Hello! Welcome!

…and yes – ack! There are changes afoot!

Change can be difficult, but in this case, the change is promising to bring with it some extra double servings of awesomesauce. Jump or scroll, it’s all good!

Jump to:

The goal for our new design is… We want to make everything about the site better for you. We want it to be easier for you to involve yourself in the incredible SBTB community. We want our site to load quicker for you, and we want you to be able to view it on your phone, for goodness sake. And searching. Oh, yes, searching. Why?

We have a lot to talk about in the romance world, and with the new site, we have enhanced searchability and thus, find-ability (the bitchability comes standard and won’t change, of course). We want you to be able to find the things you’re looking for, while also maybe discovering some new books, discussions, and moments of mayhem and hilarity which you might have missed.

Our redesign is an evolving process which includes a lot of inspection, discovery, questions, and more questions. How can we do some parts better? How can we make the site faster and easier to navigate? Why have I run out of cookies? No, ACTUAL cookies, not web cookies. We’re never running out of those.

We want to hear from you, too. The point of all our efforts is to make the site and the community within it easier to use and easier to navigate. This page is for all of us to talk about what’s new, and why it’s new, what is particularly rocking your socks, and what you think we can do to make it even better. We invite you to get involved as much or as little as you wish.

No, it’s not a stupid question: here’s what we mean by Beta

Beta testing is the process of using real people in the real world to find bugs in a new site. Why’s it called beta, you ask? Because it follows alpha testing, the internal, pre-launch, error-slaying, bug-squishing process that happened before the new design went public. Alpha is the first letter in the Greek alphabet. Beta is the second. “Beta Testing” is just a fancy way to refer to the second testing process.

And yes, logically Gamma Testing would come next, but we just call it Ongoing Beta. The site will keep evolving. We’re going to keep testing. And sooner or later we’d run out of Greek letters. (Though, must say, I do like the sound of “Omicron Testing.”)

Beta Question of the Week:

SBTB has lots of different ways to subscribe to our content! Are they easy to find? How would you do it?

    Upload a screenshot if it helps to illustrate your response:
    (How to take a screenshot.)

    Thank you! Now please tell us a little about yourself:

    * Your name:

    * Your email:

    Your Twitter handle:

    Yes, I am totally cool with Team SB-TB contacting me about my Beta reporting (if needed), and to let me know when the next Beta question is posted.

    Your Browser Size:

    1. * What is your browser size? (Copy and paste the dimensions calculated above!)

    2. * What is your internet connection speed?

    SupersonicDecentSlowErratic

    Please help us combat spam. This helps prove that you are a real person and not a spam bot:

     

    Ongoing Open Beta

    FOR REPORTING ISSUES, BUGS, AND GENERAL WONKINESS
    Tweet @TeamSBTB or fill out the form below.

    This is the spot to report anything you want to tell us about the new site. We want the site to be easy to use and accessible to all, so if you notice a problem or something’s not quite right,  we want to know. Basically, if anything feels odd to you, we want to know about it. (And if you think something is covered in coolness, we want to know that, too.)

      Upload a screenshot if it helps to illustrate your response:
      (How to take a screenshot.)

      Thank you! Now please tell us a little about yourself:

      * Your name:

      * Your email:

      Your Twitter handle:

      Yes, I am totally cool with Team SB-TB contacting me about my Beta reporting (if needed), and to let me know when the next Beta question is posted.

      Your Browser Size:

      1. * What is your browser size? (Copy and paste the dimensions calculated above!)

      2. * What is your internet connection speed?

      SupersonicDecentSlowErratic

      Please help us combat spam. This helps prove that you are a real person and not a spam bot:

       

      Let’s Talk About It

      Finally, use the comments section below for general venting… or to tell us about the changes you like! Comments are for discussing the redesign, while the form above will send fixes to the design team as quickly as possible.

      Add Your Comment →

      1. Hello. We are Bookclub Social which is an independent research project studying online book club communities. Bookclub Social examines how members of online book communities form, communicate, & socialize.

        One of the most vibrant online book club communities is romance. We would love to hear your unique voices. Our goal is to publish this research as a book. Every precaution will be taken to ensure all information is kept confidential. You will be assigned a pseudonym, and your name will not be used.

        We hope you can take a few minutes to take our survey that has been specially designed for people who love to read romance, please click the survey link:

        https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/86W53XT

        If you have any questions, please visit our website: Bookclubssocial2016.com.

        Thank you for your participation in Bookclub Social!

      2. tammy says:

        where do we look for the link that shows the books that you are currently searching for? i see the section for the cold case, and for the solved ones-butnot for the current ones

      3. Sheree Glasscock says:

        Please , can someone help me !!??!! I am trying to re-read a book borrowed from a friend years ago ( and the friend no longer has it , or remembers it ) that I do not know the title or the author , but I loved it , enough so as to carry the untitled story in my heart for over 15 years . It was set in a Victorian time , began with our heroine being the daughter of a doctor , having loss her mother at a young age with little memory of her . Her father also dies , and she learns that her mother came from an aristocratic family that disowned her when she married the doctor . Our young lady heroine is sent to live with her rich family ties , and begins a love/hate relationship with the master of the house whole … ending with love . A key point for me in the story was when she mistaken a wolf to be one of the master’s dogs that she thought he wasn’t caring for . The wolf befriends the kindness she shows it , and becomes her “dog” . I sincerely hope that someone might recognize this book , it’s the only romance novel I’ve ever read , and it’s made a home in my heart … I’d like to give it a name worthy of it’s importance to me !!!! Thank You !!!!

      4. Francine Lasky says:

        Hi. Love your website. Can I make a suggestion for a future feature. When I travel I really like to read about a place before I get there. Is there anyway to make a map with locations and recommend books about that location?

      5. Ana says:

        I was catching up on some episodes of SPTB Ep. 232 and the girls from Ripped Bodice were talking about customers in asking for HABO requests. I realize that I actually do this EVERYWHERE… like places that don’t actually speak SBTB at all. SO I’d just like you all to know you’ve infected all my language. Do you think other people knew what I meant?

      6. Allie says:

        You should review Partly Pumping, by Victoria Devino! Its on Amazon and I am obsessed. Such steamy scenes, but it is so empowering with a strong female voice. I Think this site would love it. Ahhh

      7. Mary r says:

        You should review Partly Pumping, by Victoria Devino! Its on Amazon and I am obsessed. Such steamy scenes, but it is so empowering with a strong female voice. This reminded me of it a little…awesome.

      8. BetteGH says:

        Congratulations on the mention of SBTB in last night’s episode of ‘Younger’. This really is a wonderful site!

      9. Jeannie says:

        OMG! I’ve found my tribe!

      10. Ainsley Evans says:

        Can the bitches please do ‘review’ of Robert Gottlieb’s completely condescending mansplanation of the romance genre for the New York Times this week!? DNF rating might be expected.

        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/books/review/macomber-steel-james-romance.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below

      11. Nonny says:

        Hi!

        I’ve been a reader/commenter since 2008. I really enjoy the site, but one thing has been making me uncomfortable.

        You see, I don’t drink alcohol. As a teenager, I didn’t drink because I feared the lack of control and the vulnerability (ie the very real threat of sexual and other violence) that came with drinking. As I grew older, I realized many adults who don’t drink have chosen not to do so because they’d had their childhood marked by a parent’s issues with alcohol: either out and out alcoholism or problematic drinking that was normalized by society. My husband is one of those adults. One of my dearest friends is another.

        So how does this relate to smart bitches? Well, during the years that I’ve followed this blog, the amount of posts glorifying what I’d term problematic drinking has, in my opinion, gone through the roof: posts promoting drinking on weekdays and taking “wine naps”, using alcohol as a coping mechanism, drinking as a badge of adulthood and of being a strong woman, alcohol as a necessary part of pampering yourself, regular cocktail recipes based on books, and so on.

        It’s so strange to me that for people who go out of their way to warn about various types of shaming, consent issues, violence, etc (and rightly so!), you don’t warn for this type of content, or even consider that it might make some people as desperately uneasy as a post that mentions fat-shaming or non-con.

        I’ve stopped reading the bachelorette coverage, because frankly, not even the promise of a long post written by Elyse (whose reviews I love) makes it worth it. Reading again and again about her having to get drunk to watch something otherwise unwatchable is about as hilarious to me as reading a friend make a funny blog post about their self-harming. I *get* that it’s meant to be for laughs and that it’s wildly exaggerated for comic effect, but the exaggerating and that we’re supposed to identify with stuff like going to work with a hangover and find it amusing that others do so, too, makes me cringe.

        I know you welcome debate and don’t expect your readers to agree with you, as long as everyone stays polite, so I trust you’ll take my concerns seriously. Thank you.

      12. Mollie Tree says:

        Looking for the title of this book w/ this plot: Man kidnaps woman from her fiancé? and proves to her that he is the “better” man, seduces her, some dubious consent sex scenes I thinkand when she falls for him, her former ? fiancé shoots him and kidnaps her back. Driving me crazy thaT I only have a vague recollection of this book and its title or author! I think it was part of a series.

      13. Thuy says:

        There is somewhere there a discussion about book covers? Also book cover models?

        It always interest when it comes up in the podcast but not where to discuss it.

      14. Greetings, this is an amazing platform. I am inquiring about being a guest host on your Podcast to promote my (first) title “The Bad Boy”. I think it’s only right for “When in Romance” to have a real Romantic on the show.
        Feel free to contact me via phone @ 323-250-5369

        Thank You,
        Augustus V.

      15. Jessica Shim says:

        I was very sick all this years without solution i have try many means to get my self cured but nothing work out, so today i am here to also tell this to the people in this site that there is cure to this HSV 2, i was able to reach this man through the means of a friend from UK called Sophia but i live in United state, i am very happy writing this,my friend told me that she meet this man personally when she travel to Africa because of this same sickness and i was so surprise to hear that from her, she explain everything about this man cure to me, that there is herbal cure and curing spell and that was the first time i hear about curing spell, so i ask her which of the cure do you go for she told that, it was the herbal cured. she traveled there and she spend 1 week and 4 days with the doctor so before she could know she was cured totally and he decide to go for test over there before traveling back home, her result was negative and even when she get home her result remain negative i was so surprise about what she told me, i have that confidence to contact the doctor, and applied for the herbal immediately so the doctor sent me the herbal here in US, and i used it according to the way the Dr instructed, now i am cured and free from HSV2 if you want to reach this doctor just email him now Robinsonbuckler [At] yahoo . com,……………

      16. Laura says:

        Heya,

        I love book finder – I was wondering if it was possible to put The Rec League as a drop down menu option as well!

        Thanks!

      17. drewbird says:

        I love Elyse’s Bachelor/Bachelorette reviews – could they be put in their own category in special features or something? So they were all in the same place and correct order somewhere?

        Thanks!

      18. SB Sarah says:

        Absolutely! They’re all right here: Elyse Watches the Bachelor & the Bachelorette. Cheers!

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