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Future of romance
Future of Romance - where to form here
Bronwyn Parry
Glenn Thomas
Christina Lee (Harlequin Mills And Boon publisher)
Acquiring authors for Mills and Boon requires looking at the global picture. There is a need to have the ability to market authors overseas and not only locally. Australia has the highest number of romance authors per capita in the world. The local market is no longer able to support authors on their own so they need to be international authors. The other hurdle is that mass market prices in Australia are much higher than in US. In the US mass market novels compete with magazines whereas this is not the case in Australia.
Sales representatives don't seem to understand how to pitch the romances to booksellers because it is male sales reps to male booksellers.The is a male bias in publishing and in bookselling as well as journalism. In the Australian there are 16 contributors to the book reviews and only 2 are female.
In the Australian culture there is a real discomfort with romance, love and sex and this has a further knock-on effect to romance fiction. Women tend to write about the domestic environment and about intimacy but this is uncomfortable for many readers. There is an anectdote about a male reader who is comfortable with violent scenes but balked at intimate sex scenes. Bronwyn Parry's publisher wanted to cut the sex scene out of her book which she didn't agree with. This is not always the rule though as there are some men who quite like the emotional relationships in romances.
There is a disconnection between the publishers and the readers when publishers want to only publish "literary" books. Its aiming for the prestigious prizes rather than writing popular stories. Ethnicity in romances doesn't appear as often in Mills and Boon. But Mills & Boon says that's why "Sheik", "Greek", "Italian" coming into titles is so popular. Doctors are popular in France, business men in UK, men in uniform in Australia. Cover design seems to be polarising all attendees and it has been acknowledged that this is completely out of the hands of the author. Often even the title is devised by a marketing team and not the author.
Bronwyn Parry
Glenn Thomas
Christina Lee (Harlequin Mills And Boon publisher)
Acquiring authors for Mills and Boon requires looking at the global picture. There is a need to have the ability to market authors overseas and not only locally. Australia has the highest number of romance authors per capita in the world. The local market is no longer able to support authors on their own so they need to be international authors. The other hurdle is that mass market prices in Australia are much higher than in US. In the US mass market novels compete with magazines whereas this is not the case in Australia.
Sales representatives don't seem to understand how to pitch the romances to booksellers because it is male sales reps to male booksellers.The is a male bias in publishing and in bookselling as well as journalism. In the Australian there are 16 contributors to the book reviews and only 2 are female.
In the Australian culture there is a real discomfort with romance, love and sex and this has a further knock-on effect to romance fiction. Women tend to write about the domestic environment and about intimacy but this is uncomfortable for many readers. There is an anectdote about a male reader who is comfortable with violent scenes but balked at intimate sex scenes. Bronwyn Parry's publisher wanted to cut the sex scene out of her book which she didn't agree with. This is not always the rule though as there are some men who quite like the emotional relationships in romances.
There is a disconnection between the publishers and the readers when publishers want to only publish "literary" books. Its aiming for the prestigious prizes rather than writing popular stories. Ethnicity in romances doesn't appear as often in Mills and Boon. But Mills & Boon says that's why "Sheik", "Greek", "Italian" coming into titles is so popular. Doctors are popular in France, business men in UK, men in uniform in Australia. Cover design seems to be polarising all attendees and it has been acknowledged that this is completely out of the hands of the author. Often even the title is devised by a marketing team and not the author.
FranInkster |
Latest page update: made by FranInkster
, Apr 6 2009, 10:20 PM EDT
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