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It’s All About the Readers

I remember the time well. The summer of 1987. The summer I decided to finally pursue my lifelong dream of writing novels. Until then, my literary endeavors had been in the journalistic and public relations fields. Newspaper feature writing. As the public information director for a trade association. As a freelance public relations counselor. But made-up stories keep swimming around in my head. Stories and characters and settings. I wanted to learn how to mix all those elements into a reading cocktail, into stories. Stories that would be published as books.

At the time my youngest was thirteen years old. We spent many summer days going to Whitewater in Oklahoma City, where Greg and his friends spent hours cruising the Lazy River, making daredevil leaps off the high dive, teasing one another, and flirting with girls. Meanwhile, I commandeered a deck chair and stood guard over the treat-stuffed cooler and kept a vigil on the boys.

There were hours to kill, and I don’t sit still well. Finally I realized that I could use these lazy summer hours to start my research into making my novel-writing dream a reality. So I went to a local bookstore and bought one hundred romance novels, which I read that summer and into the fall. I studied story structure, love scenes, dialogue, particularly how authors I admired showed emotion, because I had been trained to keep the emotion out of my journalistic writings.

All the while, I thought of me. What I wanted to write, what stories I wanted to tell. It wasn’t until I sold my first book of six, MIDNIGHT BLUE, published in 1989 as a Harlequin Superromance, that I finally realized, writing these books wasn’t about me. It was about the reader. It didn’t matter if I liked the story; if readers didn’t get caught up in the characters, they wouldn’t buy a second book of mine, and I wouldn’t have a career.

Ultimately, I learned that I was meant to become an author so I could do what I love to do—help other authors succeed with their publishing dreams.  But I learned a valuable lesson during those early years in the publishing business, reading all those novels on a deck chair and pondering what books two and three and four would be about, and that is that It’s all about the reader. What you write, how you promote, what you say on your social media platforms must matter to readers. Must reach them on an emotional level, must make them care about you, because you care about them.

Today, when I counsel authors on promoting their books, on establishing their brands, I constantly remind them to think of the readers, what they want from them, what they want to know about them, what will make them care about them as an author. What will make them tell their friends about you and your books.

I’m not saying authors have to do everything readers ask of them. As an author gains popularity, her readers’ expectations can get out of hand. She doesn’t have to accept every invitation to speak, or ignore her deadlines in order to participate in every reader event across the country. At the same time, I think authors need to remember how they have achieved their success, via the readers. Budgets, deadlines and family demands considered, authors need to make themselves accessible to their readers in some fashion.

Success doesn’t mean an author can sit back and “just write.” They need to show their appreciation to their readers by connecting with them personally, at reader events, or on social media, or by answering the same question time after time after time on Facebook. Or maybe by doing all of the above.

It’s all about the readers, my friends.

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Hot Trends in Reading III

From More of Our Industry Experts:

Trends in Contemporary Romance & Women’s Fiction

ebooksHere you go—our third and latest digest of what is capturing readers’ attention in romance and women’s fiction. Our generous industry VIPs shared this insight in San Antonio during our annual VIP Dinners in late July.

Contemporaries have experienced a huge spike in popularity. In addition to small town romance and women’s fiction, such as Robyn Carr’s Thunder Point series and Sherryl Woods’ Chesapeake Shores and Sweet Magnolias books) our experts talked about three trends within this trend: humorous contemporaries, those that are deeply emotional and ones with edgy protagonists.

There’s a big surge in popularity of romantic suspense. Certainly during the last half of 2014 we met with enthusiastic response from bloggers and reviewers when we contacted them about featuring books written in this genre. Of note: Carla Neggers’ September hardcover from Harlequin MIRA, HARBOR ISLAND, the fourth book in her Sharpe & Donovan series featuring two FBI agents and set in Boston, Ireland and the coast of Maine.

It’s no news that New Adult novels have captured the favor of Millennials. But our experts say books in this genre that are dark and edgy are (pardon the pun) hot!

It appears heterosexual women are reading male-on-male stories.

And a quirky trend: male protagonists named Trenton!

Smashwords founder Mark Coker reported in July that longer books sell better in the digital format. (A longer read for the money perhaps?)

Smart Bitches/Trashy Books’ Sarah Wendell made an astute observation: Overall, trends find their beginnings in books that take the familiar and give it a brand new twist.

In addition to the industry VIPs we’ve already named in this blog, our thanks for the valued input from:

Library Journal’s managing editor, Bette-Lee Fox

Library Journal romance column editor, Kristen Ramsdell

Booklist reviewer and library expert John Charles

Writerspace owner Cissy Hartley

Los Angeles County Libraries’ book buyer and Super Librarian blogger, Wendy Crutcher

RWA’s 2014 Bookseller of the Year and Ukazoo Books’ manager/co-owner, Edward Whitfill

RWA’s 2014 Librarian of the Year, Seth Gilmartin

Fresh Fiction events coordinator and WFAA-TV Dallas’s “Good Morning Texas” Literary Correspondent, Gwen Reyes

Freelance journalist and BEA Daily editor, Daisy Maryles

Las Vegas library volunteer and reading group leader Linda Cutler-Smith, who, for many years, placed books in readers’ hands as a bookseller.

What about you? What trends have you detected in publishing of late?

 

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Hot Trends in Reading II

Check Out These Additional Trends in Romance and Women’s Fiction

Share YOUR Insight!

Our books - 2I promised you more input in trends in romance and women’s fiction, which our astute industry expert friends shared in San Antonio during our annual VIP Dinners.

Here goes that insight!

Readers are enjoying reading serials, whereby a book is released and sold in segments—weekly, monthly or even quarterly—with the story resolution not coming until the final installment. Our client, Montlake author Colleen Callahan, was at the cutting edge of this trend with her 2013 serial novel, Warrior’s Revenge. The gritty, fast-paced medieval romance came out in 10 weekly digital installments throughout the summer. After the last was released, Montlake published the novel in full in digital, print and audio formats.

Another NBPR client, New York Times bestselling author Wanda Brunstetter, one of the founders of Amish fiction, was also an early adopter of the serial publishing strategy. Last year Wanda found enthusiastic response to her Discovery series from Barbour Publishing. The six-book serial was published in trade paperback and digital formats.

Before the dawn of the 21st century, books set in the early 20th century experienced a difficult time finding readers. Now, our experts say, readers are enthusiastic about Victorian romances (notably books set outside England); and stories that take place in the Edwardian period, World War I, the 1920s and up to and including World War II.

Also on the rise: Gothics and, as one popular romance site owner noted, “anything with Highlander in the title.”

Our third and final trends installment, coming next week, will provide additional insight into trends in contemporaries.

In the interest of credit is where credit’s due, here are some of our industry VIPs responsible for providing publishing trends insight, with the rest to come in my third and upcoming trends installment:

Library Journal’s Bette-Lee Fox, managing editor, and Kristen Ramsdell, romance column editor

Booklist reviewer John Charles

Writerspace owner Cissy Hartley

County of Los Angeles Public Library book buyer and blogger Wendy Crutcher

RWA 2014 Bookseller of the Year Edward Whitfill (Baltimore-area’s Ukazoo Books)

RWA 2014 Librarian of the Year Seth Gilmartin (Colorado’s Anythink Libraries)

Fresh Fiction events coordinator Gwen Reyes, who also does a book segment on Dallas ABC affiliate, WFAA-TV’s Good Morning Texas

Daisy Maryles, editor of the BEA Daily and freelance journalist

Las Vegas library volunteer and reading group leader Linda Cutler-Smith, who, for many years, placed books in readers’ hands as a bookseller.

Whether you’re an author, editor, agent, bookseller, librarian, blogger, reviewer or reader, we’d love to hear your thoughts on what kind of books are capturing readers’ attention. And is this a case of one exceptional novel, a trend in the making or both? Thanks in advance for your input!

 

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Hot Trends in Reading I —Check It Out!

Book selloutWhat’s hot in romance and women’s fiction? We at NBPR ask that question every year of industry leaders during our annual VIP Dinners during the RWA Conference, and do our experts they deliver!

This is the first of several blogs I’ll write that share the results of their input.

Who are our experts? They are editors, columnists and reviewers for trade publications, leaders in the library market, bloggers, popular romance site coordinators, bookstore owners and some traditional media folks as well—people in a position to observe shifts in reading tastes.

So what observations did our experts share this year?

The most fascinating to me is: binge-reading! Readers discover an author, then dig in and read other offerings by that author voraciously, before, in many cases, moving on to another author. I have a hunch readers are discovering authors through short-term reduced price offering and short reads in digital format and multi-author anthologies in digital and print—and, of course, as always, via word of mouth!

An observation on what authors are writing: PTSD in contemporary and historical characters. One of our experts shared that he thinks the country has been in a state of PTSD overall since 9/11, and, of course, there have been so many men and women returning from active duty afflicted with PTSD, so it’s understandable that this illness has worked its way into our pop culture.

Contemporary stories continue to gain market share, and paranormals appear to be sliding. However, one of our astute bloggers thinks paranormals will experience a rebirth with entirely different kinds of characters—not vampires or zombies or such but something fresh and new.

Stay tuned—more coming from our gracious experts!

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  • It’s All About the Readers
  • Hot Trends in Reading III
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