Lori Devoti, paranormal romance and urban fantasy author

and may be doing it for days. How can two adults and two munchkins create so much work??

Got my first non-previously-known-to-me fan mail. Pretty darn cool. :) I had an earlier one from a friend that I saved because it was just so wonderful. I plan on reading it every time I get a blah review.

Enough about me…what else happened at RT?

Okay, after Mr. Romance, my next favorite event was the book buyer panel. The conversation was very lively and informative. Although I did kind of wonder if in the future they might want to arm the panel members with tasers to fend off the rush of authors. Elbows and evil looks were a flying. Not from me, of course, I was the picture of well bred decorum. ;-)

The panel was made up of executives/buyers from Levy, Borders, Waldenbooks and Cowlie. The main discourse was on getting more sales - something near and dear to all of us in the room. However, there seemed to be some difference of opinion on how best to accomplish this.

The men from Levy talked about looking to the DVD business for ideas. Now, we have heard this before with the idea of including extras like alternative endings and such in books, but that isn’t what they were talking about. What they were referring to was more variety in pricing and size. Specifically, the new taller paperback was mentioned. Levy seemed very supportive of this format, Cowlie didn’t (won’t fit in current displays; their customers want cheaper, not more expensive). On pricing the idea of pricing “new releases” at the current rates and discounting older re-releases seemed popular with everyone. I think we can all agree there is nothing more annoying than paying full price for what you think is a new release only to discover you read it in 1992.

Paranormal and erotica are major growth areas, and I have to say the entire conference seemed focused on these two markets - everyone seemed to read erotica and vampires. (Later I’ll post a picture of me and my pretty pink book right next to Delilah Devlin of Ellora’s Cave. We joked that they couldn’t have put two more different looking books together, but differences in covers can be deceiving, we had a great time chatting.)

Back to the panel, Levy also talked about ways to build new authors - great idea if you ask little ole one book me. But seriously, it does make sense. Right now so much of the market is kept going by just a few authors. What would happen if one or two of them quit writing? Why not try and diversify some? Levy mentioned leaving the bottom shelf of their best-seller displays for a new or upcoming author. I’m not sure how they will pick them, but it didn’t sound like it would be just a paid position so good luck to all.

There’s more, but I’ll stop for now. If you are an author who didn’t get the chance to attend, I highly recommend this panel. I think it is a regular part of RT and well worth an extra effort to be at.

Till later

Lori