First, I was absolutely surprised to discover wild-with-enthusiasm fans. I mean, I knew women read romance novels, but as a reader, I was very picky with the genre and therefore very isolated. Plus, I never ran into other readers in the romance section of my local bookstore, something that never happened in the SF/F section. But I quickly came to appreciate romance’s fandom and was completely smittered with their bright enthusiasm. You see, my personal fan involvement was, before this, limited to SF/F and a wee bit of /H where geekdom ruled. Ladies, you’re quite a different bunch from the fandom of my prior knowledge!

When I looked to promote my novels with Ravenous Romance, I quickly discovered that romance fans had captured Yahoo groups as their preferred on-line communication and socializing vehicle and remain loyal to it, despite the newer, bigger, better tools of the so-called Web 2.0. Because they use an older method, I knew they had banded together years and have been together ever since. I’m still blinking my eyes in amazement at the volume of traffic any one Yahoo romance group generates!

Last, I because exceptionally sensitive to the romance reader’s demand for affordability. You see, I come from a family of book collectors and readers. Spending good money on books was never frowned upon or discouraged. Upon my mother’s death years ago, everyone agreed I should have her library of poetry and fiction — which takes up three tall bookcases. I have my parents’ joint Shaker library, several dozen books that command a wide three-shelf bookcase. Our SF/F/H collection? Four tall IKEA bookcase. The erotic and erotic romance collection? Two ROOMS.

So money has never been a huge object. Sensible shopping, however? A must. But that’s another story for another day.

Most romance readers, I’ve found, are far more frugal than me. But they’re every bit as voracious in their consumption. To stretch a dollar and feed their habit, they buy and sell and trader among themselves. (You should see the second-hand market on ebay!) They eschew the trade paperback. They buy electronic books. The only other reading circle I’ve seen who come close to this kind of savvy sharing are senior citizens, either at local town centers or bridge groups. And they don’t binge read the way romance fans do!

So, yes, this is an appreciation. Especially because this old dog learned a new trick from y’all. Thank you.

When I started blogging almost a decade ago (!) at my signature site, Pursed Lips, weblogs were primitive things. Believe it or not, the tools that allowed a comment section didn’t yet exist (well, outside of the alpha versions of Things To Come). Neither did blogrolls. Really, we just listed our links and wrote pointed little insights about them. If other bloggers wanted to comment on something you said, they linked to you and lent their two cents via their own blogs.

God, what cavemen we were back then!

The cavemen is me is going to be a tad agitated that I have to trust WordPress’s architectural over my own primitive (and often limited) coding instincts, but I’m delighted to have so many tools on hand. Special thanks to my good friend, Roger, who dragged me by the hair into modern times.

If you’re looking at WEW via a blog feed, please come visit directly. And whether you’re a long time reader or have just discovered me, comment! Honestly, having caught the twitblog bug this last year, I can’t believe what a hermit I’ve been through the years. Maybe I’ll turn into a social butterfly now!

Regardless, I welcome your participation and camaraderie.

To introduce myself to Ravenous Romance readers, I blogged about how I came to write erotica and erotic romance, first with The Transition and then with Then There’s the Sex. I’ll write about different schools of thought in my next entry.

Soon you’ll find some newly update links in my Novels section and here on the template. Keep an eye out!

(If RSS is easier for you, here’s the feed.)

Publishers Weekly supplied a response from Ingrams, Amazon main POD competitor, and I have to say, John Ingram certainly has my respect. Not only is he tempered in his response, but his company thought to actively recruit small publishers to the POD model by providing a program that provided meaningful and bottom-line worthy benefits.

I’m not about to tell you whether or not to buy from Amazon, but I’ve provided additional on-line bookstores that carry Inequities — Barnes and Noble, Borders, Powell’s. You can decide how you feel about this matter and how you want to address it.

And as an FYI, let me point you to this Teleread entry. It’s a solid summary and quite elucidating.