So Much has Happened

So I go away for a week (to a cabin in Maine where I'm promised both TV and Internet and there is neither!!! The guy I rented the place from tells me I can use his next door neighbor's computer, but I'm in the midst of editing a Threesomes anthology for Ravenous Romance, and I don't feel like explaining why I've downloaded 13 menage stories to some guy's desktop) and so much has happened - and I don't mean the MJ funeral.

Editors are being fired again in droves (a bunch at Perseus, 100 people at Penguin UK), but the saddest firing for me was the closing of Black Lace/Nexxus and the "making redundant" of its editor, Adam Neville, a pretty brilliant guy who could appreciate both creative horror and erotica, two of my passions. I hope someone in England (or here) will scoop him up, but print publishing looks pretty dismal these days.

RWAchange seems to be gathering steam. If you don't know what this is, you must not be a romance writer.

At least 500 members of RWA have joined forces to get the national romance writers organization to recognize epublished romance writers as peers to their print colleagues. The times they are a changing.

New York Times Book Review Awfully Thin Lately

Has anyone else noticed how thin the New York Times Book Review has become? It still seems to have a lot of ads, but many less reviews. And it's not even dead of summer yet, when all the journalists go to Cape Cod. That worries me.

While we're on the subject, I would love someone to start a credible stand-alone book review for commercial fiction and nonfiction. You know, a book review for books we actually read, and not ones we want to pretend we're reading as cocktail party conversation. And not genre centric. I want to know what (and why) everyone's reading what they're reading.

Sandy Lu Looking for Romantic Suspense

Sandy Lu, one of my associate agents here, has announced that she is earnestly looking for romantic suspense, so send her your stuff. Tell your friends.

Sandy at lperkinsagency dot com.

And RWA Reponds to Deidre Knight's Call for Epub Inclusion

It looks like this war of words is destined to go on and on for the immediate future, which is too bad.

Traditional publishing is failing all around us (with many good sized publishers declaring bankruptcy or just taking a moratorium on buying new books), and RWA dances on.

http://espan-rwa.com/rwa-president-pershing-responds/

Agent/Author Deidre Knight Takes on the RWA Stance against ePubs

In case you've been hibernating (or don't pay any attention to the romance market), the Romance Writers of America (RWA) came out against epublishers in its June membership newsletter, stating that they would not recognize any publisher that failed to pay a universal advance of $1000 per title and that they would decline to have an epublishing presentation at the annual RWA convention in Washington D.C. this year. They felt it was not in the interest of their membership, who should be striving toward print publishing.

Those of us who see epub as the new mass market and the future of publishing have been frustrated beyond belief with this archaic, elitist stance, but Deidre Knight, one of the insiders to publishing and writing in epub laid it all out for RWA in this timely and necessary treatise. Rather than summarize, I hope you'll go to the ink and read for yourself.

http://tinyurl.com/kuewc6

I couldn't have said it better.

Let's hope this makes the right people step back and think.