Audiences always want something new. They don't want to eat at the same restaurant every night," says Kensington editorial director Kate Duffy, evoking an apt metaphor to describe the biggest issue she faces as a romance publisher. "You have to be clever. You have to reinvent the wheel each time." However, she adds, "This hasn't always been true. The marketplace has shrunk and the attempt for the consumer dollar is more fierce." As one indicator, she points to romance titles—"they used to all sound alike. They don't anymore."
What don't sound alike are the opinions expressed by romance publishers, editors and agents with whom PW recently spoke. We asked them about their greatest concerns in this crowded, fiercely competitive marketplace—how do they maintain or gain market share? How do they grow their authors? What is their top priority, and how do they go about addressing it? The answers give insight into the vigor of the genre.
"Moving a writer to the next level is the biggest challenge," says Berkley senior editor Gail Fortune. "This has always been a challenge, but with a strong and crowded author field it's a little tougher."
At Ballantine, editorial director Linda Marrow sees it differently. "Whether breaking out an author or taking her to the next level, the biggest challenge is distribution, to allow every possible reader to find the book. You start with a great book or author you can't wait to introduce readers to and then it's all about persuading everyone involved to get enough copies out there. This has always been the case. It's certainly more competitive but I've never seen it not competitive. It's never been easy."
The biggest concern for Harlequin v-p of editorial Isabel Swift is "maintaining and growing shelf space. If one area dries up, we must find another."
"There is not one factor more important than the others," says Beth de Guzman, editorial director of the mass market line at Warner Books. "You have to cover all your bases."
Dorchester sales and marketing director Tim DeYoung, noting that many retailers are cutting back space these days and concentrating on bestsellers, tells PW, "The toughest nut to crack is the overall cutbacks in genre titles at the wholesale level."
The Patient Is Doing Fine
Thanks in part to the blurring lines between "romance" and "women's fiction," there is near consensus that the romance genre is strong and healthy, with many authors scoring high on bestseller lists and fresh new faces waiting in the wings. At the same time, weakened numbers across the board, slowed paperback sales and a soft economy have led to less shelf space, greater competition and more conservative buying. This, in turn, has led to ferment and pressure from one end of the publishing process to the other.
"The biggest challenge," says Judith Curr, Pocket Books v-p and publisher of the hardcover Atria line, "is to make sure all bookseller outlets understand that romance is big and varied and embraces many categories—historicals, contemporary, suspense, domestic, urban, chick lit—and that women read across categories."
To deliver on this message, Pocket has been giving romance packages a makeover. "When we published Jude Deveraux's The Summerhouse in hardcover last year, we did a cover that didn't scream 'romance,' and we got more support because of that," Curr reports. "We were able to get better placement and a good sell-through." In fact, she reports, Summerhouse had a 35% increase in sales from the author's previous title, and the mass market edition shot to #2 on the New York Times list this year. "Packaging is how we gain market share and expand out into bookstores," she says. "Packaging and editorial content but also more support from independent bookstores."
Across the board, Pocket is using more traditional hardcover techniques for romance writers—sending out four-color ARCs, building more time into each schedule to allow for word of mouth to build, arranging for authors to make presale visits to accounts, improving packaging and publicity. As for the crowded marketplace, Curr laughs and says, "I don't know what to do about that. We just have to find some way to stand out. It's a constant search for the answer to the question."
Ballantine also took the makeover approach to increase the visibility of one of its rising authors in contemporary romance, Suzanne Brockmann, and—for similar reasons—to broaden distribution. "Her earlier covers were very appealing to core romance readers, but that look couldn't take her into women's fiction," says Marrow. "So we did an overhaul. We gave her a mainstream author look for Into the Fire [Dec.]. It was clear from readers and booksellers that she'd do better without a cover that labeled her strongly." Brockmann's earlier mass market titles (Over the Edge and Out of Control) had been published aggressively in Ballantine's Ivy line, which had pushed her up a notch. "With Into the Fire," Marrow says, "we felt we could increase her distribution by giving her a high spot on the Ballantine list."
Kensington is reducing the number of books published in order to pay better attention to each title on its list. Their best weapon in that effort is "an attractive, seductive cover," says Duffy. Like other publishers, Duffy says the house walks a tightrope between retaining the good parts of what they've done before and forging ahead with new, bold ideas. She especially commends Bantam's work on the cover for Jane Feather's The Least Likely Bride. "They did a bold, smart thing. The book had a 16th-century setting, but the cover was illustrated to look like a J. Crew catalogue. It got the consumer to pick the book up. It taught me so much. Covers aren't meant to be history lessons. The book sold because it was beautiful and you might have given Feather a chance even if you weren't inclined to read historicals. You give some people a reason not to buy a book if the cover looks too historical, especially readers who don't read historicals. We've always romanticized covers—we don't show toothless hags, for instance, but Bantam took it a step further. I think that's wonderful."
Conventional wisdom just won't cut it in 2002, Duffy adds. For her, she says, there's no author she can't sell more of. "There's lots we can do if we keep upping the ante. We're all looking at cartoon covers and thinking, what comes next? We feel we have nothing to lose and more to gain if we're a little bold."
Picking Up the Pace
Just as new cover art can broaden sales, the idea is taking hold that frequency of publication can also cause sales to surge ahead. More than one publisher mentioned stepped-up schedules as a way to build momentum for their authors—at least for those who can write fast enough.
At NAL, author Catherine Anderson, who arrived at the house with what the publisher calls "strong but somewhat stagnant sales," has been pushed to a six-month schedule, with sales figures supporting the effectiveness of marketing her contemporary titles this way. "It's always been a challenge to break out new authors," says publisher Kara Welsh, "but competition with other books and shrinking space makes it fierce. People try whatever they can—trilogies, back-to-back books, trends covers." To Welsh, however, frequency is the key. Three titles by Anderson, Phantom Waltz (July 2001), Sweet Nothings (Jan. 2002) and Always in My Heart (Aug. 2002), support her belief that keeping an author's name out there is a winning move. Initial shipments for Sweet Nothings were 40% higher than for Anderson's prior book with her previous publisher, and Always in My Heart, which appears at the top of the Signet list, will surpass that by at least 10%. According to Welsh, "Frequency seems to work even with big writers. If fans like someone they can't get enough. Frequency gets the name out there and keeps sales moving. It's definitely increased Catherine's exposure." Welsh expects to expand this scheduling to other authors next year.
Bantam is launching an entire program around the concept of frequency. Get Connected, which debuts in January, is an umbrella marketing program for four Bantam writers, all in different stages of their careers and at different levels of sales. The four—Jane Feather, Mary Balogh, Josie Litten and Madeline Hunter—all do connected story lines and were able to push their writing schedules to dovetail with the new program. Says deputy publisher Nita Taublib, "Accounts will be able to place orders in January, but they don't have to."
The inspiration for the program derived from the success Bantam had with Litten's first two introductory books, which sold in at the same time. "Perhaps if you show the buys up front they'll place orders differently, and either order more or keep books out longer," Taublib explains. "It was a chore and a challenge to have all this done 12 months in advance, but we wanted to show our commitment to the breadth and quality of our authors. We're hoping this will lead to growth. Very often today, accounts will only order what they netted of the last book, which doesn't leave you much room for growth. They'd rather sell and reorder. No one wants inventory. We're hoping that a concerted program will lead them to order enough to cover the net but also growth. We'll have to review what's going on month by month."
Avon authors are being pushed in other ways. "Our biggest challenge is growing the numbers and thinking of innovative ways of doing that," says executive editor Carrie Feron. In their effort to break the half-million-copy mark in mass market, Avon editors encourage their writers, or at least cheerlead their efforts, to connect to readers by creating their own worlds populated by recurring casts of characters. According to Feron, "This is a concept that's often been done in other genres but is still evolving in the romance market." She adds that the house "did a major back-to-back publishing event with Australian writer Stephanie Laurens; two books—On a Wild Night and On a Wicked Dawn—about twin sisters, Amanda and Amelia Cynster, were published in April and May. The first book blew out, made all the major lists, and now has close to 600,000 copies in print." Like Laurens's Regency-era Cynster family series, Julia Quinn's multibook Bridgerton family saga also offers the lure of familiar faces—in this month's Romancing Mr. Bridgerton readers will finally discover the true identity of gossip columnist Lady Whistledown. "Some accounts love new things and some are more traditional," Feron says. "With a program like ours, every author is an individual. We are constantly shifting strategy, rethinking cover art and thinking about what's the new, new thing."
Walking a Tightrope
A balancing act is in order for Jennifer Enderlin, associate publisher at St. Martin's. "The greatest challenge facing romance publishers today is to walk the tightrope between what you know will sell, i.e., tried-and-true settings and time periods, and taking a chance on something riskier." Supersellers such as Diana Gabaldon and Jennifer Crusie were the risk-takers of yesterday, she points out. "The genre will die if writers don't take risks. We're all for it providing they're talented enough to do it and can pull it off." Since word of mouth is an effective tool in any economy, St. Martin's is starting a "Get Hooked" campaign. It is buying magazine lists (Redbook and the like) and sending subscribers a free book. At the store level, the publisher is doing "buy one get one free" promotions. "We'll try whatever will add value to an author," Enderlin says. "We keep an e-mail database of romance readers, which we try to keep as fresh as possible, and alert the list to new books."
Selling Forever
In response to lower buying levels and a more difficult sales climate in general, Warner will launch a new line in January to showcase select authors and, hopefully, fast-track their sales. "In the past," says de Guzman, "people have concentrated on one thing, like price, but the challenge is to cover all the bases—great covers, affordable prices and good distribution." Warner Forever, she says, will target all three areas.
"It's rougher out there than it used to be," says de Guzman. "Accounts are more conservative about orders. Buying levels are down. Warner Forever is a response to this climate. It was difficult before September 11, but since then. everyone's become more conservative. Our goal is to grow these authors in a faster way. We've thrown out the P&Ls for these titles; we're expecting lower profits. We're putting more into the covers. Our commitment is to our romance authors. The format is expensive but it proves profitable in the marketplace year in and year out."
Among the Forever authors scheduled for the first six months of next year, two, Annie Soloman (Like a Knife, Mar.) and Susan Crandall (Back Roads, June), are first-time authors; and two are authors who have moved over from other publishers (Pamela Britton, Seduced, Apr.; Leanne Banks, Some Girls Do, May). The rest are continuing authors from Warner's mass market line. At two books a month, each book will have special cover effects regardless of the writer's status, de Guzman tells PW. "They'll have foil, embossing, whatever cover that book needs. In the past, that was reserved for established authors, but this way we can publish everybody in a way that can seem more appealing to accounts and to readers. It's a way of getting one up on the competition by giving these people everything they need to have a successful career."
Finding the right format is the goal at Pocket mass market, which is experimenting, as are some other houses, with romantic fiction in trade paperback. "The challenge is getting manuscripts in on time for ARCs and cover art and scheduling the book at the right time so it's placed for optimum advantage," says editorial director Maggie Crawford. Christina Dodd and Connie Brockway's Once Upon a Pillow, about a bed and the lovers whose lives it has affected through the ages, is getting multimedia treatment for its release this month: trade paper format, foiled and embossed cover, romancy but not straight romance, while JoAnn Ross's mass market trilogy about the Calahan Brothers—Blue Bayou (published in April), River Road (Sept.) and Magnolia Moon (Mar. 2003)— has been designed with cover art that carries over from book to book. "We saw a sales increase of 50% over her previous books, and the earlier ones had been successful," Crawford says, pleased with the concept of a miniseries with great cover art and teaser chapters connecting the titles. "The biggest challenge," Crawford says, "is the age-old one of getting all the pieces to make an exciting statement. Making sure we're always getting the strongest book, getting authors to stretch and grow and to keep them writing at the top of their form. And to convey this to the sales force, who can convey it to the bookseller, who can convey it to the readers."
Berkley editors are also grappling with the issue of growing authors from one level to the next. "Part of growing an author is to distinguish them from other authors," says editor Cindy Hwang. "So we focus a lot on targeting the audience for a specific writer, and then trying to find new ways of either further establishing them in their readership, or expanding their readership to a wider following."
A switch of genres is one way the house gives authors a fresh start, Hwang explains. One established Berkley writer, Katherine Sutcliffe, whose reputation was earned with dramatic historical romances, came out last September with a contemporary romantic suspense novel, Darkling I Listen. This produced "a nice jump in sales," Hwang reports, and Sutcliffe has done another book in the same mode, Bad Moon Rising, due in March.
Outreach to fans has also been given high priority in the past year, says Fortune, explaining that they've been very pleased with their accomplishments with a new Web site, www.writerspace.com. "It's important to have a real presence where authors as a group can be represented," Fortune says. "Our authors all have their own Web sites, but there hadn't been a group before. Now we can create house branding." Among the site's offerings is an active bulletin board where fans can interact on a daily basis. "It helps to promote the entire list. It creates more of a house identity for readers. It gives them a sense that if they've read one of our titles and liked it, they can give another new writer a chance."
At Dorchester, the perennial task is "to come up with the next wonderful talent and not sit back on our laurels," says editorial director Alicia Condon. "We always have our feelers out for new writers. We believe in midlist romance because if we didn't, there'd be no place to develop the next new bestselling author. Susan Squires is a case in point. With her first two books recently published—Danegold, in 2001, and Sacrament, last March—and Body Electric coming next month, we're pulling out all the stops to bring her to the public's attention." Dorchester also has a new series of spy romances launching in January, Women from Bliss, by writers whose appeal is that they're likely to do a bit of genre-stretching. One of them, Lisa Cach's Dr. Yes, spoofs James Bond with a story featuring an agent who must stop an evil doctor from developing an aphrodisiac that will enslave womankind. There is also a new superhero romance line written by Julie Kenner that plays off the Spider-Man, X-Men craze. "To find good writers is the big challenge," Condon says. "Then the writers themselves come up with good ideas."
The folks at Harlequin, another category leader, view as one of their main challenges the need to constantly refresh what they do. In Swift's words, "We get to do unusual things with Harlequin and Silhouette because of their brand strength." Just launched in November was a new series, Harlequin Blaze, containing books with sexier content, and coming soon is a Mermaid miniseries within the Silhouette Romance line. "Our commitment to our accounts is making good on key deliverables, by which I mean maintaining strong relations between our sales force and booksellers and distributors so that we continue to get shelf space and build a strong reader relationship over the years." The mass merchandisers, which have been in turmoil this past year, are a big part of Harlequin's business, so when they fail, Harlequin feels it. "With distributor consolidation, which squeezes out the midlist in favor of increasing pocket space for the tried-and-true authors, Harlequin and Silhouette brands offer a unique advantage due to our established and ongoing relationships with readers and booksellers"
How does a small publisher fare against established players in such a richly competitive field? With some difficulty, says Nyani Colom, associate publisher at Genesis, which publishes African-American romance titles (Indigo Romance), a sensuous romance line (Indigo After Dark), a Hispanic line (Tango Two) and interracial romances (Love Spectrum). Colom says competing with traditional romance publishers for shelf space and media attention is a continuing struggle. "Even as this category has grown, African-American romance is still relegated to the margins and not pushed to appeal to the overall market," she says. Their titles are overlooked by consumers, bookstores and media, limiting the company's ability to enlarge their market share. "While our size offers us the flexibility to publish diverse lines that other publishers are reluctant to risk, we receive little recognition." In order to grow market share, Colom says, Genesis will be releasing a new fiction line in 2003, backed by a marketing campaign that will expand the appeal of these titles to a larger segment of readers outside of romance. One prime tool in this campaign will be a redesigned Web site (www.genesis-press.com) providing an online book club and interactive community sections.
Agents of Change
With so much activity in the field and the major publishers making aggressive moves to gain market share, author advances have shot up dramatically. According to Steve Axelrod at the Axelrod Agency, within the past six months, one author who had been getting $85,000 per book suddenly received $225,000 at auction. Another writer saw her advance shoot up, not at auction, from $90,000 to $250,000. Axelrod says, "Three major players are making a concerted effort to pick up market share: Mira, Harlequin's single-title department; NAL; and Pocket. It's created a very competitive environment in which they are bidding against one another."
For Karen Solem, president of the literary agency Spencerhill Associates, advances are increasing but not dramatically. "Authors with books that are selling are being rewarded; others who find themselves trapped in midlist or with slipping sales figures are not so happy." She adds that the biggest concern for her authors is finding the right publishing opportunity and being given the time and support necessary to grow. "The old rule used to be that an author had to have a book a year to become a brand name with readers. I think that's changed—you need to be in front of readers much more frequently, especially getting started. It's difficult for many writers to be on that kind of intense writing schedule, book after book. The biggest challenge, at whatever level, is in taking that next step up—without marketing support and sales incentives, or a special theme or concept behind your work, you won't see sales growth. The biggest editorial challenge is how to keep your novels fresh, especially when you're writing as fast as you can."
"The more things change the more they stay the same" might be the motto of Irene Goodman at the Irene Goodman Agency. "The challenge is getting stuff sold," she says. "It's harder and harder. The dead wood is really getting cleared out. A- is not good enough anymore. It has to be A+. Publishers are more and more selective and less and less willing to buy something less than perfect. If an author doesn't cut it after a few books, they're out. You have to start good and get better from there."
In the late '70s, Goodman says, when the genre was growing, you didn't have to start off at your peak, "but now everyone can be more choosy." This is a good thing, she believes—"it forces me to raise the bar. I've taken on more clients in the last year but also dropped clients who aren't growing. Everyone I represent is a working, active author whose numbers are growing. If they aren't growing I'll work with them to get over the hump. Publishers less and less want to just throw things out into the marketplace and see how they'll do. They anoint more authors: they'll pick something and make it special. They'll do a fancy cover, if it's not too expensive. They don't want anything to look bottom of the list."
With the expansive efforts going on with publishers at every level, it looks as though "bottom of the list" may soon lose its meaning. Of course "top of the list" may, too, as imprints proliferate in order to showcase more titles. And who knows? As the many zealous efforts to expand the romance audience prove ever more successful, it may be other genres that will need to watch their backs—and their shelf space.
