Authors and their associates, like agents and publishers and such, only make money on the sale of New Releases.

In fact, most publishers make money off backlist, not new releases. New releases can well lose money, but a backlist title that is still selling is almost all profit for the publisher and may still earn money for the author too.

Also, foreign rights also make money and quite often those foreign rights sales come long after a book is no longer a new release.

I did want to point out that out.

Also, the demise of the Traditional Regency does not fit the thesis; that publishers aren’t paying attention to the market for less graphic novels. You think that if there were a (more profitable) market for such books, the TR, which did feature sweeter and less graphic books, would not have simply vanished from the traditional print publisher lines.

The Trad Regency is making a very small comeback — there are two or three smaller publishers who are reprinting these books. (Sourcebooks, Bethancy House, Cerridwan Press come to mind).

I suspect a lot of people who don’t care for the graphic books may be turning to YA for their reading material. Wonderful stories, fine writing, not graphic.

But I do agree that in the current adult fiction market, hotter books prevail.

With every intimate scene I write, something has to change for the characters, and I tend to focus on the moment of change.

Healing, redemption, forgiveness, acceptance, trust, validation, these are the things that get my mind going during those scenes, and I try to portray those common elements of humanity through love.

That’s hot.

I could care less about body parts.

Now I’ll read a spectrum from just a kiss, to bring on the chicken. (J/K)

I’ve found, I tend to be really critical of the more graphic scenes if I don’t see a point to them.

I did worry about my second book disappointing on the heat level. I did manage to put in a hot scene that doesn’t include actual sex (how cerebral is that?).

But there’s no explicit sex between the characters.

Do you think, then, that with your first book you’ve given your readers a sense of expectation that is not consummated (no pun intended!) in the second book? Personally, sex between cerebral characters is my very favorite kind! When you said cerebral characters/no sex I was like WHAT?!?!?! It is with your more cerebral characters that sex tends to heighten from act to art.

I’m not saying you’re right or wrong, I’m just wanting to further the discussion!

PS- Yeah, sex with cerebral characters… don’t knock it! HA! Okay so maybe you can just write the scene for lil’ ol’ me? Hee Hee!

My first book has sex scenes that grow the relationship and characters, and these scenes advance the plot.

But when I finished writing the sequel I realized I didn’t have a graphic sex scene in it (just a kiss here and a grope there). Sex is implied (at the end when they make their commitment to each other), but at that point I wanted to let the reader imagine their own brand of wonderful and wild intimacy . . . I think it’s more satisfying that way

My characters in the first book needed sex to develop/consummate the relationship — the heroine had an emotional barrier to climb over, and the sex helped her to do that. But the second book’s hero and heroine meet on a cerebral level . . . she is confident and secure in who she is, and they delight in each other’s intellectual curiosity . . . . the hero is experienced sexually, and he’s at the point in his life where he wants more than sex from a woman. Focusing on other aspects made the relationship deeper and, to me, more satisfying.

My characters tell me when and if they need sex. Some need it, and some do not.

a) I have found that they are there to “be graphic sex scenes” and not to tell me much about the characters or how these graphic sex scenes reflect them or mold and shape their relationship.

b) They are happening earlier and earlier in stories. In my current WIP, the couple has known one another for years and has had that time for “endless mental foreplay” and yet still don’t share their first kiss until 1/3 of the way through and it’s a novella. They didn’t just meet and decide that was a great time to have incredibly mind-blowing sex and then see where the relationship took them.

c) There is rarely ANY sexual tension, which (in my opinion) in romance is where the most suspense comes in. If we all know there is an HEA for the characters, you must still build tension and conflict- EVEN WITH THE SEX. I think people would enjoy a graphic scene more if the build up was done better than I’ve been finding.

In other words, the graphic sex scene shouldn’t be there to just EXIST. It should DEFINITELY move the story along somehow. The reader should WANT to read the scene, no matter how graphic, not because it’s sex but because it’s affecting the story and the characters.

Of course, I’ve always personally viewed sex as an ART, not an ACT, and so I tend to approach my graphic scenes with this attitude and I’m told it works really well.

I had a memorable experience at age twenty or so. My mom and I were in the kitchen each doing something mundane, when she asked me: “What’s a blow-job?”

I explained it to her in the most clinical terms possible. “Ah,” she said, and of course I got that askance look that asked how I knew that. These days, I shudder to think what she’d say if she knew some of the other terminology her daughter has become familiar with, mostly just theoretically though! She’s very sweet, but grew up on a farm and is in many ways still very innocent and naive.

Well, I don’t know about you, but mine weren’t Immaculate Conceptions!