Happy new year and thanks everyone who participated in the 2015 Australian Women Writers Challenge. This is the first of a series of wrap-up posts for books reviewed throughout 2015.
So…
- How many romance and erotica books were reviewed for AWW this year compared to last year?
- Who were our most popular authors?
- Which book attracted the most reviews?
- Who were our top reviewers?
The Australian Women Writers Challenge in 2015 attracted 1527 reviews of a total of 909 books. Of these, 171 books were categorised as “romance, erotica or romantic suspense”. This represents the output of 110 individual writers, while two books were co-written. This is comparable to the 2014 results where a total of 115 authors had a total of 170 books reviewed.
These 171 romance/erotica books attracted 327 reviews, written by 48 separate reviewers; this is an increase on 2014 figures, where there were 265 reviews by 43 reviewers. In 2015, 79 authors had just one book reviewed; 21 had two books reviewed; five had three books reviewed; two had five books reviewed; and one author, Victoria Purman, had six books reviewed. (Congratulations, Victoria!)
Our most prolific reviewers of romance and erotica in 2015 were Michelle at Beauty and Lace (48), Brenda on Goodreads (43), Sam Still Reading (34), Shelleyrae at Book’d Out (21), Jess at The Never Ending Bookshelf (13), Carol at Reading Writing and Riesling (also 13), Debbish (11), Kathryn at Book Date (10) and Rochelle Sharpe (also 10). Thanks to all our participants for an amazing effort bringing books by Australian romance writers to a wider audience.
The book that attracted the most number of reviews in this category (I’m thrilled and somewhat embarrassed to say) was my own debut rural romantic suspense, Snowy River Man, written under my pen-name, Lizzy Chandler (published by Escape as an ebook). It attracted eight reviews. Thanks for all your support – I’m both honoured and grateful!
Next with seven reviews each were four other rural romances: Loretta Hill’s The Maxwell Sisters (Random House Australia), Jenn McLeod’s Season of Shadow and Light (Simon & Schuster AU), Fiona Palmer’s The Saddler Boys (Penguin Australia) and Rachael Johns’ The Patterson Girls (MIRA). Johns also had four other novels reviewed – quite an achievement! Attracting six reviews each were Shannon Curtis’ romantic suspense thriller, Runaway Lies (MIRA); Fiona McArthur’s rural romance, The Homestead Girls (Penguin Australia); and Barbara Hannay’s rural romance/saga, The Secret Years (Penguin Australia). All of the top reviewed books were published in 2015.
Note: Just because a book was popularly reviewed, doesn’t mean it was the most well-liked; you’d have to track down and read the actual reviews to judge that (feel free to do so via our search page). There might be all sorts of reasons why some books get a higher number of reviews than others, including how well-known the author is and how many novels they’ve published previously, as well as the availability of Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs) and publishers’ advertising budgets (or whether or not the author founded AWW!).
Continuing a trend, seven of our “top” eight titles for 2015 were rural romance (and the eighth had a rural scene on the cover). The majority of the books reviewed were traditional romances – defined (by me) as focusing on a relationship and leading to a happy conclusion. What our reviewers categorised as “romance” or “erotica”, however, encompassed a broad range of fiction, including short “category” romance, mainstream “women’s fiction” or saga, literary fiction and even a novel in verse. The breadth of what AWW reviewers consider to be romance is important to note as it may help to explain some ratings.
The inclusion of Emily Maguire’s Taming the Beast in the romance/erotica category by one reviewer – and the reviewer’s low (2-star) rating for the book – highlights for me one of the dangers of genre classification (and, possibly, book covers). I haven’t read Taming the Beast but, judging by the one book of Maguire’s I have read and reviewed, her excellent and literary Fishing For Tigers, I’d be surprised if Maguire considered anything she wrote as typical romance or erotica, and a reader picking up one of her books with those expectations might well be disturbed by and disappointed in her work. (I’m not saying that’s what happened in this instance, only that I wouldn’t be surprised and, given the differences between the two cover versions above, you couldn’t blame a reviewer who picked up the second cover and made that assumption.)
Susan Johnson’s The Landing was also included in the romance/erotica category by several AWW reviewers. Again, I haven’t read the book, but I believe at least one reviewer might have had false expectations of the novel, perhaps influenced by the book’s “women’s fiction”-looking cover.
While labelling novels such as Johnson’s and Maguire’s romance or erotica might reflect the breadth of our understanding of these genres, it might also indicate a confusion in the marketing of these books, specifically the problems publishers are having in targeting the books to readers who will enjoy and appreciate them. This is something perhaps to keep in mind when, for example, rating a book on Goodreads and Amazon. Personally, I’d rather opt for the “I’m not the target audience and was misled by the cover/blurb” critique, rather than give such books a low rating. (Please note: I’m not pointing the finger at any reviewer – and I’m personally happy with any and all reviews of my books, good, bad and indifferent – but over the past four years I’ve had contact with more than one literary writer who has been quite wounded by what they consider to be unjustified criticism and mis-labelling of their work.)
On a related topic, if you missed the furore over Beth Driscoll’s reference to Susan Johnson’s and others’ books as “middlebrow”, you might be interested in tracking it down. Driscoll’s post first appeared in Sydney Review of Books, as did Johnson’s reply, alongside those of Stephanie Bishop and Antonia Hayes here. There were numerous follow-up discussions including Meredith Jaffe’s defence of the term in The Guardian. It’s a good insight into the fraught nature of this literary debate.
I’m looking forward to another great year of reading with the AWW challenge. In 2015 Bree from All the Books I Can Read began writing the romance roundups; I took over in the second part of the year when Bree withdrew for personal reasons. If there’s anyone reading this post who has a passion for romance and is interested in volunteering to take over the monthly (or bimonthly) roundups, please let me know via our contacts page.
In the meantime, if you’re a fan of romantic suspense and would like a chance to win a copy of my latest novel, By Her Side, you might like to enter my giveaway. (I’d love to see a few reviews of it included in #aww2016 but I have to warn you: it doesn’t have a rural setting.)
Thanks again and happy reading!
~
About me: I have published two novels under my pen-name, Lizzy Chandler: Snowy River Man and By Her Side. You can find my author blog page here. I also review books, mostly psychological suspense, on my review blog. In 2012 I founded the AWW challenge with the help of a team of book bloggers with the aim of helping overcome gender bias in the reviewing of books by Australian women. You can read more about our fantastic AWW volunteers here.
This is an excellent round-up Elizabeth – informative, but also meaty. I came across reference to “middlebrow” recently by UTAS academic Anna Johnson. She was talking about mid-20th century writers like Ernestine Hill, Frank Clune, Ion Idriess. She wrote “Although these so-called middlebrow writers [such as Ion Idriess and Frank Clune] have been frequently scorned by critics and neglected by subsequent Australian literary history, they were very influential cultural brokers who mediated debates about place, race, and culture for the interested general reader.” She doesn’t see them as female/emotional oriented at all. My sense is that she saw them as accessible writers who tackled meaningful issues. Personally, I’d rather just use the word “literary” which is a bit of a broader church though of course a line always has to be drawn in the end – and in my area I seem to be drawing that all the time.
Thanks, Sue. It took me ages to write, but I got there. The whole “middlebrow” versus “literary” and “popular” debate interests me for a number of reasons. I can see merit in writers trying to make their writing more accessible to a broader audience – who doesn’t want their work to be read? Yet I’m also aware of the modernist concept that new thoughts require a new language. I bring in modernism because, as you know, for a long time before that the novel itself (and much prose) was considered very low-brow! It was only the fine writers of the 19th century who elevated it. So much about this debate seems to have to do with establishing reputations – important when applying for literary grants. Most romance writers I know would never dream of applying; they let sales dictate whether their work is worthy of publishing. The argument against that approach, of course, is that it leads to a consumer-driven product, where tried-and-true narratives win out over fresh, original work. The best novelists manage to combine the two elements – and many of them would be happy to be thought of as “middlebrow”. I’m struggling to think of one traditional romance writer in Australia who could strictly be termed literary – though the historical fiction/romance writer Isolde Martyn comes close. Interestingly, her debut novel, The Lady and the Unicorn, won a swag of awards both in Australia and in the US when it came out, including the prestigious Rita Award. (The novel was published as The Maiden and the Unicorn over there.) Our readers might be able to suggest more names. There’s certainly a depth of talent among the romance writing community in Australia which is going unrecognised in the mainstream media. Maybe AWW can help to redress that genre bias? I hope so!
Fabulous roundup, as usual. I only thank you once a year. I should do it more often. This was such a great initiative and it continues to make a a powerful and positive difference. So ‘thank you’ and I am so honoured to get a mention. Happy new year!
You’re very welcome, Jenn, and congratulations on Seasons of Shadow and Light. (It’s on my To Be Read pile!) I’m so glad AWW is going strong into its fifth year – amazing!
Thanks Elizabeth for the round up – I can’t believe I had six books reviewed this year! (I’ve certainly been busy). Thanks for the spotlight on writing by Australian women. There are so many incredibly talented – and under-rated – writers in our midst.
You’re very welcome, Victoria, and congratulations again! You have been busy!
What a great round up.
And yes, it makes me realize that I need to think about how I categorise genre.
I look forward to a big #aww2016
Thanks, Michelle. And thanks for all your reviewing. Glad to have you onboard again for #aww2016. It’s going to be a great year!
Another stellar year from the AWW Challenge, Elizabeth! Thanks to you and your team for all your hard work to show case so much talent!
You’re very welcome, Helene. It’s fun to reflect back on a whole year of reviewing – it really does seem as if we must be making a difference. I hope so!
(oh dear, I just lost my whole comment! Oh well, it was too long and rambling anyway…)
It’s an interesting discussion, Elizabeth – thanks for raising it (I haven’t been following bookish news and debates lately, so thanks for including it!). I agree with Anna Johnson, as quoted by Sue, and with your own response.
If I could add or suggest a title for your short list, it would be Kim Kelly’s wonderful historical novel, Paper Daisies, which came out last year. I couldn’t say why I picked it up, exactly, but the setting and premise interested me – the cover is fashionable, generic and pretty, which rules out male readers, sadly. I was more than pleasantly surprised by the story, which makes no claim to literary writing but tackles issues around racism and misogyny in Australian culture, and is engrossing and refreshing to boot. It doesn’t follow a formula, which makes it new and fresh.
(Possibly, one reason why I was so delighted with it – I loved it, in fact – was because my expectations were so middling, based on the cover and complete ignorance. This is a case where expectations helped, but I agree about covers misleading people – that’s happened to me before – which comes down to the decisions made by publishers to target a certain market and appeal to a certain demographic, with sales in mind.)
To be fair to Kim Kelly, there are so-called ‘literary’ writers out there whose writing, I find, to be fairly uninspiring, unmoving and lacking in artistry, yet they find their way into this category. Can I be possibly inflammatory and add that there’s a patriarchal element at work here, too? This discussion of what’s literary or not usually always arises in relation to female authors, whereas men are given the freedom to write what they want, how they want it, for whatever genre they want. The dismissive tone in discussions of what is literature and what isn’t, seems to always be focussed on women’s writing. It’s part of that broader dismissive attitude towards women that still pervades, as seen by the recent Briggs-Dutton fiasco. I think this challenge is wonderful at taking women writers more seriously, and giving their work more credit. So, thank you again. 🙂
Thanks so much for the reply, Shannon, and the recommendation. (You were right, by the way: this did go into spam, so I’m glad you alerted me). I think your comments re the patriarchy are spot on! It’s so infuriating that women still have to face this! I’m so glad AWW is doing it’s bit to redress the problem – and by AWW I include all of the community of reviewers like yourself, not just the blog. I’d just like to work out a way of making this reading community more cohesive… It still feels like too many participants are doing their thing in isolation – or is that just me, I wonder? Anyway, so glad you’re back for #aww2016. I’m hoping for a very good year. 🙂