Hugh Howey said:
Wow. How awesome is that!
I'm not an expert on the NA genre. Is it dominated by indies? Or are publishers ramping up release of these books? I know they've been snatching up bestselling NA authors, but I guess what I would find interesting is whether or not this has primarily been a reader-driven event with indies supplying to demand.
New adult contemporary romance is the place to be right now if you're an Indie writing romance and it absolutely is reader-driven. Most of the top sellers are indies.
I haven't read Slammed, but pretty much everything that's selling big
is a bit smutty. It's not a put down in my opinion - it's smart women who are writing what people want to read. Some of it (even the ones that are selling huge) are a bit stupid even, but they all have one thing in common - the characters are all are young people looking for sexual relationships.
Those "important bloggers" over at GR aren't hard to find. I could list five right now off the top of my head because they all run book blogs. I started my New Adult Addiction book blog last October and I've participated in hundreds of events so far. It's not a big world - you bump into them. They run events, they run promotional services, they are everywhere, everyday, talking about books. (But not all of them are reading NA - although I think that's changing. Even the one's holding out are jumping on board now - there's been quite a bit of discussion about this in the book blog world in the past couple of months.)
I've read a lot of posts here at KB about how book bloggers don't sell books and I just have to shake my head. If you really believe that, you have no idea what you're talking about. Maybe they can't sell
every book- but if you
write to the genre - strictly to the genre - you please them, they tell others. Your book sells.