Emma Wildes’ note to the TeleBlog instantly caught my eye—as possible fodder for my new E-Book Report blog in the online Publishers Weekly.
“My books are selling in the thousands at places like Fictionwise, Mobipocket, and Ebooks.com, and most of them are in print also (just because it’s e-book, doesn’t mean it is only available that way) selling at Amazon,” she tells us.
Six-month champ at Fictionwise—and the public stats prove it
Emma, a mystery and romance fan who “lives in rural Indiana with her husband Chris, her three children, and an assorted menagerie of pets,” says she is “#1 bestselling author at Fictionwise for the past six months.” What’s more, she “won the 2007 Eppie award for the best historic erotic.”
Public stats from Fictionwise back her up, and this just-given link should be a treasure trove of numbers for talent-seeking NYC editors with commercial inclinations. I hope other e-stores follow Fictionwise’s lead in providing such detailed information and don’t hesitate to e-mail me about interesting trends.
Into Sex, Capital S
Now back to Emma. Sample titles include The Switch (Lord Adam Trevor’s privates are temporarily dysfunctional—might his bro substitute for him without his new wife knowing?), Savage Shores (Robinson Crusoe for and about the sex-crazed) and Servicing Lady Tremayne from Phaze (“Trying to maintain a pristine reputation isn’t easy, especially when Lady Daphne Tremayne has a lustful secret longing for her doctor”).
Beyond the usual genre-related inhibitions—yes, Emma is into sex, capital S, though I suspect it’s actually tame compared to some releases from major publishers and the off-hours pursuits of powerful Washington prudes—why aren’t the P and E sides of New York houses paying attention? Her erotica-type writing isn’t literary and, yes, can be explicit, but isn’t that true of so many other commercial books? You can see Emma’s Web site here, her more restrained Katherine Smith incarnation here, and a write-up on Emma here from Euro Reviews.
Meanwhile see earlier PW item on Ed Howdershelt and some nice reaction to the PW blog from e-writer Pauline Jones. Thanks, Pauline and others who are talking up E-Book Report, which will help keep E on the minds of mainstream publishers.
The L issue
To address to L issue, Literature, I wish that the New York houses would do much more of that, too, along with serious nonfiction with serious money for writers deserving it. By publishing authors like Emma under special imprints, they could afford to take more gambles on tomorrow’s Mailers, Morrisons, Caros and Halberstams.
Anyway, who’s to say that sex and romance can’t be literary? The cool thing about E is that readers can be privately immoral via their little PDAs during lunch hour without bosses and colleagues being any wiser.
Other links of interest:
–The Sony-Amazon rivalry—in e-book gizmos and book offerings—might reach the U.K., where Sony may launch its new Reader at the London Book Fair next year. The Bookseller tells of rumors that Waterstone’s, the British book chain, will sell the device. Meanwhile we hear that “Amazon will try and pip it to the post by rush-releasing its own rival device, the ‘Kindle.'” Love that Britspeak. So will Kindle-format books show up soon on Amazon’s U.K. site? (MobileRead.)
–Lulu will enable PDFs of e-books to be optimized for the iPhone and the Sony Reader (via MobileRead).
—E Ink has raised another $16 million, but PaidContent insists that the Sony Reader, best known use of the technology, is “largely a market disappointment.” All right, Sony fans. Speak up if you’d like. I continue see the Reader as a nice niche product, although not for the mainstream, even though the new PRS-505 is definite progress. Some human readers are trading in their old gizmos for 505s with better-contrast screens and other improvements.
–The Widget craze has spread to Hachette. Readers will be able to search books and read a certain percentage of them. (Publishers Marketplace.)
–Holtzbrinck in the U.S. will be known as Macmillian. (PM.)
Memo to Emma and her hairdresser: Please make sure that at least one of Emma’s sites has a decent publicity photo without that horrid black background, so I don’t have to “airbrush” away the black. I know—I mangled her Do.
The real “Is she or isn’t she” issue: I’ve gone with “Emma” since that’s how she wrote us. But since the Katherine Smith novels are staider, I’m betting that just might be her real name. No definitive answer, but a whois search shows a Katherine Smith associated with Katherinesmith.net.
