Sure, romance readers may gravitate towards certain familiar themes and/or settings, but it’s the writing that hooks them.

There is only one Laura Lee Guhrke, just as there is only one Judith Ivory, one Julia Quinn, one Sherry Thomas, one Tessa Dare, and so on.

What keeps the readers returning is not the setting, but the writing–which is why I try my hardest to improve my craft and not worry that my setting isn’t “marketable.”

I don’t recall anyone in the publishing business asking me what I want to read. Therefore, how can the editors, publishers, distributors, and booksellers know what the readers want, if they offer us so little choice?

Right now there are essentially only five types of romance fiction on the market. There are contemporary romances, in which the hero is a billionaire; historicals, in which he’s a duke; paranormals, in which he’s a vampire, werewolf, or demon; inspirationals, in which there’s no sex; and erotica, in which there’s nothing but sex. And that’s it.

If you’re a reader who digs one or more of the above, good for you. But if you want something even slightly different, there’s nothing available. The market is strictly take-it-or-leave-it. If works that fit the strict genre formulas are all that’s being published, then of course that’s all that’s selling.

I might get in trouble for saying this, but I don’t think the romance fiction industry is serving its readership very well. There must plenty of us who would love more variety in our reading diets. We’d provide the publishers and authors with plenty of income and a larger, more loyal reader base if the powers-that-be were more responsive to our wishes.

But what we want is simply not available. We don’t get the books we like, and the industry misses out on a potential stream of revenue. It’s a lose-lose situation.

And if anyone says, “But romance fiction that deviates from the genre formulas doesn’t sell”—well of course it’s not selling, because it’s not being published. How can anyone know anything won’t sell if it’s not on the market?

And no, we readers won’t buy books we don’t like simply because they’re for sale. We won’t buy books at all. I suspect this is a big factor in the current economic malaise in book publishing.

I wish I had a solution, but the problem is too big for me. I’ll just get back to pounding out my work in progress, a romance novel in which the hero’s an ordinary guy . . . .

The etiquette part comes when you get an offer of representation. When that happens, you’ll want to let the other agents, who have requested material from you, know that you’ve received an offer. It gives them a chance to review your material before you say yes to the other agent. Plus, if you do accept representation elsewhere, you’ll want to let them know so they don’t spend hours reading your material.

Having said all that, you might get an agent who requests an exclusive read for a period of time. I’ve never had this, but a friend has. She gave the agent an exclusive for 30 days.

Hope this helps.
Tracey

Thanks, Tracey

Neither do book distributors. In this market, where book sales are monitored instantly, distributors and publishers know what’s selling and what’s not at any given moment. Because of that, they watch an author’s sales numbers very closely. If they see an author’s sales dip over two books, or even one book, that author can be seen as trending down and will not be ordered in the same amount next time. Even if the publisher put a crappy cover on it, even if the publisher insisted on a different (and stupid) title, even if the book came out the same month as September 11, if it doesn’t sell as expected, it’s always blamed on the author not writing a commericial enough book and their orders for that author drop. Downtrends in sales numbers mean an author’s next book won’t be ordered as much, which means it won’t be in as many stores, and fewer readers will it. If that continues over two, or at the most three, books, an author will not be picked up again by their publisher. And since all publishers have access to the same sales info, an author let go at one house may not ever be published again, regardless of her talent. And the lack of independent bookstores means no hand-selling and fewer word-of-mouth recommendations, so an author has a harder time than ever before in recovering from a downturn because no one wants to take a chance on an author deemed a “has-been”. With bills to pay and families to feed, and file-sharing sites offering pirated (stolen) copies of our books for free, authors do what they have to do to survive. We say, fine, I’ll write books with dukes set in England if that’s what it takes. That’s what readers are buying. I learned that lesson the hard way. I wrote a book set in Colonial America once, and it almost tanked my entire career. That’s why you see so many books set in the Regency period. That’s what sells best.

Romance publishing is a brutal business, sad to say.

I love you work, Laura. I’ve never read Edwardian but will now check it out.