I’m so happy with this article, not just because I’m in it, but because romance is on the front page in a positive article with a collection of quotes and comments from booksellers, publishers, and, anchored on either end of the article, romance readers.

Sarah Wendell, blogger and co-author of “Beyond Heaving Bosoms,” is passionate about romance novels.

Except for the covers, with their images of sinewy limbs, flowing, Fabio-esque locks or, as she put it, “the mullets and the man chests.”

“They are not always something that you are comfortable holding in your hand in public,” Ms. Wendell said.

So she began reading e-books, escaping the glances and the imagined snickers from strangers on the subway, and joining the many readers who have traded the racy covers of romance novels for the discretion of digital books.

If the e-reader is the digital equivalent of the brown-paper wrapper, the romance reader is a little like the Asian carp: insatiable and unstoppable. Together, it turns out, they are a perfect couple. Romance is now the fastest-growing segment of the e-reading market, ahead of general fiction, mystery and science fiction, according to data from Bowker, a research organization for the publishing industry.

Hooray for romance!

“It’s a lifestyle for me, but I give all the credit to my mom for making [me] this way,” he says, with a humility befitting one of his romance Romeos. But if his workout regimen could make many a fitness freak swoon, it’s his fantasy-inducing face that has romance readers’ loins quivering.

“This guy’s very special,” says Sarah Wendell, co-founder of the romance review site Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. “There are only a handful of people you see over and over again that become an icon in the romance-novel cover world.”

Wendell notes that publishers usually put Adams’ entire head on covers, a rarity in the “decapitated-male-model central of the romance novel aisle.” And with romance fiction sales totaling $1.36 billion in 2009, according to the Romance Writers of America, the choice of cover stud is crucial.

“The cover is a very big draw, especially for impulse shoppers,” says Wendell. “If you’re very lucky, you’ll get pectoral muscles that could shelter you under a rainstorm.”

I wish the caption hadn’t labeled him a “professional beefcake,” as clearly Adams works very hard at his job and at staying in shape.

What floored me? This man is 43 years old! He can climb 183 flights of stairs in a single hour and leap tall bicycles in a single bound and he is 43? I need to go work out. That is awesome – way to go, sir.

Today, she’s published an article about the surge in popularity of Amish-set romance: Romance novels set in Amish country are growing apace:

“It’s a huge, huge, huge trend,” says romance blogger Sarah Wendell, co-author of Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels….

And that low-tech lifestyle creates a small-town atmosphere, which has deep appeal for readers who may find Wi-Fi-only connections emotionally isolating. “Even within your own neighborhood, you feel alone,” says Jane Little of the influential romance blog Dear Author. In an Amish inspirational, “we’re all one big family,” she says.

“Here you have this agrarian society that is closed to outsiders right in the middle of the Northeast,” says Wendell. “It’s both historical and contemporary.”

I reviewed an Amish-set book a few months ago, Cindy Woodsmall’s The Hope of Refuge, and gave it a C. The themes were fascinating but the religious revelations came far, far too easy.

I don’t think the Amish fascination will decline any time soon, though it eventually will. As complex and connected yet distant as our lives are now, revisiting that type of simplicity in fiction is a curious and compulsive indulgence for many readers.

NONFICTION
Advice/Relationships
Co-founder of SmartBitchesTrashyBooks.com Sarah Wendell’s EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LOVE I LEARNED FROM ROMANCE NOVELS, to Sara Kase at Sourcebooks, by Daniel Lazar at Writers House (world).

Woo hoo! The book will look at different stages of relationships and how romance novels can serve as guideposts to people navigating normal relationship stuff. One thing that has always ticked me off is the accusation that reading romance novels gives women unrealistic expectations of real life, and I love having the opportunity to dismantle that hogwash page by page. I’ll be reaching out to authors, referring to scenes and books, incorporating real situations that people face – and I hope revealing more of the awesome women and men who write and read romance.

Glee- I has it. Lots of it!

She quoted Dr. Eric Selinger, editors from various publishing houses, and me:

o the “Twilight” series, taken as a whole, fulfills readers desire for desire itself, and ultimately for a happy, and romantically sustainable ending.

“I think romance is popular in particular right now because happy endings, or even a happy future, may seem so scarce,” says Sarah Wendell, one of the bloggers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

She adds, “It’s reassuring and affirming to read with the belief that no matter how bad the obstacle is, how awful the present may be, there will be a happy ending wherein everything works out.”

But for now, in “New Moon,” it’s all about the yearning, and for desire junkies, the movie has spawned at least two real life “impossible love” counterparts.

Obviously, our email exchange had more, but column inches are column inches. I do love that Smith looked at the element of the movie and of the series – forbidden love and yearning that might not be satisfied – without looking down her nose. Well played, ma’am!

Indeed, Sarah Wendell, an administrative assistant in Manhattan who blogs about romance novels, said that although she used the iPhone to read while on a coffee or lunch break, she still used her Kindle during her one-hour commute from New Jersey.

For long reading sessions, she said, the iPhone is “a small screen, and my eyes would start to hurt, even though I crank the text up to grandma or great-grandma size.”

Author Shannon Stacey and fellow blogger Keishon Tutt were also quoted, though my look at the iPhone as a reader counters theirs. They prefer one device that does everything and like reading on the iPhone. I don’t – for one thing, the iPhone is so small it hurts my eyes after awhile, and for another, I prefer to have one device that does one thing for reading. With so much other stuff on board, I’m more likely to be distracted. Reading is a complete cessation of multi-tasking for me, and I like the single-use device for that purpose.

Of course, I bought my Kindle refurbished and used a few gift cards to bring the cost down; without those factors I wouldn’t have paid that much for Kindle II: Matzoh Man.

Really, Publisher’s Weekly, “promiscuous” is the best you could come up with? What kind of sexist crap is that?

I’m quoted on the topic of DRM and the absence of the reader’s needs and wants when it comes to development of digital reading tools:

Romance readers and publishers remain sharply divided on the question of encryption and digital rights management (DRM), however, and many consumers continue to hold out for a low-priced e-reader and a single standardized format. “Sadly, the reader is often the missing element in the development of books and devices,” says Sarah Wendell, a romance blogger at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. “Whether it’s DRM security on the books themselves, or devices that have some but not all of the features we prefer, time and again manufacturers and publishers are standing between the reader and her book.”

Carina will be offering DRM-free e-books, delighting readers who want content to be immediately and perpetually available and easily shared. Other publishers are concerned that infinitely replicable books will destroy their bottom line. “Kensington will only deal with retailers that use DRM,” says Steve Zacharius, president and CEO of Kensington Publishing. “The authors have dedicated their lives to writing a book and deserve to earn a royalty from every copy that is downloaded. The slight inconvenience that might exist to the reader in having to put up with DRM is worth the effort to make sure that the e-publishing business is a viable model.” Wendell says that inconvenience not only discourages readers but reduces valuable word-of-mouth promotion: “We can’t say to a friend, ‘Oh, my gosh, you have to read this—here, borrow my copy.’ [Readers and bloggers] are the newest marketing and promotional team for an author, but our ability to share the very thing we love most is hobbled because we are seen as potential thieves and pirates.”

“Slight inconvenience” – sounds like someone who’s never wrestled with DRM and a device that won’t authorize itself not matter how many times you ask nicely.

Breathtaking awfulness of the headline aside, reporter Rose Fox did an amazing job of interviewing Angie, Jane, and me, and as usual I’m proud to be quoted alongside them, as they are some knowledgeable women who rock the digital world.

My quote addresses the need for publishers to embrace the idea that a digital book can be read on a multitude of devices because most of us have more than one device:

Sarah Wendell, who blogs about romance novels as Smart Bitch Sarah at the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books blog (www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com), points out that the accessibility and portability of the AllAccess approach is hugely appealing to women readers, who not only comprise the biggest percentage of fiction readers (romance fiction alone generated $1.37 billion in U.S. sales in 2008) but tend to read in small chunks of time. “Women are the biggest multitaskers around. The danger to publishing isn’t that readers will choose something else to read if they can’t access a particular book. It’s that they’ll choose something else to do entirely,” Wendell says.

For LibreDigital, AllAccess represents an evolution in the services it has provided to publishers over the past decade. Six of the top 10 book publishers use Digital Warehouse, LibreDigital’s solution for storing, accessing, distributing, and repurposing published content and for tracking its data; and BookBrowse, a technology that replicates the offline experience of book buying by allowing readers to flip through the pages of a book. Additionally, 175 periodicals including newspapers, magazines, and trade journals are using LibreDigital’s iBrowse to provide a digital replica of the classic news reading experience.

Women multitask. Women read. Often, reading is the only time when we’re only doing one thing – and publishers need to make books easier to get, not harder.

I’m not sure there could BE a better honor for us. We’re on the same list as Daily Danza, CakeWrecks, There I Fixed It, and 1Bruce1 — and Lifetime, Wow? I may swoon.

I’m curious to see if people do type in web addresses from magazine articles and if the publication will generate more traffic for us, but there’s no question I’m HUGELY flattered to be included on such a completely awesome list.

Thanks Marie Claire! You are Tres awesomme!

Here’s the article (click for bigger image):

It’s time to waste time, people – who’s with me?!

Hell, yeah, it does. And it sounds like Sullivan is a fan of the genre herself.

o thank Eros for two Americans, Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan, who dreamed up Mavis for their book Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels. It’s an unashamed celebration of their great passion, and they make no apology for it….

This is the kind of analysis we want: down to earth, cheeky, motivated by an extensive knowledge and sincere love of the genre, yet merciless on the quality control. I’d love to see a couple of Smart Bitches let loose on literary fiction.

Whoa. Thank you, ma’am! And hell yeah. Thanks for celebrating the romance all over Oz. My fangirl crush on Australia has reached new heights now.