Love in Dark Settings

. . . in response to their appalling clarification of their change in rules.

( The letter )

Lambda Literary Awards is apparently excluding certain previously eligible writers from eligibility, based on their gender and orientation. Boys Next Door has a summary and links to the blogosphere reaction. See also the additional commentary by TeddyPig.

( My thoughts, and a quotation )

The PDF file of Rebirth is off to the proofreaders, so I can give you folks your first glimpse of what the paperback will look like. The letters are smudged in this enlarged reproduction, because of the manner in which I placed it online, and of course there's no guarantee that I won't end up revising the layout of this particular page. But you'll at least be able to see what a handsome typeface Hoefler Text is.

( Image and grumbles about drop caps )

Anyway, I'm projecting a late August to September publication date for the paperback, which is later in the year than I'd like, but at least it'll be out this year.

This is my summary of and commentary on the Rogue Digital Conference, a presentation on digital publishing that was held today in Washington, D.C., by several folks in the romance fiction industry. The initial quotations in each section are from the official announcement of the conference. If I've misquoted or misinterpreted anything anyone said, I hope someone who attended the conference will correct me. (Incidentally, the conference was officially tweeted, so I assume that the organizers don't mind their remarks being reported in public.)

( Read more... )

This was my first real-life contact with the romance community (I've been hanging out online with romance writers since 2005), and I was struck by how similar the conference attendees were to slashers. There was the same sort of immediate friendliness, cheerfulness, good humor, and informal give-and-take. (Also, the same relative lack of men in the room.) In fact, I left the Rogue Digital Conference regretting that I couldn't afford the RWA Conference; if this is typical of RWA-connected gatherings, the RWA Conference attendees must be having a fun time this week.

Incidentally, the first person to greet me - and who had to prod my poor memory for her name - was someone I knew from the Erotic Romance Writers Forum . . . and whom I'd met at the last Con.txt slash fiction convention. Sitting next to her was a woman who turned out to be from Romance Divas, and who recognized my name from my posts at the Diva forums. That was nice, having my name recognized. Unfortunately, that was pretty much the only chance I had to talk with anyone there - other than a brief chat with a representative from the publisher Avon, who happened to be sitting next to me - but overall, it was a fun and informative gathering to attend. I'm glad I had the chance to do so.

I had written that I'd want to read a particular author's work before buying a book by them. lee_rowan pointed me to a free short story by that author at All Romance e-books.

My reply:

(*Rushes over to All Romance.*)

However (not to sound ungrateful, which I undoubtedly do), this seems the proper time to explain why free online samples and free short fiction aren't of much use to me when I'm deciding whether to buy a book.

( Read more... )

As an antidote to a really discouraging day struggling with InDesign, I've decided to put together a guide to the most popular print-on-demand services used by self-publishers. At least two of you folks here might be interested by this information. :)

(Those of you who are knowledgeable, please correct any mistakes I've made.)

Currently, the Big Three are Lulu, CreateSpace, and Lightning Source. All three services take care of printing and distributing books for self-publishers, for fees that range from moderate to zero. All three are recommended frequently enough to suggest that they're reasonably satisfactory services. I've only used Lulu myself, but I've hung out at forums where CreateSpace and Lightning Source self-publishers post.

( Lulu )
( CreateSpace )
( Lightning Source (LSI) )
( Running the numbers )
( Further reading )

This is long enough that it deserves its own post. I visited a couple of D.C. bookstores on April 22 and compiled a list of all the m/m books with contributions by authors whom I recognized as being from the slash, yaoi, or genre romance communities. (I use the term "m/m" here as a convenient short-hand to refer to books from those communities. Of course there are many authors of gay love stories who don't belong to those communities, but I didn't list their books.) I thought you guys might be interested in seeing how far writers from those communities have made it onto the shelves of bookstores.

( Lambda Rising )
( Borders )
( My conclusions )