This is the time of the year when magazines and TV shows do the "Year in Review" to give us their take on who was most influential, most popular, most 'whatever'. I've read several magazines lately that gave me their take on the Year in Review and I've had some thoughts.

The Royal Wedding was a Really Big Deal. Not only did this bring the world together for a few hours to watch the same thing, it helped our collective soul. In the midst of financial and political unease and distress I think the world needed a fairy tale to believe in, complete with the Happily Ever After.

The publishing industry doesn't know what's going to happen next and authors are willing to figure it out on their own in the meantime. Self-publishing doesn't mean what it used to thanks to the internet. Anyone, for good and for bad, can publish their own book. First, of course, you have to write it, edit it, and upload it to a channel by which readers can find it. And readers are finding new books by self-published authors. They are also finding books that authors are re-publishing themselves - and doing so really well. In the absence of establishment publishers figuring out how to harness the power of the internet to publish their own books, authors are going to do it for themselves. This is entrepreneurism at its best.

Politics as usual is over. Everywhere. I'm gonna have to learn a whole new list of names of despots. Or maybe not. Amazing.

If you are a sports team in Russia, take the bus. Really. You'll live longer. And speaking of living longer as an athlete, don't play professional football. Okay, this is not a scientific study by any means. This is just my reading of the Sports Illustrated Obituary section for this year but the football players are either really old, meaning they played football in non-serious helmets or before huge players and heavy hits, or they were fairly young, meaning they played in my lifetime. I don't think this bodes well for the average NFL player.

I've never been one to follow fashion or even to notice it much but I'm glad to say I love that color is 'in' again. It makes it much easier to find items I like when I get a chance to go shopping. I don't, however, get the deal with sea salt caramel, but that's because I detest caramel. For those of you that love caramel, I expect you to eat it all up so that chocolate can come back into fashion!!

And as part of my own, personal Year in Review I joined the millions of people around the world who have a smartphone. I Love Apple. I think we'll miss Steve Jobs more with each passing year, for what he could pull out of thin air, or push people to create out of nothing, or imagine could happen. That's entrepreneurism and brilliance wrapped into one.

I've only scratched the surface, but the kidlets are ready for more festivities. I'd love to hear what you think makes a good Year in Review or what you're looking forward to in the New Year.

I'm at 28K words or so into my NaNo book and on target to finish somewhere around November 22 according to my online report card. Whew. It's true that slow and steady wins the race. Not that I've won yet. There's still Thanksgiving to get through and Joy is getting tubes put back in her ears this week. So many more struggles here at home to compete with my time.

Remember when I wrote about the details of the Romance Publishing industry this summer. Where here are some new numbers to grapple with:

· Romance novels currently comprise the largest share
of the consumer book market as reported this fall in Time Magazine. More
than one out of four books sold is a romance and romance novels earned nearly
$1.4 billion in sales last year. The happy ending feature of romance
novels seems to be the uplifting aspect that appeals to people even more in a
recession.

· Some of the challenges the publishing industry
struggled with in 2008 and is continuing to in 2009 include the following:
imprints reorganized, independent booksellers struggle, mass merchandisers like
Wal-Mart continued to dominated the book-selling scene; proliferation of
used books, book piracy, increased competition for consumer leisure time.

· Americans only spent 3.9 hours per week reading
books in 2008, while they spent 15 hours online and 12.1 hours watching
television. The biggest challenge for the publishing industry to overcome may be
increasing the perceived value of reading. Industry analysts believe the
book business should remember that the future of content isn’t about whether
it is seen, but whether it is valued.

So, while it's not all peaches and sunshine the Romance industry is still keeping the publishing industry afloat. While you may not think that 'romance' is for you I would venture to bet that there's a romance book out there somewhere that you'd love. There are so many subgenres within the romance umbrella that it's almost impossible not to find something you don't love.

If you like funny - try a Jennifer Crusie. If you like suspense - try Linda Howard. If you like terrorists - try Cherry Adair. If you like vampires - well, there are so many to pick from:) And if you just want to get more ideas you can take a look at the reviews I've been writing or go over to my sister blog and see the books I've been reading over the course of this year.