Samhain Publishing is winding down and will close

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

That's a bias. That's a form of gatekeeping. If it's correct (and I presume it is, based on the experience of the poster).

It's a form of gatekeeping for how things are sold and marketed in Amazon's store I suppose (although maybe not the best term for it), but in books/publishing (which I think is how many posters are thinking about the term) gatekeeping is generally a term for a mechanism for deciding what gets published. In other words if you can't get an acquisitions editor to buy your book and publish it you didn't get past the gate keeper. With self-publishing there is no gatekeeping in that sense. Amazon, and other stores, will let anything that falls within their very broad guidelines be published whether it meets some minimal standards of what can be called decent writing or not.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

Many posts by people on this thread directly involved with independent publishing disagree with you. If Amazon imposes any kind of biased filter, sort or algorithm, or if it makes advertising/visibility more available to some than others, than it is acting as a gatekeeper.

It has been stated repeatedly (though some have disagreed) that Amazon has made it more difficult for indies to have visibility on the Amazon website than in the past, and in addition, Amazon has made Big 6 publications more visible.

That's a bias. That's a form of gatekeeping.

Yes and no.
Passing judgment on any Amazon bias isn't a clearcut matter.
Not like when Nook was systematically shifting all Indie (romances?) downwards 100 slots to keep them off the first page of their listings. That was easy to spot and they had to stop once they were called out on it.

With Amazon there's a variety of effects going on:

1 - not all Indies are equal. KDP Select (the Kindle exclusives) have higher visibility from being in KU which results in slightly lower sales in return for the page read payouts. (For some it is a net gain, for others a loss offset by the higher visibility of their brand, while for others it is a net loss. Milleage varies.) Nonetheless, since KU reads count towards rankings (people paid to read the book, indirectly but they paid) those reads mean a higher ranking for the Kindle store listing. This disadvantages Indies not in KU.

2- Amazon Publishing books are (because of the boycott) de facto Amazon exclusives. So to compensate, Amazon promotes them heavily. And their catalog is growing. They have a lot of really good books. More, some of those books are used by the PRIME unit as perks for subscribers, who every month get to choose one of six as a free-to-them perk. (PRIME pays APub & Kindle for those books. They're deep discounted but paid-for so, again, they count towards the rankings.) I've seen no estimates of what percentage of Prime subscribers actually download their Kindle First books but there's on the order of 50million Prime subscribers in the US. Look at the rankings early in the month and you'll see a big spike for those books. If you're an Indie publisher you probably don't want to release your book the first week of the month.

3- By some reports, Amazon is now doing coop promotions separate from the alsobots and Kindle store algorithm promos. They don't discriminate but they're not cheap if the reports can be trusted. Unlike the paid promo services they apparently cap the number of promo slots the BPHs can buy but again, it is a visibility tool the smaller indies can't afford.

4- there's a lot more Indie publishers active and, unlike the tradpubs, they don't stop at two books a year per author. There's a lot of books coming out both bad and good. Ten years ago, a good ebookstore carried 30,000 titles. Nook launched with 35,000 if i recall correctly. Today, Kindle is running around 5M titles and KU runs well over 1M heading to 1.5M. A lot of that growth is the last three years.

Add it all up and the total Kindle environment is a lot more challenging than it used to be. The silver lining is that the new environment is shaking out a good portion of the quick buck and delusional players. With the gold rush over the business will start to settle down for authors actually looking to build a stable long-term career.

There is no need to posit an actual anti-Indie bias at Amazon when a lot of the factors are externally-driven. Like, take away the boycott and A-Pub would be spreading their promotional budget more broadly instead of concentrating it on Kindle. If other ebookstores were more effective at selling ebooks (and Nook weren't imploding) we wouldn't be seeing as many Indies going all-in on KDP Select and putting *all* their titles into KU full time.

Things change and change isn't always in one direction.
Tech disruptions and new product evolutions take time to shake out.

The story isn't ending but the business is starting to take on it's long term shape and what worked in 2011 stopped working in 2012 and what worked in2014 didn't work as well in 2016.

We have yet to see how 2017 plays out but it most likely won't be like 2016. The changes are still coming.

Trends to watch? More Indies doing print and audio is obvious. Kindle Unlimited 3.0 is just about due. I suspect it might come with a cap on the number of titles a publisher can keep on KU at any time, encouraging a rotation of titles. And there's still the fallout from the slow motion fade of Nook...

It's a tough business.
Always has been.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Exactly I can tell from those in this thread that some are really out of touch with readers particularly romance readers.

I too have seen the entitlement attitude in some writers forums.

Samhain went down for several reasons but mainly due to readers wanting quality and more plot to their stories. Their bestselling authors left and were never replaced. They were one of the first digital imprints in romance. They have been around for a long time. They focused mostly on the spicier side of romance to erotica. As I said before when 50 Shades happened too many jump on the bandwagon and now the market is shifting away from that the publishers that tried to take advantage of that trend are suffering or going under.

Sent from my XT1528

Yes. Nothing bothers more than seeing an author say that they are "writing to the market" If you're a cozy mystery author, and all of a sudden sparkly vampires are "in" so you switch to paranormal/shifter romance, I'm going to lose all respect for you. The last time I posted on an author forum, I got berated for saying something similar because I needed to understand that this was messing with people's "business" and that I should just basically shut up about things I knew nothing about.

Too many "authors" are just in it to make a quick buck. I'm not saying that authors shouldn't make a living--of course they should! BUT...if all they are worried about is "easy money", and what the next trend is, then I don't want to read their garbage. I want to read books by people that like to write, and read. There was an author on one forum I saw who was talking about how they only read 1 or 2 books a year. Yeah...I don't want to read anything written by that person.

Shari

PS...yes, I know. Another rant. Sorry again.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

I'm not an expert on the "romance" genre (I like space-rockets!), but I do know that J.D.Robb (like Nalini Singh and Sherillon Kenyon and J.R.Ward) is an extremely talented writer. As such, I would class her as something of an exception. I would imagine publishers could charge more for her because her writing is just so damned good.

J D Robb is NOT romance.

Oh and one other thing,
Not advertising is NOT a form of gatekeeping.

Here is the number one rule in business:
MONEY TALKS AND MALE BOVINE EXCREMENT WALKS.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by shalym

Yes. Nothing bothers more than seeing an author say that they are "writing to the market" If you're a cozy mystery author, and all of a sudden sparkly vampires are "in" so you switch to paranormal/shifter romance, I'm going to lose all respect for you. The last time I posted on an author forum, I got berated for saying something similar because I needed to understand that this was messing with people's "business" and that I should just basically shut up about things I knew nothing about.

Too many "authors" are just in it to make a quick buck. I'm not saying that authors shouldn't make a living--of course they should! BUT...if all they are worried about is "easy money", and what the next trend is, then I don't want to read their garbage. I want to read books by people that like to write, and read. There was an author on one forum I saw who was talking about how they only read 1 or 2 books a year. Yeah...I don't want to read anything written by that person.

Shari

PS...yes, I know. Another rant. Sorry again.

Or what about the author that reads no books but is a great writer in the style of (insert big name indie here). Note: The books in question, was 1. Not in the same genre, and 2. so full of typos and stupid errors as to be rendered unreadable.

I think I know the forum of which you speak.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Trends to watch? More Indies doing print and audio is obvious. Kindle Unlimited 3.0 is just about due. I suspect it might come with a cap on the number of titles a publisher can keep on KU at any time, encouraging a rotation of titles. And there's still the fallout from the slow motion fade of Nook...

It's a tough business.
Always has been.

M/M Romance is one to watch as it becomes more and more mainstream. It will be viewed more as romance and less as erotica as the big publishers start publishing them. Avon has already published their first M/M romance. It will be up to the reader rather or not it's a success.

Historical romance is making a "huge" comeback. Daily I see several returning or new comers. Authors like Julie Garwood, Johanna Lindsey, Judith McNaught, Lisa Kleypas, Julia Quinn, Elosia James, Sarah MacLean are very popular right now.

Historical, mistorical it doesn't matter people want to escape to a different time right now.

We thought it was dead a few years ago. What did we know.

Audiobooks are very big right now as narrators train more and more in voice acting.

NA seems to be fizzling which I think we knew would happen as the indie market pretty much took it as anything goes the more agnst the better. Flooded the market with so much of it people got sick of it.

I don't see many thriller romances being published either lately. Although romantic suspense is holding its own.

Rockstar romances seem to be in higher demand. Go figure. lol fighter books seem to be still pretty popular too.

Sent from my XT1528

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Rockstar romances seem to be in higher demand.

Sent from my XT1528

I saw a story by an author who went through heck trying to get one of those through the establishment, with no takers. "Readers want somebody they can relate to."

She self-pubbed and hit jackpot.

Apparently the idea of lifestyle fantasy is lost on the romance aquisitions editors.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

J D Robb is NOT romance.

It depends on the book you read. The first three ones are romance, mainly the first and second one. The others, not really romance, but the romantic elements are part of the big appeal of these books (Roarke...) Not only romance, that's right, and in the last books mainly suspense, but romance is quite present there (I seriously doubt you find a lot of books in another suspense series with so much "bed scenes", you can skip them but they are there).

[Terisa de morgan]

In the end, I think that it doesn't exist the standard "romance reader" or something valid for everybody. After more than thirty five years reading romance (yes, I began to read Spanish romance novels -Corín Tellado- when I was around 12 years old, I've read the first Harlequin published in Spanish), some years being active in Spanish romance forums, I only see some patterns: when something is trendy, there are a lot of people who writes the same and, in the end, readers get tired and there is no way to say if something is going to be a success among readers.

Ah! And for me, a standard publisher means nothing at all in terms of quality. Being there, done that, and reading in English for going away of traditional Spanish publishers.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

It depends on the book you read. The first three ones are romance, mainly the first and second one. The others, not really romance, but the romantic elements are part of the big appeal of these books (Roarke...) Not only romance, that's right, and in the last books mainly suspense, but romance is quite present there (I seriously doubt you find a lot of books in another suspense series with so much "bed scenes", you can skip them but they are there).

I can think of two authors off the top of my head.
Christine Feehan and Gennita Low.

And yes, Gennita literally laughed at me because I hadn't realized her books were romances.

In my defense, I just found Roarke an added bonus. Not the main objective of the book. In my mind, they were police procedural first with a nice side story.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

I can think of two authors off the top of my head.
Christine Feehan and Gennita Low.

Please, tell me that you are not serious when you say Christine Feehan is not romance

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

In my defense, I just found Roarke an added bonus. Not the main objective of the book. In my mind, they were police procedural first with a nice side story.

Neither in "Naked in Death"? Where a big part of the book is Roarke wooing Eve? Or the second one, when he is convincing her for living with him? Ot the third one, with the wedding? Curious how our main readings influence how we see the books. I think you won't find a romance reader, who read J.D. Robb's and says they are not romance.

[Pajamaman]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

4- there's a lot more Indie publishers active and, unlike the tradpubs, they don't stop at two books a year per author. There's a lot of books coming out both bad and good. Ten years ago, a good ebookstore carried 30,000 titles. Nook launched with 35,000 if i recall correctly. Today, Kindle is running around 5M titles and KU runs well over 1M heading to 1.5M. A lot of that growth is the last three years.

So there are a lot more indie books on sale. Have total indie sales stay static, risen or fallen?

[Atunah]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Please, tell me that you are not serious when you say Christine Feehan is not romance



Neither in "Naked in Death"? Where a big part of the book is Roarke wooing Eve? Or the second one, when he is convincing her for living with him? Ot the third one, with the wedding? Curious how our main readings influence how we see the books. I think you won't find a romance reader, who read J.D. Robb's and says they are not romance.

I am a romance reader that doesn't consider JD Robb's series to be romance. They have some romantic elements, but not genre romance. Futuristic police prodecurals they are to me. Like reading mysteries series. Some have more some have less some have no romantic elements. But no, I don't consider that series to be romance. And I am a huge romance reader, but I also read other genres like urban fantasy, historical mysteries, mysteries, etc.

I started reading romance in german, well I started reading any kind of genre in german of course. . Now I can't read german books comfortably anymore go figure. Its what happens when one speaks, reads and writes english only pretty much.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Atunah

I am a romance reader that doesn't consider JD Robb's series to be romance. They have some romantic elements, but not genre romance. Futuristic police prodecurals they are to me. Like reading mysteries series. Some have more some have less some have no romantic elements. But no, I don't consider that series to be romance. And I am a huge romance reader, but I also read other genres like urban fantasy, historical mysteries, mysteries, etc.

I read other genres too, and the last ones, well, not romance, I agree... but the first ones feel totally romance too, anyway, different criteria, yes.

Originally Posted by Atunah

I started reading romance in german, well I started reading any kind of genre in german of course. . Now I can't read german books comfortably anymore go figure. Its what happens when one speaks, reads and writes english only pretty much.

Same here in Spanish. I don't speak English, but most of my writing between my job and forums is in English, and my reading is almost only English, so I feel your pain

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Please, tell me that you are not serious when you say Christine Feehan is not romance



Neither in "Naked in Death"? Where a big part of the book is Roarke wooing Eve? Or the second one, when he is convincing her for living with him? Ot the third one, with the wedding? Curious how our main readings influence how we see the books. I think you won't find a romance reader, who read J.D. Robb's and says they are not romance.

You asked me for suspense writers with bed scenes. Those were the first two that came to mind.
Note I am a little slow at times when it comes to the romance aspect.
And not just in my reading.