Which do you
prefer? Do you yearn for a good romance
as two characters play out their love-hate relationship throughout the book or
do you enjoy burying yourself in a good mystery you can attempt to solve right
along with the main character?
Maybe you
like both?
How about a
mysterious romance? Actually, that might
be interesting.
Or possibly a
romantic mystery?
A long time
ago, I used to read romance novels, right along with mysteries, thrillers and
horror books. My preference, when it
came to romance, were books written by Danielle Steel, Nora Roberts, Lavyrle
Spencer and such others like them. But over
the many years I’ve been reading, I’ll admit I’ve become bored with romance
novels. If they have humor and a bit of mystery,
it helps to hold my interest but typically the romance is overpowering and
there isn’t much mystery when the boys always gets the girl.
Based on
that, I’ve shelved romance novels when it comes to the books I plan to read. But I am curious which genre might have the
most followers. There are many readers
out there and many authors to support their need but overall, which genre can
come up with the most responsive following than the other?
The reason I’m
asking is this…I’ve been keeping an eye on the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award
contest as each Quarter-Finalist’s excerpt has been made available for readers
such as yourself to download, read and review.
It’s my understanding that our place as a Semi-Finalist in this contest
will depend on how Publisher’s Weekly rates our books as a whole now that the
books are undergoing a PW review, but readers do have the option of reading the
excepts the Amazon expert reviewers provided feedback on which in turn made
each of us a Quarter-Finalist.
Do you know
what I’ve noticed with regard to the contest?
There are 500
total excerpts available for you to download; 100 excerpts for each genre to
include mystery/thriller, romance, young adult, general fiction and science
fiction. I don’t know that the books are listed in any
particular order and in fact, the order does seem to change when I go back to
view them again. But what I did notice
was that out of the first 200 books, the romance category appears to be ahead
of the game when it comes to reviews. At
least when it comes to reviews in double digits. General fiction is a close second, young adult
and mystery/thriller have about half the amount of double-digit reviews and
science fiction is way behind. Many
books have a few reviews or up to a handful while many others have not received
any yet. I do hope that will change
before the results are made available the middle of next month. Those reviews do help the authors quite a bit
and are obviously very useful.
If you want
to see for yourself, use this search for books on Amazon.com:
At the rate
the reviews are coming in up to this point, romance appears to have a larger
following or at least a larger following willing to leave reviews. So my request to you is this…let’s make this an
even race. Let’s show the authors in all
categories that there are enough readers out there to read and review what each
of us has put so much work into with the hope of some useful feedback and a
chance at a terrific prize.
If you want to check out my entry, click here:
As with all
entries, you can download the full excerpt for free. Check it out…if you like mysteries, start with
mine and go onto the next. Don’t forget
the general fiction titles, the young adult, science fiction and yes, even the
romance. Of course, if my title were to
end up as one of the Finalists up for voting, you can bet I’ll be asking you to
vote for mine. But for the time being,
take a look at what I and the other Quarter-Finalists have offered up for this
contest and give us your feedback, your ratings and your support.
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