So many thoughts...so little time!

Go check out a guest post from July 13, 2006, by Sarah McCarty at Let's Gab. It's about commas. Yep, sounds dry but actually hits on a peeve of mine; lousy grammar in books. I love a book that flows and that is attributed to two things in my opinion, the author's voice and the grammar. I wholeheartedly agree with Sarah's assessment that reading a book, any book, shouldn't be such hard work!

Which also ties into a post on KarenS blog about how erotic romance is killing the whole damn romance genre. If you go to the link of Ms. Barnett's post in its' entirety you will see she speaks of print runs etc. Of course, me being me I have an opinion on this. I know...nobody asked me...but here it is anyway.

I think that once publishing houses realized how popular the Romance genre (at one point in the late 80's or early 90's 50% of all books sold) it was sell, sell, sell! Can you imagine? Pretty unbelievable right? Now we have book recommends from Oprah to elevate us, sci-fi books that tie into TV series (Star Trek) and whole novels to tell super hero stories (Superman, Batman, X-Men). So the romance genre has some pretty stiff competition and the publishing industry response to this competion? Glut the market!! There are more types and kinds of romance than ever. More books than ever. Of course, this does not necessarily mean BETTER books just MORE books.

So in response to Ms. McCarty's comments I think that the removal of commas is symptomatic of a larger picture which also addresses Ms. Bartlett's comments about smaller print runs...the publishers just want to sell more books by more authors and see which ones the readers find. If a book is good in any genre and strikes a chord with people I still believe it finds its intended audience. With the help of the internet's reader blogs, author sites, and on-line book sellers, readers can find a book at their finger tips. We can search for older books, download books, view covers, read excerts...all to the reader's advantage. However, I think it is a shame that we seem to be sacrificing quality for quantity.

I have my favorite authors that I anxiously await their next book. However, I'd much rather wait for a new book than have an author squeezed to deliver a book by a deadline and not do their best work.