Before Ebooks and Online Bookstores, Where Did You Get Your IR Books From?

[Stacy-Deanne]

Hi All,

I thought this would be interesting and wanted to know your experiences. In another online IR group, we were talking about the difficulty of finding IR books before the net and ebooks took off. Mostly everyone who spoke about that said the same thing I already knew, you COULD NOT find IR books in stores. At least, it was rare if you did. Even black bookstores didn't carry IR!

I'll be honest. I never found IR books in stores, never. So I didn't start reading the genre until ebooks and Amazon came along. Since you didn't know where to find these books, you didn't know who wrote them and pubs didn't seem to publish a lot of them so heck, there wasn't anything I had to go on. So I guess to answer my question, before ebooks and online stores I wasn't reading IR. I didn't realize they existed. In fact, I wonder if IR books were even being written as much then as now. I would find it hard to believe that they were.

So where did you get your IR books from? Could you find them in stores where you were? Did you order them from the bookstores? How did you even know when an IR book was out back then? Did you go to the library?

Whenever you ask a store why they don't carry an IR book on the shelves, you always get, "Because they don't sell." I guess not well enough for stores to stock them.

Anyway, share how you got IR books before the net blew up, if you ever did.

Best Wishes!

http://www.stacy-deanne.net

[CaliGirlRae, Mod Squad]

I don't think I ever found any in stores except for a few books. During the times I shopped in B&M stores, I was shopping mainly for spec fic but later on got into IR romances via Amazon. I can't even remember how but I stumbled upon Sandra Kitt's The Color of Love and was hooked completely from then on.

Then I discovered Genesis Press Love Spectrum books at Amazon and followed the trail from Seressai's No Commitment Req'd to Giselle's 'Shelter' book and everything available in the line. I think I also discovered Aliyah Burke's A Knight's Vow (good story, girlie! Looking forward to the second edition! :-D) as one of my early reads.

So basically Amazon was still my goldmine for IR when it started coming up, only it was for print books. :-) After that, I tried to look at the bookstores but could never find any GP books there (Sandra's Harpercollins books were there though). I was rather bummed but happy to be an Amazon customer from then on.

[Arch , Mod]

I have been buying books from the library for 13 years now. That's where I found a lot of my interracial books. Plus, I use to check out book interracial books from the library.

[Danielle The Book Huntress , Sees Love in All Colors]

I've rarely found IR books at the store, but I have. Usually, they were in the mainstream fiction section. Occasionally, I would luck out and find Genesis Love Spectrum, especially if it was a bookstore in an area with a higher black population. We went to San Francisco for my 30th birthday when I lived in CA, and I was jazzed, because I found four IR books at the Borders at the mall there! On another occasion, I remember finding Renee And Jay at Barnes and Noble and actually paying for a hardcover, which I rarely do. Most of the time, I order mine online, either through the publisher as ebooks, or from Amazon.com.

[Michelle, Mod with the Bod]

To be honest, I don't think that I ever came across an IR romance novel at a bookstore in the past. I have come across them once or twice since joining this group, and learning of some authors to look for, but I've had to go in the teeny weeny African American section of the store.

[TinaNoir]

Ditto to what Michelle said. In my neck of the woods, the only IR romances I'd ever found in bookstores were the ones I cam across accidentally as a secondary romance in a Nora Roberts book.

After reading Sandra Kitt's The Color of Love like a million years ago, I hadn't read nor seen any IRs until I found Seressia Glass' No Commitment Required in my local library and only at the branch that was in the predominantly African-American neighborhood that had a very healthy black romance/ black popular fiction setting.

That is when I took to Amazon to find more. At that point, Amazon was the only place I could find any IRs. This was back in 2000-2001, well before ebooks and all the online pubs where they are available now.

[Stacy-Deanne]

I'm just so glad that these books have made such an impact now. I know there have been audiences like us for years who wanted to read them, but couldn't find them. I'm just happy now we can.

Best Wishes!

[Delilah]

Honestly, I had no idea that I/R books existed until almost two years ago. The first one I purchased was an ebook, so I don't know anything apart from ebooks for I/R.

[TinaNoir]

Delilah- as Rae mentions above, I highly recommend Genesis Press for IR physical books. Their IR imprint is Indigo Love Spectrum found here.

They do not do ebooks *raises fist in frustration* but they are a quality press, well edited with good authors and stories. I really wish they would enter the ebook arena or at least I wish there was an ebook publisher for IRs that had the quality and selectivity that Genesis has.

This is not to put down IR ebook publishers in any way, but with Genesis I feel that all the front end work has been done for me. I don't have to do the weeding out. I always know that a book I get from them is going to be well edited, have a decent word count and doesn't feel like it has just been thrown together.

[Stacy-Deanne]

Same for me, Delilah. Up until about 2005 or 2006 I didn't know they existed either. I'd never heard of any of them or anyone who wrote them. You certainly didn't see them in stores or being promoted. I hadn't even heard of the authors some of the others say they had before Amazon and ebooks. Never saw these books anywhere. I discovered that it existed from other women who had interests in IR relationships. They would talk about the IR books they read and that's when I learned of some.

But Danielle made a good point. Maybe these books were not called "IR" fiction but called Contemporary or something and we didn't know what these books contained. I think that's one of the main reasons. I don't dispute that IR books have been in some stores now and then but I know I never saw them. I think a few (just a few)might have been in stores if they came from bigger pubs but weren't promoted as IR. Big publishers aren't gonna promote the IR aspect because they think that will hurt sales and limit readership unfortunately.

Best Wishes!

http://www.stacy-deanne.net

[Stacy-Deanne]

Tina, I have heard through the industry grapevine that Genesis might start offering ebooks. I don't know if or when this will come to pass, but I have heard speculation.

I believe they will begin offering ebooks even if it's through another imprint. All publishers will expand to ebooks because as times goes on, ebooks are gonna be more and more the norm. A pub would be hurting themselves just to offer one format this day and age. A lot of people read ebooks now and some read both, but you got a lot who want only ebooks.

One of my author friends writes black romance and she's been frustrated for a while because her pub didn't offer ebooks. They said they will soon be offering their books as ebooks starting this year. She knows that not having her books electronically too can hurt her sales. Ebooks are becoming a dominant force and authors should be able to cash in on it. LOL! Personally I wouldn't go with a pub now a days that only offered print. Especially writing IR because most IR readers are into ebooks.

Best Wishes!

[postcrdprincess]

I came across my first IR book about 2 yrs ago entitled An Unlikely Encounter by Aliyah Burke, and it was completely by accident. I didn’t even know this type of book really existed. I was searching a book site on the web (I can’t even remember the name of the site or what book I was originally looking for). All I can say is was I was hooked from there and decided to try and find some additional books that fell into this category. I was able to find some paperback copies in the romance section of a Barnes N Noble in Atlanta; otherwise my only other resource was Amazon.

It was after reading my 5th book that I found out from other readers that the category these books fell into was called IR. With my laptop and Google, I then started searching for any IR book I could get my hands on. Until I came across this IR group I thought I had exhausted all my IR reading (boy was I wrong). I’m glad to see there is still more IR reading in my future.

[Stacy-Deanne]

Me too, Princess. *smiles*

[CaliGirlRae, Mod Squad]

Tina, I couldn't agree more! I hope GP enters the digital arena soon because there a group of books I want to read by them. They're in print and sitting on my shelf but I don't have the drive to read them. Now if they were in e-format... ;-)

I wonder if the rumors are because of Kensington, their new distributor. They have some books in e-format and I hope with them working with GP now, we'll see GP books move digital. I hope. I hope. :-) They've gotten so much better with the editing nowadays. Like Tina said, it'd be great to just grab a story that sounds good and know that it's been cleaned up and put through the process.

[Danielle The Book Huntress , Sees Love in All Colors]

Glad you found us, Princess. It's kind of sad that IR is still on the 'down-low.'

[The FountainPenDiva, Old school geek chick and lover of teddy bears]

Honestly, I don't remember where I found my first interracial romance. I do know, like most of you, it was Color of Love by Sandra Kitt. Unlike most of you, I had to force myself to finish it, and though I gave (and still give) Ms. Kitt a lot of credit for breaking new ground, I also wondered when someone was going to write an IR romance that wasn't so heavy-handed on the race angle.

Fast forward a few years and I discovered Genesis Press and was thrilled to actually see a cover with a black woman/white man in a clench on it! I bought it without a second thought.

The best things to have happened to our beloved sub-genre are e-publishers and smaller presses. Oh, and self-publishing. The big NY publishers are pretty much SOS (Stuck On Stupid) when it comes to IR's, especially when either one character is of a different race or neither character is, no matter how well-written and how much of an audience there really is. Sad to say a lot of our fan-faves would still be languishing in a slush pile if the e-pub market hadn't opened the floodgates. We're so not going away and besides, IR's are only reflecting what's happening in society anyway.

For the most part, I purchase my IR books from the actual publishers, or on Amazon since they seem to have a lot more variety.

[Arch , Mod]

My first interracial story came from me, when I was a teenager.

[The FountainPenDiva, Old school geek chick and lover of teddy bears]

@Arch: LOL, well if we're going back that far, then my real first IR was a story I wrote about me and Steve Perry of Journey (I still have the damn thing)!

[Stacy-Deanne]

Rae, since you mentioned Kensington and I FORGOT that they are the same publisher my other friend's imprint is from (the one I said will soon have her books in ebooks). I'd forgotten that Genesis was also a part of Kensington now! So now I wouldn't be surprised if G does start having ebooks because this might be something Kensington is doing for all their imprints.

Best Wishes!

[Stacy-Deanne]

Does anyone ever read books from Parker Publishing? I just wondered. I never hear them mentioned by a lot of readers. I think they have some good looking titles but I've never read a book release from them. They've began doing ebooks if I'm not mistaken. They started last year. It's cool. You can buy right from them like an epub.

Best Wishes!

[CaliGirlRae, Mod Squad]

I hope so, Stacy-Deanne! That's definitely a good sign. I'm sure I'm not the only one waiting for them to cross over. There will be a stampede (especially if they release their books via all the big digital distribution channels)!

[Arch , Mod]

lol Vixenne.

Besides my interracial stories, when I was younger, I think my first bw/wm interracial story as an adult came from Sandra Kitt or David Handler.

[The FountainPenDiva, Old school geek chick and lover of teddy bears]

@Stacy: Actually, Parker Publishing has been doing e-books for almost two years now. I was the only short-term holdout (LOL) because I was concerned about the readership who likes print (like Arch *wink*), but we still do print. On the other hand, e-books allows for us to have more titles which means we can bring new and fresh voices into the publishing industry. We've been kind of quiet because I've been working really hard to get our new YA imprint, Moxie, going, but I've got some awesome titles happening for it next year!

[Arch , Mod]

lol Vixenne, yes, I love my print. :)

[The FountainPenDiva, Old school geek chick and lover of teddy bears]

Me too! There's just something comforting about having that physical book in my hand.

On a serious note though, the best thing about the rise of e-publishing is the freedom of choice readers have. Those of us who love and support the IR and MC romance genres don't have to wait for New York to decide their "focus group" is okay with characters who aren't caucasian anymore. It's the ultimate in DIY (Do It Yourself). Don't find the kind of book you're looking for? Write and publish it yourself, or find a publisher who is doing the kind of book you want. E-publishing has given us a lot more in the way of choices.