ARRC09 Day 2 Morning LIVEBLOG

We’re liveblogging ARRC09 via Twitter. Come follow us at Twitter and check out the photos at Flickr.
Click here to view the liveblog of the ARRC09 Day 2 Morning sessions.
Click here for a round-up of ARRC09 posts.
If you’re interested in participating in the liveblogs, please let me know via Twitter or grab me at the convention. I’ll be mobile all day and may not get to my e-mails on time.
If you can’t see the liveblog below, you can go directly to ScribbleLive to watch the action.
- 7:49 AM: BookThingo Wandergurl and I are liveblogging ARRC09 via Twitter, cross-posted to the blog. Morning sessions include welcome, speeches by Susan Grant and Liz Maverick, panel discussion on e-books, love and alternate realities, and future of romance.
- 8:24 AM: BookThingo Running late again. Wandergurl is having brekkie with some Cellies. Will resume liveblog soon!
- 9:17 AM: girlwithabolo having brekkie with the cellie girls! Good to catch up :)
- 10:09 AM: BookThingo Talking books with cellies. Apparently, I should look up King Neptune on the Lora Leigh forum! *NSFW*
- 10:12 AM: BookThingo for tweets on #arrc follow @vassilikiveros I’ll be listening to the panel at 10.30
- 10:36 AM: BookThingo #arrc Tough choice between ebook panel or future of romance. Opted for ebook. Sponsored by Torquere Press.
- 10:40 AM: girlwithabolo ended up in urban fantasy cos was running late as we had to check out
- 10:43 AM: girlwithabolo its quite funny this panel!
- 10:45 AM: BookThingo #arrc eBooks greener, more personal attention, ease of use, way of future
- 10:48 AM: BookThingo #arrc SF/F even bigger in ebooks than erotica
- 10:50 AM: girlwithabolo i love how denise rosetti insists that her characters!
- 10:52 AM: girlwithabolo ok that got sent too early. I meant that her characters bathe!
- 10:54 AM: BookThingo #arrc DADirect sells BeBook for under 500. May have a shop front in Melbourne soon. Dymocks in Sydney sells ebooks
- 10:57 AM: BookThingo #arrc Authors have greater input into titles and covers, more flexible.
- 11:04 AM: girlwithabolo vampires penetrate now in diff ways from back in dracula’s time
- 11:04 AM: BookThingo #arrc An author in the audience reckons ebooks often have better covers than HQN and others. I don’t agree with this.
- 11:05 AM: girlwithabolo excuse me dear while i shift your tail is the best line ever. Tho i don’t think i could read a centaur female and a male erotica thingy
- 11:05 AM: BookThingo #arrc Would be great if sites had AUD conversion.
- 11:05 AM: BookThingo @girlwithabolo how much more different could penetration be? LOL #arrc
- 11:08 AM: BookThingo #arrc need to be mindful of niche and audience
- 11:10 AM: girlwithabolo @bookthingo apparently before it was all just blood sucking. No penetration. Now they bite other things too, as denise rosetti says :)
- 11:14 AM: BookThingo #arrc Editing is important and quality depends on editorial team
- 11:14 AM: girlwithabolo there’s a lot of liberties that u can take with world building. You can be a goddess! I like that.
- 11:15 AM: BookThingo #arrc Publishers and authors dob in piracy sites and readers help by reporting when they find sites
- 11:19 AM: girlwithabolo catch phrase of the day: “you are my mate!” bwahahhahaa
- 11:20 AM: girlwithabolo now really want to read books by everyone in the panel. Oh noes! Will be overbudget. Thank God we have ebooks
- 11:23 AM: BookThingo #arrc Don’t get the feeling that panel understands generational issues with filesharing
- 11:24 AM: girlwithabolo @bookthingo oh noes makikipagaway ka nanaman hahaha! Do not fight the panelists!
- 11:27 AM: BookThingo #arrc eBook royalties are much higher than print books. Is this true? I’m not sure I believe this. At least not in terms of averages.
- 11:31 AM: BookThingo @girlwithabolo I didn’t! Was disappointed in lack of diversity in the answers, though. But audience challenged answers, too, so was good.

Re: eBook royalties, I’m only a reader but I’m pretty sure I spoke to an author once who said to me that a Harlequin royalty is under 10% (usually around 8%) and an e-publisher royalty is around 40%. Factor in that you can buy Harlequin for a month only, and most eBooks can be sold for years, and that’s very different potential numbers (although you do have to consider how many titles Harlequin sell every month but arguably some of the bigger e-publishers like Ellora’s Cave would be doing just as well).
Natasha’s right about e-book royalties being around 40% of the ebook sales price.But – they do NOT pay any kind of advance, and their royalties on print books are similar to those of other print publishers. They can take an awfully long time to get your book into print too, like over two flippin’ years. Grrr… Don’t know nuttin’ about HMB royalties though.
And yep, I have to confess I like my heroes to be reasonably clean. But that’s only so the sex can be real down and dirty. *evil cackle*
I get that the percentages are vastly different, but when volume is taken into account, I guess I assumed—and I could certainly be totally wrong—that HQN authors have an advantage (especially new authors) due to automatic sales from subscribers, libraries, etc. Natasha raises a good point about the long tail of HQNs, although perhaps that will also change now that they’re releasing ebooks, too.
Denise, I try not to think too much about hygiene in medieval romances. There’s a reason I read fiction! *g*
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