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 ______________...
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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

______________

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

____________________

Related posts:

1. 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 ______________...
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. Romantic Conflict Conflict is just one of the many elements that go into building emotional intensity in the romance novel. Café cruising Pretend you’ve just sat down...
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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

______________

Romantic Tension

Romantic Tension is one of those invisible elements in a romance novel.  New writers are often told they need romantic conflict, characters, a plot, and sometimes they’re even advised that emotional intensity is needed – and I’ll be covering some of these in later posts in this series.

But most courses and most primers on romance novels slide right over romantic tension, or else they lump it in with romantic conflict – which it isn’t.

Romantic tension is also sometimes called sexual tension, but sexual tension is a subset of romantic tension.

A perfect example of romantic tension is the classic first meeting moment.  You get it in every romance novel…the moment when the hero(es) and heroine first lay eyes on each other.  Any romance author worth their salt knows the value of that first meeting and the effect it can have on you, the reader, so usually they won’t miss the opportunity to really crank up the tension for the hero, the heroine – or you.

One I particularly enjoyed writing came from Mia’s Return, and as the title suggests, it wasn’t technically a first meeting, but the hero and heroine were meeting after over ten years apart, and the heroine, Mia, though the hero, Alexander, had died (warning — explicit language and images ahead!):

The elevator stopped on the next floor, with more people getting on, but by then his animal instinct was crowding him, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He was being watched. His heart thundered.

He made no sudden moves. Instead, as people pushed onto the elevator, he turned so his back was to the side wall of the car, giving him an excuse to look at everyone if he brought his head up.

He lifted his head and looked around.

She was standing on the other side of the car, almost completely obscured by the other riders because she was only just over five foot.

Mia. Shamira Menendez of San Diego, California.

His first aching thought was You’re so fucking beautiful, Mia.

Then reality caught him in the chest. Mia was staring at him because she thought he was dead. She thought he died ten years ago, in San Diego.

And now she was watching him with tears in her eyes and all he could think about was his swelling cock and his exploding heart and how much he wanted to take up where he had left off…bending her over the counter, sliding his cock into her pussy, and making her scream his name.

“Are you all right, sir?”

He tore his gaze away from Mia. “Excuse me?” he said hoarsely. He looked down at the grey-haired lady next to him.

“Your breathing is all funny,” she said. “Are you claustrophobic?”

Others were looking at him now. Becoming the centre of attention was never a good thing for a vampire. Zack had drilled that into him. Seaveth was even more of a sergeant about it now vampires were assimilating into human society. He swallowed. “I’m fine,” he said.

But he wasn’t. He looked at Mia. She was still watching. She knew it was him. There was no way to deny it. No escape. No bluff he could use to fool her. The knowledge gleamed in her eyes.

“Give him room, please,” she said. “Everyone, stand back a bit.” She was stepping closer, taking charge.

They all shuffled back, clearing eighteen inches. Mia squeezed between them and stepped into the space. “Take a deep breath,” she told him, her voice low.

He couldn’t tear his gaze from her face. The tears in her eyes pooled and one fell down her cheek. Just one. But she didn’t wipe it, or show any sign of emotion. Cool, calm, controlled. “We’re nearly there,” she added, speaking for the others in the car, maintaining the illusion of a claustrophobe in full panic mode. She knew as well as he did it was nothing of the sort.

As the doors opened, the others stood back, letting them exit first. She grabbed his lapels and hauled him from the car. He let her, for he stood a foot higher than her and outweighed her by nearly a hundred pounds. But her scent alone was wreathing his head and making his senses reel. Something with vanilla and…grapefruit? He could feel his incisors trying to descend and his mouth filling with vampire saliva to deaden her flesh so she wouldn’t feel the first piercing of his teeth. And his cock was pounding with the agonizing need to slam her up against the marbled walls of the foyer and fuck her senseless.

He was almost hyperventilating with the dilemma.

Her hand rested on his chest. God, he could feel her heat through her hand. He swallowed.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” she whispered. No hello. No attempt to confirm who he was. She was that sure of him despite ten years.

Mia’s Return, 2009

While not a traditional romance novel in the strictest sense, a really great (and famous) first meeting scene can be found in Gone With The Wind.   The snippy exchange between the pair is priceless:

 Her hand dropped to a little table beside her, fingering a tiny china rose-bowl on which two china cherubs smirked. The room was so still she almost screamed to break the silence. She must do something or go mad. She picked up the bowl and hurled it viciously across the room toward the fireplace. It barely cleared the tall back of the sofa and splintered with a little crash against the marble mantelpiece.

“This,” said a voice from the depths of the sofa, “is too much.”

Nothing had ever startled or frightened her so much, and her mouth went too dry for her to utter a sound. She caught hold of the back of the chair, her knees going weak under her, as Rhett Butler rose from the sofa where he had been lying and made her a bow of exaggerated politeness.

“It is bad enough to have an afternoon nap disturbed by such a passage as I’ve been forced to hear, but why should my life be endangered?”

He was real. He wasn’t a ghost. But, saints preserve us, he had heard everything! She rallied her forces into a semblance of dignity.

“Sir, you should have made known your presence.”

“Indeed?” His white teeth gleamed and his bold dark eyes laughed at her. “But you were the intruder. I was forced to wait for Mr. Kennedy, and feeling that I was perhaps persona non grata in the back yard, I was thoughtful enough to remove my unwelcome presence here where I thought I would be undisturbed. But, alas!” he shrugged and laughed softly.

Her temper was beginning to rise again at the thought that this rude and impertinent man had heard everything—heard things she now wished she had died before she ever uttered.

“Eavesdroppers—” she began furiously.

“Eavesdroppers often hear highly entertaining and instructive things,” he grinned. “From a long experience in eavesdropping, I—”

“Sir,” she said, “you are no gentleman!”

“An apt observation,” he answered airily. “And, you, Miss, are no lady.” He seemed to find her very amusing, for he laughed softly again. “No one can remain a lady after saying and doing what I have just overheard. However, ladies have seldom held any charms for me. I know what they are thinking, but they never have the courage or lack of breeding to say what they think. And that, in time, becomes a bore. But you, my dear Miss O’Hara, are a girl of rare spirit, very admirable spirit, and I take off my hat to you. I fail to understand what charms the elegant Mr. Wilkes can hold for a girl of your tempestuous nature. He should thank God on bended knee for a girl with your—how did he put it?—’passion for living,’ but being a poor-spirited wretch—”

“You aren’t fit to wipe his boots!” she shouted in rage.

“And you were going to hate him all your life!” He sank down on the sofa and she heard him laughing.

If she could have killed him, she would have done it. Instead, she walked out of the room with such dignity as she could summon and banged the heavy door behind her.

Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell

It’s not just the first meeting that creates romantic tension.  As I mentioned earlier, sexual tension is one of the classic ingrediants of a romance novels — these days it’s sometimes the only romantic tension element used, possibly over-used.  Hormones are a major player in any romance, real or fictional, and their swirl and surges add delicious tension all on their own:

She did not seem to mind his interruption. Again, she tilted her head to study him curiously. “Did you think I was lying?”

“I think… you’re capable of it. You let Thorsby think we were close friends.”

“You played along with it. Doesn’t that make you as much a liar as me?” She put her hands behind her back, like a small schoolgirl reporting to her head mistress. “Do I not get my tour of the conservatory now?”

The linking of her hands behind her back had a remarkable effect on her décolletage. Stuart found his gaze drawn there, yanked there and held with invisible pincers, despite the fact that as a gentleman, he never looked directly at a lady’s chest in public. He could feel his heart begin to beat with the old excitement that came from the type of hunt he preferred. Was she doing it deliberately? Her breasts were pushed toward him, lifted up by the heavy boning of her corset and almost offered to him. She was petite but her breasts were lush, coffee-cream globes.

He wrenched his gaze away and looked into her eyes. The same amusement was sparkling there and he knew she had done it deliberately.

She was testing him.

Had she been testing him all along?

But now she had moved the game onto pleasurable territory he considered his own. He relaxed and smiled at her, feeling more sure of himself. “I would be honoured to guide you through Lord Dumfrey’s famed conservatory,” he said, holding out his arm.

The Royal Talisman, 2012

There are all sorts of ways to increase romantic tension in a romance, beyond using sex, and a good writer will use them all.  One of them is what I call “indirection” — the use of witty little interchanges between the hero and heroine, all while sexual tension boils and simmers just beneath the surface as sub-text — in a searing glance, a studied pose, the symbolic stroke of a fingertip along a jawline…

It’s not misdirection, because the conversation can certainly be going somewhere, too.  Most often the conversation can be serving a useful purpose:  solving a crime, unravelling a paranormal mystery, all sorts of thriller sub-plots that might be afoot in which the hero and heroine are embroiled.

But it keeps the romance firmly centre stage and the tension cranked up while the rest of the story unravels.

And who said the reader has all the fun?

Next: Romantic Conflict

____________________

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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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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.

__________

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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5. Ease Yourself Into MMF Romances – Part IV Where To Find Your MMF Romances This is Part Four of a Series Part 1: Ménages Categorized Part 2: How can MMF be romantic? Part...

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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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.

__________

Next:  Contributing to Word-of-Mouth

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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 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)

________________________

Last post, we explored all the ways of using Google Alerts results to mine the Internet for useful blogs, sites and newsites, and the bounty they give up:  romance titles for your growing list of potential books to buy.

Here are even more resources to tap.

Amazon

Even if Amazon doesn’t have every single romance title published available for sale on its virtual shelves (and if it doesn’t, it’s only by a gnat’s whisker), it comes a lot closer to 100% than any other bookseller in the world.  For this reason, and one other, Amazon is one of the most advanced search tools on the Internet.

The other reason Amazon outranks any other publisher, bookseller or database in the world when it comes to searching for books, is that readers, publishers, authors…anyone…can categorize and tag the books that Amazon offers for sale.  In other words:  keywords.

And those keywords are searchable.

You may not like shopping via Amazon.  But searching via Amazon is hard to argue with.

With your keyword groups in hand, head over to Amazon, and in the Departments drop down box, select “Books” and hit the “go” button.

Underneath the search bar, you’ll get a row of menu items, including the “Advanced Search” link.  Click on that.

You’ll come up with a screen called “Book Search” and the first row of the range of fields you can fill in is…keywords.  J

Don’t add any other conditions than your keywords.  You’re not trying to narrow down the range at this stage (quantity, remember?).  Just add your keywords, separated by commas, and hit enter.

You’ll come up with a list of titles that may be surprisingly long or short.  If you think your list is too short, try searching again, and dropping off one of your keywords — whichever one is the least critical in your opinion.

For each title that pops up in the search, open up that book’s page (use the right hand mouse button to open the book up in a new tab, so you can save the search page and come back to it later).  Have a quick look at the blurb, etc, and add the book to your list if it makes your interest level twitch at all.

Also check out the books listed under the “Frequently Bought Together” titles and add them to your list, if they beckon in the slightest.

Then check the books listed under the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought….” section.  Books under this section are often similar, but not always.  A quick look at the blurb will tell you if you can add them to your list or not.

And don’t forget, for each book that you click through to, you should also check their “Frequently Bought Together” and “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought….” sections for similar types of titles.

And start adding titles to your list.

Repeat this with all of your keyword groups.

Reader groups

There are romance reader groups all over the Internet.  And I will give you a list of places where you can start looking for like-minded peer groups in a minute.

But there are strong pros and cons to joining reader groups of which you should be aware before signing up.

Pros

A romance reader group that works well is a fabulous resource for word-of-mouth about great romance novels, changes in the industry, help, support, friendship, and fun.  When reader groups work well, they’re fabulous places to hang out.  And you will hear of so many great books you will never catch up!

If you can find a group that is “closed” (there is some sort of formal subscription process) and has a stable membership, you’ll find yourself making friendships that last years.  If the group caters to a small niche category that you love and adore, you will wonder how you ever lived without it.

Reader groups that function well bring all the best qualities of each of its members to the group.  The knowledge of each member provides a pool of information that all members draw upon for a unique resource that provides support for the group as a whole and enhances it.  A strong coordinator/manager is a must.

Cons

Many “reader” groups are over-subscribed, or open, and subject to spam, hackers, or the abuse of authors who use the group as promotional platforms, to the detriment of free discussion and fellowship.  In the very large reader groups, you will hear of many, many romance titles via promo posts from authors or promotional companies, but not much else.  These larger groups are rarely niche groups.  They cater to larger divisions of romance (e.g. “erotic romance” or “paranormal romance”).

Smaller niche groups have tiny memberships and are often moribund through lack of activity or current interest in the niche.

All groups may also be subject to bias via group pressure.  If the group is aligned with a website or publisher, then discussion will be limited to that website’s reviews, or publisher’s books.  There may also be more subtle or political prejudices:  The group may have a bias against indie titles, or e-books, that isn’t apparent on the surface, but only via consistently bad reviews of anything other than New York published titles, for instance.

Even if none of the above occurs, groups sometimes break out into bickering and sniping, if there is one or two forceful members who don’t see eye-to-eye.  If these frictions are not resolved, groups can end up disbanded or deserted because members grow tired of the conflict.

—

Despite the downsides, there are more well-functioning groups than not.  Each group has a lifecycle and groups are forming and disbanding all the time.  You just need to find a group that works for you, if you think one would be useful for you.

Where to find Groups

Yahoo Groups – The grand-daddy of groups, Yahoo is still the one most people think of when they talk about “groups”.  Posts are delivered via email as a defaul, although you can check your group’s postings online if you want.  There are dozens, if not a hundred or more, romance novel-related groups on Yahoo.

Google Groups – Google took over the old Usenet bulletin board style groups, then added their own Groups on top.  One of the oldest writing groups on the usenet boards is still going on Google – rec.arts.sf.composition.  One of the problems with Google, though, is that the groups are semi-open, so hackers and spam is rife.  I’ve looked for romance novel groups there, but didn’t find any.  However, if usenet groups are your thing — and some people like them — then you may consider the idea of creating one of your own in your favourite niche.

Facebook – Whatever you think of Facebook, there’s no denying the numbers it commands.  It’s #2 on Alexa (Google is #1).  And Groups is Facebook’s next “thing”.  If you’re a member, go to your home page, and type your keywords into the search bar at the top.  There’s potentially a group page will pop up with your keywords.  If not, drop the least critical keyword off and try again.  Sooner or later you’ll end up with a group showing up in your search results.  I guarantee that group will be talking about romance books in your niche.  And you can always ask for recommendations, too — and brace yourself for impact.

__________

Next:  Assessing your List Of Potentials

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A Toolkit And Compass for Romanceland

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

Finding Books – Part 1

This is Part 2 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)

________________________

With Romanceland fracturing and thousands upon thousands of new publishers and authors self-publishing their romances every weeks, the first challenge for you as a reader is knowing where to find all the new titles.

After all, you don’t want to miss out on a potentially brilliant new (to you) author, or a fabulous romance that could pass by you unnoticed if you don’t have your ear to the ground, or the right tools and connections for hearing about it.

All the old ways of keeping up with newly published romances just don’t cover all the virgin territory being opened up in Romanceland these days.  Not all review sites and romance oriented sites will cover every publisher out there.  Some have a policy of “only” dealing with New York publishers (still).  Many refuse to deal with indie authors at all, not allowing them to list themselves as authors, or list their books, or reviewing their books.  And many publishers and authors simply can’t keep up with all the thousands of blogs, sites and social networks out there that list and review romance books (I know I can’t).

You must bear in mind that these days, there is simply no single source of information that will provide you with all there is to know about romance novels.  You’re going to have to build your information from multiple sources.

Keep this motto in mind:  “No one knows everything.”    The best anyone can do is become an expert on a small sub-niche of a category…and even that will become more and more difficult as authors grab hold of the idea that they can pretty much write any sort of romance they want, now, and publish it…and so you will find all sorts of cross-over, mixed-genre, wildly different and almost impossible to categorize romances flooding the market.  Soon, it will become easier to simply say “The sort of romances xxxx writes,” in order to indicate a genre.  Romance categories will become that specialized.

So, your first step, as I mentioned, is finding titles.

And because many titles you will be finding will be indie published and small press published, and from sources you don’t know, your next step will be assessing if the romance title is worth buying.  But that will be the subject of the “assessment” post.

For now, you need tools and methods for finding romance titles.

Building your potential titles list

The Strategic Approach

As you build your list, keep a few key strategies in mind:

Go For Quantity

The intention at this stage is not to narrow down your selection at all.  Put on the list any romance title that tweaks your interest at all, for whatever reason.  Later, in the assessment stage, you can knock it off the list after further consideration.  But if it nudges your curiosity, put it on the list.  The more the merrier, at this stage.  Do not be fussy about where the romance came from, who published it, who wrote it, and even try to ignore the cover, if it’s not brilliant.  There’s more than one fantastic romance out there with the suckiest cover ever.  The cover has nothing to do with the way the author wrote the book.  If there is anything remotely interesting about the book — the blurb, the (sub)genre, the hero’s occupation, whatever catches your eye or attention — it doesn’t matter — add the book to your list.

Be open minded

If you’ve only ever read vampire paranormal romances, and you insist on only collecting romances titles in that narrow niche, then you might be missing out on some wonderful reads.  I’ll have more to say about niches, keywords and genres in a minute, but for now, consider expanding your genre horizons…even just a little.  By looking high and low in all sorts of unusual places, you may find other “genres” that suit your tastes right down to the ground, that you never knew existed — or simply didn’t exist until recently.  But you have to do the looking, first, and that means opening up and exploring, rather than staying with your tried and true category(ies).

Break your genres into keywords

You more than likely already have one or two or more favourite subgenres of romance novels that you prefer to read.

Because Romanceland is breaking up and the categories are fracturing, shopping around by categories will become impossible, soon.  Besides, most of the on-line bookstores offer woefully inadequate search facilities within the “romance” category, and brick and mortar bookstores rarely break down their romance shelves at all.  Given how many thousands of books are released each month, that makes reading each blurb impossible.

You need to drop down to the next level of search granularity in order to find what you need.  And that level is keywords.

It will need a bit of brainstorming to start will.  Write down your preferred categories of romance novels, and beneath each of those categories, write down a handful of keywords that you consider important for each category.  It is critical that you select keywords that are relevant to you.

Here’s an example.  Say you like erotic romantic suspense.  Now, there are dozens of potential keywords you could pick for that category: Sex, guns, suspense, crime, rape, serial killer, black ops, SEALs, military, undercover, spies, espionage, political thriller, war and on and on.  Romantic suspense is a big field.

But when you think about the sorts of romantic suspense you tend to enjoy the most, you realize that most of them are military ones.  So that’s your first keyword:  military.  And you like them sexy and hot.  So erotic goes in there.  And of course, there must be romantic suspense.  And you think you prefer Black Ops to straight military operations.  So there are your keywords:  military, erotic, romantic suspense, black ops.    There are both very broad and quite narrow keywords in the collection, so you will end up with some good search results from these keywords.

Go through each of your favourite romance categories and create keyword groups for each type of romance you like.  If there’s two or three subgroups within a category (say, you like werewolves and vampire paranormals) create two different groups of keywords, with repeat keywords as necessary for each group (each might have “erotic”, say, or “menage”).  Don’t forget to include “romance” in there, too.  My example above had “romantic suspense” which covers the “romance” keyword.

If there is a category you think you might like to try, create a keyword group for that, too.

Now to go searching.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts are kinda cool, because they send all the good stuff back to you, once you’ve set them up.  You just sit back and see what comes to you from across the Internet.

You can choose to set up an Alert for once a day or week or month.  I usually set for once a day, unless it’s a wildly popular and heavy hitting Alert, in which case I’ll drop it back to once a week.  That rarely happens.

You set the Alert up to search on all the keywords in a group.  Surround each compound (multi-word) keyword in a quote mark so Google doesn’t return results on each single word.  Do include all the keywords in each group in one Alert.

Set up a different Alert for each keyword group you have developed.

The Alert will return to you each day any news site, website, or blog that has created new content that includes all your keywords, or most of them, along with live links to those sites.   This is invaluable in your hunt for new romance titles.

Just scanning the brief summary of page contents included in each Alert will probably provide half-a-dozen titles and authors that you can add to your list, right there.

Clicking on the links and following them back to the source pages will give you further titles.  The types of pages that Alerts reports on are a) news b) websites and c) blogs.  For the sake of finding new romance titles, I’ll break them down the same way Google does, so you can figure out useful ways to deal with them when you find new ones inside your Alerts.

News sites

Google treats any website that isn’t a blog, but has a high volume turnover in timely, current content as a “news” site.  Some sites are news sites, while others who do not style themselves specifically as news sites still get classified that way by Google because of the timeliness and volume of their content.  The number of hits you’ll get for news sites will be fairly low, but they’re usually worth following up just to see what the site is like to deserve the classification.

When you come across a new “news” site that is dealing with Romanceland content, check out first to see what titles they’re mentioning with your keywords, and add the titles to your list.

Then spend some time on the site and see if it has anything else of value to offer you.  Does the site deal in lots of titles around your favourite categories?  Or was the title that tripped your Alert an oddity?  Were they disparaging it?  If so, perhaps the news site will be of little value in the future.  If they’re raving about the title, dig a bit deeper and see if the site has other titles mentioned like it.  Add them to your list, too.  (Remember, quantity!)

If the site has a newsletter you can subscribe to for a month or so, to check out their future offerings, bookmark the site and sign up.  You can always unsub later.

When future Google Alerts direct you to the site, you’ll get further confirmation of this newsite’s usefulness, too.

Blogs

Blogs are plentiful in Romanceland.  There are review blogs, author blogs, and general romance blogs galore.  Publishers and agents have blogs.  Everyone is into blogging.  So a vast number of your Google Alerts will be for blogs, especially because blogs update their content frequently.

Just as for news sites, follow the Alert link back to the blog and check it out.  Add any romance titles mentioned to your list.

Then spend some time reading posts and checking out the blog to see if it has anything of value to offer you.  If it seems valuable and relevant, subscribe to the RSS feed via your reader or email.  Then you can monitor the blog for a week or a month and farm the posts for book titles, while assessing if the blog is worth staying subscribed to.

If the blog is an author’s blog, find (somewhere on the site) a list of that author’s books and add them to your list.  If the Alert directed you to this author based on your keywords, there’s a good bet that her books fit your preferred reading.

Review blogs need to be treated a little differently.  They handle a vast range of romance books, in all sorts of categories that may or may not fit your keywords.  You can try searching their review database to see if you can find books in your keyword group.  If finding books in their archives is difficult, then you may have your first clue as to how useful the review blog will be in the future.

Also try reading one or two reviews of books that are in categories close to what you like.  How do the reviews read?  Are they badly written?  Insightful?  Spelled correctly?  (You’d be surprised.)  Is every single review a glowing recommendation?  Is every single review a bloody mauling?

By the way, you’re not looking for a single review blog as the ultimate guidance on books.  But if you find a review blog that seems to be even-handed and fair, and handles the sorts of romance books you want to read, then it’s worth adding them to your collection of resources and tools.  They will become a part of your group of word-of-mouth peers.

If you think the review blog that your Alert has sent you to might fit the bill, then subscribe to their feed for a week or two, and check them out.  But don’t be afraid to off-load them if you don’t like the feel of their reviews; if they fail to appear in any more Alerts; or if you find you’re not adding any titles to your list from their reviews — any of the above means they’re not useful.

This same thinking/sorting applies to any blog that your Google Alerts directs you to.  Assess and farm for titles.  Monitor via RSS feed for a while to see if the blog might be useful, and watch to see if Google comes back with further Alerts.  If the blog doesn’t a) pop up in more Alerts, b) provide you with more titles for your list and c) doesn’t impress you with its RSS feed; then its time to cut it loose.

Websites

Websites are the “everything else” category in Google Alerts.  If a site isn’t a blog or a news site, it’s a website.  Websites are static, with the least amount of change in content.  Having said that, there are some very active websites out there.

Treat Alert links to websites just as you would for blogs:  Assess and farm the site for titles.  Consider its usefulness.  However, there will be no RSS feed for you to subscribe to, so check if there is a newsletter or some other way for you to get site content coming to you, and subscribe as necessary.  If the site doesn’t offer a way to send you content, then give up.  You don’t want to have to remember to go to them.  There’s a dozen other sites who will give you the same information.  Just move on.  If the site does keep providing great titles, the Google Alerts will tell you, and you’ll be building alternative resources and tools, too.

Next post, we’ll consider even more sources on the Internet that will provide even more romance titles to add to your list, before you start assessing the titles for their quality.

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A Toolkit And Compass for Romanceland

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

Romanceland Meltdown

This is Part 1 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)

________________________

How you shop for romance novels and how authors write and sell them is going through a fundamental revolution right now.  You, the reader, will benefit from the massive changes that aren’t just coming down the pipe…they’re already here.  They just haven’t popped into gear all over town yet.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, then you get this stuff.  So you’ll like what I’m about to tell you, if you don’t already know it.  Most of what I’m about to say you’ll understand intuitively.  It just makes sense.  But it takes someone saying it out loud to make it jell.

The publishing industry is transitioning from paper books to electronic books.  Soon, paper books will be like candles:  they’ll still exist, but they’ll be expensive specialty items, while the majority of the world uses e-books by default.  Already, e-books outsell paperbacks and many publishers are already considering paperback rights to be subsidiary rights to e-book rights.  About the only real mystery is how long the shift takes to happen.

But the next big revolutionary step is that authors are shrugging off royalty-paying publishers altogether, and moving to self-publishing, using a number of platforms that let them publish e-books directly to on-line booksellers like Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble and All Romance E-books.  They’re becoming independent authors.

This second revolution is the one that is causing the most angst in the industry right now, because it will topple the centuries old power structure that used to exist, where publishers used to dictate which books got published, usually with two year production schedules for each title.  Now, authors publish their books as fast as they can write them, which means you, the reader, get to pick from all the books that are written, instead of just the books the publishers think you might like.

The other benefit of this revolution is that authors are pitching their prices very, very low. $2.99 and 99 cents are common prices. Free is not unheard of.  Indie authors can afford to set these prices, because they are getting the lion’s share of the profit from each sale.  Legacy publishers can’t afford those prices because they have huge expenses to off-set, and they are struggling to come to terms with the whole idea of “cheap equals more sales”.

Indie authors who have several titles out there already have noticed a buying pattern emerging:  Readers will buy one “test” title.  Then they’ll come back and buy every single title the author has released, in one buying session — because the prices are so low.  Or they’ll buy all the titles in one series, in one shopping session.  Then they’ll come back and buy the next series, later.

This group-buying and author-buying trend points toward the future.

So does indie-publishing in general.  Because Amazon, Smashwords, and other on-line bookstores have virtual bookshelves, there is no competition for space.  An author doesn’t have to get “permission” to upload.  She just uploads.  As long as her book is correctly formatted, and she follows a few simple rules, she can publish any novel she cares to.

This has huge implications for the future of popular fiction, and for you, the reader.

Whereas once upon a time, the bookshelves at your local store were strictly limited to “romance” and maybe “fantasy”, and you had to carefully comb through them to find the authors you knew, or an imprint you knew that published the sort of books you liked. However, with virtual book sellers, the game has changed.

Indie authors can publish any sort of cross-genred, out-of-genre, weird-mixed, wonderfully inventive, whole-new-unique-to-her-genre romance they want.  It can have fairies and giants, krakens and mushrooms, as long as it has a happy-ever-after and a to-die-for hero (perhaps the only two constants of a romance, these days.)  Her romance doesn’t have to fit into a pre-defined category anymore, because she doesn`t have to get an editor of the big six publishing houses to like it to get it published.  If the romance works, the author can publish it and let the readers decide if it`s good, or not.

Of course, it helps that her romance be well written, or no one will read it.  But that’s one of the joys of the indie publishing game.  We enter it at our own risk.  If an author can’t write for peanuts, she’ll soon find out — the hard way.  Readers get to tell her with their wallets.  The indie publishing scene is a perfect feedback mechanism, because authors get their feedback directly from the readers via sales and/or communications like blogs and emails.  (But sales are more truthful.)  No gatekeepers like agents and editors exist to filter and distort the information.

So what will happen to the romance industry in the near future?

Here’s what I think will happen.  Here’s where I can see it going.  Here’s where I think you, the reader, get to have it all.

More and more authors are going to go indie.  And they’re going to realize they can write the books they really want to write, instead of staying in the straight jackets that the publishers, marketers and brick & mortar booksellers have insisted on for years.

That means the romance field is going to explode with interesting and varied romances the likes of which you have never seen before.  The shackles will be off authors’ imaginations, and you are going to have a buffet of romances to choose from, and not too many signposts to guide you.  If you thought the explosion of e-books from epublishers made it difficult, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

That means you will need to build your own tools and sources for finding decent romances.  It will no longer be good enough to simply buy up everything a single publisher releases, because you`ll be limiting yourself to a tiny corner of the market and (possibly) quickly grow bored with your romances.

Word-of-mouth about hot new series and titles will become the best way to find out who to buy next, because there will simply be so many authors out there, you won’t know who will be a good fit for your tastes, after you’ve bought up every title of the last author you fell in love with.  Amazon’s “if you like this, you’ll like that” links will help, but they won’t always tell you if the author they’re recommending can’t spell worth a damn or if the novel is full of grammar mistakes and typos…or if it’s just plain bad.

This is where you adding reader reviews and ratings becomes incredibly important, too.  If you’ve never bothered before, think about starting now.  Soon, readers will be the only guide for other readers.

The romance industry is already huge.  It’s about to become a giant industry, because romance authors, who were at the forefront of e-books and e-readers, are also now embracing indie publishing with a vengeance, too.  With their imagination, and with all the paranormal and fantasy worlds to explore, and the historical and romantic suspense fields to re-invent, mash-up, and re-live, you as a reader are in for thousands of special treats.

You just have to learn how to find them, because authors won’t be able to reach out and be heard across the whole industry.  It’ll be too damn big.  You’ll have to meet us half-way.

This series will offer you a set of tools, ideas, tips and tricks for finding good romances no matter where they’re hiding, and for making sure you’re staying on top of continual changes in the landscape of Romanceland.

Next:  Finding Books.

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