Thursday, October 1, 2009

Happenings in the world of romance


There have been so many things happening in the world of romance that I felt compelled to talk about it.

On Monday I received the news that Kensington Publishing's editorial director, Kate Duffy, had passed away. It seemed to me that Kate helped jump start some pretty terrific careers. She was a serious force in this business. My only personal experience with Kate consisted of a rejection letter she sent me a few years ago. It was my first, if I recall, and painful as it was to read, Kate didn't send a form letter rejection, but a personal one. I appreciated that! Also, she had good things to say about my writing, ending the letter with the words, 'Keep working though, your writing has serious potential'. The publishing industry will not be the same without her.


In other news, I read an interesting article about piracy the other day that had me giggling. Over at agent Nathan Bransford's blog he discusses the issue of pirates being scammed. According to Nathan, "...a site that purports to contain all sorts of pirated material, including books, that you can download very easily and holy cow thousands of people have already done it. All you have to do is install the right software. And, of course, the software is a virus. Or they're phishing for credit cards. Or some other nefarious activity. I didn't stick around long enough to find out. But! There's nothing being pirated. Essentially: they're scamming pirates."


Am I the only one who finds that funny as hell? The pirates are getting screwed! That's justice, as far as I'm concerned!


The last bit I want to discuss is the iRex. Have you heard about the new ereader device that will have 3G wireless (Verizon) and you'll be able to buy it directly from Best Buy? You can purchase the ebooks off the B&N site, similar to the Amazon Kindle now. The thing I like about this is that it gives Amazon a run for their money. Competition is a good thing! Check it out here


To wrap things up...I want to say once more how sorry I am to hear about Kate Duffy. I never had the chance to work with her, but her name will certainly live on.

3 comments:

Regina Carlysle said...

Pirates getting spammed/scammed, I loooove it! If you'll recall I posted not long ago about pirates stealing work for charity. Scum!

Anne, the link for the I-Rex isn't working but I'm going to plug it into my browser and check it out. More and more new devices are coming out and I think it's sooo exciting. Hopefully the prices will be going down too.

Very sad about Kate Duffy. I'd never met her but she was a huge force in the industry.

Anne Rainey said...

THanks for letting me know about the link, Regina. I redid it. Hopefully it works now. :)

Yeah, I like to think that pirates getting nasty viruses that wipe out their computer is quite simply...karma. LOL

Kelley Nyrae said...

I'm brokenhearted about Kate. I never had the pleasure of meeting her, but ever since I started writing it was my dream to write for her and the Brava line. She did so much for romance and she will be missed.

That's great that the pirates are getting scammed. How funny!