I'm sorry, Ma'am. Did you say Paranormal books?

Does that phrase sound familiar to you? No? Try going to your local bookstores and asking for the paranormal romance, mystery or suspense section and you're bound to hear it. All works paranormal are flying off the printers faster than you can say ghost. Unless you KNOW who you're looking for on the shelf, then you'll be out of luck. How can you discover new authors with a golden pen for ghouls if you can't find the genre?



Sure, publishers know a potential for big sales when they see it, but can't they petition the bookstores for a section all its own? So that the loyal readers and writers of the genre can find them?



Sci-Fi and Fantasy have their own sections, why not paranormal, huh? Where's the justice? What would it take? The cost of another shelf? The excuse I hear most often is "We just don't have enough customers with interest to specialize in that category." Oh, really? You would if we could find them.



With so many different sublabels under paranormal, you could probably fill two aisles. I write paranormal suspense and paranormal romance. How much easier would it be to publish and sell your book if the reader didn't have to sort through all the romance, fantasy and suspense novels in the store? Imagine going in and finding a whole aisle of paranormals full of new promising authors! Wow! You'd have to tear me away from the store and my purse. My fondest dream is to walk into Books-A-Million and find my novel on the paranormal shelf. It'd be great to see Barbs, Nichole's, Heather's and J.K.'s right beside mine too.



I'll start a petition ....Who's next to sign?



*waves*



Beth