(Comment from Jane) @Shannon Stacey: I think the editor has to be responsible for rating each one of his or her books. They are in the best position to know the content and “heat” level. It’s not that I endorse ratings per se, it’s just that I see them as inevitable and would like those that are intimately acquainted with the book assign the rating instead of some algorithm based on use of certain words.

I agree the editor would be the best person to rate each book, though I worry about that having consistency across publishers. I’m sure readers would catch on pretty quickly, though, to how publishers judged their own books. A content label, such as Samhain uses, would probably be the easiest system to implement for readers, but I’m not sure that would work for booksellers. (I seem to recall an early Aphrodisia title having a small warning as to the explicitness of the sex at the bottom of the back cover, but don’t quote me on that. I remember the warning, but I can’t swear it was an Aphrodisia.)

I’d like to deny ratings are inevitable, but I remember being a little surprised recently to see a mass market by a well-known erotic romance writer (whose sex scenes raise eyebrows) on the shelf at Walmart. I thought, at the time, that there was no way in hell anybody at the home office had ever read that author. Then I wondered how many women not accustomed to finding erotic romances at Walmart wrote nastygrams to the company. With the kinkier/more explicit stuff being published in mainstream mass market romance now, I can definitely see retailers wanting some kind of a rating from the publisher.

Sadly, there’s a good chance that will lead to retailers such as Walmart not buying certain ratings at all and Borders/etc shelving them separately.

I read absolutely everything I could get my hands on by the time I was 12. And yes there was plenty that many people would consider outrageous for a child. But I didn’t turn into a gay nymphomaniac serial ax murdering tax dodging welfare cheat.

You want to know what your kid is reading? Read it first. And if you can’t tell your kid no and make it stick you shouldn’t be a parent in the first place. (says the mom of a 12 year old who is pulling her hair out over tween attitude)

I admit there are times I wish all books used Samhain’s warning labels, as mentioned above, but I’m not sure how that would be implemented. On a publisher level, I guess, but one pub’s hot is another’s extreme.

Hopefully All Romance will tell us how they assign the heat rating. I’m interested to know how that works.

When my 2 boys were growing up, I allowed them to read anything in the house. I never imposed censorship on their reading material. A few times, my eldest son would ask me about a book and I would tell him he might want to read it when he was older, but if he went ahead and read it, that was ok.

I can see rating the romance genre getting totally out of hand. Please, no ratings!

Also, at the risk of repeating myself from a few years ago when this surfaced, you don’t see groups crying out to rate men’s novels on the grounds that some of them are too offensive and might overset their delicate sensibilities.