The folks over at All About Romance did a cool post about 10 Things I’d Like to Tell Pub­lish­ers. I agree with a lot of their com­ments, espe­cially the one about the cheesy romance book titles. (Seri­ously, I think some­one has a lot of fun com­ing up with some of those groaners).

Inspired by them, I thought that I’d do a post about 10 Things I’d Like to Tell Read­ers. Here goes:

1. I have very lit­tle input/control when it comes to the cover art for my books. If you think the cov­ers suck, there’s noth­ing I can do about it. (And yes, I know the cov­ers for the mass mar­ket ver­sions of the Big­time books suck — they suck out loud, espe­cially the one for Karma Girl. Believe me, I know and have spent many hours bemoan­ing that fact.)

2. I do not know every­thing there is to know about pub­lish­ing. I can­not find a cover artist for your book, or a copy edi­tor, or tell you why no one wants to pub­lish the anno­tated his­tory of your belly lint. Well, I could on that last one, but you prob­a­bly wouldn’t like what I had to say about it. I get a lot of ques­tions about pub­lish­ing and writ­ing, and I’m happy to help when and as I can — but I can’t get your book pub­lished for you. Only you can do that. And yes, it is much harder than it looks.

3. Fake even a lit­tle bit of inter­est in my work, and I will sign books until my fin­gers bleed and smile for pho­tos until my face hurts for you. Buy one of my books, and I will shower you with all the book­marks and good­ies that I have on hand. Tell me that you read and enjoyed one of my books, and I will wish you joy and hap­pi­ness for all of your days.

4. I look at reviews for my books. Good ones make me happy, bad ones make me sad. Reviews where folks call my books the worst things ever writ­ten after read­ing all of two pages of said books and never fin­ish­ing them bring out my inner Hulk, who can only be con­trolled by eat­ing mas­sive amounts of straw­berry cheese­cake ice cream. Or to sum up, authors have feel­ings too, folks.

5. Get­ting asked where the bath­room is while I’m doing a book sign­ing is depress­ing. Pop! Did you hear that? That was the sound of you just deflat­ing my ego. Now, I want to crawl under the table and whim­per while I eat a candy bar — or three.

6. I don’t care what for­mat you buy my book in. Paper copy, e-copy, heck, I don’t even care if you get a copy from the used book­store. All I ask is that if you like the book, you tell your friends about it — and maybe take a minute or two to send me an e-mail about it (see 10). If you don’t like my book, that’s okay too — just be polite about it. Dif­fer­ent strokes for dif­fer­ent folks, and all that.

7. I’m a reader too, and I’m just as happy to talk about other authors’ books as I am about my own. I can prat­tle on and on and on about my favorite authors and books all day long. Seri­ously, I can make your ears bleed, folks. My sig­nif­i­cant other knows bet­ter than to get me started wax­ing poetic about my favorite books. Every­one else, you have been warned.

8. Yeah, I know that my books are not per­fect. There are typos and con­ti­nu­ity errors and some­times I repeat phrases in books. But you know what? It’s hard com­ing up with 100,000 words that cre­ate a coher­ent story, and it’s even harder to ensure that every sin­gle one of those words is per­fect. Man­u­scripts go through a lot of edi­tors as they are turned into books, and we all do our very best to catch all the mis­takes. But we’re human, and some errors are going to creep in. It’s not because I don’t work hard on my books — that’s just life.

9. My inner fan­girl squees with delight every time I see my book on the shelf at the book­store. That weird woman you see tak­ing pho­tos in at Wal­mart? That’s me, ogling my book on the shelf for about the hun­dredth time.

10. A pos­i­tive e-mail from a reader telling me that she liked my books really does make my day (see 6). Know­ing that peo­ple enjoy my books makes all the hard work and long hours in front of my com­puter worthwhile.

So there you have it. Some of my (hope­fully amus­ing) thoughts that I’d like to share with read­ers. What about you guys? What are some of the things you’d like to tell authors or pub­lish­ers? Share in the com­ments. And keep it polite, please.