Of nooks, Vooks and the Changing World of Books

A few days ago, I blogged about my reading slump. I’ve been picking up a lot of newish paranormal books and some contemporaries but I’m not seeing anything really unique and new (save for my fellow PRomantics upcoming works ;-)). In talking with my mentor, I find that a lot of these are books that have been in the back burner of publisher queues (aka legacy) and is just now being released all at once. But there’s a deeper problem as well.

The sameness is safe.

A recent Publisher’s Weekly article talked about this and the comments were really telling. Thus, reading book after book gets tiring if every story seems just like the last.

At the same time, my reading hasn’t stopped. I'm addicted to publishing related news sites like Pub Weekly, Huffington Post’s publishing section, blogs like Teleread, Booksquare and my new favorite podcast On the Media. I read tons of things on the internet and some great fiction from my fellow author friends who look for crits. But pleasure reading as I used to do as a kid has changed dramatically with the new changes.

It got me thinking about the future of the book. There’s no doubt that things are changing in the industry and it seems like it all charged ahead in just the last few months. With this generation’s e-readers fast becoming the new “it” toy of this year’s Christmas rush, a new trend in reading will begin.

What else will change? As things become even faster paced, I wonder how our reading will change. It’s already been said that the next generation of e-readers will be nothing like this generation’s. Will we see readers than can double as audio books? Barnes & Noble's nook is in high demand so much that orders are on hold. Amazon's Kindle and Sony's eReader continues to be popular among ebook lovers. The Vook (yes, a portmanteau for “video” and “book”) recently launched with the iPhone and as a web version. I’m not sure I, as a reader, would jive with this because of the fact that I use different neurons for watching tv than I do for reading a book, but I’m sure an audience is out there somewhere. Netbooks, tablets (Apple, do you have something up your sleeve over there?) and the continued sophistication of cell phones are becoming strong competitors for ebook devices. All of this, along with my own current experience, makes me believe that there still are a bunch of people reading in some way or another. Just maybe not books and not in the numbers they used to, which is a bummer.

(In considering all of this, one small part of me muses over the fact that everyone is preoccupied with how the books will be read rather than trying to get more folks to focus on telling a darn good story. But I digress.)

Social networking sites like Goodreads, Shelfari and LibraryThing are bridging the gap between authors and their readers so instant feedback on newly released works are immediate along with excerpts giveaways and other reader goodies. Reading has become a community focus again. Maybe we'll see a surge of reading groups with youths. Laptops are being given to some school kids in Canadian schools and ebook readers are being handed out in others, both with the curriculum's books inside. We know how we're going to read. Maybe we can now focus on what to read and how to bring those to readers.



Bob Stein of The Institute for the Future introduces his view of how things will be once the shift occurs.





Do you see your reading habits changing in the near future? Any future e-readers on the list who have one of the gadgets on their wishlist?

Testing Romantic Conventions

I’m currently editing a multi-genre story that can be woman’s fiction, suspense and noir but also a romance because it has an HEA. But the path to getting there is about a woman’s journey back to herself and to the man she loves rather than the hero and heroine fighting odds to be together. The hero is coming up more in this draft than he has in the past but the story is very much the heroine’s. I think it may shift into a “dark romance” if anything.

It got me thinking about some things regarding the romance genre. Lately there has been a lot of genre bending with the new paranormals dancing between suspense, romance, fantasy, detective and even a little bit of sci-fi that makes bookstore placement even more confusing. But as we move into the digital age with unlimited shelf space and numerous genre handles it’s becoming less limiting.

But what about the audience who is looking for a certain type of story? Will they be willing to stretch their idea of what a romance is to, say, darker romances that still end in HEA? A fellow writer friend of mine sent me some Anne Stuart titles to check out and her stories, based on what I’ve read from the blurbs, are what I have in mind as an example. I'm currently looking for more like hers where the heroes are sort of anti-heroes in a way in high octane jobs like assassin, spies, etc. Something like The Replacement Killers which I love and wish we got that kiss in the deleted scenes.

According to the recent RWA coverage roundup at DA, editors eagerly looking for something new to release and readers are even more so willing to look for twists on old themes, new voices and styles and new stories to indulge in.

Will strict genres be a thing of the past and the focus more so on larger definitions of romantic fiction, mainstream fiction or perhaps literary love stories? I love the idea of the former which is a staple of Black Lyon Publishing. But I wonder how the next generation of romance readers will accept it.

How about you guys? How stringent are you on the types of romance books you read?

A Call For Dialogue Between Readers and Authors

Today's blog is in response to Jane's insightful post over at Dear Author ' Digital Publishing Has to Step Up Its Game'. Here at Paranormal Romantics we've been and will be digitally published. We wouldn't be here without you readers out there and much of the business is driven by your input and thoughts as to what kind of books you'd to read.

DA already has a wonderful dialogue going on with its readers in the comments section so I urge you to continue reading if you check out the article.

For a few years now I've been studying the publishing industry with much interest. As an avid reader since I was young I had NO idea the intricacies of pre book production to bookstore sales until my buddy/biz partner/fellow writer Melissa and I opened up our own publishing company in 2007. Boy was that a rude awakening! Co-ops, books turned out (rather than faced in spine out), big corporate publishing was all unknown to me. (Agent Nathan Bransford has a great guest blogger this week breaking the bookstore placement politics in the recent blog ‘Book Sales Demystified’ if you’re interested). In my early reading days I was a library addict and didn't know that sales had to be made from publisher to library just to shelve books either.

I used to go with my family to bookstores and browse with interest, grabbing interesting looking reads based on the gorgeous painted cover and the fascinating blurb. Any SF/F book that had a kickin’ looking female character automatically grabbed my attention which, in the 80's, wasn't as widespread as it us now. I came to the counter to rejoin my family, each with our own stack, and even in the car I couldn't wait to get home before I dipped my hand in the bags to check out what goodies I got.

Sadly those days are gone as much of our favorite independent bookstores have closed (although one is still hanging on) and so went with it blind browsing. Now I mainly shop online for great reads and have recently acquired tons of old backlists at thrift stores (they're gold mines, I tell ya).

Some of it is also because of the business I'm in. The online writing community is a small one and usually I come across someone who knows someone else who frequent my writing boards. Reader blogs report when authors behave badly so word gets around when things go awry in authorland. It makes it hard to browse blindly when you see an author on the shelf who has threatened one of their readers!

On the other hand when I see an author on the shelf who has made a recent sale, I excitedly start sharing the news deal with my fellow browsing family member, including the company and the little author details that, well, that only us authors pretty much care about.

Online book publishing and sales have changed the face of the entire publishing industry and it’s continuing to make waves as online venues outsell their brick and mortar counterparts. With online blogs, zines and publishers cropping up alongside direct reader connection from author to reader and vice versa, a community of authors, aspiring authors and readers are growing. Publishers like Tor and Harlequin are taking note but there is still much to be done.

I would like to get my fellow PRomantics blog family’s thoughts on this as well as all you readers and authors out on the web. What would you like to see for the future of digital publishing? Where would you like to see the industry go? For readers, if you were given a chance to have your greatest reading wishes fulfilled with the oncoming new era of publishing, what would you like to see happen? Anything goes from access to certain books, the perfect digital reading device (that maybe looks like a book?), the types of genres you’d like to see, book cover wishes, anything you would like to see in the books you read.

I’ll try to steer some of my editors and publishers this way and hopefully the wish list spreads to make an impact and make the industry better for readers and authors a like.