Direct To The Web

Over the past few years, sales have declined at Harlequin, the publisher that gave the world Fabio.

Muscles rippling, hair floating on an artist's breeze, Fabio graced many a cover of a Harlequin romance, and it's said his manly physique boosted sales.

Now Harlequin is giving up on the aging cover boy and launching a new line that will be published direct to the Web. No hard covers, no paper, just digital pages for downloading.

Carina Press plans to put out something new every week, not unlike its parent publisher, and like Harlequin, they'll look at your manuscript without the need of a literary agent.

For now, if your steamy erotic roman-a-clef is picked up by Carina, readers will only be able to access your words through the Carina website. They have plans to expand distribution to other places, possibly Amazon for the Kindle or Barnes and Noble for the Nook. Then you, the author, would have to promote yourself like mad across the Internet to drive traffic to Carina's on-line shop. With a book a week coming out, you can't expect much publicity from your publisher.

Thanks to the discretion inherent in online publishing, Carina could put out women's porn and not have to worry about offending shoppers at Wal-Mart or Target. The only person who might know that a reader has purchased such naughty material is the computer repairman. There's no hiding files from the computer savvy, so you'd want to be careful where you store your digital downloads.

Anyone can submit just about anything to Carina, and they provide detailed submission instructions.

You have a manuscript under the bed, don't you? The one that the literary agent said was well written but without a market? Maybe you won't earn a huge advance from Carina Press, but wouldn't your novel do you more good online than among the dust bunnies?

Just to be sure, you might want to revise it a bit, through in some throbbing members and shafts and the like. And then use a pseudonym. Wouldn't want your neighbors to think you were some kind of pervert.