The RNA Conference this year was held in the stunning setting of the Greenwich Naval College, designed by Inigo Jones in the 1630’s, overlooking the Thames. It’s our 50^th anniversary.

The RNA is like the RWA, but it’s primarily for authors and aspiring authors. There are no big public booksignings, as there are at RT Booklovers’ and RWA Nationals, but a series of lectures and talks by industry professionals and authors. Past luminaries and lady authors include Barbara Cartland and Denise Robbins, whose famous feuds lit up the 1950’s. It has a colorful history, but ladies, always ladies.

It’s a UK based organization and conference. I can, as always, only talk about my conference. Someone else might have had a very different experience.

The Friday session started with a welcome from our President, Katie Fforde. The first part of Friday is an extra, Industry Day. It was well worth attending.

The first session came from Charlotte Bush and Rob Waddington of Random House. They acknowledged that great changes lay ahead, but remained optimistic. Waddington cited his “Three Katies – Katie Fforde, Katie Flynn and Katie Price.” A sharp intake of breath at the last name, but she and her ghost writers have done very well for Random House recently. Waddington seemed a little taken aback to find a seasoned author questioning him about his e-publishing policy, and he very nearly admitted that they were using the extra profits from e-publishing sales to finance the increasing losses on the print side, and the switchover to a digital market. When supermarkets only skim the top of the author pile, epublishing looks like a new outlet for the midlist author, he said.

The second session in the Industry part of the conference came from David Shelley of Little, Brown. He, too, identified the supermarkets as both good and bad for the bookselling industry, especially since the demise of the net book agreement 15 years ago. They are shifting books, and these days are the main customer for print titles. So if an author doesn’t get in there, she’s condemned to smaller sales. In the UK, there are only two bookselling chains left – Waterstones and WH Smith. However, the staff at the bookstores are generally more enthusiastic and knowledgeable about authors and the industry, so an author can build her career there. While ebook sales in the UK are around !%, they will probably rise to around 15%. What this says to me is that UK publishers are still underestimating the impact of ebooks, the ways they can be distributed and bought. While the dedicated readers haven’t caught on over here, iphones and other smart phones most definitely have. He came up with an interesting idea, that a print book could have a token in the back, which the owner could photograph with her smartphone and then download extra apps. When he gave Nicholas Sparks as an example of a romance writer, he lost a lot of his audience, though.

The third session of Industry day was the one that is making all the headlines. Tom Holland of the Society of Authors, spoke about “Living Through a Revolution.” He warned authors about giving all their e-rights away in perpetuity, but acknowledged that publishers would need some start-up money, as the switch would be expensive. He suggested accepting the 25% most are currently offering, but for a limited period. He suggested 2 years. Personally, I don’t think it should be that expensive. Learning new methods would take a lot more effort. Tom quoted current thinking, that in 5 years, ebooks would take about 20% of the market. I think that’s probably an underestimation, and I think the publishers are already working that out.

And then came the gala dinner. We had an absolute riot in a stunningly beautiful room overlooking the River Thames. A fine summer evening, good food and the best of company. And lost of gossip. I sat with the lovely Amanda Grange, who says she’s just finishing the last of her diaries based on the books of Jane Austen. This one will be Henry Tilney’s. I’ve loved these stories, and I’m only sad that Austen didn’t write more books for Amanda to write diaries about!

All weekend the talks included acknowledgment that digital is of growing importance in today’s publishing world. At last, the UK is waking up. But it’s not until recently that the manufacturers got it together enough to provide the full experience for the European market. It’s a very different market to the US. Even the definition of romance is different, not so rigid, so that sagas and stories of women’s endurance in hard times is also classed as a romance. The saga never made it across the channel, but it can be one of the most satisfying reads around. There’s always a romance, sometimes the main part of the book, sometimes secondary to other experiences. The saga is changing, becoming more romance-centric, but it’s still there and going strong.

Highlights for me included author Kate Hardy’s Planner’s Guide for Creativity, the Mills and Boon presentation of their New Voices contest and a sneak preview of the new look the category lines are getting soon (very nice!) and an indication of the new lines that HQN is planning. Oh and a request for a look-see for one of my books, which is always nice. I try not to worry about those, but I do it anyway.

And an absolutely wonderful presentation by Lucy Inglis of the Georgian London blog, on “The Prospects for the Single Woman in 18^th Century London.” That was awesome and well attended by most of the writers of historical romance at the Conference. Lucy pointed out that women were much freer in the Georgian era than they became later in the Victorian and gave us some numbers, culled from the Poll Tax of 1731. So expect some stories about female playwrights, flower shop owners, milliners and craftswomen in the near future!

The guests at this year’s conference were Joanna Trollope, who detested the label of “aga saga” to describe her books, but admitted it was snappy. She wants romance writers to use more substance in their stories, rather than writing about “ditsy girls falling off their designer heels.” Basically, she described a market that I didn’t recognize, citing “The Bridges of Madison County” and “Love Story” as romances, and appearing to assume that the chick lit novel encompassed the market these days. She dislikes the covers, the stories and the approach of writers of romance. For last 4 years she has been on the panel of the Melissa Nathan Award for romantic comedy. She said it wasn’t’ easy to choose a winner because they “aren’t snowed under by good books”. It wasn’t just that the writers can’t write. There was a “poverty of ambition and subject matter.” I’m just glad I never entered that competition.

I did disagree with much that she said but others agreed with her, so there you go. But I will go a long way to avoid a book with meaning, one the author is trying to shove down my throat, and I’ve never really suffered from the fluffy pink cover. Vampires tend not to go in for that. It was an interesting contrast to the romance world I work in, and the one other authors use. And yet it’s all romance. I think.

The final talk was by the lovely Judy Astley, who does write light stories, but they have a plethora of meaning, if you want to search it out. Her speech was the best way to round out a highly enjoyable conference.

For me, it reminds me of the world under my nose, one I often ignore in favor of the one across the Atlantic. The US and UK markets are so different, and yet some writers achieve remarkable success in them both. I met a number of them at the conference this weekend, and had a great time meeting them all. I have to say, the romance writer is one of the most generous, giving kind of writer that there is. And where else could we have a conference in a world monument, a four hundred year old architectural masterpiece designed for Charles I?

And I got Joanna Trollope and Katie Price on the same blog. My cup runneth over.

So here’s to next year and another 50 years.