This post is part of a series.

Part 1: Damn Good Romances
Part II: Romantic Tension
Part III: Romantic Conflict
Part IV: Emotional Intensity

______________

Emotional Intensity

When I first started writing romance novels, I was still living in Australia.  Everyone writing romance back then seemed to be reading Harlequin Romance and Harlequin Presents books.  We knew them as Mills & Boon novels.  The big sweeping historical romance novels that most American readers grew up reading were unavailable to us.  So when we started writing, we naturally turned to Mills & Boon as the market we wanted to break in to.  It was also a very lucrative market.  There were dozens of authors making very good money indeed writing four books a year for M&B, and many of them were Australian and New Zealand authors.

Back then, Mills & Boon in London had a standard rejection letter which was notorious in writing circles, and universally dreaded by writers just starting to market their work.

The body of the letter — all of it — ran:

“We have considered your novel Wuthering Heights, and although it is well written, we feel it lacks the extra degree of emotional punch for which we look.”

Trying to crack this “emotional intensity” code was the subject of endless working sessions where manuscripts were critiqued to death in search of the answer.

The telling thing about this rejection letter is that it is standard — in other words, it serves to explain the majority of rejections.  This means the majority of manuscripts received do not have enough emotional intensity.

It’s a good demonstration of how important this element is to a romance novel.

Emotional intensity isn’t a single element you can put your finger on, and say “there it is.”  It’s a by-product of a dozen different elements in a romance novel all working together seamlessly, to build up the emotional tension to a fever pitch, then mercilessly holding it there until the endThe bigger elements that contribute to the emotional intensity include:

• The characters
• The plot
• The romantic conflict

To some degree, the setting can also contribute.  Historical romances, for instance, can add to the reader’s sense of emotional intensity, if they’re historical lovers, and the author has done a good job of description and scene setting.  Paranormals, with atmospheric settings, can work the same way.

But settings can also kill off the positive romantic emotional tension, if they’re the wrong sort.  That’s why romantic suspense authors are possibly the most underrated authors in the genre.  They’re constantly juggling hard, gritty storylines against the need to keep the romantic storyline tension wound up tight.  It can be an enormous challenge.

But you will know when the emotional intensity is creeping upwards, because whenever a scene shifts away from the hero(es) and heroine and their problems, and you are mildly annoyed, because you just want to get back to them and see what happens next — that’s emotional intensity at work.

That’s when a romance novel starts to become “unput-downable.”

Next: Heart Stopping Moments

____________________

Related posts:

1. Damn Good Romances III – Romantic Conflict This post is part of a series. Part 1: Damn Good Romances Part II: Romantic Tension Part III: Romantic Conflict Part IV: Emotional Intensity ______________...
2. Damn Good Romances – Part 1 This post is part of a series. Part 1: Damn Good Romances Part II: Romantic Tension Part III: Romantic Conflict Part IV: Emotional Intensity ______________...
3. Damn Good Romances – Part II: Romantic Tension This post is part of a series. Part 1: Damn Good Romances Part II: Romantic Tension Part III: Romantic Conflict Part IV: Emotional Intensity ______________...
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5. About The Industry – All Romance eBooks Trend Analysis for 2011 Every year, All Romance eBooks produces a Trend Analysis that they distribute to all their publishers. The report is naturally focused upon All Romance eBooks...

This post is part of a series.

Part 1: Damn Good Romances
Part II: Romantic Tension
Part III: Romantic Conflict
Part IV: Emotional Intensity

______________

Romantic Conflict

Romantic Conflict is perhaps one of the most misunderstood functions of a romance novel.  It gets misused by writers and critics.

But when it is used well…wow!  Then you’ve got a romance on your hands that you can’t put down because you simply have to find out how it all turns out.

Because “conflict” sounds like arguing, stress, people at loggerheads, you might be forgiven for thinking that romantic conflict is when the hero and heroine are standing toe-to-toe, going at it over some minor or even imagined slight.  Actually, that’s more a function of romantic tension than anything else, as I pointed out in the last post.

But I suspect many new writers and readers may mistakenly think that aguments, misunderstandings, shouting, and negative confrontations between the hero and the heroine constitute romantic conflict, and that’s why so many romance novels feature high stress scenes like this.  Perhaps this is where the Big Misunderstanding plot originated?

Believe it or not, you can have a hero and heroine perfectly in synch with each other, even madly in love and sublimely getting along, and still have a plot that is highly charged on the romantic conflict meter.

Romeo & Juliet - Leonard di Caprio & Clare Danes

The perfect example:  Romeo and Juliet.  They never had a moment of negativity between them.  They were in love almost from moment one.  Yet that classic plot is still incredibly high in romantic conflict and I’ll explain why in a moment.

So what is Romantic Conflict, if it isn’t characters arguing?

The simplest way to define it is to ask a question.  Romantic Conflict is what is keeping the hero(es) and heroine apart.

What’s stopping them from committing to each other?

As you can see, that question is a fundamental plot and character question, not a petty, “You didn’t put the seat down!…Again!” type of question.  It really digs into the heart of the story.

Can you see why, if romantic conflict is constructed properly, the romance turns into such a humdinger?

It is also why Big Misunderstanding plots are not really strong on romantic conflict, even though they’re favourites that keep turning up, even on the virtual shelves these days.  I suspect they’re more sentimental favourites these days, but writers have to work extra hard to make the story pay off for the reader, because when the hero and heroine can resolve their differences simply by talking to each other, Big Misunderstandings become somewhat strained and superficial when they’re dragged on too long.

If romantic conflict is what is keeping the hero and heroine apart, I’m sure you can already see, thinking about your favourite romance novels, that there are all sorts of things that can keep a couple/group apart.

Generally, a writer focuses on two different types:  external and internal.

External conflict is anything that comes from outsides the hero and heroine.  Forbidding families, interferring friends, lack of money, countries, politics, religion, crime, spies, wars, kings, enemy action, you name it.   Here is where all the conflict for Romeo and Juliet lay.  The two families, the Montagues and the Capulets, were feuding and would have forbidden the pair to be together, period, finito.  That was the sum total of their conflict, and Shakespeare built a classic story that has lasted centuries around this purely external conflict.

Ladyhawke - Rutger Hauer & Michelle Pfeiffer

However, purely external conflict is exceedingly rare these days.  You might find the odd historical romance where the lovers are utterly in love and the world forbids them to be together.  Also, paranormal romance is another genre where such parirings could be forbidden or impossible.  A really good example of that forbidden love is the movie Ladyhawke.

However, the contemporary romance and contemporary circumstances rarely provide stiatuions where anyone would be unable to overcome barriers to love for long.  And if a hero wasn’t determined enough to find a way…how much value as a romance novel hero is he, really?  Romance heroes are supposed to be ardent, determined, and somewhat superhuman.  Love conquers all, even in contemporary romances.  That’s part of the romance novel’s charm.  So a really powerful romance novel needs something more than a family’s wrath to keep a pair apart, these days.

That something is internal conflict.  Internal conflict is just what it sounds like.  It’s barriers and conflict emerging from inside the hero’s and heroine’s own minds and hearts.

The range of reasons and conflicts are endless.  Think of any of your keeper novels.  Pick one.  And ask yourself “What kept them apart?”  You’ll quickly build up your own list of reasons and internal conflicts as you work through your keeper novels and memorable romances.

The art and craft of romance writing is in selecting really strong, realistic internal conflicts for both the hero and the heroine.

There are also external conflicts that can be added to the mix — yes, we’re not done yet!  Family feuds and arranged marriages are not longer barriers to happy love matches in our romance novels anymore — except in historical novels — but even in historical romances, the better ones have strong internal conflicts as well.  But external conflicts are still around and still provide lots of grease to the romance novel mill.

The external conflict that we love to adore these days has changed significantly.  What keeps the hero and heroine apart can be so much fun to write and and read:  military thrillers, paranormal suspense, vampires, urban fantasy, romantic suspense…and the sub-genre plotlines that go along with our romance novels are added to the romantic conflict in a way that makes the romance hum and zing — as far as we, the reader, is concerned.

Even erotic romance adds to the romantic conflict, if the author knows what they’re doing.  The sexual storyline is a perfect opportunity to add to the romantic conflict by introducting more conflict, more tension, more reasons to keep the couple apart romantically, even as they’re twined together between the sheets.   Lora Leigh is a perfect example:  Her couples are always dealing with a sexual issue before the HEA moment.  Often it’s something the hero is demanding of the heroine — anal sex, or an extreme form of BDSM — that they must work through before love is possible.

Can you see, now, how powerful and all-encompassing romantic conflict can be?

Next:  Emotional Intensity

____________________

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Every year, All Romance eBooks produces a Trend Analysis that they distribute to all their publishers.

The report is naturally focused upon All Romance eBooks and their position within the industry, but once you sift through that bias, it contains some very interesting information.

I thought I’d share some of the highlights.

 Some buyer highlights

We’re continuing to experience triple digit growth in the U.S. and the bulk of our sales are to U.S. customers. We are currently selling in 202 countries.

Top ten markets: United States, Canada, UK, Australia, Germany, India, New Zealand Philippines, Malaysia, and the Netherlands.

Female = 89%

Male = 11%

I find this one very interesting, because I believe it’s not just specific to All Romance eBooks.  I suspect the growth trend they’ve experienced can probably be applied to ebooks in general and romance ebooks in particular, for all ebook retailers.

The sales to the non-US countries is even more interesting, because many of them do not claim English as their primary language, and All Romance eBooks don’t sell foreign language editions.

J.A. Konrath, who is probably one of the loudest champions of indie publishing, has predicted that non-English translations will be one of the primary sources of income for indie authors over the next few years.  All Romance eBook’s sales trend is supportive data for that prediction.

Some bookish highlights

Heat Rating = over 97% of sales are on books rated 3 or higher, of significance is that the 5 and 4 flame sales have see a combined drop of 4% over last year with most of the difference shifting to the 3 flame rating.

This could mean one of two things.

1)  Readers are getting sick of erotic romance and are choosing “tamer” romances once more, or

2)  The definition of “hot” has shifted along the scale so far that what was once considered 5-flames for ARE is now only 3-flames.  The 5-flames is now kink, BDSM, and extreme erotic, while readers who still love their erotic romance are still buying them, they’re just buying 3-flame romances, not 5.

The fact that The Romance Studio have thrown away their “erotic” categories in the CAPA awards this year and melded the erotic and non-erotic all in together would hint that romances are all erotic these days.  Erotic romance is losing its distinction.  “Extreme erotic” is now the uppper end of the scale, while we are simply enjoying “normal” romances.

Despite everything I’ve said here, it is only the books that I label “erotic romance” and put the highest “hot” rating on that sell the best for me, personally.  If I lower the rating or label in the slightest (down to 4-flames for instance), the sales plummet.  My ARE sales figures do not match what All Romance eBooks are reporting, here.

Sales Revenue DRM v Non DRM = 97% was for Non DRM titles for 2011

96% was for Non DRM tittles for Nov & Dec

These figures are misleading.  Can you see the catch?  ARE don’t state how many DRM titles v’s Non-DRM titles are available.  If there is only 1% protected titles available overall, then naturally, the non-DRM titles are going to out-sell the protected titles.    So even bothering to compare from year to year is meaningless.

But, much further down in the report, ARE had this to say about DRM protection:

A special note about DRM, the impact of agency, and piracy.

While ARe supports both the DRM and non-DRM business models, we advocate that publishers refrain from using DRM and provide open access – it’s what our customers overwhelmingly want. We appreciate and understand the concerns expressed about potential revenue loss due to piracy. We believe the best deterrent is to provide customers with easy access to appropriately priced content.

Tens of thousands of DRM titles were removed by what has commonly been referred to as “Agency” publishers in April of 2010. Data from Q1 of 2010 seemed to indicate DRM might have ended up being approximately 12% or more of sales in 2010, as opposed to the 4% that resulted. Although we certainly realized some lost sales due to the decrease in that inventory, data supports the fact that many readers simply found alternate content to interest them and accordingly shifted those purchasing dollars to non-Agency publishers.

The market share of DRM titles decreased further in 2011 to 3%. We attribute this to two factors: the decrease in overall market share of DRM inventory due to the loss of Agency publishers, AND buyer preferences shifting to Non-DRM publishers and Indie Publishers.

Agency Publishers returned to the site in early November. The DRM/Non-DRM market share split did improve during the subsequent two-month period of time (from 3% to 4%). We anticipate a 4-6% share in 2012, a far cry from what we believe we possibly would have seen without Agency interruption.

So if ARE are carrying 3-4% DRM titles and readers are choosing about 97% non-DRM, then that would seem to indicate that readers are not choosing based on whether the book has protection or not.  Which belies what ARE are saying, above.

Although, there are other sources (J.A. Konrath is one) that say readers do care, very much, if a book is protected or not, regardless of whether they have illicit intentions or perfect innocent ones.

I know I get mildly vexed by all the heinous “we are watching you!” safeguards on ebooks, when I buy DRM proected ones, but I don’t think it would stop me from actually buying a book I really wanted.  Would it stop you?

File Formats

File formats = PDF and ePub account for 85% of files downloaded. Next is PRC/Mobi at 14%, other file formats combined equal less than 1.

NOTE: We believe PDF, ePub, and PRC/Mobi are the “must have” formats.

Agree, agree, agree.  With one proviso.

PRC/Mobi, by the way, is the platform that Kindle is built upon.  It’s actually identical to Kindle, except for a change in serial number and file name.

If you’re buying ebooks in a format different from these three/four, then you might want to think about starting to change over to one of these four.  Actually, three.  I’d give up on PDF, too.  It’s too unweildy for the fluid ereaders.  It’s a useful will-open-on-anything format, but as a permanent, native format, it has problems.  Pick either Kindle, ePub or Mobi, and find an eReader you love that uses that format (or use your cellphone, iPad or tablet), and start trading over.   Soon, everything will be available in these formats.  Yes, everything.

In terms of which romance sub-genres owned the biggest piece of the pie in 2011, the top 10 are = Erotica, Vampires/Werewolves/Shapeshifters, Gay Fiction, Paranormal, Contemporary, Sci-fi/Fantasy, Multiple Partners, Interracial, Historical, Time-travel, Drama, and BDSM.

No big surprises here.

 _____________________

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This post is part of a series.

Part 1: Damn Good Romances
Part II: Romantic Tension
Part III: Romantic Conflict
Part IV: Emotional Intensity

______________

Mark and I were arguing…sorry, “discussing” what makes a good romance, the other day.  We’re deeply hooked by the TV series NCIS, and working our way through Season 7 at the moment.  Two of the regular characters in the show are circling around each other, and there are endless hints about a potential romance.

Which is, frankly, driving me bonkers.  I want to see them get together, but of course, the producers won’t allow that to happen anytime soon, because Hollywood learned its lesson when it let Bruce Willis bed Cybill Shephard in Moonlighting and ratings plummeted overnight.

Still, I keep hoping and the NCIS producers keep teasing with little vignettes here and there where the two characters stare significantly into each others’ eyes and you can feel the ambient temperature soar.  (And if you know what happens in Seasons 8 and 9, shut up!)

The will they/won’t they between Tony and Ziva is what prompted Mark and I to argue.

Mark suggested that if the producers wanted to write a damn good romance for the pair, they should simply have Tony sweep Ziva off her feet and declare how he feels and be done with it.  Women would swoon and ratings would soar.

I countered with the Moonlighting example.  But I was trying to explain to a guy that has read limited numbers of romances that a damn good romance consists of a delicate balance of nearly a dozen different factors.

He held up his hand and began ticking off what he thought were the necessary ingrediants that made up a damn good romance.  A hero, a heroine, a kick-ass storyline, and the romance itself.  And sex, of course, d’uh.

I’ve been thinking about that argument.  Sorry, discussion.   Thinking a lot.

I taught romance writing at my local university for over ten years, on and off.  For me, breaking down the essential elements of a damn good romance comes easily and automatically.  I’ve been doing it for so long, that it never occurred to me that the average reader may not have ever deconstructed a romance novel into the raw ingredients that make romances work.

Why would you want to?  A story either works, or it doesn’t, right?

Well, yes and no.  If you’re a rabid romance reader, you might simply be curious to learn more about the technical side of romance novels.

Then, there’s the swifty destabilizing publishing industry, too.  With the free market that is forming, it will help you as a reader to recognize why romances do and don’t work, so that you can build more informed opinions about the books you read…and can then tell other readers about them.

It will also help you recognize damn good writers when you come across them.  Damn good romances are easy to recognize — being sucked into a romance and being unable to put it down are unmistakable symptoms, afterall.  But being able to explain why a romance is so damned good it often incredibly difficult.

If you’ve noticed a dearth of decent romances lately; if your search for a damned good romance seems fruitless; or you keep being disappointed in your reading, then knowing what goes into a decent romance will help you recognize the hallmarks of a damned good romance, so that when you’re shopping for a new title or a new author, or both, you narrow your chances of being disappointed once more.

This series will help.

Next:  Romantic Tension

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Mark was the one that pointed the nomination out to me, which is staggering, under the circumstances.  He noticed one of his contacts on Facebook talk about missing out on a CAPA nomination this year.  He remembered that the CAPAs are a big deal in the romance world, and flipped over to The Romance Studio’s website to check the nominations, and then almost broke his neck hurrying downstairs to tell me that Blood Knot had been nominated for Best Paranormal Romance, for 2011.

Sometimes I really do think he’s worth keeping…  :)

I actually missed all the announcements for this, which is the staggering part.  The nominations were announced on December 15th.  The winners in each category will be announced on February 14th — Valentine’s Day — next year.

The Romance Studio have done away with the separate “erotic” categories this year.  Erotic and “normal” paranormals are all in together (all other categories have also been blended, too).  I think this is significant:  Erotic romance has become mainstream and normalized.

I don’t for a moment expect to win.  Shiloh Walker is one of the nominees, just to start.  The rest of the nominees are a who’s who of paranormal romance authors in both legacy and epublished romance.  Interestingly, I’m one of only two indie authors who made the list of nominees.  I’m tickled pink about that, and in this case, being nominated really is honour enough.

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Actually, if you know what choosing to be the monkey really means, you’d recoil.  But it’s a diverting title for a book that is really a long conversation between two big names in publishing.  One, Barry Eisler, is a New York Times Bestselling writer who has turned his back on the legacy publishing model and is now self-publishing his books.  The other is self-professed loud-mouth and indie-publishing advocate, J.A. Konrath.

It’s a nicely formatted and edited compilation of three really big posts that were posted on Konrath’s and Eisler’s blogs over the last couple of years.  All three posts were traffic spikers, conversation-starters and comment-magnets.  I’m subscribed to both blogs and saw the traffic snarl live and up-close.  It was very interesting.  There is a lot of mind-blowing content in this book.  If you’ve never thought about the direction publishing is heading, this will open up some interesting rooms — well, whole warehouses, really — of speculation and ideas for you.

No one knows anything for certain about where publishing is really going, but some of what Eisler and Konrath proposes will drop your jaw.

And make you laugh out loud.

Oh yeah…and the book is free.  Pick up your copy in your preferred format here.

Enjoy.

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A Toolkit And Compass for Romanceland

Because All The Roads Are Being Re-Built (Maybe)

Contributing To Word-of-Mouth

This is Part 5  (and the last) of a series:
Part 1:Romanceland Meltdown
Part 2: Finding Books – Part 1
Part 3: Finding Books – Part 2
Part 4: Assessing Books
Part 5: Contributing To Word-of-Mouth

(Series based upon a guest post at The Bookish Snob)

________________________

If you’re mining the Internet for everyone else’s opinions about the worth of a romance novel, in order to figure out whether you should buy it or not, it’s only fair that you contribute back to the system in order to keep it going for other readers, too.

Once you’ve read a romance, you should tell others what you think about it.

Romanceland is a changing world — if this series hasn’t convinced you, just wait a while and you’ll see for yourself, if you haven’t noticed already.  Once upon a time you may have thought it was the purview of the professional editors and reviewers to give a public opinion on the worth (or not) of a published book.

Not anymore.

Authors are publishing directly to the public now:  Directly to readers, and cutting out all middlemen.

That means word-of-mouth — readers talking to readers — is now the most effective means of sorting out the quality books.

You may think that adding your simple review or rating to the cacophony already out there will be a waste of time and energy, because no one is going to hear you or pay any attention.  You’re quite wrong, if that’s what you are thinking.  Your review or rating may not get a direct reaction.  You may not get anyone commenting or responding to you.  It’s highly unlikely the author will thank you — authors are taught or trained by hard experience to stay far, far away from reviewers and reviews to avoid publicity nightmares.

However your rating and/or review will be noticed.  I’ve used this analogy before, because it’s an exact one:  I’m a dedicated blogger, and my blog posts get incredible amounts of traffic every day.  Yet I consider myself lucky if I get one or two comments a month on my blog.  But I know that people are reading and reacting to the posts because my stats tell me they are.

It’s the same with reader ratings and reviews.  You may not get any direct reaction at all, ever.  But your review will be read.  The author will absolutely read it, and if your review is a positive one, I promise you the author will be pathetically grateful.  Then, every single potential buyer who considers the book will read your review once you’ve posted it.  You will have influence over their buying decision, and depending on how you write your review, your influence could be small or large.  Your rating will also form part of the average star rating for the book.

Every time you post a review and rating for another romance book, you’re adding to the weight of information out there for other readers to find.

What goes around, comes around.  Romanceland is becoming a true community of readers.  It’ll pay off big time to contribute meaningfully to that community.

Review on Amazon, even if you didn’t buy there

You only have to write one review, then you can copy and paste it to all your favourite review locations.

Amazon should absolutely top that list.

You’re using Amazon as a primary search tool for book titles, and as an assessment database, too.  Putting your review and rating on there is only fair.

There’s a small bonus to adding your review to Amazon, too.  People can rate your review for its usefulness.  So you can get a little feedback on your reviewing!

Once you’ve pasted your review and rated the book on Amazon, consider adding the review to all the “biggies”.  You can pick and choose amongst your favourite booksellers and review sites:

• Barnes & Noble.com
• Kobo.com (which has the potential now of becoming the next Amazon, thanks to the recent Japanese buy out)
• The bookseller where you bought the book, if they allow reader reviews.
• Goodreads
• Shelfari
• Google Books
• The book’s page on Facebook
• Any reader groups you belong to
• Your own blog, if you have one, or your Facebook page
• A rating line and link back to the review on Twitter

 A review is better than just a rating

Many review sites and booksellers will let you just rate the book and forego the review.  If you’re not good at stringing words together, it might be tempting to avoid writing a review and just click on a star rating and consider your contribution done.

You’ll be short-changing the system if you don’t write a review as well.

No one is expecting perfect prose for reader reviews.  You’ve been reading enough of them yourself to know that they’re not always grammatically perfect, or even close to well-written.  Sometimes even the spelling sucks big time, and if you can pick up on that much, you know you won’t embarrass yourself with your own review, right?

You also don’t have to write pages and pages.  A short paragraph is all you need, explaining why you enjoyed the book — or why not.

Your review, however, should be considered.  If you absolutely hated the book, try very hard to analyse why you hated the book and state it in objective terms in the review.  Don’t just verbally puke all over it and walk away.  That’s not going to help the next reader figure out if the book might still work for her.

It’s also not going to help the author.  If you think the author isn’t going to try to understand why you didn’t like it, again, you’re wrong.  Authors always read their reviews, even the bad ones.  Especially the bad ones.  And yes, they listen.  If enough readers are complaining about the same weakness in a book, you bet the author is going to fix it next time around.  Especially indie authors, who are writing directly for readers.  They need feedback.  So make it constructive feedback.

Your reviews for great books should be just as constructive and considered.  What made it so great?  What works so well in the book to make it fabulous?  Readers will want to know why it’s such a great read — they will want proof that it’s a winner before they buy it.  And the author will want to know what works well so they can repeat it in future books.

Use A Plain Text Editor

Write your review in a plain text editor like Notepad.  Don’t use Word or Wordperfect, because these programs add a lot of hidden coding to your text, so when you cut and paste to websites, all that coding goes with it and can completely screw up your pasting.  Using Notepad ensures there’s no hidden crap, just text.  If you want to use features like Spellcheck and Grammar check, then you’ll have to use a full text editor program like Word, but paste the text over to Notepad once you’re done, then save the file in Notepad as a text file, and shut it down.  Open it again, and then copy and paste to websites.  You’ll have got rid of all the hidden codes this way.

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This is the final post of this series.  You now have a full set of tools and a good collection of resources for keeping up with the shifts and upheavals in Romanceland.  The evolution of the romance industry is ongoing and changes will keep happening for quite a while before anything that looks like stability will appear — if it ever does.  In order for you to keep finding the very best romance novels to suit your tastes and preferences, you need to stay on your toes, and keep looking in unexpected places.

Romanceland isn’t the same place it was even a year ago, and it won’t look this way next year.  You have to keep redrawing your map…or simply throw the map away and enjoy the freedom of exploring new territory every day.

Have fun!

Related posts:

1. A Toolkit And Compass for Romanceland – Part IV A Toolkit And Compass for Romanceland Because All The Roads Are Being Re-Built (Maybe) Assessing Books This is Part 4 of a series: Part 1:Romanceland...
2. A Toolkit And Compass for Romanceland – Part III A Toolkit And Compass for Romanceland Because All The Roads Are Being Re-Built (Maybe) Finding Books – Part 2 This is Part 3 of a...
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Of course you’re looking for the best romances out there.  You don’t want to read crap, afterall.  But there’s some very good reasons why using best-seller lists, “top author”, “Best of,” “most popular” and other similar listings of books is the worst way of finding the best romances to read.

The traffic stats on my blog also report on search terms people use to find me, and a good portion of those search terms show me that many readers are doing exactly this:  searching for the “best of,” and best sellers, top authors, and other means of finding what they think will be the wheat amongst a lot of chaff and drek out there.

If you try to find romance novels this way, you will miss out on a lot of great stories and authors.

Here’s why:

Best Seller lists are exclusive, not inclusive

There is no single best seller list anywhere that includes every romance novel ever written, across all time.

Even that most holy of holies, the New York Times (NYT) Best Seller List, doesn’t include Harlequin/Silhouette category romances (which regularly outsell the #1 on their list each month).  And up until last year, it didn’t include e-books.  It still doesn’t include indie-published books.

Amazon, which sells close to 99% of every romance ever published, has a best-seller list…but that list still only covers the books they sell, not every romance out there.  And that best-seller list is skewed because of time — more on the time factor in a minute.

Any best-seller list you come across will only include titles for that publisher, review site, bookseller, or site.  Whatever list you’re looking at will be limited in some way.  It will exclude titles from its list.  Therefore, it isn’t a true representation of “best”.

And then there is the time factor.

Best seller lists don’t factor in time

Most best-seller lists decide what is a best-seller based on some sort of limiting time period.

The NYT Best Seller List covers the previous month, for example.  They will only look at sales across a one month period.  Therefore a book that sells 20,000 copies in that one month period may end up being the #1 title for the month, even though it never sells another copy.  Yet a book that sells 5,000 copies every month for a year, for a total of 60,000 copies in a single year, may never reach the top ten best-sellers list at all — yet it has outsold the #1 title three times over!

This distortion of what is really a best-seller is only going to get worse in the next few years, because e-books stay on the virtual shelf forever, and keep selling month after month, after month, unlike the old paperback system where the book was on the bookstore shelf for a month and then was gone, already a distant memory, as the bookstore made room for new titles.

“Best-of” and “top” lists are subjective

Most “best of” and “top” listings are purely arbitrary.  They’re pulled together based on one or two readers’ or editors’ opinions on who the best authors are, or what the top titles of the year are.  Consulting these lists and using them as a buying guide means you are assuming that your reading tastes are the same as the one or two people who built the lists.  This is extremely unlikely and you’re probably going to be disappointed by some or most of their selections.

Researched lists are still limited

If the lists were built using some type of statistics — highest review ratings, most reader votes, etc., you’re back to the same limiting factors that best-seller lists face:  the lists can’t possibly include every romance ever written, and they are most certainly limited by some sort of time factor.

What lists ARE good for

Lists of any sort are pretty useless as a buying guide.  But they’re not totally beyond redemption.   They are, afterall, lists.  They’re a listing of romance titles.  A limited listing, true, but you can scan the list to see if there are any titles or authors you’ve not heard of before, to add to your own personal list of titles and authors to research and check out before buying.

Just don’t let the fact that they’re on a best-seller or “best of” list influence your buying decision in any way.  Their inclusion on that list is pure luck — the title happened to have sold just the right amount at the right time, or came to the right editor’s attention at the right time, to be included on that particular list…and that is all.

If you’re wondering how you’re supposed to figure out what books you should buy without the crutch of best-seller lists and best-of lists, then check out my series, A Toolkit And Compass for Romanceland.  It will give you all the resources and tools you need to find the very best romances for you.

_________________

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Lately, I’ve noticed some erotic romance authors referring to their genre as smut, or dirty, and to themselves with various similar titles — smutkateers or naughty authors, or various other titles, with the emphasis on the sexual content of their stories, and the beddable quality and sexual prowess of the heroes they write about.  I confess that these author sites leave a bad taste in my mouth.

I’ve been writing and publishing erotic romance since 2003, which puts me in the vanguard of the erotic romance genre.  I’ve seen the genre through its entire evolution and I think its safe to say that it’s here to stay, and that I have a pretty good idea of what erotic romance is…and is not.

I can also say that I believe it’s still one of the most misunderstood genres inside one of the most misunderstood industries in publishing today.  Romance in general has always been utterly denigrated and misinterpreted by outsiders.  And now, even romance insiders are missing the point when it comes to erotic romance.

Erotic Romance

Erotic romance is a subset of the romance genre.  It is not a different species.  This is a critical point to remember, because everything else spring from this key definition.

Erotic romance is a romance, first and foremost.  It just happens to have an explicit and arousing sexual storyline to go along with the romance storyline.  Think of erotic romances as normal romances told with the bedroom door thrown wide open.

If you were to take out the romance storyline, you couldn’t tell the story.

And the reverse also holds true.

If you were to take out the sexual storyline, the story would also collapse.

A properly told erotic romance has character and romance elements entangled inside both the romance and the sexual storylines.  Taking either the romance or the sexual storylines out of the story wrecks the book.

Think of your own personal love story.  When you fell in love, you learned a lot about your new lover when you were in bed together, didn’t you?  And that learning didn’t just include sexual preferences.  You learn a lot about another person in such intimate circumstances.  Well, erotic romances acknowledge that fact and explore a romance properly, with the bedroom door open for the reader, showing a realistic romance.

Many erotic romance also have additional plotlines — romantic suspense, paranormal, mystery and more — and these storylines are balanced and interwoven between the romance and sexual storylines.

Erotica

Erotica, on the other hand, is a genre of fiction that is completely unrelated to the romance genre…and therefore is completely unrelated to erotic romance.

Erotica has no romance in it.

Erotica has no additional plotlines in it.

Erotica is purely about the sexual activities of a protagonist, and any plotlines that exist in the story are built purely to titillate and arouse the reader.  Erotica is designed to be 100% a sensual experience for the reader and nothing else.  Language, plot, character, imagery, everything that happens in the book occurs purely for this goal.

—

As you can see, there is a vast difference between erotica and erotic romance.  That is why I find it troubling when erotic romance authors focus so heavily on the sexual content of their work, to the exclusion of the romance and storylines of the novels they’re writing.  Yes, sex is great, but it’s not the sole focus of erotic romances, which are still romances at their core, and always will be.

______________

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A Toolkit And Compass for Romanceland

Because All The Roads Are Being Re-Built (Maybe)

Assessing Books

This is Part 4 of a series:
Part 1:Romanceland Meltdown
Part 2: Finding Books – Part 1
Part 3: Finding Books – Part 2
Part 4: Assessing Books
Part 5: Contributing To Word-of-Mouth

(Series based upon a guest post at The Bookish Snob)

________________________

By now, if you have set up your Google Alerts; mined the depths of Amazon, romance-related websites, blogs and news sites; plus the various RSS feeds and newsletters you have temporarily subscribed to; along with any romance-related groups you may have joined, you should have built up a satisfyingly long list of potential romance titles to investigate.

The titles you placed on your list you should know very little about, except that for some small reason, they appealed to you, and they’re in your preferred reading niche(s).  The authors, publishers, and general quality of the books could (and should) be a complete mystery to you.

Now, you get to assess those titles and find out if they’re worth buying.

The breakup and fracturing of Romanceland is bringing a flood of new titles onto the market.  There are new e-publishers springing up every day.  They edit their books, yes, but how good are those editors?

There’s no guarantee that just because a book comes from a New York publisher, its quality is guaranteed, either.  Recently, an e-book published by a New York publisher garnered so many complaints about formatting problems, editing and spelling errors in the text and more, that the publisher was forced to withdraw the book from sale and issue refunds.

Too, indie authors’ books have long suffered the reputation of being poorly edited and badly written.  Sometimes this is true.  Often, it isn’t — indie authors are increasingly becoming more savvy about their work; they hire professional editors, and book formatters to build their e-books for them, plus professional cover designers (I do, for instance).  The product indie authors put on the virtual shelves can be indistinguishable from New York books.

There is nothing stopping indie authors from publishing whatever they want, whenever they want.  Titles are hitting the market every day.

The flurry of new e-publishers means those publishers are also pumping out new titles every week, too.

And New York is gamely trying to keep up its output, as well.

The fact is that with the fracturing and breakup of Romanceland, there will be hundreds more exciting, different and interesting romances flooding the market.

The price for all that innovation and creativity is that some of the books are going to suck.  Romanceland is turning into a free market, where anyone can publish anything — and will.  And some of what will be published will be fabulous.  The flip side of getting all that fabulous stuff is that you also get the stinky stuff.

You have to learn how to recognize the stinky stuff before you put your money down.

Relying on other people to tell you what is good is no longer going to work.

No single review site can keep up with the deluge.  They haven’t been able to do that for a while now.  Most review sites run anywhere up to six months behind release dates — or more.  I’ve had reviews of my books emerge up to a year after the book was released.  The lag can only get worse as the number of romance titles released per week rises.

There is no single best-seller list that incorporates every single romance title for sale.  There never has been.  The New York Times Best Seller list, for instance, never included Harlequin/Silhouette category romances, which regularly outsold the #1 best-seller.  The NYT list only started included e-books in mid-2011.  It still doesn’t include indie titles.

There are only two ways you can find out if a book sucks, or if it is worth reading.  One way is to read it.  But that gets expensive, especially if you keep hitting sucky books.

The other way to find out if a book sucks or not is to tap into word-of-mouth sources.  Consult other readers.

There’s a number of ways to do that.  If you use a combination of these tools and resources in a systematic way, then you’ll get a pretty good idea, very quickly, if the book you’re considering is a dud, or not.

Amazon

Amazon is the best place to start, because something like 99% of every romance book ever published is there, and because 99% of every review for the books on there are reader reviews.

In addition, you get reader ratings — the five star rating that is an average of every readers’ rating.

There will also be the odd professional review, too.

Read through all the reviews, both the good and the bad.  Reader reviews are usually not very specific about why a book doesn’t work for them, but see if you can determine why the book failed to please the readers who didn’t like it.  If it is for reasons that won’t affect you (they don’t like European settings, say), then you can safely discount the negative reviews.

If the book gets consistently bad reviews, you may need to cross it off your list.  Put a question mark next to it for now.

If the book is part of the “Look Inside” program, you can even read an excerpt and see if it intrigues you.

Professional Reviews

Hunt down some professional reviews for the book.  Using Google, or your favourite search engine, put in the book title, the author’s name and “review”.

Amongst a few negative results, you will get a listing of links to reviews of the book.  Check them out for overall impressions on the quality of the book.

If the book received crushing reader reviews and ratings on Amazon, and the professional reviews support the bad rap, then it’s probably time to knock the book off your list.

However, if the reviews are all glowing, or even just generally positive, you can move onto the next step, if you are still uncertain about whether you want to buy the book or not.  If you’re already convinced you want the book and are comfortable enough to buy it, then you don’t have to search for further word-of-mouth.

While you are browsing the review sites, if you find that there is a particular reviewer whose voice you like, bookmark the site, or subscribe to their feed.  This is a reviewer who reviews romances in the niche you read.  They may review a romance you will like in the future.  It could pay to keep up with their reviews.

Goodreads

Goodreads and other social reading networks will provide you with one more average reader rating on the book you’re researching — if it has been listed on that network.

There may also be the odd reader review (more like short comments).

The feedback you get from these reader networks usually isn’t comprehensive, but it will provide confirmation and back-up for whatever you’ve already learned about a title.

Reader Groups

If you belong to a reader group, this is the perfect place to actively ask for information.  Put the question to your group:  “What did you think of xxxx?”

If the group has archives or a database of titles you can access, even better.  You can check out members’ reviews of the title for yourself.

Too Little Information

It sometimes happens that a title is too new to have gathered enough information to help you make a decision about its quality.  There won’t be any, or too few, reader reviews on Amazon to reassure you.  If a title is very new, there likely won’t be any professional reviews for it, either.  If it is an indie title, professional reviews are even harder to acquire as many review houses refuse to review indie authors at all.

In this case, what you can do is:

1)   Read an excerpt of the book and check the quality that way.  If the excerpt reads okay, and you don’t notice any obvious grammar and spelling mistakes, typos or other formatting flaws, then the rest of the book should be of similar quality.

2)   Go to the author’s website.  If there are any reviews or positive feedback at all, there’s a good bet the author will have them listed there for the title. (But keep in mind that the author won’t report bad reviews!)

3)   Research one of the author’s other, older titles, in the same or a similar niche as the one you’re interested in.  If that other title got glowing reviews and high ratings, then you’re probably on safe ground with the new book.  Check several of the author’s books, if you really want to be sure.  If they’re all high ratings and good reviews, you’ll feel that much more certain about the new book — and you’ll have more titles on your to-buy list, too!

Sometimes you’ll hit a book where there’s little information and no other titles by the author.  (Every author has a first or second book).  Ultimately, you’ll have to make a decision about whether to buy, or not, based on your gut feeling.

If it’s an indie author, the chances are the price will be very low, so taking a chance on the book won’t be such a big deal.

For New York titles, where the price isn’t so reasonable, you may decide to wait a few days or weeks until the book has gathered reviews and ratings…or not.

For any title where the blurb and excerpt have really grabbed you by the throat and you decide to risk it; go for it.  Why not?  Sometimes you just have to jump in with both feet and see where it takes you.  And sometimes that jump will pay off with the most unexpectedly delightful story you’ve read in ages.

That’s the bonus of a free Romanceland market.  You get to be surprised and delighted every now and again, when you reach out and try something new.

Enjoy your hunting.

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Next:  Contributing to Word-of-Mouth

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