AAR

[Lucia]

Do you think the publishing house trend to sign romance authors to multiple book contracts has had an impact on the quality of novels produced today?

The related topic What is the worst romance novel you have read? begs the question.

Thanks, all!
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Lucia

[athena_d]

I think so.

My first series was Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark Hunter series. The first book "Fantasy Lover" was wonderful, but as I went through her book list (there are more than 15 books in the series and still counting) I began to get bored. The heroes seemed the same, the plots were recycled, and it was just flat out roll-your-eyes predictable. Im not even remotely interested in Acheron's story. I was, once a upon a time, but nowadays, not a lot of books live up to their hype. (No offense to kenyon's fans).

I think when an author is trying to meet deadline to spit out 2 or 3 more books a year, the quality of the book does go down because they dont put enough time and heart into their characters as some would when they spend a year writing and developing them, imo.

Of course, not every author is like that. The good ones make you wait. And theyre usually worth the wait.

[NoirFemme]

I think the habit of publishers to push their authors to write more of the same, same, same is what has led to the decline in quality, if not the sheer quantity of books published. I understand that romance readers treat romance novels like crack--they read voraciously and get into reading "moods" where they want to read one thing (that in and of itself annoys me, because it sort of implies that romance novels are pretty interchangeable)--but to meet this demand, publishers are pretty happy to run a certain trend into the ground. And then after they've done so, they blame that trend aspect (say, the decline of the Western, or the glut of Regencies recently) instead of the greater quantities of chaff compared to wheat.

I may be in the minority, but I read for the storyline and the writing--not the setting--so I really resent the blithe acceptance of flooding the market with bland writing and cliched plots to meet demand, despite TPTB claiming to be on the lookout for that next great voice (which, if it becomes popular, they associate its popularity with the plot and/or the setting, not the excellent writing).