NCP has hired a new editor with impressive credentials. From the NCP site: "Jeri Smith Youness is a former acquisitions editor and cover copywriter for Macmillan, Berkley, Silhouette and Penguin USA in New York City. She has taught romance writing at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and has worked as an evaluation editor for Romantic Times in New York for over ten years. She is the author of three gothic novels, LEGACY OF HUNTER HOUSE, WITCH TREE INN and THE HAUNTING OF VICTORIA, which won the Bookrak Best-selling Gothic award."
She's looking to acquire "Paranormal, Fantasy, Sci-fi/ Futuristic that are spicy or erotic, Historical romance (not Western). She will consider Romantic Suspense and Contemporary Romance, as long as they are well researched and well written."
In other news, I discussed my writing in emails with the boss at NCP the other day and she told me that contemporary sales are "sluggish" for them. I get the impression that she thinks writing contemps for them is not something that's ever likely to win me a big audience. As a consequence, I think In the Mood will probably be my last contemp for them. It's a bit on the ironic side that a genre that regularly hits the USA Today Bestseller list for New York pubs can't find a big audience when it comes to e-publishing!
I don't get this either, Ellen. Is it, perhaps, because contemporaries are doing so well in print publishing that people aren't turning to epubs to find what is readily available elsewhere?
ReplyDeleteFor years, it seems to me that epublishers were a source for the books that print publishers wouldn't touch -- for reasons like a WWII time period, too erotic, fantasy worlds, France or Egyptian settings and so on. Now, we're seeing some 'guidelines' open up. Heck, Medallion openly says they want 'out of the box' and it doesn't matter where your book is set.
I don't know the answers. I'm just conjecturing for the sake of discussion. :-)
I think you've hit the nail on the head, Mary. The problem is that I tend to write characters that are a bit "out of the box" for New York-- b*tchy heroines, virginal heroes-- but I'm not "out of the box" enough to appeal to e-readers. Sigh. I don't know what the answer is...
ReplyDeleteSo far I write a bit too out of the box for NYC, too. FWIW, Ellen, my former epublisher, Nasty Buncha Idiots (TM), were very frank that contemporaries did not sell well for them. Now that Amber Quill has re-issued my book...cripes, I hope I'm not a huge drain on *their* resources, LOL! Nasty Buncha would not publish erotica (for valid reasons - didn't fall within the publisher's belief systems). It's my cross-my-fingers hope that purchasers of erotica visiting the AQP site will pick up other genres out of interest and hopefully build sales. I do know erotica routinely tops the sales charts at AQP - and that's a genre not easily available at Safeway....
ReplyDeleteI think, with so much available in the traditional bookstores for the contemporary market and with the ebook contemps costing just as much, in fact in some cases MORE, than what's in the grocery store, for example, there's no real need for a reader to turn to ebooks for her contemp. fix. Unfortunately.
Cindy