Jess, thanks very much for your kind words about my blog!

I can honestly say there is nothing more nerve wracking for me than waiting on my first cover. It is killing me. The title of the book BEYOND THE RAIN isn’t really SFR sounding, and I doubt the cover art will be overly spacey. I’m a little concerned that people will think it is a book about a shape-shifting were-tiger considering the alien hero is going to be on the cover and he has a couple of stripes. (They’re super-sexy trust me.)

The fact of the matter is, I’ve got no control over that. The only thing I do have any control over is writing the very best, most evocative, emotional, fast-paced heart wrenching (but with a HEA) story that I possibly can, then try to get my name out there.

Blogs like Heather’s super fun and fabulous Galaxy Express,
http://thegalaxyexpress.blogspot.com and

The Spacefreighter’s lounge http://spacefreighters.blogspot.com

Make that a lot easier for us authors. Thank you.

Jess

Susan, it seems to me there’s a strong benefit to longevity. Regardless of marketing techniques, you have enough readers out there now to recruit new ones and to set the record straight when there’s confusion. It seems like it’s been a marathon rather than a sprint for you.

Heather, i think you are basing your argument in part on that readers do not read the back cover copy. I think many do. Then the content would not be so obscure. sure, that may lose me the impulse buyers, but I think many more of us readers are informed and know what we’re hunting for.

As for getting the covers I want, after Moonstruck I just gave up. I am just concentrating on writing my books now and trying to not let this bring me down and hurt my creative process more than it has already. I have no control whatsoever over marketing and marketing decisions.

As for paranormal and SFR, I can see why publishers would want to lure the vast paranormal romance audience. We SFRers are considered a subgenre of this larger one. It has been like this for years. After all, Linnea Sinclair and I both won RITAs…for paranormal romance. Someday it would be awesome if paranormal books were being marketing to SFR readers, but that is years off!

In closing, I think it’s idealistic to expect our reader and author desires to influence the publisher’s cover treatment/packaging with which they will market a book. I have no say, and most authors don’t. Some pretty high up folks in the book-selling world got involved in the process for me, and still hit a brick wall. Like i said, I have decided my books defy marketing and I’ve buried my involvement in the process as it clearly cannot influence it. My energy is better spent writing a good book.

Thank you so much, Kimber. I, too, enjoy reading such stories. IMO, it can really raise the stakes in the plot.

I guess part of the issue is defining what constitutes “widest”. If by widest we mean both current and fans who are predisposed to like something like SFR, then super.

But if publishers are just trying to sell books just based on covers/titles, then as others have pointed out, it does readers a disservice.

On the other hand, if sales are showing that new-to-SFR/futuristic romance readers buy books despite obscured content, and seek out more, then I can’t argue because that *is* one way to introduce different sub-genres.

I guess I’m just surprised that a cover can influence someone’s reading preferences so much that he/she’d be willing to try out SFR of all things. I mean, I love the stuff but I know how otherwordly strange it can get (which of course is part of the appeal)! It just feels like a disconnect to me but then again, I’m not in the business of selling books.

Who knows…with enough luck we might be having a different conversation in 2-5 years when loads of SFR books hit the shelves and every single one has a futuristic landscape on the cover!

Kimber An, thanks for clarifying my comments. I, too see a lot of originality in the SFR stories being released now.

Trying to appeal to the widest possible audience results in something so general it comes off as an ‘Endless Parade of Sameness.’ If a reader likes the same kinds of stories over and over, that’s fine. People who read any flavor of Science Fiction, even Science Fiction Romance are after the *fantastic unknown.* Therefore, casting SFR as Paranormal drives away the potential reader, the one who loves the *fantastic unknown.* Once you start me down that road, I really get cranky about SFR being crammed into the Paranormal mold. So, I won’t go there. Suffice it to say, I believe SFR needs and deserves an identity of its own.

Creating something original and then presenting it to the world in the widest possible way is brilliant. I think that’s what everyone’s after, but opinions vary on how to do that.

For the record, I think Susan is probably the most original of any SFR author I’ve read. She’s the only one I know, for example, who’s heroines are mommies more often than not, or are trying to be by the end of the book.