The Complete Ellora’s Cave Primer for Newbies Who Are Too Afraid To Ask – Part 2

What Ellora’s Cave Has To Offer You, The Reader

Jump to Part 1: What is Ellora’s Cave?
Jump to Part 2: What Ellora’s Cave Has To Offer You, The Reader
Jump to Part 3: How to Ease into Ellora’s Cave
Jump To Part 4: Other Way To Keep Up With Ellora’s Cave

Last post, I covered what Ellora’s Cave is, and how it got started.  Now I’m going to cover what it has, so to speak.  What’s inside the cave.  Hardly a surprise, but what you’ll find inside the cave is books.  Lots and lots of books.  But to make it easier for you to wrap your head around the size, number and style of books Ellora’s Cave have to offer, let’s break down the books they have to offer into the many different categories and divisions they have available for you to pick and choose from.

Genres

The biggest and simplest breakdown of categories, and the easiest way to ease yourself into the books inside the cave is to use the Genres.  Ellora’s Cave have some unique genre names, but they’re really the same genres that you know and love elsewhere:

Aeon = Futuristic/SciFi
Breathless = Romantic Suspense
Exotika = Erotic Fiction
Fusion = Multicultural/ Interracial
Lawless = Western
Legend = Historical
Moderne = Contemporary
Sophisticate = Older Woman, Younger Man
Spectrum = Gay/Lesbian
Taboo = BDSM
Twilight = Paranormal
Voyager = Time Travel
Xanadu = Fantasy

If you look at the top of many of the new Ellora’s Cave book covers, you’ll notice a banner at the top that shows the genre very clearly:

One of these genres, above, I should point out is not erotic romance.  Remember that discussion from the last post?  Ellora’s Cave have branched out from offering 100% erotic romance since they opened their door, and some of what they offer isn’t purely erotic romance.  Clearly, Exotika is not.  However, Taboo is erotic romance fiction, regardless of its extreme nature, and so is the Spectrum genre.

When you open the home page of Ellora’s Cave, you’ll find all the genres listed on the left, at the top.  Click on the one you’ll like to browse, and all the current titles available in that genre will list themselves in the browser window.  Click on any titles that interest you to read the blurb, and away you go.

Themes

This is where is can get a little confusing.  Although you can browse for books via the genres, you can also browse for books via themes.  The themes include:

19th Century

20th Century

Light BDSM

Christmas

Comedy

Female/Female

Holiday

Interracial Element

Medieval

Menage or more

Male/Male

Paranormal Elements

Regency

Rubenesque

Shapeshifter

Valentine’s Day

Vampire

As you can see from the list of themes, it’s possible for each book to carry more than one theme.  It’s also possible for themes to carry across the genres.  For instance, it’s possible to find books that feature Light BDSM sex scenes in historicals, in contemporaries, in romantic suspense, in futuristics…

On the other hand, some themes are genre specific.  You’ll only find Regency themes in the historical genre.  Therefore, this theme works to further refine the historical genre.

Themes can change from season to season and year to year, too.  As current reader tastes change, or a hot trend hits, a theme may be added or deleted.  Themes are more fluid and temporary than genres.

You’ll find themes listed right below the genres on the front page of the EC website.  Just click on the theme you’re interested in browsing, and any book with that theme in it will assemble in the browser window for you.  Click on any titles that interest you, and the blurb will open for you.

Navigating Around

At the top left of the home page there are a series of links in the navigation bar that you’ll find the most useful for getting around the website.

Home

You’re on the home page as soon as you arrive, and the book covers and titles arrayed to the right as soon as you arrive there are those books that are available right now.  They’re already released, ready to go.  There’s nothing to stop you buying them as soon as you look at them and decide that yep, they’re what you want.  However, the handful of titles that you see on the front page are only the latest releases — the twelve or sixteen titles that were released in the last three days.  Ellora’s Cave release twelve or so titles twice a week, so that front page changes twice a week…see what I mean about keeping up or drowning?

One of the major joys of electronic publishing, however, is that the older titles don’t ever go away completely, like they would in a book store.  Once they slip off that front page, by browsing with the genres tabs, theme tabs and other search functions that I’ll explain below, you can find more titles to read.

Coming Soon

Pretty self explanatory.  Just in case you weren’t having trouble keeping up with what’s already available, you can also check out what’s coming up in the next four to six weeks, and torture yourself with what you can’t have yet.

New Releases

This is a complete list (usually multi-screens) of all the new releases.

Paperback Checklist

The paperback checklist is a list designed to be printed, for the Ellora’s Cave readers who collect the print versions of every print edition out there.  This is for the real fanatics — and there’s more than a few, as the existence of this list demonstrates.  The idea is that you print this list off, which gives a complete listing of every available EC print edition out there, including the ISBN number, and a column where the reader can check off whether they own the volumne, or need to buy it, or whether the volume is a new one, or not.

The list is regularly updated.

Books on Sale

EC regularly place various print and ebook titles on sale.  Check here to find out which titles are on sale, for nice bargains and deals.

Free Reads

This is a great feature for introducing yourself to new-to-you authors.  These are original, honest-to-goodness free stories, available only at Ellora’s Cave.  Try the free read, and if you like it, check out that author’s other titles.

by Author

This is where you can start to drill down into the huge range of books that aren’t visible at the front page.  One of the ways you can search is by Author.  When you click on this link you get a page that lists every single author published by Ellora’s Cave, alphabetically.  Click on the author that interests you, and you’ll get another page opening up, with that author’s titles available at EC, a bio and a link to their personal website and email address.

by Series

Another function that will help you sort through the hundreds of titles.  EC does a huge number of special series, such as the Torrid Tarot series, where authors write stories all related to tarot cards, and the stories are all published around the same time.

In addition, individual authors can do their own individual series, such as my Guns ‘n Lovers series that started with Red Leopard and Black Heart and will soon feature a third book.

There’s also sometimes limited author series, such as the Going Down Under series recently, that was for Australian authors, that my Ningaloo Nights novella is a part of.

All these series are listed by series name on the series page that opens up when you click on the “by Series” link.  If you click on a series name that intrigues you, all the titles linked to that series will assemble on a new page for you.

Anthologies

Ellora’s Cave is big on anthologies.  Quickies, their names for short stories, can only be sold as single items electronically, so when it comes to print, they get packaged up together into anthologies.  And the Ellora’s Cave Caveman Anthologies have always been enormously popular in both ebook and print, since the first year of operation.

So the Anthology link is another way to sort through the titles and find books to read.

Quickies

Ellora’s Cave’s short stories are cheap, quick to read, and a great way to introduce yourself to a new author.  They’re incredibly popular.  The Quickies link will help you find short stories to read easily and, well, quickly.

Ellora’s Cavemen

As I mentioned just a moment ago, the Cavemen anthologies are hugely popular, to the point where they’ve got their own sort link.  Click on this link, and you get a page (and more) of Cavemen anthology titles to chose from.

Español

Ellora’s Cave is also published in Spanish. Si usted lee a españoles más fácilmente que usted hace inglés, chascar encendido este acoplamiento y comprar su Ellora’ títulos de la cueva de s en español, en lugar.

Shirts, Cards & More

You have to look for this link, because it’s kinda hiding out beneath the themes links.  But it’s there.  If you’d like teeshirts, playing cards, and other merchandise with the Ellora’s Cave logo on it (and there’s some really cool stuff there), here’s where you go.

Ebooks & Print Books

As soon as you get comfortable and you’re ready to buy, one of the things you’ll need to watch out for is format.  Ellora’s Cave has two formats: print and ebook.  Everything single title they sell is available in ebook.  Not all titles are available in print.

Whether a book is available in print is dependent upon a handful of factors including how well it does in sales, how old it is (even if it’s a best seller, it still won’t go to print until it’s been out at least for a few months in ebook), and how big it is.  A quickie, even a six month old best seller, simply can’t be put in print if there isn’t an anthology available for it to go into.  It can’t be printed on its own.  Novellas don’t get printed on their own either.    There’s a lot of factors that affect whether a book gets into print or not.  Ellora’s Cave provide the print version as a secondary format only.  They’re an epublisher first and foremost.

Cerridwen Press

And if that wasn’t enough, Ellora’s Cave has two other imprints for you to check out.  If you scroll right down to the bottom of the home page, you’ll see two logos on the left.  Cerridwen Press is a general fiction imprint.  They publish everything that Ellora’s Cave don’t, if you’d like an easy definition, including seven of my own titles over the next year. (Eyes of a Stranger, Dare to Return, Betting With Lucifer, Dead Double, Dead Again, Diana by the Moon and Heart of Vengeance.)

Lotus Circle

Lotus Circle is the other Ellora’s Cave imprint, and the easy definition is that they do “psychic fiction.”  But that’s probably putting it far too simply.  I would encourage you to click on the link and take a look at some of their titles and blurbs, and see if it’s to your liking.  Like all things Ellora’s Cave, the books are a bit different, and not exactly what New York publishing is putting out these days.

Next:  How to Ease Into Ellora’s Cave

Jump to Part 1: What is Ellora’s Cave?
Jump to Part 2: What Ellora’s Cave Has To Offer You, The Reader
Jump to Part 3: How to Ease into Ellora’s Cave
Jump To Part 4: Other Way To Keep Up With Ellora’s Cave

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