Rosa Romance Publishing Company, Inc. - May 2007 Interview with Holly Hewson at The Romance Studio So Holly asked me for Rosa Romance's Mission Statement and I suddenly realized that we didn't have one. Our parent company does have a motto that's even on its company T-shirts, Life is too short to do business with a**holes. But no Mission Statement. Oh my. Twenty-five-years old and no Mission Statement. Hummmm .... So how 'bout, To have a ton of fun publishing great romance that we want to read ourselves? Let's see ... if that doesn't work for you how about, To use romance novels to save the world? Hey, it's not that crazy an idea ... if you're reading romance, you don't have time to hate people, do you? Pretentious, huh? Well then ... what about, Because we all need pure unadulterated escapism? Yeah, that works. The bottom line is, we care passionately about books. We are inspired by the enduring magic of writers' tales inscribed on paper, electronic or otherwise ... tales that cheer the spirit, tales that chill the soul, tales that thrill the heart with happy endings to lighten the burdens we all labor under in this modern era. Enough said. http://RosaRomance.com     Click on the covers to read exciting excerpts of our books! Writing Contest! We're having a writing contest this summer -- open to all authors published or unpublished except those we've already signed. The contest will be for shorts and novellas but all that will be required for the original submission will be a one thousand word or less excerpt from the short or the novella. There will be a monthly winner -- judged only on that excerpt -- who will be featured at the top of the contest site with outgoing links to either the author's web site or a sales location for whichever of their other writing they wish to promote. No, we don't care if you are published by someone else! The link can go to them ... the point is to give the winning authors some publicity! Our monthly winners will compete against each other and will be judged not only by our editorial staff but with additional input from our Film Company's Development Executives. If the quality of the full short or novella submitted lives up to the promise of the winning excerpts it will result in a publishing deal for any or all of the monthly winners. For further information, authors should visit this page: Rosa Romance Writing Contest.     Click on the covers to read exciting excerpts of our books! Loop information for writers and readers. Please sign up for our recently created announcement only Yahoo Group who's home page is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RosaRomance_News. We'll be sending out announcements about our authors' books and their publicity plans, about the company, and about the writing contest. An Interview with Chris Cross Publisher at Rosa Romance Publishing Company, Inc. By Holly Hewson for The Romance Studio HH: Thank you so much for joining us at TRS. Rosa Romance Publishing is an exciting new company. What can you tell us about how you got your start? CHRIS: Thank you so much for saying that we're "exciting!" Although I must confess that we aren't all that new -- just new to publishing romance although we've been reading it forever. Rosa Romance is an imprint of a print book company, and both are a division of a 25-year-old Motion Picture and Television Production Company. Rosa Romance was started because a bunch of us, myself included, were discussing the romance we'd read lately, and passing our favorite authors' books around, and suddenly it struck us ... we were in the perfect position to find new goodies to read and also, since we live and work in the entertainment business, to give the "Judy Krantz/Jackie Collins" show biz genre a comeback. Many of us are screenwriters for a living -- not me, I'm in development -- but those of us who are writers desperately wanted an outlet for the stories that were banging around inside our heads. In Hollywood, Reality TV is king and romance is not a sought after commodity here. I went to the company's President and not only got the okay (I just love working for a smart woman!) but as it turns out, she's a Romance fanatic too (who knew?) so here we are ... publishing what we love to read -- romance! In addition to publishing the books, we have a Press Agent and a Marketing Department (which I share with the film company) which helps authors to promote their books. And at this time we have been creating web sites designed to the author's desires and we've been hosting our authors for free. That policy will probably change as we get more authors who already have their own sites and who know how to do the "book promo" thing ... but since our first authors have been screenwriters and don't know that normally authors are responsible for all their own PR and not the publisher, it seemed like the right way to start this. So we are actively involved in getting reviews, running contests, providing the author with the prizes they need, and whatever else we can do to help each author get known. HH: What types of books does Rosa Romance Publishing have to offer readers? Where can they be found? CHRIS: Our books can be found at http://RosaRomance.com. We are starting out with our own romance sub-genre, Hollywood Romance (TM), and with some great science fiction because those genres are what was immediately available to me as a publisher. We intend to expand our offerings as good writing is submitted to us in all other genres. The web site was designed with genre specific categories so as we publish books in each genre, the site will show each book within its proper link. We think that web site navigation designed to make it easy for readers to find what they are looking for is essential. We will be offering everything from "Shorts" up to what we are referring to as "Hot Stream Novels" -- from two hundred and fifty thousand words and up -- and as we grow, we will repurpose the writing into collections and anthologies of similar themes to give our readers the chance to cheaply experience new authors and our authors an additional revenue stream from work they have already written. As far as ratings go, Rosa Romance offers three levels of romance literature for your reading pleasure and we have rated the books we publish to help you determine which you want to purchase: H -- H is for HOT literature, sometimes for Hollywood, also for sensual love scenes which can be explicit but which are always story driven and develop from the characters. Books rated H tend to be more story with sex appropriate for the literature but are not sexually driven tales. HR-- stands for HOTTER. These are books where the seduction and/or sex scenes are more frequent. They are not necessarily sexier, more graphic, or more explicit than books we have rated H but there's more of it. H&H -- HOT and HEAVY, includes all of the above. It might also include HEAVY subject matter with plots, scenes, and/or relationships that some readers might find objectionable including but not limited to; bondage, submission, same sex encounters, multiple partners at the same time, non-human partners, and other controversial subject matter whether or not it's of a sexual nature. On some of our books you will see a red piece of movie film at the top. That signifies that the book is primarily set within the Entertainment Industry. If the film is not there, either the book only touches lightly on the business or it's without any connection to Hollywood at all. In addition, depending on the authors' decision, their books can also be found at many third-party locations. HH: Are you open to submissions? What are you actively seeking? CHRIS: Yes, Rosa Romance is open to submissions in all genres, and are particularly looking for shorts and novellas in paranormal, vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, and fantasy to balance the two hard-core science fiction series that we are already publishing. Needless to say, if your day job is or has been in any aspect of the Entertainment Industry -- not only Film and Television but in the magazine business, public relations, music business, and the fashion industry -- we would love to hear from you! I want to be candid here ... at this time we are open for submissions. How long that will continue, I don't know. Since I started my career in script development departments, I know how hard it is to find good writers. We used to get between 100 and 150 scripts submitted a month -- I was reading and writing coverage on an average of six scripts a day -- and if there was one every three months that was worth putting into development, it was a miracle. The film company finally shut down submissions unless they came through a known agent or lawyer -- or if they were personally recommended by a writer we respected -- because it was costing us way more in staff, time, and frustration than we could ever make on selling one script. There's a reason why people say it's impossible to get a script read in Hollywood -- it's financially a waste of time for companies to search for that one, proverbial, script in a haystack. I hope it's different in the book business. I hope that novelists have done their homework and learned their craft. Just because you can write your name on the bottom of a check doesn't mean you can write a book or a script. I will give it a shot. We're open for submissions for now. And we're running a writing contest this summer which will give me a much better handle on the quality level of the writing which is submitted to us. But if it turns out that open submissions is taking up valuable time we could use to promote the terrific writers we already have, then we will shut down open submissions and concentrate on a stable of WGA writers and of novelists who have proven track records. I would hate to do that. I loved finding that one wonderful writer out of the thousands I read ... but it's just plain not a good way to run a company. And since the buck stops here, I will play "hatchet lady" when and if I have to and close down submissions. HH: Can you tell us what genre(s) you are looking for and can you give us your guidelines for all book lengths? CHRIS: Our book lengths break down like this: Hot Stream: 250,000 or more words Grande Novel: 100,000 to 249,000 words Novel: 45,000 to 99,999 words Short Novel: 30,000 to 44,999 words Novella: 12,001 to 29,999 Short: 5,000 to 12,000 words I mentioned some specifics about genres in the question above ... but basically we want to publish good writing whatever your genre. Some of the books we are publishing are great stories with romantic subplots. Some of our books are more traditional romance -- girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy at the happy ending. They run the gamut from lightly sprinkled with traditional sex to all out erotica. But we always want a happy ending ... otherwise, what's the point of reading romance? There's enough negative stuff out there ... we aren't gonna add to it! We only have two hard rules as a publisher; don't go over the edge of erotic romance into porn -- especially no child porn -- and we will never publish anything that is derogatory to women. Which I suppose would seem logical since Rosa Romance was created and is run by women, and our parent company was also created and built by a strong woman. And yeah, we do have male employees! No prejudice here. HH: Can you tell us what a typical day is like for you at Rosa Romance Publishing? CHRIS: I wish I could but ... there is no real "typical day" as I'm the "buck stops here" person. I have corporate people above me and thank goodness, a great team who work under me -- but I'm the functional head of Rosa Romance. My work week is seven days, usually about 16 hours. What I'm doing depends largely on who needs what within our production schedule. As manuscripts come in, I assign an editor to that author, hoping to choose a team that will work well together for the foreseeable future. I am fortunate in that my background and training for working with writers is extensive. I began my career in script development at several motion picture companies and I am thankful every day to the thousands of writers who taught me so much about their craft. So I work closely with our editors to see that the manuscripts we publish are as polished as possible. I follow the book through copy editing, formatting the galleys, writing advertising and promotional materials, and I spend a great deal of time working with our cover artists because I believe that a well crafted cover sells the soul of the writers' work. Since we are imprint of a print book company, the first layout we always do is an Adobe Acrobat PDF; fully ready for the eBook to become a print book. I confess I was shocked when I purchased some e-Books from other publishers and found that they were made using manuscript layout format instead of print book format. That feels to me like it's cheating the author. If the book is good enough for us to publish, it deserves to have a professional layout complete with dingbats, headers, footers, and all the other little touches which are expected in a book of quality. Granted, that takes us a lot more time and money to accomplish but it's the right thing to do. Also granted, that for all other eBook formats the beautiful layout is stripped ... but that's technology for you! I am also responsible for all the day-to-day business aspects of running a publishing company. I determine our release schedule, I work closely with our programming and systems management expert on website development, I assign ISBN numbers, list our books with Bowker's Books In Print, and for those of our authors who wish their books to be listed on third-party websites (like Fictionwise and Powels) in addition to being sold at Rosa Romance.com, I make those arrangements. Added to that, now I'm doing interviews! This is a new one for me, I must confess. HH: What exciting things do you have planned for the upcoming year? CHRIS: In addition to a bunch of great new books that we will be releasing this year we will be running a writing contest starting this summer. It will be open to all authors published or unpublished except for those we have already signed. The contest will be for shorts and novellas but all that will be required for the original submission will be a one thousand word or less excerpt from the short or the novella. There will be a monthly winner -- judged only on that excerpt -- who will be featured at the top of the contest site with outgoing links to either the author's web site or a sales location for whichever of their other writing they wish to promote. The monthly winners will compete against each other and will be judged not only by our editorial staff but with additional input from our Film Company's Development Executives. If the quality of the full short or novella submitted lives up to the promise of the winning excerpts it will result in a publishing deal for any or all of the monthly winners. For further information, authors should visit this page: Rosa Romance Writing Contest. HH: Do you hold any special events for your readers? Special promotions? CHRIS: Although we are part of a well-establish company and have been doing screenplays for twenty-five years and print books for over five years we are very new to publishing romance so I've got a lot to learn about the type of special events that are a part of the romance world. We've got some things cooking but .... The first special thing I have done is to create a 20% off coupon code for readers of The Romance Studio! Just click our name to go to Rosa Romance, choose the books you want to buy, put them in your shopping cart and when you check out, put in the coupon code -- RomanceStudio -- and the cart will automatically deduct the money you saved before payment! Our gift to the wonderful people at Romance Studio and to all the readers who are making us so successful. HH: Do you have a newsletter or group where readers can find out all the latest on Rosa Romance Publishing? CHRIS: Yes, we have recently created an announcement only Yahoo Group who's home page is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RosaRomance_News. We will be sending out announcements about our authors' books and their publicity plans, about the company, and about the writing contest but only on a limited basis. I promise, no 45 emails a day to drown your inbox! HH: What can fans look forward to from Rosa Romance Publishing? CHRIS: Wow, lots of great books to read! That's the one really nice thing about working with the writers we have -- they are all professionals, several making big bucks writing scripts and they are writing romance for us just because they so love romance! So the quality level of the writing we publish is very high. Coming this year we have lots of new books in many genres, and the sequels to two books that are already out, the science fiction epic Journey To Diir has a sequel, Diir Evolution, and we are publishing the sequel to the Hollywood tale of two star-crossed lovers Electric Vibes, called Electric Vibrato. Also we have a new author with some serious attitude, Jada Nichols, who is posting bits of her book -- Jada's Journals ~ sex, scandals and superstars, scene by scene at her web site every Wednesday for your reading enjoyment. Please visit her site at JadaNichols.com for some down and true Hollywood stories told from her POV. Trust me, she takes no prisoners in her insider writing about Hollywood! HH: What prompted Rosa Romance to start it's own romance sub-genre, Hollywood Romance (TM)? CHRIS: They say you should write what you know, right? And it seemed to me like the one way we could create a book company with our own niche market ... some way to make us stand out from the crowd of e-Publishers out there who may or may not have our qualifications when it comes to writing. Our parent company's spent twenty-five years working with writers but we have no reputation as a romance publisher. I needed to find a way to attract good novelists and a way to grab the readers' attention. Writing in an arena where very few authors can play was the solution. Hollywood is my authors' day jobs. I suggested that they write what they know -- the trials, tribulations, and insanity that is the Motion Picture business. I encouraged them to take all the maniacs they work with in the movie business, changed their names to protect the guilty, jack up the sex from the previous generation's Hollywood books so that it would reflect what the characters would encounter in real life -- except, of course, they all have romance novel happy endings -- and here we are. Rosa Romance ... sex, scandals, and more sex on film sets and all over the world! And lots of great science fiction, and many other genres on the way too. We love romance, both to read and to write. Is there a better place to hide your head from reality that a terrific romance novel? If so, I don't know of it. Romance Rules! HH: Thank you so much for joining us! CHRIS: And thank you for having me. You are a great interviewer and this has been painless! top Close this window Copyright © 2007 The Romance Studio