Georgette Heyer Fans discussion

Hi I'm putting this up quickly (my daughter is home for the weekend & she has just woken up!) but I'm wondering if we now need a thread for authors & what we put in it?

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I will say Sophia has been a member for a few months here, so it's not like she has just arrived & started promoting her work. :)

I think it's a good idea to have a specific place for author's to post.

Sure—so long as we restrict it to authors writing Regency (or closely related) period stories influenced by GH.

Thanks for your input Andrea & Abigail.

I'll give time for a few more members to comment before making a decision but I'll just put down a few thoughts of my own.

I'm sympathetic to how hard it is for writers to get known & how few tools there are for them to promote their work. One of my sister's & her partner are self published authors. But I have enjoyed moderating a single author board & not having to make decisions about this stuff!

What I suggest

➽ An Authors' Corner thread or folder. All information about the authors books to go there only. I think this should include our recommendations threads (although other members can recommend our author member books)

➽ I like Abigail's idea of restricting genres but I'm happy to stretch it to Austen & Heyer inspired Regency or Heyer inspired Georgian. & biographies of Georgette Heyer & or literary criticisms of her work. (Jen Koestler is a member of our group, although she hasn't posted in it)

➽ Something in our rules so our authors are clear.

➽ I'll move Sophia's comments (& send her a message if I can) but after that I will just delete any author promotion in the wrong place. If Goodreads would give moderators the tools to move comments I would be happy to move them, but Jaclyn (from GR staff) has said that is unlikely to ever happen.

I'll be honest I am a bit nervous about this. I don't read other Regencies so it is going to be difficult for me to monitor when they change too much from Heyer's world.

Any other thoughts?

As you say, Carol, I understand authors' needs to promote books, but I do not want it in the discussion, and other authors in the group do not do that. I get enough marketing targeted at me to & do not want anymore when I just want to chat about books. A fellow reader telling me what they think of something is way different than someone trying to get me to buy a product, even if that product is a book. That being said, having an Author's Corner is fine with me. It is common practice for groups to have stated parameters & restrictions around marketing.

It’s great that you’re thinking about this, Carol! The reason I mentioned “Heyer-inspired” is that there is already an active Austenesque group on Goodreads that is very open to author promotion (on its own thread), as well as two Jane Austen groups with, I believe, spots for self-promotion. The Austenesque genre is so enormous now—hundreds of books published every year, possibly a majority self-published—that you could easily get swamped!

All that said, it would be nice to have a place to recommend finds, whether written by oneself or by another, that have some of the Heyer flavor.

Abigail wrote: "It’s great that you’re thinking about this, Carol! The reason I mentioned “Heyer-inspired” is that there is already an active Austenesque group on Goodreads that is very open to author promotion (o..."

I'm going to bow to your superior knowledge on this Abigail! It's actually the reason I didn't include Heyer inspired mysteries as there are many groups on GR all about or partly about Golden Age mysteries & some of them are happy for authors to promote their own work.

I think it's worth having a policy about it, and I think it would be better to have an area for recommendations and member promotions so that we can dip in when were looking for something rather than get off topic.

You could also provide some links to other groups for authors looking to promote, so that if their book does really fit Heyer inspired/related they could something more suited to them.

I'm a member of the clean romance group for example, which often has requests for reviewers etc.

I agree. I don't particularly want the book discussions to be hijacked by authors promoting their books. The idea of a separate thread for authors makes total sense. It's funny because something similar has happened on the Mary Stewart group and whilst it's not at the book promotion jag yet - there is a risk and I don't want that either! I am all for encouraging authors - just not on our specific GH book discussion pages.

Susan has summed up my feelings about this. I don't want to see promotional posts in the discussion threads but a separate thread or folder is fine since I can ignore it if I want.

Susan in Perthshire wrote: "I agree. I don't particularly want the book discussions to be hijacked by authors promoting their books. The idea of a separate thread for authors makes total sense. It's funny because something si..."

Yes in the Mary Stewart group I felt that was sailing close.

Another group I'm in a woman (actually an author herself) has asked for recommendations for books for her daughter & an author on his first post jumps in & recommends his own book! (& this group has an author's corner) & I certainly don't want to be discussing, say, a duel in one of GH's books & have authors posting "this reminds me of a scene in my book where..."

Ha yes! I have seen people do that. I don't think they do it on purpose all the time, it's just their books are very much on their mind but it makes me cringe.

Carol ♔ Type, Oh Queen! ♔ wrote: "Susan in Perthshire wrote: "I agree. I don't particularly want the book discussions to be hijacked by authors promoting their books. The idea of a separate thread for authors makes total sense. It'..."

You sum it up so well Carol - my fears entirely!

Regarding recommendations - we do have both a fiction & a non fiction thread in the Really Useful Stuff folder & I would like to leave it there. Also in the rules I'll have to say authors can't recommend their own work in those two threads - although of course they can recommend other peoples.

Just a couple more thoughts & then I'll start drafting something up.

Fan fiction. If Elliot (or anyone else) does write something & & wants to put it on here. If s/he could PM me. (although I thought Elliot's ideas were so good he should look at publishing!) I'll think about it if it does arise.

Other merchandise - again I'll think about it if it does arise but I've just seen someone trying to hawk tea caddies on a Jane Austen board. Pretty unlikely to arise here (unless the film of The Grand Sophy is a raging success) but my answer is likely to be no.

I've put the rules & a thread for links to other boards

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Any suggestions?

That sounds good. I'm actually a published YA author at work on a very GH-inspired story...but I'm a member of this group as a reader, not a writer, and want to be here to read discussions about GH, not be solicited. It's part of why I'm also active on LibraryThing--as a reader who has a boatload of books to catalogue and keep track of so I stop buying duplicates. :)

I agree that sometimes it is hard for authors to stop thinking about their own books. If they had a specific thread to post in, I think it would help all around to keep self-promotion in a specific area.

I am not sure about fan fic being in the same thread as promotion because it really is completely different from talking up your books.

Critterbee wrote: "I agree that sometimes it is hard for authors to stop thinking about their own books. If they had a specific thread to post in, I think it would help all around to keep self-promotion in a specific..."

I'm looking at the These Old Shades folder as for writing, rather than only self promotion though.