Hilary Sares, editor with Aphrodisia, who was quoted once or twice a while back has sent an email to Angiew to clear up a few things.
Only to me it reads like she is saying the same thing… and it is still wrong.
Hilary Sares, editor with Aphrodisia, who was quoted once or twice a while back has sent an email to Angiew to clear up a few things.
Only to me it reads like she is saying the same thing… and it is still wrong.
Even if more often than not they are romances – the ones that aren’t shouldn’t be labeled Erotic Romance. Do you market a book without a mystery as a mystery, just to have it put in with the others? Wouldn’t you expect the lover of mystery books to be a touch pissed off to buy that mysteryless book?
If you say:
you are saying some of these books are not erotic romance, they are erotica. Which is cool and there is a market for erotica… but why piss off your readers by lying to them to get placement where you want it?
It seems to me Aphrodisia is going about this in the wrong way. If you want the bookstores to place erotica in with romance, romantica and erotic romance. Speak to the bookstores. Reason with them, show them why it would work. And then make sure you are labeling your books correctly!
Don’t lie to your readers and expect them to spend 14 a book to chance getting what they want. And what does that do? Other than punish the reader and the writer. How many people are not going to buy any aphrodisia’s because they don’t know what they will get?
I don’t see other publishers doing this. Correct me if I am wrong but doesn’t Harlequin label Spice as EROTICA. This is good – erotica has a hea optional tag to it. You can expect that going in… so why are they trying to reinvent the wheel? This isn’t a new genre, erotica has been around a long ass time.
What kind of media attention can one expect from knowingly mismarketing a product?