Julie Tetel is both an associate professor of English at the University and the author of more than 15 romance novels-and she makes no apologies for the seeming contradiction of her professions. In the hallowed halls of academia, where Milton, Chaucer, Updike and Morrison are far more commonplace names than, say, Danielle Steele, one might surmise that being a writer of the romance genre may feel a little awkward at times.
But Tetel-who is also the director of graduate studies in the English Department-is fine right where she is, thank you very much, and she refuses to separate her novels into the category "romance genre," just as they are often cordoned off from other works of fiction on the shelves of Barnes and Nobles.
She points to the fact that many, even most, books have many of the elements that comprise romance novels-power and sexuality, honor and respect, loyalty and courage.
"Any book I like gets figured in my head as a romance novel," she says with a laugh.
And if Tetel is successful in her latest pursuits, she may soon have a hand in changing others' preconceptions about what constitutes a romance novel.
Until about a year and a half ago, Tetel's novels were being published by three large New York-based companies, including the well-known Harlequin Books. Becoming increasingly frustrated that she did not have the degree of artistic freedom and control over her books that she desired, Tetel decided to take matters into her own hands. That meant turning her frustration into her own publishing company, Madeira Books.
Tetel's newest novel, The Blue Hour-a romance set partially in the Triangle which came out just a week ago (see side bar)-is her first book to be published solely by her own company. Though it's a historical romance like her other books, you wouldn't know it until you crack it open and start reading. Gone from the cover are the scantily-clad strawberry-blondes and bare-chested men in an embrace (referred to as "the clinch" in the romance novel industry) that customarily signal a romance novel. Instead, the book is bound in a tasteful, blue, cloth-covered hardback with a small white rectangular panel bearing the title.
"If you're just going to judge [The Blue Hour] by its cover, it's not a romance novel," Tetel says.
As she thumbs through a copy of the novel her pride in The Blue Hour is readily apparent. She sees her finished product as a work of craftsmanship rather than a flimsy paperback.
"This is what's so cool about being able to do this," she says, admiring the illustrations done by a local artist that preface each section. "You have the illustrator actually read the book. With the books that come out of New York, the artist doesn't read the book. The cover may or may not have anything to do with the book."
It is not only the visual realm in which Tetel is able to spend more time with the details. Having her own publishing company affords her the right to spend more time on a novel's content as well. The revising process at Madeira Books, she says, is "a more careful process" than that of the New York publishing houses, and entails finer editing and copy-editing-which is done by freelancers she knows from her experience in the romance novel industry.
"I adore excellent copy-editing," she says, noting that when working with the mass-market publishing houses, "it got to the point where I was actually having to correct copy editing."
As an independent publisher, Tetel concedes that marketing a book is a "really different ballgame" than anything she has done in the past. You won't find The Blue Hour at mega-bookstores like Barnes and Nobles, although any bookstore is able to special order it. Rather, Tetel's newest novel, which had a very small first printing, can be found on the shelves of libraries, high-end gift stores and selected retail stores, including the Gothic Bookshop in the Bryan Center. Listing her novel in book catalogs, making certain that distributors and wholesalers have access to her address and soliciting reviews in trade publications are other methods she uses to get the word out.
Most notably, Tetel has taken advantage of modern technology to market her book over the Internet. She has her own website, where visitors can read the first chapter of her novel and even purchase it on-line.
Tetel sees the marketing of books over the Internet as "a sign of the times," a current trend in publishing that will become more popular as other writers see the high quality of the books that are being created. Colleagues she has worked with in the mass-market romance novel industry hardly see her branching out as a sign of a defector; instead they have asked her how they can set up small presses of their own.
"I'm still in the first wave of people doing this," she says, "but I think this is really, in some sense, the publishing future, precisely because [you] can do a better product."
Tetel has become part of a small community of writers who support each other in their ground-breaking efforts, and she has teamed up with ten other writers to form The Author's Studio-a consortium of small presses owned by multi-published authors of popular fiction. Neff Rotter, a member of the studio who writes under the name of Elizabeth Neff Walker, hailed Tetel as the driving force behind the group.
"Julie was one of the first to recognize that if we as writers wished to have some degree of control over our writing careers, we needed to look at the long term and consider whether it wouldn't be wise to arrange for publishing our own work," Rotter wrote via e-mail. "That way we would have control not only over content but also over the quality of the product offered to readers."
Rotter added that Tetel has also steered the members of the group away from the mass-market mentality of book publishing that drives the large New York publishing companies.
"Julie has encouraged [us] to do what we've been secretly longing to do-bring out the books of our dreams which publishers think won't find a large enough audience," she wrote.
Tetel reinforces this sentiment by pointing to the homogeneity of the covers of many "genre novels"-murder mysteries often show a raised hand holding a dagger, Westerns sport "a guy on a horse" and science fiction novels display swirling planets.
"That's a marketing decision by the people in New York to improve their bottom line, and it may or may not have anything to do with the interest of the individual reader," she says. "But it is amazing how easily we have bought into all the categories that New York has fed us."
Indeed, Tetel seems skeptical of the very rigid, and sometimes arbitrary, categorizing of novels into different special interest genres. In many ways, her independent publishing efforts protect her book from this kind of categorization and may even propel The Blue Hour to reach a different, and more diverse, audience than do her other novels. At the very least, no one will be able to say that they could judge this book by its cover.
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