{"id":1378,"date":"2010-12-12T13:46:50","date_gmt":"2010-12-12T17:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/?p=1378"},"modified":"2010-12-12T14:15:35","modified_gmt":"2010-12-12T18:15:35","slug":"pebbling-nipples-rippling-abs-ringing-registers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/12\/pebbling-nipples-rippling-abs-ringing-registers\/","title":{"rendered":"Pebbling Nipples, Rippling Abs & Ringing Registers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some of the hot news this week promises hotter sales in 2011 for crafters of HEAs, like yours truly.\u00a0 Yes, Virginia, Bowker says\u00a0 it.\u00a0 The New York Times says it. Even Smart Bitch Sarah Wendell says it<\/a>. And if the Smart Bitches <\/a>say it, then\u00a0it must be true - \"Romance is now the fastest-growing segment of the e-reading market, ahead of general fiction, mystery and science fiction, according to data from Bowker, a research organization for the publishing industry.\"\u00a0<\/p>\n

Industry honchos say<\/a> that the \"discreet power\" of the e-book reader mean that \"romance novels are now enjoying a renaissance.\"\u00a0 The popular wisdom is that e-readers allow their owners to read whatever they like privately, without displaying the covers of the books.\u00a0 Romance novel covers have long been a platform for showing long-locked bare-chested lads with rippling abs embracing a longer-locked lady with a\u00a0low cut bodice or a silk gown tight enough to show off her pebbling nipples.<\/p>\n

Those-who-know-these-things\u00a0say that lots of ladies have been hesitant to indulge in lovely, lusty tales because of these cover images.\u00a0 In the NY Times piece a CFO of All Romance\u00a0quotes e-reader customers who've said they can now indulge their love of romance novels - without having to \"show my husband what I'm reading.\"\u00a0\u00a0The switched.com piece says mass-transit commuters\u00a0with e-readers are downloading romances in record numbers because they don't have to worry \"about a fellow traveler casting a judgemental glance\" at the book cover.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

I have trouble identifying with any of this.\u00a0 I've never cared what anyone thought of my romance novels - covers and all.\u00a0\u00a0Whatever romance novel I was reading accompanied me to college and law school classes.\u00a0 The only time I ever had a professor object to a book\u00a0didn't involve a romance novel. (At Francis Marion University one of my profs made\u00a0me take\u00a0me take\u00a0James Joyce's\u00a0\"Ulysses\"<\/a> outside her classroom and\u00a0made me promise never again to bring\u00a0the novel\u00a0back into her presence.\u00a0 It turns out the professor\u00a0wrote her\u00a0doctoral thesis on the book and never wanted to see it again.)<\/p>\n

And women worrying about telling their hubby they are reading a romance or being afraid to show him the cover?\u00a0 Oh, please.\u00a0 Who are these women?\u00a0 Did they poll refugees from the\u00a01950s?\u00a0 If a woman is that concerned with her hubby's opinion of her reading material, then her marriage has far, far deeper problems than romance novels.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Besides, in my household Mr. Quack designs the romance novel covers.\u00a0 All of the earlier book covers were pretty\u00a0non-offensive and gender neutral, but they were striking covers with very graphic images.\u00a0 They're killer covers but they\u00a0don't necessarily sell sex and lust.\u00a0 We both adore the covers, but the one I'm writing now,\u00a0The Duke of Eden (it's up as a serial on Amazon BTW), has a much more graphic cover.\u00a0 \u00a0Currently in Casa de Quack hubby and I have been talking about him doing some new covers for the earlier books that are more graphic.\u00a0 Yes, we're talking about adding pebbling nipples and rippling abs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why?\u00a0 Because we've learned that sex still sells.\u00a0 And Quacking Alone Romances is very much a joint enterprise.\u00a0\u00a0 What's good for the brand is good for our\u00a0bank account.\u00a0 And what's good for the brand is what sells.\u00a0 Some of the very best-selling e-reading material is erotica of the kind that can make me blush - and that ain't an easy thing.\u00a0 We've learned that the graphic covers grab the eye and we'll never\u00a0get readers to press the buy button if we don't get their attention first.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I don't think that romance sales are going up because women can read the books without fear of being judged.\u00a0 Most of the ladies I know are strong women with independent minds and don't care a fig who does or doesn't \"approve\" of the cover of whatever they are reading.\u00a0 I think romance sales are going up because a new generation of women is getting out in the dating and working and real-life world.\u00a0 And they're discovering that reality offers few happy endings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If women want to be entertained with sex and lust and forbidden desire then romance is the genre for them.\u00a0 If they want heart-tugging moments and heroes who'll face and overcome their worst fear for their ladies then romance novels (including\u00a0my Forever<\/em> series<\/a>) are the books for them.\u00a0 I think that the covers grab the eye, but the plots sell the books.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Don't get me wrong.\u00a0 There may\u00a0actually be a few\u00a0timid women who will only buy romance if they can do it on an e-reader where\u00a0their husbands or\u00a0total strangers won't \"judge\" or \"disapprove\" of the covers.\u00a0 And if those folks are looking for a good romance, I hope they'll pick up one - or two -\u00a0or ALL of mine<\/a>.\u00a0 But I hope that reading romance gives them more than love and lust and happy endings.\u00a0 I hope that it gives them strength and independence.<\/p>\n

There's nothing wrong with a sexy image.\u00a0 Ask Ford, GM, Mercedes, Victoria's Secret, or Calvin Klein.\u00a0 Ask any of the folks at Project Runway.\u00a0 Ask the shampoo companies, Cover Girl or Tyra Banks, Miss J or any of the folks at America's Next Top Model.\u00a0 Sex sells and that's as American as Apple Pie.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lord love a duck, I'm happy to\u00a0hear everyone, including Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch talking about romance selling and recognizing that the romance buyer is\u00a0\"really, really valuable.\"\u00a0\u00a0I've been a romance reader and a romance buyer for a lot longer than I've been a romance author.\u00a0 And I agree that romance buyers are amongst the most loyal folks on earth and they're buyers who will go back and buy the entire backlist of a new author they discover.\u00a0If the anonymity of romance buying on an e-reader makes it easier for some folks, then I'm glad of that too.\u00a0 The biggest hurdle is getting the readers to read a romance novel.\u00a0 Once a reader has jumped that particular fence, then she's on the other side.\u00a0 And romance novels are like potato chips - you can't buy just one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0Even if the covers irritate you a little, you'll still want them on the device.\u00a0 Another lawyer who agrees with me on that is the Iowa\u00a0attorney who runs a blog under a\u00a0pseudonym, \"Jane Little\" of Dear Author<\/a>.\u00a0 She's quoted in the NY Times\u00a0article as noting that she finds the covers\u00a0irritating and doesn't love them but she'd \"rather have them than not have them\" when she downloads a book.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So\u00a0we, at QA Romances have come to believe that a sexy cover will still be a big marketing advantage in the age of the e-reader.\u00a0\u00a0I'm glad to see that more and more and more folks are buying romance.\u00a0 It's just that whether they flash those covers on a paperback or tuck them away in an e-reader, we'd rather that more of them be our covers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even if those-who-know-these-things say that buyers are buying more romances because they don't have to display the covers, those covers had a LOT to do with why the reader bought the book to begin with.\u00a0 So I guess, what I'm saying is this:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pebbling Nipples, Rippling Abs and\u00a0Ringing Registers Ahoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of the hot news this week promises hotter sales in 2011 for crafters of HEAs, like yours truly.\u00a0 Yes, Virginia, Bowker says\u00a0 it.\u00a0 The New York Times says it. Even Smart Bitch Sarah Wendell says it. And if the Smart Bitches say it, then\u00a0it must be true - \"Romance is now the fastest-growing segment ...continue reading \"Pebbling Nipples, Rippling Abs & Ringing Registers\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,4,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1378"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1387,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions\/1387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}