All readers love knowing what is coming next. We love the little chapter excerpts at the end of the book. On each publishers’ website, there is a “coming soon” link. Amazon lets you search books based on release date all the way up to 2009. The resources are there to get readers excited about next month’s purchases.
The problem is that the information is scattered throughout the internet. Sometimes the information is wrong (Amazon had Lisa Valdez’ next release, Patience, for sale in May despite its publishing date being pushed off to 2008). As readers, it was challenging to fill out our “want” list. We could blog hop. We could go to each publisher’s website. We could go to each author’s website. But there was no one central location that would provide this information for us.
Thus Sybil and Jane got together on a chat one late February evening and romancenovelcentral.com was born. Only that wasn’t a very enticing name. And sheesh, the work involved in putting something like that together was daunting. So they emailed a few publishers and receive a request for a beta link. A Beta? It was a chicken and egg thing but clearly the beta had to come first.
We sent out emails to bloggers baldly asking them to volunteer time to participate. Sybil contacted publicists and Jane coded. and coded. and, well, it’s Beta, she’s still coding.
But the idea took corporeal form and morphed from romancenovelcentral.com to Romantic Advances: Building Your To Be Read Mountain, One Book at a Time. 
It’s to be a one stop location for all the upcoming romance book releases. We have a semi operational “wishlist” feature which allows you to “select” the books you are anticipating and have your very own “wishlist” of upcoming books. There will be a link in the future to allow you to “print” the page and take it to the store.
For librarians and booksellers, we are including ISBN information.
In all, we hope to provide all the information a reader needs to part with money in their wallet for new books. We would love to hear what people think, both the good and the bad. You can contact us at romantic.advances@gmail.com.
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Sounds like a terrific service. Now I’ll be able to plan how broke I’ll be well in advance. Great for avoiding those touchy last-minute “food or book?” situations.
:neutral:Hmmm, I’ll take a ‘wait-and-see’ approach. There are many different kinds of readers. Many of the readers I interract with fall into the ‘Hesitant to Buy New’ category. Pop over to my blog by clicking on my name. Scroll down to the column entitled ‘Sally Reader Overcomes Her Fear of Buying New’ if you want a clear idea of the majority of my readers’ needs.
:idea:All right, I checked out the site. It’s wonderful. Very easy to find all the information one needs to know. However, there’s nothing about it which would convince my Hesitant-to-Buy-New readers to buy. If that’s your goal, then maybe you should brainstorm ideas.
Our goal isn’t to sell books, but merely provide information for upcoming releases. I don’t know that we can or want to overcome the “hesitant to buy new” reader or that it is our place to do so.
At some point almost all readers are in the “Hesitant-to-Buy-New” category. Whether it’s trying a new author or a genre that they’ve never read. The goal isn’t to help readers overcome this, it’s about information. Using the wishlist option doesn’t mean you have to buy the books new.
It isn’t about selling books. It’s about helping readers find information about upcoming releases, by giving them all sorts of search options. We do make it easy for readers to buy books, but the ultimate goal is to provide new release information.
Do some of the entries include excerpts? I thought I’d seen some that did have them, but then I seemed to be getting lots that didn’t have excerpts, so I wondered if maybe I’d imagined it and got confused with Early Ink, which is doing something a bit similar.
We only have a few excerpts for now, but we want to add them later. Early Ink has a very smooth site, doesn’t it? We just thought because of its requirement to pay to be include that Romantic Advances could be complimentary.
What a great idea and service to readers and authors. Daunting prospect, too. I have less idea of how to code a website than I do of how to code a top secret military message. Thanks for doing this!
Hey Kimber Ann,
We need to work on the mission statement… what is it about the site that leads to the impression that we are trying to convince my Hesitant-to-Buy-New readers to buy.
We aren’t aiming to be a book store but did include ‘buy’ links for the ease of readers who did want to buy. We are helping readers find all the books, they never knew, they always wanted. Convincing your hesitant to buy readers to buy your books (or any authors) is the authors job to do with their book and writing. We are going to include excerpts, book covers and summaries, we figured if the cover is bad - maybe the reader will like the summary -if the author gets a ‘bad’ cover & back copy, if they submit an excerpt that could help as well.
At the end of the day this is all about helping readers know what is next, find new authors and of course building to be read mountains. Of course that will lead to authors finding new readers as well…
I think it looks great! I just sent you the info for my May release.
I just book marked it. I need this site.
Well, I can’t give you an assessment of the site as a reader, but as an author I think it’s great. You already had my July/Aug release up there (THE SUPPLICANT, which just earned a 4-star review from RT Book Reviews and a CTRR award from Coffee Time Romance!). I easily added a comment to the book, and I easily filled in the form for my release of last March (MOON SHADOW, which also earned 4 stars from RT, and several reviewers choice awards!) I also commented on the news page, offering several copies of MOON SHADOW and THE SUPPLICANT for prizes for your upcoming contests and giveaways. Good luck with your site!
SWAK,
Lucinda
:grin:I was merely providing my impression of the site as a reader and the likely impression most of the readers I know would have of the site. That’s all.:wink:
Can you elaborate on that more? Perhaps we need to better define our mission. I mean, selling books for authors is a side benefit, but I see us as more of an informational source.
I don’t want to mislead people.
:roll:Well, I don’t know if I can be much help, since your purpose is informational. The readers I know might visit the site, but never return. They feel more comfortable getting their information from people they know and trust, in real life or on-line. They don’t really care about exact release dates, flashy covers, and such, except for those by their favorite authors. Since they visit these authors’ websites anyway, they already know. These readers are sensitive people. They lead stressful lives and want to relax when they go looking for a new book. A good book means a lot to them!:wink: This is why they’re such wonderful readers for an author to have. They’re devoted and they love telling their friends. They usually send those friends directly to the authors’ websites or blogs. They need to enjoy visiting your site or they won’t stay long or come back. Or tell their friends. That’s what I know about my readers. Hope that helps!:wink:
I would guess that we aren’t a good match for your readers then.
[...] A reader at Romancing the Blog raised an interesting question on Jane’s post yesterday about Romantic Advances: Romantic Advances: Its Porn for Your Bookshelves. [...]
Unfortunately, Kimber An, there are a lot of authors who don’t update their websites regularly, and don’t have the information about their upcoming releases readily available. And there are authors, such as the very popular Linda Howard, who don’t have a presence on the web at all.
I have yet to meet a reader who wouldn’t love this sort of resource, and return again and again to see what’s soon to be published. Readers voraciously devour information and can’t get enough, whether on author sites, publisher sites, RT, etc.
And what’s more relaxing when looking for a new book than having all the information in one single place rather than having to visit multiple websites and even then not be sure the information will be there. I don’t think you’re giving “your readers” enough credit!
I can’t help but think of it as similar to going into a bookstore and browsing the shelves. It’s the cover and back copy that might get you to take a second look there, and maybe pick it up. (And since this resource is online, hopefully it’ll be just as easy to flip to an author’s website for more information and excerpts.)
Only this shows the titles coming far in advance, or currently available. I’d have killed for something like this when I’ve been at Amazon for the last couple of years, trying desperately to remember all of the books that I wanted to pick up, but hadn’t put in my Wish List. And at Amazon, unless you already know what you want, there’s not really a good way to find out what’s available (unless it’s on a bestseller list).
So I like that it brings “browsing” back into the online venue in a way that doesn’t force you to hop from site to site. And for new and mid-list authors, especially, I can see this as an incredibly valuable resource.
As a reader, I can’t help but get all excited about this site and I applaud Sybil, Jane and the other bloggers for taking on such a huge job and providing this informational service for readers just like me. It’ll save me a lot of time searching online at the different sites and I for one, really appreciate this service.
-Rowena
As a reader, I’ve been wanting this for YEARS. I read a ton of authors, too many to keep track by reading every freaking blog. I tried letting Amazon send me recommendations but they sucked. I want a site that lets ME choose books, and then keep track of my choices. If that’s what you’re doing it’s AWESOME.
Maybe under each title you could have a “Tag for Later” link as well as a “Buy” link. I guess I’m missing how one actually MAKES the wishlist.