As I mentioned last month, all of my free time (ha!) has been devoted to adding content to the RomanceWiki. In addition to fighting the good fight against spammers (why, oh, why do they think they’ll win against me?) and adding new titles, I’ve been working on gathering information about past RITA winners – titles and authors.
Here is what I’ve learned: we have lost so much history. Worse, we are losing our major asset…the actual stories that make the history.
It’s a bit depressing to consider, yet I think we can save our past. I’ve been trying to build histories for each RITA-winning title. Naturally, my primary source is Amazon.com. It is, frankly, amazing how many old books they have in their catalog. Of course, a lot of them are out-of-print. If I were the type to do math (and, thankfully, I’m not), I’d say 85%* of RITA-winning titles are no longer available to readers.
If it weren’t for authors like Nora Roberts and Susan Elizabeth Phillips, that number would be far higher. Trust me on this.
More often that not, the note I include with a book’s description is “Out-of-Print.†And every time I write those words, it hurts. I understand the business of publishing, probably better than most. It’s a numbers game and the sheer economics of maintaining physical product makes keeping books in print a losing prospect.
Yet, my little inner voice whines, these are the best of the best of the genre. And while that’s probably debatable, these award-winning books tell the story of how romance has evolved since RWA was established. You get a sense of what was considered, well, romantic, and you get a sense of how absolutely different our genre was when compared to today. And, if you’re reviewing these titles in great detail, you’re thinking, “Man, that was a great book. Too bad I let it go.†(I’m thinking, specifically, of Anne Stuart’s Cinderman, but it applies to many more titles).
What really got me agitated about this topic was a book by an author with a name I’m sure is made up. I hope is made up. In fact, when I first started typing her name, I thought, this is the type of name that people making fun of romance use. Her name is Constance Ravenlock>. She won the RITA (actually, Golden Medallion as the RITA didn’t come into play until the 1990 awards) in 1982 in the Category Historical category. Which I believe is the Short Historical category in our modern world. The title of the book is Rendezvous at Gramercy
.
This book is out-of-print (heck, the publisher is out-of-print), and the online information about this author is minimal. I can access a list of her pseudonyms, that’s about it. From what I can tell, the only book she wrote under the Ravenlock name was her RITA winner, a Candelight Regency about a woman who finds shelter with people who suspect she’s a spy. Maybe this book is ridiculously awful, maybe it’s brilliantly brilliant. The sad truth is I’ll probably never know.
Now if I were in the mood, I’d turn this into a screed about authors grabbing back their rights and using new technology to make these award-winning titles available to readers. I’d suggest that the very least RWA could do is form a committee to explore ways to preserve RITA winners for posterity. I’d complain that the one-month-and-you’re-gone Harlequin model is depressing when you’re trying to learn about books that were considered the best of their genre (of course, I’d level the same charges at other publishers as well).
I imagine this is an issue faced by every genre from literary to science fiction, and I like to think others are asking these same questions. I’ve written about projects like Google books in other venues – and my point has always been that we’re losing so much because the economics of publishing precludes keeping large numbers of titles in print. We have the technology. We have the creativity. What I really hope we can do is save our history before it’s too late.
And, yeah, if you know more about Constance Ravenlock, please fill in the blanks. In fact, here’s a list of RITA-winning authors (I’d post the titles, too, but I’m only up to “O lot of books, you know!).
* – This is truly just an estimate. Honest.
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I applaud your wiki work! And now, thanks to you, I’ll have the Six Million Dollar Man theme as an earworm all damned day. “We can rebuild him. We have the technology.”
I think it’s odd that the RWA hasn’t done more.
I believe at least one of the author organisations, maybe Mystery Writers of America or Novelists Inc., has a program with a POD publisher to keep books from their members in print.
I know that Patricia McLinn has released her now out of print categories as ebooks from Belgrave House, including the book she won a RITA for, Hoops.
I love buying the old Joan Smith books and others from Belgrave House. I know that Moxie Press is looking to acquire old favorites. I definitely think that authors should consider ebook pub as a way to re-release these books. I would much rather buy from the author than from the UBS but many times the UBS is our only option.
I’d rather buy from the author as well — especially when you realize that if you do find the books from a used book dealer, they’re often at triple the cover price.
There are so many options available to reprint now — there’s Belgrave House, there’s Moxie Press. Heck, there’s Lulu if the author wanted to do it themselves. It’d be nice to see some of the old titles come back.
Oh, and apparently Constance Ravenlock is a pseudonym according to my research on Google, for a writer named June E. Casey who also wrote as Melissa Ash, Casey Douglas and June Trevor. She wrote several contemporaries in the early 80s, but Rendevous at Grammercy was her only Regency.
Kassia–what an AWESOME project. You should send your suggestion to the RWA board. I’m quite certain that most winning authors wouldn’t mind donating a book to RWA for posterity.
For older romance novels, try http://www.paperbackswap.com. Both Cinderman (3 copies) and Rendezvous at Gramercy (1 copy) are available and just waiting to be requested.
In the UK we have ‘copyright libraries’ and publishers have to send a copy of their book to each of these libraries. There aren’t very many of these huge libraries, but at least it does mean that it’s kept somewhere, and if someone has the time to do the research and travel to that library, they’ll be able to find it.
But according to Wikipedia this isn’t what happens at the Library of Congress. Just in case, I checked their catalogue and it’s not there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_library#Legal_Deposit_and_Copyright
Maybe it’s a matter of space, but it would seem like a good idea for the RWA to keep copies, particularly as they’re funding research grants for academics who want to do work on romance. It might well help academics in decades to come if there was somewhere where they could find the books easily.
I couldn’t agree more. There is a way to preserve these treasures. Now we must step up and make the effort.
How will we know where we’re headed if we’re unaware of where we’ve been?
Romance has a rich history. And it needs to be cherished. Not put out to pasture.
Grins*
[...] Do You Remember Constance Ravenlock?We look back at lost authors and lost work — and wonder if there’s a way to save more books before they’re gone forever. [...]
Wow — so many great comments. I’ve been peeking in between meetings all day. It’s great to get such a response to this, especially since I’ve been thinking about it long and hard lately.
One thing, however, while the idea of buying used makes sense, it’s not always a surefire approach. And while preservation copies are an absolute necessity (and I will follow up with RWA on that point), I’m kind of thinking that there needs to be a way to make these older titles available to readers in a more reliable manner.
My first thought, of course, would be to go with some sort of e-publishing/on-demand model as authors regain their rights. This is easier said than done, I realize, but it does accomplish the goal with relatively low overhead (though I suspect digitizing earlier winners would be a challenge). But these are just my ideas…I’m sure that once this is out in the collective unconscious, something brilliant will bubble up!
You missed Linda Devlin in the “D” section. She won Best Paranormal for “Shades of Midnight” in 2004. I’ve held that Rita in my hot little hands.
Great job you’re doing! It’s been interesting to read through all the winners you have posted to date.
Hmm, I have that book as being written by Linda Fallon. Is it possible that one is her pseudonym? RWA goes by published name with RITA winners, real name for Golden Heart ( I believe I have that correct)…
[...] Do You Remember Constance Ravenlock?We look back at lost authors and lost work — and wonder if there’s a way to save more books before they’re gone forever. [...]
My bad! She has so many pseudonyms that I get them confused. You’re absolutely correct — Linda Fallon was the name that Linda Winstead Jones wrote the book under. I’ve held that Rita in my sweaty hand too.
She’s gorgeous.