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

Once again the industry of books and music are compared to one another - which is always a rocking good time, because while they have some finer points in common, among them being structurally bugfuck crazy, the two models are very, very different. However, ancillary market profit might be one of the areas that the two medias come to share. The question is, how?

Music sales from “touring, merchandising, and licensing” are becoming mainstays of band profit as “downloads… steadily undermin[e] record sales.”

So, what about books? BEA was all about eBooks, baby, and ebooks are the new market for books. Touting the Kindle-Aid, Krugman draws a parallel between downloaded music and downloaded, aka pirated, books.

How will this affect the publishing business? Right now, publishers make as much from a Kindle download as they do from the sale of a physical book. But the experience of the music industry suggests that this won’t last: once digital downloads of books become standard, it will be hard for publishers to keep charging traditional prices.

I wrote recently about the price tag of ebooks but my problem with the price has nothing to do with the comparative $0.00 sale price of ebooks from pirate sites. For one thing, I like good reading and know that snagging a free book means one less byte of good writing for me in the long run. For another, the formatting is often atrocious, the quality crap, and did I mention the immediate satisfaction vs. future quality reading thing? Yeah. Threaten me with the absence of good books from talented authors, and I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll even clean the sink trap (*ew ew ew ew*).

Krugman points out that newspaper attempts to profit by ancillary subscriptions for content they otherwise give away have backfired - and that free vs. subscription prejudice from consumers works both ways. Count me among those who get very ornery when a magazine I subscribe to prevents me from reading that same content I already paid for on the publication’s web site. (Consumer Reports, are your ears burning? The only reason I pay twice is because you’re a non-profit and your recommendations never fail me).

However, with publishing attempts to market books in innovate ways, the free ebook is making many, many consumers happy, and if it’s working appropriately, then one free download that’s professionally sanctioned (and professionally formatted, please, kthxbye) can make a world of difference in creating new fans and new customers of an author’s backlist of product. 

But here’s the part that really made me stop and ponder:

Indeed, if e-books become the norm, the publishing industry as we know it may wither away. Books may end up serving mainly as promotional material for authors’ other activities, such as live readings with paid admission. Well, if it was good enough for Charles Dickens, I guess it’s good enough for me.

This is the part where I wonder, “Hmm. Do romance readers figure into dire predictions of the death of publishing as we know it?” How many readers here and at other sites swear by paper books, the tactile experience of them, and the pleasure of shopping for them, trading them, borrowing them, and keeping them for rereads?

Books as promotional materials for other activities? I’m confused. I’m still rather startled at the degree to which authors are asked to make themselves in to celebrity representatives for the sales of their own books, and that they allow greater access to themselves for the sake of a voracious readership that wants more, more, more between the issue of each new book.

If you’re a reader like me, you read fast and eagerly, and the finish of one excellent book is a sad event soothed only by the anticipation of the next adventure in a new book, with luck also a good one. Reading is among my very favorite activities (right up there with sleeping, eating pastry, and drinking wine). So whether I’m reading an ebook, or a print book, I’m still after the book, not the promotional reading. I’m a solitary person by nature; I don’t have any desire to sit in a room with other people to listen to my reading. I want to read by myself in the quiet. I’m not after the author and I’m not after the experience of reading-as-interaction. I just want the reading of the book, in any form. And while I do blink at the equal price of ebooks, I still buy the ebook or the paper, because I want to read.

I agree with Krugman that the markets that intend to profit from digital media will have to alter themselves mightily to create new functioning models that account for the sizable difference between pages and bytes. But am I alone in thinking that so long as there are books to be read, there will be folks like me paying for them?

Thanks to SonomaLass for the link.

How did you get started covering all things book? What is the scope of your responsibilities for the AP?

Hillel: Basically, I started covering books (around 15 years ago) because they were there, piles of them, begging to be written about. My scope is as big as the industry, and that is many, many piles of books.

What conventions or conferences do you look forward to? You coming to RWA National in San Fran this year? (If so, I shall buy you drinks. Many of them.)

I love attending BookExpo America, which - judging from the one that just ended - is apparently more fun for reporters than it is for publishers. I have never covered an RWA convention, although the AP has. But thanks to your generous offer, I will put in a request, for medicinal purposes only.

If RWA gives you a press pass and you go to San Fran, I will be so excited I will spin around and buy you martinis until you cannot stand up. Seriously, it would be a real treat to meet you and talk books and coverage.

This sounds like gushing. You promised no gushing.

What do you personally think of some of the more dire predictions at the BEA as pertains to booksales, ebooks, and the decrease of consumer spending on books? For example, I’d think that in a depressed economy, books become cheap entertainment. Instead of a $10 movie, a $7 paperback lasts longer. Hardbacks, understandably, are a luxe item but books across the board? What’s your call?

It wouldn’t be a booksellers convention without dire predictions, kind of like a political convention without balloons. But there is plenty to be worried about. Publishing has consolidated a lot over the past decade and isn’t nearly as “recession proof” as once believed. More books keep getting released, but more people are not buying them. The world accelerates, but reading doesn’t. And if, a real `if,’ e-books ever take off, anything is possible.

But there remains a deep, and wide, affection for books.  Millions of kids didn’t line up at midnight for “Harry Potter” because their parents, or some marketer, or their parents, told them to. The well-told story never goes out of fashion, and it works beautifully on paper.

What author do you want to stalk and go through their garbage until you get arrested? Anyone? Nobody? Ok, then, what authors do you really, really dig, but not in the going-through-the-trash sense?

I don’t have to stalk authors, thank goodness, I just request an interview. I don’t have to stalk authors, thank goodness, I just ask for an interview.  And since I don’t drive I find authors who do. So, thanks for the lift, Russell Banks, Joseph Ellis, Louise Erdrich, S.E. Hinton, Richard Wilbur ....

Are you exclusively a reporter of bookishness or do you also write fiction, longer prose, or, poetry or LOLCats?

I remain exclusively a reporter of bookishness, but I should pay more attention to LOLCats, the great art form of the 21st century.

If you had an ebook reader (do you?) which book(s) would live on it permanently? And if you say Chicago Manual of Style or Struncks or the Times or something, I’ll bang my head on my desk.

I’ve seen, held, but never owned an e-book reader. There’s some talk among publishers about sending advance copies of books in digital form to journalists; that would interest me.

Thank you, Hillel, for answering my nebby questions. And yes, oh yes, if the publishers in the world wanted to send advance copies in digital form, I’d be so full of glee you’d hear me in Australia.

Authors who go this route believe that the ebooks act as a form of advertising, arguing that the negative effects on sales from people reading it for free are offset by the word-of-mouth campaigns those same people will initiate. These creative commons evangelists also tend to point out that most readers don’t like long texts on a screen, a fact that may cause them to buy the print copy once they’ve sampled enough of the story online....

Every Tor author I spoke to for this article said they hoped the publisher would continue offering the ebooks even after the new site debut. When I asked them whether they would be willing to offer another book of theirs to the giveaway list there wasn’t a moment’s hesitation with their answers.

Romance readers seem like an ideal audience for the “Try a free ebook” giveaway program, since we are very much inclined to glom (nom nom nom) the backlist of an author whose books we enjoy. If Tor authors are reporting sales increases on books within a series after one of the books was offered for free, a similar model might work in romance. There are many romance whose series might experience a boost, especially series that are long as all hell, and therefore intimidating for those who are looking for new material but are hesitant to embark on a huge, lengthy series without taking the first book for a test drive.

Of course, Owens’ article does indicate that the free ebook giveaway from Tor is a temporary program that’s scheduled to end after the 20 July launch of their new site.

Note to Tor: Major Bummer, if it’s true. Free ebooks are brilliant! But even if Tor doesn’t keep up with the program, other publishers, I’ll bet, are getting in line to start doing free ebook offerings of their own, so you’ve definitely set a trend. 

And (alert! Abrupt sort-of change in topic!) that’s kind of how I feel about a lot of the erotic romance on the market right now. I mentioned to Jane recently that the fallout of her turning me on to ebooks and my purchase of the Kindle-ade is that I’m a lot less patient as a reader. Used to be if I was trapped on the bus with one book, and I didn’t like it, I’d keep going because, well, I was trapped on the bus. But with the Kindle-Ade, if I don’t like something, click, click, there’s about fourteen thousand something-else’s I can try. There’s a much smaller window of opportunity to grab me when I know I’ve got a buffet of other books waiting in my hands.

Erotic romance is a tough one with me. This is not because I don’t like explicit sex, but because there are times when the construction of the erotic romance reads like someone took an average plot and brought it over to the Semi-Homemade set for some processed doctoring. Erotic romance, Semi-Homemade style, is a perfectly fine basic narrative, with sodium-heavy, tasteless, partially hydrogenated sex stuffed into every possible orifice, coupled with impossible paranormal backstories that allow any number of coy bestiality hints or what have you.

Look at it like this: imagine your basic contemporary plot. It’s a store bought angel food cake (Sandra Lee LOVES those) and you need to doctor it up for the erotic romance party that’s coming over to your house to gawk and chatter at the Kama Sutra tablescape you constructed with coathangers, some Chinese silk remnants, those web-and-flower-sparkle slippers that everyone wore two years ago, a peace lily, and a bowling ball. What can you do with your angel-food cake plot to make it over-the-top Erotic Romance, the semi-homemade way? Add the following:

Name Brands:

Always stuff as many named brands as possible into your erotic romance. Not only does it show you did your research, but it lends that touch of realism that just can’t be faked. Sure, your hero may have a fourteen foot man-hose, and the heroine might like triple-double penetration (that’s six dudes, two holes) and you’re wondering how that might be choreographed, but one mention of Folger’s crystals and your reader will be transported into a reality that is too, too real, and that makes the absolutely-anatomically-impossible sex that much more possible. And thus, more hotter.

Manwich:

This is a two-part Semi-Homemade improvement. Dump two cans of Manwich on your angel-food cake plot. First, always have a threesome, or a manwich, wherein the heroine gets smushed between two men. It doesn’t matter who the other dude is. He might be an ancillary character. He might be some guy who is glued to the wall in a priapic state who exists merely for the manwich purposes. He might not be a he—he might be a pole in the ground. Doesn’t matter. Not only does the heroine need to take it in the two-hole for it to cross the border into erotic romance, she needs a double-stuffing for that erotic romance to float the boats of today’s discerning crowd.

What, angel food cake and Manwich don’t really go together? Tough. We need manwiches and threesomes galore.

And speaking of men, there’s part two of the Manwhich requirement. If your hero can muse to himself as much as possible using the word “Man,” it adds that certain touch of quality to your erotic romance. Nothing says “man who thinks with his dick” than constant use of the word “man” itself. From Man, her ass was tight inside her jeans, so tight he wondered if he’d be able to pull them off or would he have to get the shoehorn he kept hidden in the bedside table as a backup amorous device? to Man, her boobs jiggle a lot, the erotic romance hero must constantly self-identify to remind himself that he is, in fact, so manfully manly and manhoodly-man-man. Man.

Scent:

Your Brand-name Manwich angel food cake erotic romance plot needs scent. All these alpha predatory male heroes, man, are sniffing up her skirt, scenting her essence, and generally remarking on the whiff eau heroine, man. This is particularly true for paranormals, because it’s not an erotic paranormal romance unless the animal-esque hero ruminates upon the smell of her arousal at least three or four times. Get it? He’s part-animal, that sexy man-beast, and his sense of smell is fourteen thousand times more sensitive than everyone else’s, and so you have no secrets every time you’re hot to trot. There’s nothing more erotic than being turned on and having the dude who turned you on inform you that he could tell each and every time you were turned on in the past four years since you moved into the apartment next door, and what is it about QVC that gets your love honey flowing, anyway? Is it the Quacker Factory?

Love’s Baby Soft:

After you’ve covered your angel food cake plot with Manwich, threesomes, some additional scent, and enough name brand references to choke a shopaholic, there’s just one more thing you need to make a Semi-Homemade Erotic Romance: “baby.”

Ever notice that moments after the erotic romance hero meets his erotic romance heroine, and he’s figured out that between that page and the end of the book he’s gonna get a loooootta tail, he starts calling her “Baby?” It’s part of that whole alpha-male protection thing, and part of the sexy treatment that makes any Semi-Homemade erotic romance such a total treat to read. If he’s not remarking to himself, man, he’s calling the newly-met heroine “Baby,” regardless of whether she’s older than he is, or whether she might even like the reduction of power inherent in a diminutive nickname. Maybe she has a name, but after she meets him, it’s “Baby.” And you can bet your sweet bippy he’ll be putting baby in the corner, over the banister, in the back yard, up the wall, in the shower, and on the kitchen table.

Now that you’ve put your personal Semi-Homemade touch on a basic romance plot, and used 30% fresh ingredients to make that narrative your own, it’s time to shop it around for sale. This is when the Kama Sutra/Bowling League tablescape will come (ha!) in handy: invite all the erotic romance editors whose names you can find online over to your house for a Semi-Homemade erotic romance party.

But don’t forget the cocktails that are at least 85% alcohol. They’ll need at least three.

Remember, keep it simple, keep it smelly, keep it sexy, but always keep it Semi-Homemade Erotic Romance.

Another behind-the-scenes funny: Beverly Jenkins is part of the Today segment (I hope) reading part of her novel, Jewel. Seems the producers wanted a sound bite or two of an actual romance novel, so Jenkins sat on a chair and read aloud the opening scene from the novel when the hero and heroine agree to pretend to be married for an hour. The posse of bloggers who were at the Borders with us, we were all entranced. It was like Story Time of Excellent with Beverly Jenkins. Then the reporter asked her to read a more “Romantic” scene, which meant, “one with the sex in it please.” So she obliged, and right about the part where Things Get Interesting (and Jenkins writes some fine, fine sex scenes) the reporter said, “OOOk, then that’s plenty!” And the camera men both spluttered, “No, wait! Keep going! It was just getting interesting!”

We now break for the Nora Roberts Shoe Report. Nora’s shoes yesterday were hot screaming red with awesome heels and strappy tops, which she paired with hot pink nail polish. Today was a mix of brown leather sandals with woven medallions, and lace-up flats worn with jeans. Nora’s Shoe Report will continue as long as she continues to change footwear and cause Sarah to ponder that perhaps the rumors are true, and Nora doesn’t have actual nerve endings in her feet.

The Marriott is amazing. Power outage or no power outage, this hotel is rocking my socks off, and I only have one pair with me so they better knock it off. Every single staff member is friendly to the point that I wonder what’s in the staff luncheon, and if it comes with a side order of happy pills and stock options. Seriously. Friendly people like damn and whoa. Plus, every time there is a major event, like a luncheon or the literacy signing, there’s hotel personnel every 10 or 20 feet helping direct traffic and answer questions. It’s amazing. I’m seriously deeply impressed with the staff here. They rock.

Tonight Jane, Candy, Kassia, Wendy the Super Librarian and I had dinner with the Harlequin Digital Team, where there was seafood and bodacious conversation. They wanted to know more about how we viewed ebooks and digital media (No more DRM plskthxbye) and along for the ride was a British film maker who is developing a documentary on romance readers- the real ones. She started by interviewing folks in the UK as part of the Mills&Boon Centennial, and she realized that if she wanted to appreciate the scope of the readership of romance, she needed to hop across the pond (Then across the rest of the US) to investigate American romance readership. The manner in which she discussed her project seemed to indicate that she’s after a respectful and thorough documentary about us romance fans – which makes me ineffably happy.

Alas, my jet lag is getting in the way of more bits o’ recap, so tune in tomorrow for Tweeting and blogging and general merriment.

Tomorrow there may be Olympic events on the schedule, but there’s definitely a Bitching Happy Hour on the docket: 330 pm Local time at the Thirsty Bear, 661 Howard Street, which is about two blocks away from the hotel. I hope we see you there.