*** From Cindi Myers’ eNewsletter ***

I’ll begin with the Spotlight on Pocket Books from the Romance Writers of America annual conference in Dallas, Texas. This Spotlight was presented by Editorial Director Maggie Crawford, and Senior Editors Lauren McKenna, Micki Nuding, and Abby Zidell. Pocket books is division of Simon & Schuster. They publish hardcover, trade and mass market paperbacks, with the core of their publishing program in mass market, particularly women’s fiction. They publish historical and contemporary romance, romantic suspense and both historical and contemporary paranormal romance.

This year Pocket participated with Gather.com to sponsor a First Chapters Writing Contest at Gather.com specifically for Romance Novels.

Senior Editor Abby Zidell, the newest addition to the Pocket editorial team, began the presentation. She indicated she’s very interested in acquiring romance and women’s fiction. She’s not interested in seeing anymore vampire stories.

Micki Nuding acquires historical and contemporary romance as well as erotic romance and women’s fiction. Pocket is publishing both single title and anthologies of erotic romance. Pocket publishes women’s fiction for all different ages, including 60s and over. She likes lots of variety and isn’t specifically looking for vampires either. She loves a very sexy read with strong sexual tension, alpha heroes who aren’t jerks, strong heroines and humor.

Lauren McKenna works on urban street fiction, begun by rapper 50 Cent and on MTV Fiction, which is celebrity nonfiction and teen fiction. She also works on women’s fiction, including commercial literary fiction, both historical and contemporary. Lauren also acquires both historical and paranormal romance and some Chick Lit. She really likes “dark and strange” heroes — “the more messed-up the hero, the better.” She cautioned that the market for Chick Lit has declined, and that to sell these days, stories need to be ‘different and topical.” Lauren said she’s not a kid person, so don’t send her books where the heroine’s goal is to chuck it all and raise a big family, but she loves dogs.

Maggie Crawford edits a number of Pocket’s best-selling romance authors. She shared that she sees the most growth with new authors in paranormal, but their historical romance program is also gaining strength . Maggie loves vampires and family stories.

Like many of the editors at this conference, these editors said they’re looking for authors with strong voices. They’re open to melding of sub-genres and have no hard and fast rules. Length is not critical for them, but anything over 100,000 words is going to be hard to sell.

Pocket does not accept unagented submissions. However, if you have pitched to a Pocket editor at a conference and the editor has asked to see the manuscript or a proposal, that is one way for unagented authors to get in the door at Pocket. Pocket has published a couple of first time authors in the past year.

*** This information is from Cindi Myers’s eNewsletter. Subscribe by sending a blank email to cynthiasterling-subscribe@yahoogroups.com ***