Best e-pubs for romantica???

I think Ellora's Cave is still the market leader by quite a margin. I'd recommend Loose Id.

I published recently with eXtasy Books. The editor is very nice. Now I have not gotten any royalty or sales statements as yet, so I don't know what their sales are like. I use a pen name there, I would like to reserve my own name for other things and the stories are in first person narrative, so I just use the main character's name as the pen name.

Others are Phaze, Venus Press, Changeling Press, Freya's Bower. I didn't duplicate any of Emily's suggestions, I don't think.

There is no doubt that Ellora's Cave has the inside track, but I think there is a lot of cross-over buying as well. Ellora's big boost is its presence on bookshelves at B&N, Borders, etc. None of the others have made that kind of breakthrough.

Part of the problem at Ellora's Cave is rapid growth related, I am sure.

Regards,
Scott

Samhain is great to to work with. LindenBay is good too.

Please do remember that "Romantica" is a trademarked term, belonging to Ellora's Cave. Yeah, people still use it all over the net to describe romantic erotica, but be very careful not to include it in a query--unless you're querying EC, that is...

I'd also mention New Concepts Publishing. They're getting more into trade paperbacks that are going into traditional brick and mortar stores.

In addition to those already mentioned, you can find more epublishers and print publishers at this link.

I never knew that Romantica was a trademarked term. Learn something new every day.

Loose Id is very much separate. I recommend them for many reasons, feel free to PM. Keep in mind that there are many very lovely epublishers in this area but a small minority sell strongly and consistently. Decided based on the fit for you fiction but also exactly what your goals are, money, professional development, fun? Get info from the author's mouth rather than open forum.

As Veinglory said, Loose Id is an independent publisher. Primarily ebook, although they are experimenting with print via Lightning Source, and they've just changed to a new contract which takes a one year option on print rights. They have a distribution deal with Borders for the print editions, and yes, the books are in the stores. I have a vested interest in checking this because one of my books was in last year's pilot print programme. Erotic romance, but is interested in Happy For Now as well as Happy Ever After endings, and is actively soliciting cross-genre (fortunately for me). Pays on time. My experience has been that the editing and proof-reading is good (even if not as detailed as it would be at somewhere like Tor). This matters.

I have ten books with them at the moment, all m/m. Mine typically sell a few hundred copies in the first year, and the ones that have been out for nearly two years continue to sell a few copies each month. Note that having a reasonable backlist and two or three new titles a year to remind the readers that you exist is helpful in selling more copies.

The folks at Liquid Silver are great to work with, and the covers are BRILLIANT. April Martinez (the art director) is simply amazing.

I just got back from RWA's national conference, and Virgin Books was there, along with Ellora's Cave and Red Sage (the "Secrets" anthologies, and I missed the beginning of the session, but I think they're expanding into more releases). If anyone is interested, I believe the audiotapes of the various sessions are available to the general public through a link at RWA's website (RWAnational.org) for something like $7 apiece (although the price may have gone up since the last time I ordered them). There was an interesting workshop featuring an editor at EC on "Pillow talk" (and a few authors, as well), discussing some of their turn-offs (from a writing/editing point of view) and a "spotlight" on Red Sage (not sure if that was taped, though) and another session that I missed on the erotica lines at Harlequin, Kensington and .... um, another NY publisher, although my brain is too fried to recall which one it was, but I believe the tape for that should also be available.

Both of the EC editors I heard speak mentioned, at different times, that m/m erotic romance, is selling (to readers) very well at the moment, and accordingly, they're looking for submissions in that subgenre. I also found it interesting that if they're looking for a particular subgenre that's particularly hot (in a marketing sense, not a sexual sense) at a given moment, they go through the submissions and read them out of order, expediting the submissions that are in the hot subgenre. Which mine never is. Sigh. But perhaps someone else here has better timing.

JD

I write for Whiskey Creek-Torrid, too, Pam, as well as Triskelion and (hopefully-they're looking at the full)-EC. My editors at WCP have all been really nice.

I've heard great things about Samhain, too.

Well, heck I need to finish up Nate and Caesar and throw them at EC.

Also Phaze is (from what I hear) negotiating with Borders to carry hard copies of their better sellers.

Jan - thanks for the inside scoop.

Great info from everyone. Hmmm...I may have to hop onto the m/m bandwagon.

a small red flag for all the newbies (like me) out there. I have been submitting for about a year but only got savy to the business in the past few months. For all new authors I would recomend Samhain as the editors are amazingly nice. They didn't accept anything from me, but were so nice I don't feel the need to curse them repeatedly as I do with others. As far as EC I had one query sit for 14 months. I followed up every few months to be told that they were just backlogged. I continued to wait patiently and finaly got a rejection.
The story would end there except that my rejection did not come from an @ellorascave email address. Wondering who this person was who hade not only gotten ahold of my chapters but also saw fit to reject them, I google the email and got the blog of an aspiring author who stated in her blog that she had just signed a contract to work with EC as an editor... four days before she sent my rejection.

waited 14 months to get a rejection from an editor who had been on the job for four days. *sigh*

Needless to say I cringed when I got a request for full from the same editor (that story had been sitting only 4 months so clearly this person is doing an amazing job of going through EC's backlog). I was also not surprized to get the rejection after she read my full. However in all fairness she turned around the full in about a week.

DecemberQuinn said:

and (hopefully-they're looking at the full)-EC.

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Good luck I hope you get it!

EC has been going through some changes recently, and they're still quoting a one-year turn-around, although one of the editors said at the RWA conference that if they're looking for a particular subgenre, they might look through the submissions for stories in that subgenre and read them out of order.

Still, it's worth weighing the pros and cons. The turn-around time is substantially longer than some other epubs, but EC probably has the best sales figures and best brand recognition of all the epubs.

JD, who still loves Liquid Silver Books, of course.

"Please do remember that "Romantica" is a trademarked term"

I think that trademark won't wash in court. Spanish is very prevalent in this country and "romantica" is Spanish for Romance. I do not know how one would trademark a common word in a language prevalent in the United States.

Regards,
Scott

I have been quietly skeptical about that for some time. The word was used to refer to erotic romance pre-EC.

I know of at least one epub that got a nice cease-and-desist letter from EC's lawyers for trying to use it.


The important thing, though, is that if you don't know that (and I'm really not trying to sound snotty) and refer to your work as "romantica" to an agent or editor for a different house-it may look like you don't know the business. The trademark thing is mentioned in most articles about EC and erotic romance in general.

Just my thoughts.

DecemberQuinn said:

I know of at least one epub that got a nice cease-and-desist letter from EC's lawyers for trying to use it.


The important thing, though, is that if you don't know that (and I'm really not trying to sound snotty) and refer to your work as "romantica" to an agent or editor for a different house-it may look like you don't know the business. The trademark thing is mentioned in most articles about EC and erotic romance in general.

Just my thoughts.

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I don't write "romantica". I write out and out erotica. It doesn't matter to me. I think that cease and desist letters are easy to write, but not so easy to make stick. Barbra Bauer comes to mind for one thing. Good old TSR and Dungeons and Dragons comes to mind also when they wanted to keep people from using the term Role Play Game.

Please note that I understand the distinction, and I sure avoid using the term in any formal correspondence. (I also do not have the depth of pocket to challenge the usage in the legal system.)

Your thoughts are very germaine to any efforts to publish such work and wise to consider. The real legality of it though is a substantive question. A question that cannot be answe3red without a real legal clash to determine the reality of it.

Regards,
Scott

Regards,
Scott

I avoid the word--but still, last I heard they were 'applying' for that trademark and had been for some time...

I was under the impression that they'd received the trademark. They show the TM symbol on their site which you're not allowed to use while still in the application process. Hmm... I'll have to do some checking on the Patent site and see if it's really happened. The Trademark Office spends a great deal of time vetting applications. It's why the process takes so long. If it's been given, the term has had a thorough run-through for possible conflicts and language issues. It's not at ALL like copyright -- they don't pass out trademarks like candy.

ETA: Yep. It's gone through the full process and is a live trademark. It's a combination of symbol and word grouping. It's not the ONLY use of the word, but under the category of "publishing" it's the only one listed, so it's first in line.

http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=714rma.2.8

Popeyesays said:

Your thoughts are very germaine to any efforts to publish such work and wise to consider. The real legality of it though is a substantive question. A question that cannot be answe3red without a real legal clash to determine the reality of it.

Regards,
Scott

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Thanks, Scott! Being a newbie I was a little scared to poste it. On such things reputations can be made, you know.

"Oh, yeah, December...the negative know-it-all..."

I just write plain old sumt and let people call it what they will. If'n I'm feeling uppity I might call it romerotica, but I just leave identifiers out of most correspondence with pubs.

I have a rough poll on this posted here: http://veinglory.com/P4.html