Hmm...no reviews

My science fiction ER, The Antaren Affair has now been officially available for a month. And I have one review.

I'm not complaining. Okay, I am complaining. But not about the review, which was positive and delightful (thank you, Carla, at RomFan Reviews). I'm complaining about the dearth of reviews. Which I don't understand, but can only attribute to a matching dearth of SFR review sites.

This experience has made me incredibly sympathetic to the plight of those authors who, for the last thirty years, have been trying to write, publish, and sell SFR. As an author in 2010, I am, of course, the beneficiary of all of their hard work. They slogged for years to get published because they had to prove that SFR was worthwhile.

It's now generally acknowledged, at least in e-publishing, that SFR is an emerging (sub)genre with real sales potential. Most of the big romance and ER e-publishers accept SF submissions (though I have in the past complained about their confusion between SF and "paranormal"). But the review venues aren't keeping up with the market.

I find this paradoxical in SFR readers because we like--or at least appreciate--technology. I would expect SFR readers to be in the review vanguard, creating ever more sophisticated sites with imaginative graphics and widgets. But that's just not the case. There are, of course, some excellent SFR sites--they just don't happen to be devoted to reviews the way All About Romance and other sites are. Nor, in my experience do many general romance review sites spend much time or digital space on SFR.

I do occasionally review SFR on this blog, but I tend to review only a limited number of books. Perhaps I'll write AAR and ask for more SFR reviews...

UPDATE: I just emailed All About Romance and requested more SFR reviews. Will share their response if I get one.