Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

>>Samhain is the one publisher they can consistently count on to provide good, quality material.

Did you not proofread your ad on the inside cover of the RWA conference program?  It’s full of errors.  That alone would make me gunshy about Samhain.

Thanks, Sarah!

Did you not proofread your ad on the inside cover of the RWA conference program?  It’s full of errors.  That alone would make me gunshy about Samhain.

You have absolutely no idea the cuss words that were said when I saw that ad. I was completely embarrassed and appalled and had the very same thought you did, Sonia. In fact, all of our editors who were at the conference shared similar feelings with me. It was the first thing we all noticed and the first time I prayed no one paid any attention to advertisement. There’s no excuse for it. And I think the fact is that epublishers need to not only do it well sometimes, but do it better. That ad was not a highlight for our company by any means.

That said, I think our marketing department learned a valuable lesson in a very hard way, as we all do sometimes: you MUST proof the ads that anyone designs for you. Actually, every ad should have multiple people checking it over. Never trust that the ad copy you’re provided is error-free. In other words, treat it like we do our books. We’ve since added some measures to ensure that doesn’t happen again *fingers crossed* but it doesn’t take away the sting of it happening. 

I can’t blame anyone who holds the opinion you do because, in the end, we are accountable for our mistakes. I only hope somewhere along the way we can redeem ourselves through some measure of consistency!

Nice interview, very informative. Thanks for doing it, Angela and SBs!

Hey Angela,

You have no idea how much I appreciate seeing someone being so professional despite everything that is going on currently in ePublishing.

Honestly, I do see some of the inside workings between publishers and writers from friendships I have made and Samhain is a class act not just from the outside looks of things but also how they interact with their writers.

Looking forward to meeting you and Sasha in San Francisco. My best buddy said she would introduce me to you.

Teddypig, just another fanboy.

Nice interview.

Angela, the errors in the ad might’ve made me gunshy, but your response to the situation as posted here has restored some faith.

Chryssa

Sarah and Angela—thanks for the nice interview. I’m a veteran author who’s worked with several NY publishers over the years. I’ve also been working with Samhain for the past couple years, and I’ve found them to be as professional and concerned with quality as any of my previous publishers.

As with any business, there are always some that give the profession a bad name, but then a few good ones rise to the top. Go Samhain!

Becky Barker

Back when I was a cook at a high end hotel, the chef entered us in a culinary competition. The pastry chef and his assistant baked a torte--it took the two of them about six hours from start to finish. They put the name of the hotel in bold, classic script in white chocolate over the dark ganache right on top.

It wasn’t until about two hours into the competition that anyone noticed the name of the hotel--only five letters long, for godsake!--was misspelled.

Oh, the horror!

Cake tasted pretty good, though. :)

I agree with Teddypig.  Samhain is a class act and has been from the start.

I do hope they keep their present format with the variety of genre’s. I believe that this has been a factor in their success. I have purchased in every genre except young adult. I’m no longer a “young adult” so I doubt that I will buy anything in that category.

Keep up the good work and the good books.

We’re looking forward to seeing you in Australia! :-)

Angela, your comments, answers, way of dealing with issues in a public forum consistently put a strong, professional and human face on Samhain.

I love to see positive representations of ePubs and this was definitely one. Fantastic interview. Informative, intelligent, witty and the best part? Learning I’m not the only person on the planet who loves Greek Baby Daddy books. :D

I’m one of the ones who didn’t notice the ad, so no worries there.

Very nicely said across the board Angela. I wish more took this approahch i.e. that it’s a business-first. Some do, some come close, and others… Don’t need to be mentioned. :)

I’ve always enjoyed the way you phrase your answers and can tell that out of the consistency, that you mean it, and have no doubt that Samhain is a going to be long-lived.

Samhain is definitely one of the presses that is held up, rightly I believe, as a model of the e-book industry.

I wanted to address the question of formats. There is a movement to move toward a common format, and there’s a lot of information about that on the teleread.org blog (disclaimer, I’ve recently become a contributor there, but haven’t yet posted anything but comments). It’s my understanding that Mobipocket, Adobe and Microsoft are actually using a very similar format built on XML. Non DRM protected Mobipocket stories can be read on the open source fbreader. Once the issue of DRM is settled to most people’s satisfaction, and once software and hardware companies recognize that they’re not going to be the next iTunes and so better do something similar to an across the board format, like MP3s for books, it will get better. As I’ve read here and elsewhere, e-book publishing is a relatively new industry and the kinks have to be worked out all down the line, but I do believe they will be, and that, eventually, e-book sales will rival those of print.

I’m lucky enough to be a very happy Samhain author and frequently hold them up as an example of how things SHOULD be done.  Kudos to the Bitchery for giving some of the good guys the spotlight they so deserve.

Well, I love Angela.  I’m on the Romance Divas forum a lot and her answers and explanations during the changes at RWA were extremely helpful.
I know several authors at Samhain and one of them is a close friend.  She has had a wonderful experience there. 
Thank you Angela for a wonderful interview.

Thanks for your very candid and forthright answer, Angela.  I appreciate that you made no excuses and pointed no fingers at anyone but Samhain for not double-checking the ad copy. 

Right on!

I noticed the Samhain ad in question, but gosh--what a classy reply, Angela. Bitches, I’m so glad we get a dose of good news about industry pros behaving with grace and smarts.

Angela/Sarah--fabulous interview.  Angela, hope to run into you someday.  I like the way you think.  Except for the Greek Baby Daddy thing.  But then, we all have our foibles. ;-)

Seriously, you are a credit to the industry.

I know I’m beating a dead horse, but what is the outlook for historical romance at Samhain? I’ve been looking into moving away from the NY market to the e-market after being fed up with a lot of tepid releases, but most e-publishers with great reputations focus on erotic romance. Any good historicals coming out soon?

Great interview Angie, and I’m not just saying that because you’re my editor.
:-D

Angela, I know your question was directed to Angela James, but Samhain recently released a regency historical by Lucy Monroe. I thorougly enjoyed it, and I believe it hit their top ten bestseller list. I’ve actually read a lot of good historicals from Samhain, a handful of westerns, regencies and victorian novels.

Great interview, ladies!!

And I want to go to Australia! I pretty much started drooling when I read that.

The Greek/Sheikh hero in a Presents book are so freaking popular and always will be. Though I’m not sure why...I think it is that alpha thing. I love alphas, too.

Thanks, everyone, for the incredibly kind things you’ve said today. I think we’re doing something good at Samhain and I’m glad to be a positive representative for the company.

Julie, maybe at an RWA conference one year we’ll meet up!

Teddy, I’ll look forward to meeting you in San Francisco next year.

Angela, your comments, answers, way of dealing with issues in a public forum consistently put a strong, professional and human face on Samhain. Thank you . It’s like my birthday week all over again, hearing that from you.

Angela, I think we have some excellent non-erotic historicals both available and coming up in the next year. *whispers*Lucy Monroe just released one with us this week but I’m not sure I should mention that here.

Lynne Connolly is a historical author whose Richard and Rose series I’ve long adored, so I was thrilled when she pitched her Triple Countess trilogy to me. The first book, Last Chance, My Love, released in July and the next will release in November.

We have more than a few talented authors who’ve written westerns including Beth Williamson and Shannon Stacey.

You can find our current selection of historical romances here

I think we have a nice mix of editors at Samhain and pretty well have a love of all genres covered among us. I know a few of them are always on the lookout for a great historical (in the same way that I’m always on the lookout for great futuristics, cyberpunk, space opera and urban fantasy, if anyone is writing one of those!)

Samhain is a class act. Great interview, Angie!

Angela, Shelley Bradley’s The Lady and The Dragon has been reissued by Samhain recently. (Pirates, arrr!) And Sharon Long’s Her Majesty, My Love and Beyond the Night are fun historical adventures.

Samhain has been good to work with and I see them regularly mentioned by readers, where the same 3-5 epresses come up over and over.  I particularly appreciate that they take books without sex (contrary to rumours I don’t want to write sex *all* the time) and without romance (ditto)

Excellent interview!  Thank you so much for all the valuable insight into Samhain and the publishing industry.

I enjoyed the interview - though I would have loved to see the red-eye picture. I’ve heard nothing but good things about Samhain from the authors who publish there and it was nice to hear from Angela here.

I have only been buying and reading ebooks for the last few months, and it has opened me up to a wonderful range of authors that I would never have read before. I recently bought books by Eve Vaughn, Shelly Laurenston and Dionne Galace and have absolutely loved the books they’ve written. Can’t wait to read more by them. Sahmain is definitely a class act and offers a great range of books.

There is limited choice of ereaders available in New Zealand, so I bought myself a Palm. It’s a bit annoying not being able to buy all of the books I want in the same format, but the one advantage with the Palm is that I can have more than one format on the devise - Mobipocket (my favourite), Adobe and eReader (Palm format). The main reason for buying my Palm was a shortage of bookcase space and my reluctance to take 10+ books with me everytime I go away on holiday. Now I can take my 250+ books on one little devise! Will definitely be purchasing mainly ebooks from now on.

To all those who may be feeling gunshy about a misspelled ad:

Trust me when I say, while more proofreading should perhaps have been done, it’s largely the problem of the graphics designers.  The poor dears are in fact genetically predisposed to being horrific spellers.  My sister is one, and when she worked at a larger firm, I received regular phone calls from not only her, but also from her co-workers about how to spell this or that word, “jewelry” being at the top of the list for some reason.  And, of course, the ultimate irony is that NO design programs come equipped with spell check!  It is *sigh* le tragic.

In fact, I remember my sister swearing profusely because, even after all of the proofreads, they released an ad campaign with the word “apple” having 3 “p’s” in several places.  The hooorror!  So, really, it does happen and shouldn’t make anyone too gunshy of an ePub like Samhain, especially with someone so obviously dedicated at the helm!

Samhain is an author centered, class act and I love writing for them. One of the major reasons is having Angie for an editor.

As an author, it’s on me to make good choices with my publishers, to read my contract, to insist on being a vibrant part of my own career and to listen to criticism from my editor. It’s easy to do all these things when I deal with Samhain because they’re open to questions and I respect my editor enough to let her bully me (snort).

Samhain is a great place to be and it continues to grow slowly and effectively. There’s no “cloud talk” but rather, marketing plans and a steady direction. I appreciate that so much as an author. I appreciate solid deadlines, solid publication dates and professionalism from the top down.

You know the title of Angie’s blog, “Nice Mommy, Evil Editor”?
Believe it. I’m sure she’s a wonderful Mommy and I know she’s an evil editor!
Thank God.
She tracked all my timelines, made me revise things I hadn’t noticed in 10 or more passes of “Last Chance, My Love.”
It’s a pleasure to work with an editor who enjoys what you write, but doesn’t let you get away with a single thing.

If you think typos on an ad are an unforgivable sin, then you’re simply being silly. I find typos in major “NY” books all the time. It happens. I used to be in nonfiction publishing, and we could have ten people read an article and miss a typo--the eye can see something and “think” it’s correct.

The editing at Samhain is solid, Angie is solid (I’m not talking about muscle mass), and the books are marvelous. If you dismissed a company over one error, you’d never have a thing to read.

Misspelling isn’t a red flag so much as obvious misuse of words. “Inspire” when they really mean “aspire”. “Perpetuate” rather than “perpetrate”. Or really bad grammar. There’s a kitchenaid commercial that sticks in my craw every time it comes on. Gahhh!

It’s forgivable to transpose a couple of letters, but when I read the word “supposably”, that’s when I put the book down.

I don’t think it’s at all silly to consider typos a bad look.