the, the betrothal that was made to this last of the ruling family of that country. Apparently the father got control of the country by, I don’t know, Harlequin Presents means or something? So there’s another dynastic family that has an equal claim to the throne, and so they arranged a marriage so that no one would question their leadership and they’d have beautiful children forever and ever, but the best way to take care of this young woman whose life was in danger because she was the last of her line was to send her to the United States with some woman. Who was going to raise her as a princess, because, you know, that always ends well. And of course the woman dies, and of course the girl disappears, and so they have to go track her down. Without the internet, they manage to find her because she’s a barmaid in a, in a house, not going by her real name, and she’s the abused daughter of this piece of crap who is bedridden, and they keep describing him as bloated –

[Laughter]

Sarah: – which is just – and she went in to feed his bloated body breakfast, and I was like, ah, gross! So –

Jane: I thought that when people get sick their bodies, like, shrink instead of bloat up.

Sarah: Well, this guy got bloated, and I can only imagine the smell. So she, she wants his bar; that’s her, that’s her aspiration. She wants the pub in New Orleans to become her own, and he’s, like, written on a piece of paper that she gets to have it and put it under the floorboard because, you know, that’s legally binding, and the prince and his band of alpha males show up, and they’re like, no, you’re a princess; you’re coming with me, and she’s like, nuh-uh! And they’re like, yeah-huh! And that goes on for, like, two chapters. Nuh-uh! Yeah-huh! I’m going to pull your hair. Oh, and she’s got a birthmark on her ass that they have to see, because, of course, if you have a birthmark on your ass and it’s not seen by the alpha males, then you don’t really have it, and they can’t just take your word for it that it’s there or not there.

Jane: [Laughs]

Sarah: And then of course if she said she is the princess then they’re not going to believe her because she’s clearly just, you know, jonesing for the princess life, because if you were a barmaid in New Orleans, why, why wouldn’t you want to be a princess, but if she says that she isn’t the princess, then they know that she’s lying because they know she’s lying. I mean, it, it’s crazy. And I’m totally enjoying it! I can’t tell you how much I enjoy it! I’m telling you, Johanna Lindsey, like, writes the words and then dusts crack on top of them, and it’s contagious. Every printing has the crack.

Jane: Well, I think that she used all her crack up before, pre-, like, pre-2000. [Laughs]

Sarah: I have not read any of the books she’s published since them. I’m, I’m well into the Fabio years of her books.

Jane: Oh, the Fabio years were the best years, no question.

Sarah: I have a total sick weakness for Silver Angel. Oh God, that book is crazy! And I love it. Secret twins and sheikhs and harems and some girl with eight feet of silver hair who’s hot. Yes! Love it. Awesome.

Jane: I love the totally politically incorrect Savage Thunder.

Sarah: [Laughs] I think that in most romance reader households there’s one person who, who uses that as a fart euphemism, and I am that person.

Jane: Oh – [laughs] – I did not know that.

Sarah: Savage thunder, oh yes. It happens after you have beans.

Jane: [Laughs] I had no idea. We don’t –

Sarah: Savage thunder!

Jane: We don’t actually have that – is that a boy household? We don’t have that name in our household.

Sarah: Oh yeah. I’m surrounded by dudes. We talk a lot about farting. So what other Old Skool backlist reprints have you been totally into?

Jane: Well, Julie Garwood. Isn’t it amazing, all these mistoricals that we love?

Sarah: [Laughs] Oh yeah!

Jane: Julie Garwood, I bought them. Even, I think I was able to get a few of them at $5.99, but some of ‘em I actually paid, like, $7.99 for.

Sarah: Whoa!

Jane: I know. I’ve only bought a few, though, because I’m hoping that (a) they go on sale, and (b) some of ‘em aren’t very good, so I’m not going to buy the ones that I don’t really like at the premium price –

Sarah: Right.

Jane: – just to have them. So, you know, The Bride, The Secret, those are some of my favorite. I’m really thrilled that they’re actually out in digital now. I’ve actually been buying a ton of Harlequin Treasury books, although I haven’t read them all. That counts as backlist, right?

Sarah: I think it counts as backlist, although the ones I’ve bought have made me very sad; there was one that I bought, I think it was Knight in a White Stetson? Does that, is that right? Oh, Sarah, bad with titles. I’m pretty sure it’s Knight with a, Knight in a White Stetson, ‘cause it was a, it was a Help a Bitch Out; someone was looking for it. Yeah, it is Knight in a White Stetson by –

Together: – Claire King.

Sarah: Yes, and it’s, it’s actually pretty good, but it, it’s an OCR scan, and –

Jane: Hmm.

Sarah: – the errors are so bad. Like, it’s, it got to the point where there was one every other page, and I was like, I am really, I’m so, I’m so distracted by the number of errors, even though I know why they’re there? Like, there’s some that, that, that sp-, like, spell check would have caught. Is it really that hard to run spell check? I don’t know anything about digital book production. I presume that running spell check is not something that can be done easily, ‘cause holy hell!

Jane: I agree. The, the production value of the Harlequin Treasury books is pretty poor.

Sarah: And it makes me sad, because some of them are like – [gasps] – I want to read this book again! And then you get it, and you’re like, oh, that’s not going to work. And, and they’re $3.99, which is a totally, totally decent price.

Jane: A lot of times, because they’re non-agency, you can use a coupon on ‘em.

Sarah: Yep.

Jane: You can get ‘em for fifty percent off sometimes, or a dollar off –

Sarah: Yep.

Jane: – depending on what your coupon is, so, yeah, I think that those are a good value. I do, I agree with you; I wish that they were of higher production quality. In fact, sometimes I get so irritated I want to crack the, the, strip the DRM so I can make a corrected version.

Sarah: [Laughs] I’m going to strip your DRM just so I can run spell check. Yeah, that’s –

Jane: [Laughs]

Sarah: – that, that, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a threat that strikes fear in the heart of many. I’m going to crack your DRM and correct your spelling errors.

Jane: But I was, I actually read a book, yeah, two days ago that was just recently, it was a new release –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jane: – a digital release from a big publisher, and apparently the Ts are hard for them to make –

Sarah: No!

Jane: – because there are lots of –

Sarah: The letter T?

Jane: – because there are lots of “the”s without the T on it.

Sarah: Oh, man!

Jane: And, and I read, Courtney Milan made some comment once about how this may be a kerning prob- – I don’t really know what it is –

Sarah: Right.

Jane: – but apparently Fs and Ts present a big problem, and so sometimes they disappear in the final product? [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh, great! What the hell?

Jane: So my favorite Old Skool Harlequin Treasury book is Hot Surrender by Charlotte Lamb. I shouldn’t say my favorite, but the one that I’ve enjoyed in the past month or so.

Sarah: Hot Surrender by Charlotte Lamb.

Jane: Yes.

Sarah: I am not familiar with this one.

Jane: Well, Zoe is the heroine, and she’s actually a film director, and she has a very hate/hate relationship with the hero?

Sarah: Ooh, I love those!

Jane: [Laughs] And there’s no baby epilogue. It’s actually kind of a battle of the sexes sort of story. I, it, it’s –

Sarah: She couldn’t handle this man in her life; her feelings were too intense. Ooh, it has a four-, a two-, and a one-star review!

Jane: Yes, yes!

Sarah: Readers had very strange things to say about it, too. Ooh! Nice.

Jane: And one of the comments is, why is she a bitch? [Laughs] That’s exactly why I like the book!

[Laughter]

Sarah: ‘Cause she’s such a bitch? [Laughs more] That’s awesome!

Jane: She’s like, she’s depicted as this man-eater; she dates a lot of guys, and she tosses them away. I mean, I just thought it was a fun kind of role reversal.

Sarah: I love role reversals. I love, I love ‘em especially when they’re well done and I don’t see the rever-, role reversal until halfway in, and I go, ooh, oh, I see what you did there! Very smart!

[music]

Sarah: Thanks for tuning in to another edition of the Dear Bitches, Smart Authors podcast. If you have suggestions of what you’d like us to cover, or if you’d like to tell us what you’re reading that rocks, what vintage romances you’ve downloaded, email us at [email protected]. That’s S for Sarah, B for Bitches, J for Jane, podcast at gmail dot com.

Today’s music, again, is provided by Sassy Outwater. She’s going to send us original music each week featuring herself or artists that she grabs off the street, so each week we hope to have good music and a good discussion about romance novels.

And as always, I wish you the very best of reading.

[pretty music]