Category: bestsellers

ARe Bestseller Badge; Trevor Donovan Texas Rising; Taiwan Gay Comedy

ARe Bestseller Badge

I’m always pointing readers toward allromanceebooks.com for a variety of reasons. One, they aren’t Amazon and competition is a good thing. The only way to give Amazon a little competition is to give other companies some business. Otherwise, Amazon will, indeed, own you eventually. They’ve already raised the Prime thing to $99. And two, from a consumer POV I think ARe is probably one of the best retail web sites where e-books are sold. It’s also one of the most professional places for authors/publishers to do business.

And each time a book becomes a bestseller ARe notifies the author and attaches a bestseller badge. I just got one for Second Chance: The Sweetest Apple and wanted to post about that here…along with the fact that two of the Second Chance e-books are still on ARe for free until the end of this month.

And  huge thanks to all those who purchased The Sweetest Apple. I work hard on all my books, but the indie books are closest to my heart.

Trevor Donovan Texas Rising

I know so many M/M Romance fans who follow Trevor Donovan on Facebook and Twitter we often cross paths several times a day. I see familiar people liking and commenting on his status updates more often than not, and I think that’s because in many ways Donovan is the ultimate M\M Romance hero. He’s the image you want to stare at on a book cover, he’s the smart guy who always says something tasteful or wise, and he’s never once shown a negative side in all the time I’ve followed him. In other words, he’s more than just a pretty face and he isn’t afraid to connect with his fans.

So I know a lot of people are thrilled to see that he’s joining the cast of Texas Rising, a historical mini series, tentatively titled for now, on A&E.

 Trevor Donovan (90210) have joined the killer cast of History’s miniseries Texas Rising (working title) from A+E Studios and ITV Studios America. Leslie Greif (Hatfields & McCoys) is exec producing the project which will detail the Texas Revolution against Mexico and the rise of the legendary Texas Rangers. Roland Joffé will direct. McDonald, repped by Gersh and Brillstein, will play Henry Karnes, a grizzled, tough taskmaster of the ranging company. Donovan, with APA and Michael Yanni Management, will play Kit Acklin, a handsome, wise-ass, expert horseman whose chivalry and equestrian skills are matched only by his gun-fighting prowess. Bill Paxton, Brendan Fraser, Ray Liotta, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Thomas Jane, Olivier Martinez, Chad Michael Murray, Michael Rapaport and Max Thieriot round out the all-star cast.

There’s more to the press release here, and you can leave a comment at the bottom. It’s very simple to do with this web site. Just a name, e-mail, and web site if you have one.

Taiwan Gay Comedy

There’s a new gay family comedy in Taiwan called Penguins at the North Pole.

‘We want to make a movie for moms and dads [with gay children] to show in a light-hearted but easily understandable way that they are not alone,’ said the movie’s production crew.

‘This is like a long road where parents and children get to know each other all over again,’ they added. ‘There are indeed many who share some common worries.’

Two things about this I find interesting. The mom finds out her daughter is gay on Facebook, which shows how powerful social media has become all over the world. And my straight friend, Jordan, thinks this show looks like it will be better than Modern Family.  I agree with him. I hope Hollywood is paying attention.

You can read more here.

Author Career Crisis; Trans Peeps on Jared Leto; Ellen Breaks Twitter; Ender’s Game & Orson Scott Card

Author Career Crisis

This is interesting because we hear so much babble (I can’t think of a better word) about there never being a better time for writers than now. The article gets into the many mid-list authors and even bestselling authors who are trying to figure out ways to survive and maintain viable incomes with so many changes happening in publishing.

The piece goes into more detail and names a few writers as examples. This paragraph sums things up well:

Thomson is a veteran from a now-deserted battlefield. Rates of attrition among so-called “mid-list” writers, steady professionals who can no longer find publishers to support them, have begun to rise alarmingly. But drop a generation or two, and you find parallel stories: young writers grappling with a wholly new – and in some respects, hostile – literary landscape. In a business that relies on keeping up appearances, no one wants to admit this. Privately, there’s a lot of fear.

I know several I won’t name here in this post who would say these authors should all be self-publishing. And maybe they should. I’ve had to make several career changes I never thought I’d have to make in my lifetime and self-publishing has been one of the biggest. But the problem with self-publishing is that we’re also dealing with a new, lawless brand of authors who may or may not have talent, who are willing to sell their proverbial souls to sell a book, and who will stop at nothing shy of murder to get onto a best seller list.

So yes, it’s a great time in many ways for authors. But it’s also a frustrating time for authors who play by the rules. But more important, more and more authors are questioning how they should be playing their own games now.

You can read more here.

Trans Peeps Mad at Jared Leto

I haven’t seen Dallas Buyers Club yet so I can’t offer any solid criticism about this. It seems that trans people are speaking out about Jared Leto’s performance as a trans woman. They claim it was exaggerated, stereotypical, and cliché.

‘If you thought Jared Leto’s performance was anything other than an exaggerated, stereotyped, cliché damaging to trans people, f off,’ one said on Twitter.

 ‘One small step for Jared Leto One giant blow for the trans movement,’ another added. Another Twitter user said: ‘The fact that every trans person on my [timeline] found Jared Leto’s portrayal of a trans person offensive makes me not really want to see that film.’

British trans activist Paris Lees, writing in The Independent, said it was not an Oscar-worthy performance as she did not recognize in Rayon any trans woman she knows.

‘For truly accurate portrayals of trans people, cast trans actors, I say,’ she said.

This reminds me a lot of the discussion in gay forums back when Brokeback Mountain was getting so much attention. Hollywood has a long history of doing things like this, and it’s all about money and getting attention. Right now, anything LGBT is hot and they are going to capitalize on it as much as they can. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but they never seem to get it right.

I will watch Dallas Buyer’s Club and review it.

You can read more here.

Ellen Breaks Twitter

The only reason I’m posting about this is because of the photo itself (and I love Ellen). I couldn’t care less about Twitter or the Oscar Awards in a general sense. Ellen took a selfie and Twitter went BERserk.

For the selfie, DeGeneres was quickly surrounded by two of the night’s winners Lupita Nyong’o and Jared Leto as well as nominees Bradley Cooper, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep along with Brad Pitt.

I also can’t help thinking this might be the last of the privileged generation of old time film stars. I could be wrong. But the fact is that even with all the Oscar hype most people in the US didn’t even see the films that were nominated. Publishing isn’t the only thing changing. The film industry is going through its own restructuring right now.

You can read more here, and view the photo.

I wish James Franco had been in it.

Ender’s Game & Orson Scott Card

Speaking of films, I wanted to do a follow up on Orson Scott Card and Ender’s Game. Here’s a link to several of my posts on the topic. In short, Orson Scott Card is the author of the book, Ender’s Game, and he’s always been highly outspoken with homophobic, discriminatory comments about gays. LGBT people called for a boycott of the film version of Ender’s Game last year and Card’s gay hate comments seemed to shadow everything associated with the film, in spite of all efforts to contain it. I’ll be honest, even though I posted a few times about all this, I actually care so little about Orson Scott Card or anything he’s associated with I mentally blocked him out, forgot all about the Ender’s Game movie, and didn’t even think about it again until just this weekend when I saw that Ender’s Game had already gone to video on Demand. In other words, my own personal boycott wasn’t even conscious.

So I did a simple search about how Ender’s Game did at the box office and came up with a few interesting things.

The film’s backers have been in panic mode ever since a boycott call was launched by an organisation called Geeks Out, protesting at Card’s views on gay marriage, as well as his comparison of President Obama to Hitler.

All those connected to the film have been forced on the defensive, with actor Harrison Ford defending Ender’s Game by claiming “There is nothing in the film or the book addressing [Card’s] current dispositions, or prejudices”, and director Gavin Hood saying: “It has been a real dilemma for me: I love the book … and it’s very difficult for me to reconcile that with his clearly contrary views to the ones I hold on the issue of gay rights.”

More here.

This next article says because of a lackluster box office appeal Ender’s Game will not have a sequel.

 The Hollywood Reporter compiled the views of a number of analysts whose job it is to review the franchise potential of blockbuster wannabes. Most felt Gavin Hood’s film, which has been targeted by gay rights activists, would struggle to make back its $110m budget after debuting with a solid but unspectacular $28m in North America.

More about that here.

I won’t be watching Ender’s Game on Demand, or anywhere else, thanks to Orson Scott Card’s vituperative comments on gays.

New York Times: E-Books and Best-Seller List

I copied and pasted the article below from this link. It’s just one more of the daily changes happening within the publishing industry in the past few years. And I can’t help but remember that almost two years ago a good friend of mine who works in publishing told me e-books wouldn’t last and there was no reason to take them seriously. Evidently, the NYT seems to think there’s something to e-books now.

In an acknowledgment of the growing sales and influence of digital publishing, The New York Times said on Wednesday that it would publish e-book best-seller lists in fiction and nonfiction beginning early next year.
The lists will be compiled from weekly data from publishers, chain bookstores, independent booksellers and online retailers, among other sources.
Since 1935 The Times has published best-seller lists, widely considered the industry standard. Best-seller lists are also published by Publishers Weekly, a trade publication, and newspapers including The Los Angeles Times and USA Today.
Janet Elder, the editor of news surveys and election analysis for The Times, said the newspaper had spent two years creating a system that tracks and verifies e-book sales.
“We’ve had our eye on e-book sales since e-books began,” Ms. Elder said. “It was clear that e-books were taking a greater and greater share of total sales, and we wanted to be able to tell our readers which titles were selling and how they fit together with print sales.”
E-book sales have risen steeply in 2010, spurred by the growing popularity of the Amazon Kindle and by the release of the Apple iPad in April. According to the Association of American Publishers, which receives sales data from publishers, e-book sales in the first nine months of 2010 were $304.6 million, up from $105.6 million from the same period in 2009, a nearly 190 percent increase.
Several major publishers said that e-books had climbed to about 10 percent of their total trade sales. Some publishing experts have predicted that they will rise to 25 percent in the next two to three years.
RoyaltyShare, a San Diego-based company that tracks data and aggregates sales information for publishers, will work with The Times, provide data and offer an additional source of independent corroboration.
The Times will also redesign the section of its Sunday Book Review that features the best-seller lists. The Times already publishes 14 lists, including those for fiction, nonfiction and advice books in hardcover and paperback, as well as children’s books and graphic books.
“To give the fullest and most accurate possible snapshot of what books are being read at a given moment you have to include as many different formats as possible, and e-books have really grown, there’s no question about it,” said Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the Book Review. The new listings, he added, give readers “the fullest picture we can give them about how a book is doing week to week.”

You Can Never Predict Anything in Publishing

If it sounds like I’m blowing my own horn in this post, I’m not. I’m seriously surprised and I’m writing this post to let other authors know that even though you think you can predict what will happen to your book, you can never really be sure.

A REGULAR BUD was originally a short story published in a small anthology by STARbooks Press. This was a nice little anthology, but I made very little money and the story received limited exposure. And I was fine with this. As a writer, I thought I knew the drill. I’d have my short story published in an anthology, I’d enjoy the fact that someone wanted to publish it in the first place, and then I’d move on to the next project.

So when I decided to re-write A REGULAR BUD and have it published by loveyoudivine.com as a stand alone e-book, I didn’t expect the book to do much. When I submitted it, I told myself I’d be happy if it sold a few copies and paid for its costs with the publisher (I tend to take this aspect of publishing seriously: I like to know the publisher didn’t waste their time with me and with a book that didn’t sell anything.)

And to my ultimate shock, A REGULAR BUD has been on the fictionwise.com bestseller list as either number one, two , or three, in the fetish/erotica category since it’s publication as a stand alone e-book with loveyoudivine.com. I didn’t even consider the book a fetish story. Though there is a small fetish in the book, it wasn’t the way I’ve been promoting it. To me, this was a nice little romance between a guy in his thirties and a guy in his early twenties who happened to run into each other at a very awkward time. And the fact that it even sold copies, forget about being on a bestseller list, has blown me away. I will say that I loved the new cover for the loveyoudivine.com stand alone version and I was hoping A REGULAR BUD would at the very least be received well enough to get a couple of nice reviews. But I never thought it would be on any bestseller lists.

So if any other authors are reading this, you just can’t predict where a book is going to go and how readers are going to receive it. You might think you know what you’re doing, but there are always surprises out there and you just can’t imagine the outcome.

Duel Post: A Huge Thank You, and Ravenous Romance is on TV Again

First, I’d like to thank all the readers who have helped make DOWN THE BASEMENT number six on http://www.allromanceebooks.com/. I’m still surprised. And when I say thanks, I really mean it.

Second, Ravenousromance.com will be on The Home Shopping Network again this Friday, selling the Escape to Romance Collection, at 8 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. This is exciting for everyone associated with ravenous. Even though none of my books are part of the collection, I’m supporting RR as much as I can. I’ve read the books in the collection, and I’m a huge fan of all the writers. So if you need any last minute Christmas gifts, check it out. This is the last day that HSN will guarantee shipping by Christmas Day.