Re: Re: ebook sales

No, Noel, you're condescending toward the entire romance genre--or at  
least that's how you come across. If I've misinterpreted, I humbly  
apologize. However, you may recall this isn't the first time romance  
writers (and most erotica writers do straight romance as well) have  
been upset by the tone of one of your articles.

In this case the problem is that the tone of the article makes it  
sound as though the Triskelion/Mardi Gras/Silk's Vault disasters are  
the norm rather than the exception. And whether you intended it or  
not, linking them to the erotica/erotic romance genre implies a  
connection between sloppy business practices and what's being  
published. I can assure you there were sleazy ebook publishers well  
before this. Ask Kate about Crossroads.

You said: "Many of the epublishers of e-rotica have been experiencing  
financial and other difficulties."

In point of fact, less than a handful of epublishers of erotica are  
having problems. The ones that are were almost universally started by  
clueless people who thought they were going to be the next Ellora's  
Cave and become millionaires. Their demise is precisely the result one  
would expect when a business is run by people who don't know what  
they're doing.

You listed Amber Quill as an erotica publisher. They have an erotica  
line, but Amber Quill is a trade ebook publisher; they started in 2002  
after another publisher floundered and didn't start publishing erotic  
romance until a year or two later. There was no erotic romance ebook  
genre before Ellora's Cave, and EC was in business in 1998 or '99. The  
next two erotica publishers were Renaissance eBooks and eXtasy Books.  
eXtasy started in 2003.

As for Fictionwise, it has been around even longer than that, and  
eReader likewise, albeit not in its present incarnation. Fictionwise's  
first offerings where short stories from major SF writers. eReader  
used to belong to Palm, and absorbed both the Palm bookstore and  
Peanut Press, if memory serves.

The practices of the majority of erotica ebook publishers, including  
my partner's eXtasy Books, are as professional as those of any other  
publisher. In some cases, even more so. At least none of them have  
tried to lock up their authors in eternal contracts the way Simon &  
Schuster did. Most post a copy of their contract on their website so  
writers can see what they're getting into before they get into it.

Until very recently, all a writer needed to do if they became  
dissatisfied with the way they were being treated was ask to be  
relieved of their contract. That only stopped when it became clear  
there was a core of the unsatisfiable who were "publisher hopping."  
The minute a new publisher opened its virtual doors they would start  
complaining they were being mistreated--including reporting to Piers  
Anthony and Preditors & Editors and splashing their woes all over the  
web. The publisher who had them under contract would let them go just  
to avoid the headache.

Unfortunately, the falsehoods the writer had spread had usually taken  
on a life of their own by that time, which meant the publisher then to  
spend more time correcting them.

That's why it's dangerous to go by what you read on blogs and other  
such sources. It's also why a group of us decided it was time to have  
a formal organization specific to the needs of publishers who use  
digital formats--ebooks, audiobooks and print-on-demand--which we are  
slowly putting together. If you want to know what's happening with the  
ebook industry, why don't you talk to people who actually know  
something about it rather than getting your information from Nora  
Roberts's blog? Ms. Roberts knows squat about the independents, and  
it's a given she's only hearing from the injured. Her outrage is  
appreciated, but it's the response of an outsider--and an essentially  
uninformed one, at that. I you have questions about what's going on  
with that aspect of publishing, feel free to contact me. If I can't  
answer, I can probably steer you to someone who can. So can Brenna  
Lyons.

FYI, two independent ebook publishers placed bids on the Triskelion  
contracts with the bankruptcy court so they could free the authors who  
are now in bondage to submit their work elsewhere. That reflects the  
real attitude of publishers in the independent ebook community, the  
majority of whom are doing just fine, thanks: Hard Shell Word Factory,  
Awe-Struck eBooks, Double Dragon Ebooks, Loose Id, New Concepts,  
Champagne Books...shall I go on?

Triskelion's problems are the direct result of bad business choices.  
They went into debt trying to gain recognition from the Romance  
Writers of America and didn't have the financial reserves to counter  
the impact of returns and late-paying vendors. That they didn't have  
the courage to be honest with their authors is a different issue.  
There was trouble at Mardi Gras long before they went belly-up, and  
they, like Amber Quill, also published other genres. In both cases,  
Triskelion and Mardi Gras, the inability of the parties involved to  
'fess up was the problem, not some inherent evil in independent ebook  
publishing or erotica/erotic romance publishing.

Contrast that with the owner of Chippewa Publishing, who was forced to  
give up her company for personal reasons. She released all her authors  
immediately after the decision was made, and made the decision before  
there was any chance of disaster. Again, in the nearly ten years I've  
been associated with the indies, that's been standard.

L
Elizabeth Burton, Executive Editor
Zumaya Publications LLC
http://www.zumayapublications.com
Opening doors to the creative mind


On Nov 16, 2007, at 11:47 AM, Noel Griese wrote:

Yeah, I'm down on the sleazy practices of some of the e-rotica e-book  
publishers, but so is Nora Roberts, the diva of romance writers, with  
more than 260 million books in print.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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