Raine Balkera - Romance Author

It is with a sad heart that I must issue a delay in the Release Day (party) Announcement of my second novel, Love Over Time . It actually comes as no surprise that something of this nature would occur. If it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have none at all. Before I break out in country music song, however, let me just say that it isn't the end of the world; not even for me. Good news! When I uploaded the file to Amazon, it returned with only 3 possible errors -- two of which were formatting, but not because of me.  That paragraph symbol thing with the dot before it . . .  It was there in both instances, as was the dot to indicate a break in words, but in mobi format, the words ran together, so all I had to do was go back into the file and re-space them. The 3rd issue had to do with my use of the word ballzy . I chose to leave it as is. Of course, this didn't give me a swelled head in the 'thinking I'm the darndest smarty-pants grammarian alive...

Recently, we've been hearing more horror stories about changes to self-published works that are submitted/uploaded to Amazon for their Kindle. The latest issue is attached to their Unlimited program, where they've taken it upon themselves to pay the AUTHOR based on the number of pages read. Under the new payment method, the amount an author earns will be determined by their share of total pages read instead of their share of total qualified borrows. The author of a 200 page book that was borrowed 100 times but only read halfway through on average would earn $1,000 ($10 million multiplied by 10,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages). We will similarly change the way we pay KDP Select All-Star bonuses which will be awarded to authors and titles based on total KU and KOLL pages read. Not being a member of this Unlimited program, I might not have a right to voice an opinion on the topic, but these types of issues usually include a trickle-down...

For more than a decade I devoured romance novels the way I still devour potato chips. T hroughout the mid 80's and 90's,   my favorite author was Johanna Lindsey, who might be labeled by some as the undisputed queen of romance. This was my introduction to her writing, and this book was all it took to get me hooked and want more. Even if money was tight, there still seemed to be a way to hit a bookstore, browse her selection, find something I hadn't yet read, and buy it. But, then she did something I still equate to as having stabbed me right through the heart. The paperbacks were replaced with hard cover novels, and at a cost of more than double the paperback version -- which weren't being offered btw. Suddenly it wasn't even an option to buy any of her works. A hard cover the size of coffee-table books I still believe should be relegated to photography and nothing else started at $14.99 and went up to unholy sums, pricing me right out of the marke...