A reader at Romancing the Blog raised an interesting question on Jane’s post yesterday Romantic Advances: Its Porn for Your Bookshelves.

Kimber An said:

All right, I checked out the site. It’s wonderful. Very easy to find all the information one needs to know. However, there’s nothing about it which would convince my Hesitant-to-Buy-New readers to buy. If that’s your goal, then maybe you should brainstorm ideas.

I was concerned because it looked like the ‘goals’ of the site weren’t easy to understand and Kimber An went into more detail and I attempted to answer only to ramble on at length. So I moved it here lucky you *g*.

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Ok, I think I see where the misunderstanding is, Romantic Advances, is not a review site. I would guess it isn’t for the causal one book a month reader either.

I stalk books. What is coming next, what is hot, what do people want to be hot or even what is being sold. The books I find that interest me, I post on my blog but I wondered about all those other books. Books I didn’t want but I knew there was someone else who would DIE for it. Only they might not know it yet.

As anyone with a blog knows, posts take time, even my ‘coming soon’, ‘I want’, ‘omg you author person why haven’t you emailed me this yet so I can read it’ type posts can be ah hour long process. So the thought was why not do this for everyone, minus the commentary. Our goal is no romance author left behind, which is what we are working toward.

I won’t lie. Front and center is the reader but the side effect will be more sales for the author. How much more depends on the author, we can do many things but we can’t make a book better than it is. We can’t change a readers taste and we are not trying too.

So focusing on ‘that’ first goal, “All the books you never knew you always needed”, where do reviews fit in there? I don’t see that as a hole in romanceland to fill, there are blogs for all tastes.

You are completely right in saying friends of Kimber An, who like the same books as Kimber An, will not be able to come to Romantic Advances and get the answer to ‘what does kimber an like’.

But how does Kimber An know about the book if she doesn’t know it is coming? How does ‘Word of Mouth’ start? You can say Romantic Advances wants to put words in your mouth or would that be books?

In everyones mouth… I know we are such book sluts. We can’t be everything for everyone and we don’t want to be. But we do want to put the buzz in the ear of the romance reader.

Once that buzz starts… If a reader wants to know more about the author, we try and provide a link to their site. [the only place an author should reprint their favorite reviews] If reader x wants to know what I think about a book, she/he can visit my blog. Wanna know what devon thinks, she/he can visit hers. Wanna know the what jane thinks…

Now the second goal I see for the site, is another hole in romanceland, to provide an affordable, highly visible site for romance authors to promote their work. By that I mean all Romance Authors, not only the ones that can pony up serious cash. For all my faults I am a firm believer in just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Now this is proving to be challenging, but hey I am twisted and I like that. First thing right off the bat was it was NOT going to cost to be listed. Newbie author Ginny Robert can on the same page as Nora Roberts (well depending on how you search and what ginny writes *g*). We wanted some books to be featured on the front page and it is very important to us anyone who visits Romantic Advances knows and can trust ‘featured’ books have been read and recommended, staff picks are just that picked by staff.

I had no idea some sites had ‘features’, ‘interviews’, ‘spotlights’ and such that amount to not much more ‘than this person paid’. So we are working very hard to make it very clear what is a ‘sponsorship’ and what is ‘staff opinion’. As well as we are trying to not cut out the newbie, ebook or even midlist author.

And that brings us to the ‘RWA approved only’ thing… we are looking at that and will most likely toss it sooner than later. BUT (isn’t there always a but) the other route we are looking at is Staff Approved Publishers. And that will be reader/site-centric: how many romance novels does the publisher do, how many cross-over books are there, are they really cross-over or bad marketing, how early does the publisher have the information available, how quickly do they get the information out, do the covers need to be uploaded, what is the ratio of novella’s to full length and so forth and so on.

So I can already guess that will upset people too but it will make sense to us in a way we can answer to vs… “I don’t know why they aren’t RWA approved“. And help get to our goal of no author left behind quicker. At least that is the plan, at this moment.

If nothing else… we are helping you, build your tbr mountain. One book at a time.