What do people read? What do they like?

The answer is — ROMANCE.
“A whopping 81 percent of those surveyed listed romance as their favorite genre with mystery coming in a very distant second at almost 5 percent. According to the Romance Writers of America, romance was the top-performing category on the major bestseller lists in 2012.”
Readers like romance best
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The Decline and Fall of the Book Cover
“Getting to design your own book cover is the sort of ultimately maddening power that probably shouldn’t be entrusted to vain mortals. It’s a little like getting to choose your own face…”
Having done a couple, I can’t argue with that — although the cover I did for my ‘Houses in Africa‘ has garnered some nice comments.
The Book Covers story
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And speaking of covers… (NSFW)
 bad-covers-jpg
“We … this … we just don’t know.”
Horrible Book Covers
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Great Science Fiction Stories by Women
Women have been writing good science fiction since the beginnings of the genre but are too often underrepresented in ‘best’ lists.
“The list below contains 100 pieces of short fiction by women writers, published between 1927 and 2012. Each author appears only once.”
SF stories by women
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