Saturday night was the “Oscars” for romance, which is called RITA (no idea what that stands for, if anything). I saw something interesting in the results that made me form a hypothesis, and I want to test my hypothesis, so I’ll be reading the following books in August, which are the nominees for the “Novel with Strong Romantic Elements” category:
Last Dance At Jitterbug Lounge by Pamela Morsi
The House on Tradd Street by Karen White
The Paper Marriage by Susan Kay Law
The Shape of Mercy by Susan Meissner (must ILL this one)
The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley
Tribute by Nora Roberts
Where Serpents Sleep by C.S. Harris
Aside: I was going to buy all these in ebook, but I had put the first three in my basket at BooksOnBoard and they were all just too damned expensive. So helloooooo Mid-Continent Public Library. I’ll read paper for free before I’ll plunk down $13+ for an ebook. Bite me, publishers. This is how you encourage pirates to steal your authors’ work and take money away from them. Please note deliberate sentence construction.
Also, I am on schedule (actually ahead of) for my July reading list.
July 21st, 2009 at 2:50 pm
This is one of those terrible dilemmas. The high cost of books is certainly cutting into our shrinking income. But not buying books is killing off bookstores all over the country. At the RWA convention a VPs of sales was discussing this at one of the publishers parties and told us that sales of the MAJOR authors were down from 19 to 30 percent. I have several friends who are not major authors and who are not getting new contracts or the advances are so small that they came make more welcoming you to Wallmart. I don’t have an answer, just wanted to vent.
July 21st, 2009 at 2:52 pm
You are welcome to come here and vent all you want.
Please note, those were the EBOOK prices, not hardcover, which is even WORSE, if you ask me.
So, Steve in New Orleans, welcome!