A Confession

I love romance novels. I read them voraciously. And although I've been superbusy in my life and haven't read as many as I would like lately, I'm still all about romance.

My confession? I don't buy books. Well, rarely. And only at used bookstores or K-mart which sells them for 25% off list. I never buy hardbacks. Ever.

Or I go really cheap and do the library thing.

Why? Because I think that they're just getting so fucking expensive. $26 for a book? Really? I don't think so! And paperbacks aren't all that much better. I remember when I could buy a Harlequin book for $2.50. Now, they're almost $5. And people outside of the industry may not know this, but word counts are going down, Blaze used to be 75,000 words. Now they're 65,000. That's a huge difference. People are paying more but getting less.

And although I am an aspiring writer, I'm also a consumer. I think I'm the typical consumer who's outraged at the treatment that we're getting from publishers. I rarely buy even my most fave authors and never take the chance of new ones.

I cannot tell you how angry I was when JD Robb's 'In Death' books went hardback. I used to immediately buy them right off the shelves. Now not so much. And there was that brief stint that Christine Feehan made into the new 'reader friendly' format. They were those long columns books. I hated them. And they were like $3 more expensive than normal. For the same thing!

The problem is that I know that when I spend a Saturday at the bookstore and read 3 books that I won't buy, while I think I'm hurting the publisher (which I am), I'm doing more damage to the writer. Especially unpubs like myself. When I make it harder for established writers, I make it damned near impossible for myself.

I think that the publishing industry needs to address many of these concerns. The growing popularity of e-pubs and e-books are taking a chunk of their business. I would buy an e-book before a print. I know that may of the publishers are dipping their toes into the e-pub trade. I think it's a step in the right direction. I saw a book at the bookstore that I wanted to buy but it was too expensive. I went onto the website and I bought the e-book a few days later. That should tell publishers a lot.

I don't know exactly what the solution to this may be, but I know that my concerns are that of many others. It's the talk of the publishing industry. It's a problem that needs to be solved.

Now, I love books. I love the feel of them in my hand. I love the smell of them. I want to buy more books. I want whole rooms full of them. There is nothing wonderful than holding a book in your hands, feeling the pages, becoming intimate with the writer and the story.

I simply can't afford them. Not like I used to.

And that makes me sad.