NEWS

WIRES

OTHER

Is Electronic Publishing Real Publishing?

By Jude Liebermann

I've written about self-publishing, so now I'll discuss electronic publishing (epub). Many of these publishers have sprouted online lately, and a lot of them sell only erotic fiction. What is erotic fiction, you ask? The basic and crass definition is "porn with a plot." These romances are for people who enjoy reading highly explicit sexual scenes. I admit freely that I am one of those people, and I have even written a few erotic stories of my own. I've only tried to publish one of them once, and might try again soon. More on that later.

Since using twitter.com I came across a lady that bashes the worst of these erotic ebooks in her RRTheatre. The name comes from an online publisher called Ravenous Romance, which used to have free stories on Fridays. Jane would get the free story and then bash it that night on twitter as she read it. I enjoy her RRTheatre and try to tune in every week to read whichever story she has chosen. So far they have all been horridly funny, and I can't help but wonder how these books ever got published at all. Some on twitter do not follow Jane's bashing because they feel it's mean. Though I can see their point and would not want to see one of my own stories on RRTheater, I still can't help but enjoy the masterful way that Jane has of summarizing these horrid stories.

Since Ravenous Romance no longer offers the free reads, Jane has been getting her ebooks from other sources. The book she chose this past weekend was a Siren Publishing book called The Claiming by Trinity Blacio. Jane reviewed this book on her site as well at DearAuthor.com.

One of the biggest problems with this book is that it obviously wasn't edited. The author frequently confused words like cheek for check, rapid for rabid and neither for nether. It made for hilarious reading, but it led us all to wonder how the editors at Siren could have missed them. It occurs to me, and many others I'm sure, that they didn't bother to edit the story at all. How could any editor worth their salt miss such obvious and glaring errors? Siren pulled The Claiming from their website this morning. Will they make Ms. Blacio edit her own story, have the editors trudge through it, or just 86 it?

I am curious to find out what happens, but what will this situation do to other authors who use epubs? Many commenters to Jane's review say they would never buy another ebook from Siren ever again. It does make one wonder if the editors are so inefficient with all the books they publish. Does that mean that all epubs are as bad? I would like to think that's not true. I personally have never bought an ebook, but I sell all my novels as ebooks. I wouldn't want this situation to color anyone's attitude about buying my books, though I'm sure it will.

Ms. Blacio may have had a book published before it was ready, but she sold at least 500 copies of her ebook before it was pulled. At 40% commission at $4.50 for each of those books, she made $900 in less than a month, so she's crying all the way to the bank. I'd like to think my unedited first draft stories are better than her finished product, but I've never made $900 from any one of my books in the over two decades I've been writing. Definitely makes one wonder ... and worry.

Jude Liebermann is a romance novelist, blogger and book reviewer. Contact Jude by visiting her site at www.judesplace.com