Bullying

In the last couple of months, I've seen terrible attacks against bloggers and authors on Goodreads and other sites. I think everyone who's in the book community has probably heard about or knows someone who has been bullied. I had a friend on Goodreads go through this and thankfully they decided to stay but I know of others who left Goodreads or disappeared from the community.

So, I thought it was time to take a stand and promote love not hate in the community. I'm starting a new group on Goodreads called Blogger Loving. We have placed the shiny new button which links to the group on our blog and implore you to join this group and sign the pact.

Fashionta

Happy 2012

I know this a bit late, but I've been away and on top of that I got sick and only now getting over it.

2011 was an interesting year, it was the first year of reviewing for most of us here at the blog and none of us excepted to reach where we're at now. I had fun learning to run this blog and am very thankful for the great staff I have that help.

We plan to make some changes, starting with moving to three reviews a day on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday due to the amount of requests and opportunities we have. We will have our first guest reviewer March 1st. She runs her own blog and I've had the great pleasure of getting to know over the last year. There will be another blog tour in March and we hope to organise more tours and hops.

I’m hoping to have our first giveaway once we reach 100 followers on the blog. So invite your friends to join and spread the word. And don’t forgot to follow us on Twitter and Goodreads!

Fashionta

Publishing

I profess to not knowing a lot on publishing. But I do know one thing: publishing is evolving and the traditional method is not the only means now available for releasing a book. These days, it is not uncommon for an author’s book not only to be published in paperback but also as an eBook. Sometimes the eBook comes out first followed by the paperback because the publisher's roots were as an e-publisher and, as they developed the financial means to do so, they capitalized on the traditional market.

With this technology, authors have an additional avenue to reach readers: self publishing. I don’t know whether to be excited about this or not. On the one hand, books will be inexpensive to buy but the quality of the book may suffer. Already we have seen a slew of poorly executed books hit the market. Bad formatting, misspelling, syntax—you name the problem and there is a likelihood there's a published eBook suffers from it. So which method of delivery is the best?

I think every author needs to explore his or her options before sending off a manuscript to a publisher. If they are unpublished, they should avail themselves of alternative venues. There are, for instance, some high-profile writing contests run by established publishing houses seen as vehicles to get work before the eyes of the major players. Even some established authors hold pitch contests so a new author should keep a lookout for these opportunities as well. There is also the Authonomy ( www.authonomy.com) run by Harper Collins, one of many such sites, where unpublished authors can share books and publishers are known to keep tabs on the site always searching for new talent.

Even an established published author doesn’t need to commit to one publisher. We are seeing increasing activity in old books being republished at new homes. Take for example the writer Nora Roberts; some of her most beloved series are being published as eBooks by Berkeley next year. A writer needs to explore his or her options; there are many publishers out there willing to do to business if a writer is established in the field.

Self-publishing levels the publishing field. Money is no longer a consideration to getting a book published and book profits do not need to be shared with a publication house. Smashwords, a fantastic publication tool for these kinds of authors, accepts any book for publication based on their easy criteria and distributes to some of the major players in the eBook market. Friends can help to increase the return on the book as well. However, a codicil: with self-publishing, a writer needs to be scrupulous about the use of a spellchecker combined with the help of friends or betas to weed out the words a simple spellchecker would not catch. A self-published tome need not read unprofessionally.

When choosing an option, a writer needs to choose what is best for them and not be pressured because a publisher is insistent that they know best. Writers must thoroughly research their options before they commit their book to any publisher.

Fashionta

Covers

So recently I came across these links that someone posted on the smartbitch blog. It made me laugh. Somebody actually had a go reinventing some of those horrible covers that we've all seen and made fun of because they just don't look right.

Check them out for yourself:
http://www.worldoflongmire.com/features/romance_novels/index.htm
http://www.worldoflongmire.com/features/romance_novels/readers_covers.htm

Fashionta

Crossing Genres

I missed last week, so this week I'm going to tackle a couple of things I've seen or heard.

Some authors take a chance to write in different genres but it can be hit or miss. Take for instance Maya Banks. She wrote in 2007/2008 for Harlequin’s line Silhouette before writing for Berkeley and Samhain. She mainly sticks to contemporary, her newest series being her first foray in historical, which I know lot of people are loving.

But there is another side to it - when authors shouldn’t have tackled a genre. I read one such book a couple of years ago, due to the fact the author was fantastic writer and I was into the ménage at the time. All my friends knew her as paranormal/contemporary author but this new fantasy book by her was a huge disappointment. In fact, I was put off reading that particular genre for a couple of months and only recently began to get back into the fantasy genre.

Then there is the new wave of mixed genre books. I haven't personally read one of these yet. I'm sticking to my old favourites for now, but it's exciting to hear about such experiments. There are some great new authors in each particular genre, but  I don't know any outstanding authors (besides Maya Banks) whom I have read that have successfully crossed genres. Hopefully, in the future we will see more such attempts.

Fashionta

Hype

I recently went through my goodreads account and saw that I have been mainly reading Mills and Boon/Harlequin. And before that, I was reading Lynn Hagen, who become a favourite amongst the MM community, just to see what the fuss was about. But it got me to thinking. Why do I read these books? Yes, some of these books can be good reads but honestly, I finish these books very fast and then I get bored as it's not satisfying as a good read. So why waste time when I could be reading something from the New York bestseller list or a favourite author. It's the hype. Lynn Hagen has been constantly topping Bookstrand's list each week. And Mills and Boon has always been popular, they have been in the game so long. Honestly hype isn’t always the best way to chose a book. It can backfire. As an avid reader since childhood, I have seen authors promoted and touted as the next so and so but then fall short of the high expectations. Then there are the surprise authors who out of no where became popular. Hype has become a key tool in the book industry and it's said that publishers are loosing ground in this area as bookstores are closing around the world (Borders closing down in America, Australia and other countries).

Fashionta

Inaccuracies

Recently I've been reading books and noticing more than ever the inaccuracies the authors are making. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes the author does this on purpose and provides a comment saying so. But now there are more authors than ever, forgetting when they write to check important details. Recently, I read an example of this. The heroine was a young English girl with financial difficulties due to the downturn of the market. The hero was a rich Greek tycoon who meets the heroine to pay her not to cause problems for his sister. It was a wonderful light romance read, but what got me thinking was there was no mention of the GFC affecting the Greeks. If you hadn’t heard, Greece has been bailed out twice as they couldn’t afford to pay off their debts . The book was released this year and assuming that it was written in the last year or so, these events should have an impact on the story as they travel to Greece . So I did some research to see what the trend is currently and I found this http://redlinesanddeadlines.blogspot.com/2011....ca.html . The blog is run by the Ellora Cave editors and according to them the trend is American regency is written by non – America authors. Now I loved regency and went through a period reading any good regency book that I could get my hands on. But this worries me. How many of them are actually going to do the research , because there are small differences that can affect your novel. People seem to forgot that we are highly educated people. We do notice your mistakes and make comments on them . So to the authors, whether they be mf or mm when writing your book make sure you research your setting and events if you are going to mention them . Don’t leave it lopsided and only make one character affected by it. Everyone gets affected whether you like or not.

Fashionta