Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

How I despise country music! Is anything more annoying than a smarmy Stetson-wearing “hunk” wailing about turning to drink because his woman stole his unemployment check and his dog and ran off with his best friend? I’ll never understand how the people who produce that garbage can hold their heads up. And don’t even get me started on the listeners. From what I can tell, the typical country music fan has the brains of a sweet potato.

Before we go any further, I’m just kidding, okay? But just for a moment, let’s imagine that everyone reading this is a die-hard country music fan. Now–

Did my opening paragraph make you feel ashamed of your listening habits? Will it discourage you from buying Brad Paisley’s latest CD? Will it make you reconsider your dream of taking your songs to Nashville and getting them heard? And finally, do you believe that my foolish, mean-spirited words will have even the tiniest impact on the country music industry or its, uh, listenership?

I’m guessing most of you answered each of those questions in the negative. So why do we get so upset when people ridicule the romance industry? When they insist that any fool could write one of those “trashy little romance novels”? When they imply that the typical romance reader is a bored and boring individual of sub-par intelligence who has checked out of the real world because she can’t get a good man to love her?

Last week an author writing in another genre singled out my romance publisher’s guidelines for some heavy ridicule. His message was clear: Our books are shallow, whereas his books are deep. We have sold out, while he is willing to fight to the death for Realism and Integrity in Fiction.

Quite a few of my author friends were deeply offended and did their best to set the guy straight. Yes, his rant was a tad irksome, but he was expressing his own opinions on his own blog, and isn’t that what blogs are for? One of the things I hate about the internet is the way people leap into arguments on blogs they have never read before, leaving huffy comments because their friends have stirred them up and encouraged them to go over there and give that jerk a piece of their minds.

I cringe when I see romance readers piling on, coming from every corner of the internet to punish the hapless bloggers our friends have taken exception to. Is our self-respect so fragile that we must shore it up by slapping down everyone who ventures to express an unflattering opinion about our favorite genre of fiction?

There are times and places where a few well-chosen words can help build respect for the romance industry and its various subgenres. But I don’t think its wise for us to troop over to blogs we don’t ordinarily read and “tell off” bloggers who are complete strangers to us. When we rush into battle every single time somebody maligns the books we love, we risk appearing insecure and pathetic. And consider this: if a blogger really is mean spirited, she’ll “win” by making us angry. She’ll sit back and laugh at us all the more once she knows she’s controlling our emotions.

I’d just like for all of us to display a little more confidence, that’s all. We who read and write romance have no need to defend our choice. We don’t have to fight for and earn the right to hold our heads up. Tell a country music fan that you detest country music and she’ll probably just shrug and say, “Well, I love it.”

Maybe we romance lovers ought to do the same.

As anyone who has ever worked in retail knows, the customer is always right, even when she’s clearly wrong. The same can be said of romance readers. It is the novelist’s job to entertain, so there can be no arguing with a reader who insists she is not amused. And if a reader catches the author in any kind of error, the author is rarely in a position to answer or even to hear the charge. Even if she could argue and even if she’s right, the author could never change the fact that for that reader, her story failed. A reader who’s gleefully or disgustedly pointing out grammatical or factual errors is not a reader who’s fully and delightedly immersed in a novel.

I boarded this train of thought last week when someone on one of the writers’ e-mail loops I follow asked which was the correct saying:

1. If you think that, you have another thing coming.
2. If you think that, you have another think coming.

The second sentence is correct. When someone says you have another “think” coming, she means you will soon think again and realize your error. But try saying “another think coming” aloud and you’ll notice that the k in “think” is swallowed up by the sound of the c in “coming.” It’s easy to see why people who have only heard the expression and never seen it in print would swear it’s “you have another thing coming.” So many people have been making that error for so long that it has become an acceptable alternative to the original expression. But that’s the English language for you. It’s always changing and adapting in response to our rough handling of it.

Speaking of rough handling, an egregious Shakespeare misquotation keeps turning up in the historical romance novels I read. Characters chirp, “Lead on, Macduff!” to indicate their willingness to follow someone. But that’s not at all what Shakespeare wrote in the last scene of Macbeth. Take a look:

Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn’d be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!”

This is not about leading and following. These guys are fighting. Macbeth is challenging Macduff to “lay on” and take his best shot; this will be a duel to the death. But long ago, whether through ignorance or in jest, somebody got the line wrong–and it has been repeated for so long that many people aren’t even aware that “Lead on, Macduff” is not Shakespeare.

Here’s another mangled quote you’ve probably heard: “Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast.” William Congreve actually wrote, “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast,  to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.” He was talking about soothing wild hearts, not wild animals. But at least something close to the original words and meaning has been retained in the misquotation.

English continues to evolve. Remember the old days when “impact” wasn’t a verb? I still can’t bring myself to use it that way, but then I was also slow to accept that book editors no longer want to see two spaces after a period. And speaking of editors, a few months ago mine sent an e-mail to her stable of authors politely demanding that everyone stop writing, “He quirked an eyebrow.” Quirk, she informed her authors, is not a verb. And she’s right; it isn’t.

Yet.

When words and sayings are used incorrectly by a large number of people over time, those mistakes gradually make their way into the vernacular. If an author employs them thinking they’ll resonate with her readers, she may find instead that she is ridiculed for her ignorance. Yet if she scrupulously adheres to tradition and correctness, she risks being thought wrong by some and insufferably rigid by others.

Of course no author can please all of her readers all of the time. But unless I’m going for a laugh, I generally avoid problematic words or phrases like the ones I’ve discussed here. If my readers shake their heads in confusion or condemnation because of something I’ve written, then whether I am correct becomes immaterial. I’m endeavoring to trap readers in the sticky webs of my stories; the last thing I want to do is leave openings where they might escape to ponder the mechanics of my writing.

The words “lay” and “lie” and their various tenses have tripped up many writers, but that’s not usually one of my problem areas. Yet I ran into trouble in my last book when I wrote that a driver “laid on his horn.” In a knee-jerk reaction, a copyeditor who must daily see authors erroneously use “laid” for the past tense of “lay” made the usual correction. When she was finished, the manuscript read that the guy “lay on his horn.” But that was wrong, and I said so. While the past tense of “to lay” is indeed “lay” (and not “laid”), to say that the man lay on his horn was ridiculous. His body was not sprawled across the steering wheel.

I was not using the verb “to lay,” but the verb “to lay on,” which means to apply pressure to. The guy was not lying across his horn, he was laying on his horn. My fellow dyslexics may need to read that sentence two or three more times before all becomes clear, but here’s a hint: He was making his horn blare long and loud, just like an impatient cabbie  in Chicago.

So I was right. “He laid on his horn” was correct. But I was wrong, too. Because if the copyeditor stumbled over that sentence, maybe readers will, also. I wish now that I had simply reworded it.

So here’s a bit of advice for my fellow writers: The next time your editor or your critique partner flags something in your manuscript that you know is absolutely correct, don’t be in a hurry to argue your case. Instead, take a moment to wonder why that person stopped reading your story to make a note at that particular spot. And then consider the possibility that being right might be just a tad less important than  being read.

We all know that too much of a good thing can often be a very bad thing. Chocolate cake, for example. And suntanning. But what about romance novels?

Most of us would agree that reading good romance novels can inspire and empower women. But just how much romance can we read before we cross the line to unhealthy self-indulgence? We can’t spend every waking moment with our noses buried in a Susan Wiggs novel. Not when we have livings to earn, children to rear, despotic cats to serve, and so on. Clearly, it’s important to maintain a good balance between our reading and the other facets of our lives. So from time to time, a wise woman asks herself, Am I reading too much romance?

I’m not here to tell you how many romance novels you can safely consume without turning into a wild-eyed book junkie who cares about nothing except her next Sherrilyn Kenyon fix. That threshold is going to be different for every romance reader. But I have compiled a list of warning signs that might indicate you are skating dangerously close to the edge of addiction.

You might be reading too many romance novels if:

1. You don’t understand why your boyfriend is insulted rather than flattered when you accidentally call him by the name of a hunky Suzanne Brockmann hero.

2. Your best friend gets engaged, and instead of being thrilled you worry because you know that immediately before the wedding, the couple will face a Dark Moment when all will seem lost.

3. Although you’ve never seen a man with azure eyes that darken to midnight blue when he’s feeling amorous and black when he’s angry, you’re certain such men exist because Julia Quinn wouldn’t make up stuff like that.

4. You put your Kindle in a Ziploc bag so you can read in the shower.

5. You promise your dog a walk after you finish just one more chapter and are annoyed when, three chapters later, the sound of your dog peeing on the floor pulls you out of the big love scene.

6. You ask your landlord to wait another week for the rent because Nora Roberts has 37 books out this month, 19 of which are certified first-time releases.

7. You blame Jennifer Crusie for your weight problem because even the most disciplined woman couldn’t read all those references to Dove Bars and Krispy Kreme doughnuts and the like without eventually reaching for her car keys and heading to the store.

When I started this list I was planning to include eight or ten bullet points, but I can’t think up any more right now because I just got an e-mail alert from Ereader.com saying they have a new Loretta Chase book available, and–

Oh, wait. I just thought of another one:

8. Your Romancing the Blog column for Monday was supposed to be turned in on Saturday morning, but you didn’t even begin writing it until 10:00 on Sunday night because you spent a big chunk of the weekend reading Eloisa James’ latest “duchess” novel.

Uh-oh. I might have a problem…

Hello, romance author. Since you’re reading this blog post, I’m assuming you’re comfortable navigating the internet. You almost certainly have your own website. You probably have a blog. And I bet you have a Facebook page or a Twitter account, don’t you? Maybe even both.

May I ask you a question?

Why?

Are you doing it to increase your book sales? And if so, are your efforts bearing fruit? How can you tell?

Maybe you’re beginning to worry about the huge bites of time the internet is chomping out of your writing day. But your editors and your agent and all of your published pals are telling you that an author must have a current website. They’re also telling you that blogging is a great way to engage with your readers, and if you’re not on Facebook, you’re missing yet another wonderful opportunity to connect with fans. And everyone who’s anyone is Twittering these days, right?

There are three kinds of authors on the internet: those who worry that they’re not doing enough to promote their books, those who are trying to do it all but are running dangerously short on energy and enthusiasm, and those who have found a comfortable level of involvement in online activities and are meeting the goals they have set for themselves.

We’ll get to the goal-setting in a minute. First, stop and think about how many times in the past twenty-four hours you have read notes like the following on writers’ e-mail loops and message boards:

“I’ve just totally redesigned my website. Please take a look and tell me how you like it!”

“Click over to my blog and register for my latest book giveaway!”

“Are you on Twitter? Me, too! Let’s ‘follow’ each other!”

“Hey, I’ve just set up a fan page on Facebook. Here’s the link!”

Unless you’re a paragon of patience, you might resent seeing this stuff every day, all day long. But admit it: you’ve sent your share of those messages. I have, too. They usually elicit a handful of responses, but what good is it, really, when romance novelists spend their time promoting to other romance novelists?

Yes, every romance writer is also a romance reader. But most of the time when you do a romance writer a favor by checking out her blog or her website or by “friending” her on a social network, aren’t you really doing it because you would expect her to do the same for you? Hey, there’s nothing wrong with mutual encouragement. But how many of your MySpace friends are actually buying your books and how many are just fellow writers reciprocating because you helped increase their own friend counts? Apart from those little ego boosts, what exactly are you doing for each other?

Wasting each other’s time, that’s what. You’re also helping to promote the ludicrous idea that an author’s popularity can be gauged by the number of “friends” she has collected on her social networking pages.

I joined Twitter almost a month ago and quickly learned that in general, people who “follow” you consider it the height of rudeness if you don’t follow them back. Why? Because they have done you a favor by adding to your follower count and they expect a favor in return. To play the game like everyone else does, simply follow hundreds of Twits; you can count on a large percentage following you back. Just remember that most of them will ignore all of your Twitter tweeting just like you ignore theirs. Which means that when you announce the release of your next book to your impressive collection of 2,798 Twitter followers, only a handful of them will actually read the message.

From what I’ve seen, the numbers race is as blatant and as meaningless on every other social network as it is on Twitter. Many writers who have discovered that fact have lamented the time they’ve wasted “building a presence” on those sites. And when their publishers and agents persist in pressuring them to step up their promotional efforts, the writers begin to grouse that those things are very easy for publishers and agents to say when they aren’t the ones footing the bills for things like web hosting and site design and when they don’t have to research and write the daily blog posts or even rack their brains to come up with interesting tidbits to tweet on Twitter.

Late last year, I was an exhausted Web 2.0 user who finally asked herself, What am I gaining from all of this? The answer I came up with was, Probably not nearly as much as I’ve been led to believe. So I slowed down. Now my website hasn’t been updated in eight months, but while that’s on my To Do list, it’s not a huge priority–and it won’t be until I am convinced that the site is selling more than a handful of books here and there. As for my blog, I used to post entries six days a week but am now down to fewer than eight posts a month with no mass exodus of readers. My MySpace page has lain fallow since last autumn. I have also abandoned a couple of online communities and reduced the number of e-mail loops I read. And my Twitter account? Well, that’s just for fun. As of today I am being followed by only 144 people, and about half of those are my writing pals.

At long last, I am comfortable with my level of activity on the internet.

How did I get to this comfortable place? The first step was paring down my online activities according to the e-mail I have received from readers. Since many of my incoming messages begin, “I’ve been reading your blog for a while and finally decided to try one of your books,” the blog is clearly helping to build my readership. Ditto, my website. But I bowed out of participation in at least three message boards (including–dare I confess–eHarlequin’s Steeple Hill Community) because I could not recall ever getting new readers from those places. It’s true that I’ve picked up quite a few readers from MySpace, but the cumbersome interface was a drain on my time and patience–and many of my 597 friends there are other writers, anyway. So I have all but abandoned that account.

After my internet housecleaning, I created a statement of purpose for each of my remaining online endeavors. I share the following list not as a recommendation, but merely as an example. Your own list might end up looking very different.

1. The purpose of my website is to give readers information about my books. The site includes one large section on writing tips and another on the subject of preparing and serving afternoon tea, both of which get very good traffic from the search engines. The purpose of those auxiliary pages is to pique interest in my writing and drive traffic to the main pages of my site. My referral logs tell me that’s working great. I can “see” when people have come in on a tea page and gone on to read an excerpt from one of my books.

2. The purpose of my blog is to engage with the writing community and other blog-readers with a view to mutual education and encouragement while also driving traffic to my website. Even now that I’m blogging only once or twice a week, I’m still receiving many comments and private e-mails from blog readers. And my referral logs tell me that traffic is flowing steadily to the website.

3. The purpose of my Twitter account is to trade news and quips with friends. If a little accidental promotion happens, that’s great; but right now, Twitter is mostly for fun and relaxation.

4. The purpose of my involvement in various e-mail loops is to become better known in the romance-writing community in order to make interesting new friends as well as to learn, to be encouraged, and to share my own experiences and encouragement with other writers.

Since completing that list, I am no longer shooting blind, but aiming at clear targets. Knowing why I’m doing what I do online helps me keep things in perspective and manage my time better. For example, since Twitter is just for fun, there’s no point in wasting time or using gimmicks to build my “follower” base.

Some might say I’m not doing enough to promote my books. Others might say I’m squandering time that could be spent writing more and better books. But I’m the expert on what I’m comfortable doing, and in the absence of any reliable information on the efficacy of websites, blogs, social networks, and the like in increasing book sales, I’m going to go with my gut and say I’ve finally found the perfect balance for my online activities.

I’m eager to hear what’s working for the rest of you. Please share your thoughts in the Comments.

A few days ago, a member of a published romance authors’ e-mail loop linked to this page of Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish and lauded an anonymous writer for her well-crafted, positive comments on the romance industry. I clicked over to read the piece and stumbled across this disturbing line:

Although the romance novel industry is constantly derided from the outside, made fun of and considered “trash” by the uninformed, these are not the romance novels your mother read, nor anything like the Barbara Cartland books gathering dust on your grandmother’s bookshelf.

Did this individual (who describes herself as an author of European historical romance novels) really mean to suggest that the romance novels our mothers read were indeed trash, unlike the novels of today, which are quality reading? That’s what it sounds like to me–and I’m sorry to say this is hardly the first time I’ve heard that sentiment expressed by a fellow romance writer. But is denigrating the old books really a good way to build respect our genre?

It might be if it were true that today’s books are more entertaining and relevant than yesterday’s books were in their own time. But we can’t demonstrate that today’s books are better because they are not better.

One example often cited as “proof” of the improved literary quality of modern romance novels is the increasing rarity of purple prose. Yet romance authors of the past didn’t write purple because they were ignorant and untalented. They were simply writing for their time and their market–just as we do today. So it’s disingenuous of us to attempt to correct our critics’ perception of the literary quality of modern romance novels by agreeing that yesterday’s romances were insipid and cliche-ridden and insisting that we’ve moved beyond that now, thank goodness, and are finally producing books that are fresh and compelling and extremely well-written.

All right, there were a lot of truly awful romance novels published in the 70’s and 80’s. But I’ve seen quite a few stinkers bearing copyright dates of 2008 and 2009, as well, so you won’t hear me crowing that we’ve come a long way, baby. Today’s books aren’t, as a whole, better than yesterday’s. Yes, the genre has broadened, and we’re seeing many new and exciting sugenres and writing styles. But as regards literary quality, the romance writers of today aren’t more creative and more talented than the authors our mothers loved; neither do they subscribe to higher standards of literary excellence.

So maybe joining our critics in sneering at the romance novels of yesteryear isn’t the smartest way to promote our genre. If we persist in doing that, it will serve us right when the next generation of romance writers ridicules our books and wonders how we could have been so totally unenlightened.

I hate it when romance novelists toy with me by withholding story details for no good reason. It annoys the heck out of me when an author hints and hints and hints at a character’s inner conflict, for example, but doesn’t spell it out because she believes teasing readers will keep them turning pages.

Sorry, but I don’t appreciate being manipulated. If your story is so weak that you must resort to cheap tricks to keep me reading, I’m not going to finish the book.

I’m not talking about subtle references to legitimate mysteries that a story might hinge upon, but about the relentless, Chinese-water-torture-style repetition of hints about facts it wouldn’t hurt the reader to be told early on. Here’s a made-up example from an imaginary book:

In Chapter One, we read: …but after what her twin brother had done to her, how could she ever trust any man?

“What did he do?” we ask, and we read a little faster.

In the next scene, we learn that …she hadn’t felt such helpless anger since the day her brother betrayed her.”

“What did he do to her?” we ask again. We keep reading, certain we’re about to find out.

In the next chapter, we find yet another reference: …but how could she ever forgive her brother, after what he had done?

By this time, we’re shouting: “WHAT DID HE DO?” But the coy author is still not giving up the secret. A chapter or two later, we see another mention of the brother’s treachery, and then another. Readers who stick with the story (I’ll be long gone) will eventually learn that the Big Internal Conflict that Makes the Heroine Distrust All Men is simply that her twin brother copied the answers off her math final in the eleventh grade and told the teacher his sister had been the one to cheat. So the sister failed the class and the brother got an A.

“That’s it?” the readers will ask. “Why couldn’t we have been told that in the first chapter?”

All right, that’s a ridiculous example. But do you see what I’m getting at? Unless an author has a darn good reason to keep readers in the dark while repeatedly reminding them about something they don’t yet understand, those readers might very well feel abused when all is–finally!–revealed.

Does anyone else get cranky about this kind of writing? Don’t tell me I’m the only one!

Over the past three years, I have read the entire backlist of a certain New York Times-bestselling, RITA Award-winning romance novelist. Although I haven’t loved all of her books, I have been entertained by enough of them that I experienced a little thrill of anticipation recently when I spotted her latest release in the bookstore. I made my purchase, hit the Starbucks drive-thru window on the way home, and then settled eagerly into my favorite reading corner.

Halfway through the first chapter, I was convinced that I had read the book before. I checked the copyright page and realized that wasn’t possible. Then I read on, my confusion mounting. I knew the story. Knew exactly what was going to happen next. Knew how the book would end.

Near the end of the second chapter, I realized what was going on. No, I had not developed psychic powers; I knew the story because I had read it before. Last year, in fact. As it turned out, the new novel is a retelling of the story contained in the author’s previous book, but is related this time from the point of view of a man and woman who appeared as secondary characters in that first story. As I continued to read I was amazed to find entire scenes and long stretches of dialogue copied from the first book, altered only to indicate that events were now being seen through the new hero’s and heroine’s eyes.

There are no story questions in this “new” novel. Readers of the other book will already know exactly what’s going to happen, and when, and why, and how. I quit reading on page 110, less than a third of the way through the book. I hadn’t enjoyed the other book enough to reread it, yet that was exactly what I had been doing, never mind that the main characters had been swapped out for a couple that I found marginally more interesting.

How could such a talented author have made such a mistake? And what on earth had her editor been thinking?

Clearly, this repackaged story was a literary experiment. My opinion is that it failed miserably; I wish I could get back my $7.99 and the time I wasted on the book. But there really is no accounting for taste, so I am prepared to believe that some readers will actually enjoy revisiting the events of the other book and seeing them through the secondary couple’s eyes.

I have never before encountered a “recycled” novel in the romance genre, but I’m betting many RTB readers have come across this kind of thing. I’d love to see some discussion here on what might drive authors to take such risks. Also, perhaps some of you will comment on specific books that have delighted or disgusted you by deviating dramatically from what the authors in question had conditioned you, their faithful readers, to expect.

“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.

“Can’t you?” the queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again, draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said. “One can’t believe impossible things.”

“I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

–Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

In recent years there’s been a lot of talk in the community of Christian inspirational romance writers about increasing the level of realism in our novels. The hipsters are writing “edgy” inspirational romance, pushing boundaries long established for the genre, priding themselves on writing “true-to-life” characters while coming darn close to sneering at authors who feel more comfortable–and who believe they are better serving their readers–when they keep to the more conservative path.

Readers, too, are divided on whether they want more “realism” in their inspirational fiction. Some applaud, for example, the more sensual stories while others are dismayed by what they see as the declining standards of the genre.

I’m a middle-of-the-road inspirational writer, which means some of my readers think I go too far and others, not far enough toward “realism.” I once received a letter from a reader who objected to my Christian heroine having sex (before the story opened) with her fiance. “A good Christian would never do that,” the reader chided. Another time, someone thought my hero’s response to an aggravating situation was too controlled. “Christians are human,” the reader informed me. “And in that situation, even a good Christian would have lost control.”

Why do so many readers expect fictional characters to behave in predictable ways? And why are those people so upset when the characters surprise them? Don’t real people often act out of character? Surely it’s not for the reader to decide which thoughts, speech, or actions constitute character violations for a novel’s protagonists. The sole authority on what is or is not in character for a given character is the author who created that character.

Let’s think about reality for a minute. Some readers are quick to protest that certain romance heroines are too good to be true. But didn’t we see a real-life example of goodness in Mother Theresa? I’ve never come across a romance heroine who was quite that selfless, have you? So why do some readers object that certain heroines are “impossibly” sweet? Also, readers who shake their heads over “ridiculous” plotlines might do well to remember that some pretty strange things have happened in the real world. In 1954, a woman was actually struck by a meteor. And just last month, a (transgendered) man gave birth to a baby girl. If we want to talk about things that are difficult to believe, we might start with real life!

Sometimes I think authors of vampire books and time-travel stories and the like have a less frustrating time of it than the rest of us. Nobody expects their characters and plots to reflect the common perception of reality, although I suppose even they hear from readers who insist that the characters in their made-up worlds would never do this or that.

How much “reality” do you insist on in the romance novels you read? What have you been able to believe, and what couldn’t you swallow? Give examples of books that totally sold you and books that left you muttering that such things could never happen and such people could never exist in the real world.

Recently I was asked by a romance-reading friend why publishers of mainstream romance, particularly historicals, don’t seem to understand that many readers are embarrassed to be caught with their noses in books with sexually suggestive covers. I told my friend that publishers do understand, but that many other readers are attracted by such covers. It’s a book’s cover, after all, that tempts a shopper to pick it up and read a couple of pages or check out the back-cover blurb. And sexy covers sell books.

Usually. The difficulty for publishers (and many authors) is that the “clinch” covers (shirtless men embracing women whose breasts are about two seconds and as many centimeters from popping out of their bodices) can sometimes discourage women from buying books. I know that’s true because I am one of those women who won’t pick up a book if the title or the cover is too suggestive. And I’ve seen women in airports and at doctors’ offices angling their bodies away from onlookers and folding back the covers of their paperback romances to hide steamy cover art.

I love reading historical romances, although I don’t enjoy the explicit sex scenes found in most of them. But I’m an inveterate page-skipper, so I suppose flipping past those scenes is no real hardship. Yet I don’t want anyone thinking I’m buying romance novels for sexual titillation, so I’ve been known to put certain books face-down in my shopping cart lest strangers and chance-met friends see what I’m buying and leap to wrong conclusions about my personal values. (And before anyone rushes to comment on my attitude toward eroticism in romance novels, I have no interest in what others choose to read. I’m talking about my own values and preferences and those of women like me.)

Many romance readers share my aversion to sexually suggestive bookcovers. But while publishers are aware of our preferences and know very well that sexy covers are causing them to lose a few sales, what can they do apart from offering a less sensual cover every now and then?

I’ll tell you what they can do.

An idea struck me when my May 12 issue of The New Yorker arrived with two different covers on it, one behind the other. I never learned what the magazine publisher’s aim was, but the double-covered issue made me wonder why certain kinds of romance novels couldn’t have two covers, also.

They do, sometimes. Sort of. “Step-back” pages have been around for years. A book might feature a G- or PG-rated cover design, often something floral, followed by another page of the same heavy, glossy paper which features a couple writhing on red satin sheets or going at it in a meadow. But step-backs are generally seen only on the books of bestselling authors because it’s expensive to commission and print art for two covers instead of just one.

My suggestion to publishers is a variation on the step-back idea. For the outermost cover, a sensual image could be used to grab shoppers’ attention. But that cover would be perforated, enabling sensitive readers to tear it off and reveal a second cover, one with an inoffensive design that would allow them to enjoy the books in public without embarrassment. Production costs wouldn’t even begin to approach those of a step-back as long as the second cover was a no-frills affair, perhaps just showing the author’s name and the book’s title in a two-color design that might be standard for the imprint.

Yeah, you’re right. It’s never gonna happen. So I guess my only options are to avoid buying “those” books or to slap a strip of duct tape over the hero’s ripped abs and the heroine’s heaving bosoms before I take a romance novel out in public.

Readers who find errors in mass-market romance novels often accuse the authors and publishers of “cranking out” the books with no regard for quality. Why can’t they just slow down and hire some proofreaders? is a question often heard.

As a Harlequin author (I write for Steeple Hill’s “Love Inspired” line), I’d like to answer that question in two parts: First, our books are by no means slapped together; they are reviewed several times by several editors, and we authors are fully involved in the process that turns our finished manuscripts into published books. And second, romance readers are probably not seeing nearly as many errors as they imagine.

The progress of my upcoming book through the Harlequin pipeline has been fairly typical: over the course of some five months, my manuscript found its way to the desks of my “regular” editor, the senior editor of my line, a freelance line-editor, and an in-house copy editor. My book has been vetted by no fewer than four professional editors who have combed the manuscript for everything from plot holes and weak character development to misplaced commas.

After my manuscript was line-edited, it was sent back to me. I reviewed the editorial changes, accepted most of them, and added a few last-minute changes of my own. I fired the manuscript back to New York, where the editors’ changes and mine were entered on the computer file and the book was typeset. After that, the typeset manuscript (page proofs) came to me for a final review. I found a number of additional errors, including several of my own. I made the necessary corrections and returned the page proofs to my editor. She will enter the new changes and send the manuscript to the printing department.

And when my book comes out it may very well contain a few minor errors.

How can that be, when the manuscript has been edited, corrected, and proofread by four different editors and the author? It’s quite simple: Every time someone makes a change in the manuscript’s file, a window of opportunity is opened. Existing errors may be compounded and new errors may be introduced. Someone might change an obvious typo like “hourse” to “horse,” never noticing that the word that best fits the sentence is “house.”

These books are proofread. Again and again. But even the most anal of authors and editors are still mere humans, so if my 250-page book contains a couple of typos and a superfluous comma or two, I’m still going to say we did a darn good job.

But are there really as many errors in today’s romance novels as some readers would have us believe? Surely much of what we readers perceive as omissions in books–plot holes and inadequate character motivation–can be accounted for by our own inattention or forgetfulness. Maybe my ringing telephone caused my eye to skip over a crucial sentence in the middle of Chapter Three. Or maybe I’ve been reading the book over the course of several days and am not perfectly recalling some important detail I read in an earlier session. Have you ever missed something in a book and gone back to look for it–and found it? I have.

Today’s romance novels are often criticized for containing improper grammar–and sometimes they do. But again, perhaps that’s not as common as we believe. In my upcoming book, a line of dialogue spoken by an old rodeo cowboy was changed from, “Have you boys seen that Help Wanted sign over to Jimmy Land’s place?” to “Have you boys seen that Help Wanted sign at Jimmy Land’s place?” I guessed that my New York editors thought they were simply correcting a typo. I might have argued that it’s quite common for an old man from central Texas to say “over to Jimmy’s” rather than “at Jimmy’s.” But being “right” is less important to me than being understood by the majority of my readers, so I let it go. And now I’m wondering how often readers unfairly characterize authors’ use of idiomatic expressions (whether in dialogue or narrative) as ungrammatical and wrong.

I’m not saying romance novels don’t contain real errors. I’ve seen plenty of obvious typos, bad punctuation, and any number of inexcusable grammatical goofs. The printing process isn’t error-free, either; an unknown number of copies of my first book were distributed with 32 pages missing, and I was every bit as annoyed as the fifty or so readers who complained to me about it. Such mistakes get a lot of attention, and that prompts some readers to complain that it’s next to impossible to find a beautifully written, meticulously edited, well-put-together romance novel. But considering the mind-boggling number of romance titles hitting the bookshelves every single week, I believe the overall quality of today’s books is actually quite good.

You see, I’m not just a romance writer. I am also a romance reader. And a few small mistakes here and there don’t negate the enjoyment I derive from reading a good romance novel.