Print copies of Ruby Fever have been sighted in the wild. This is a soft release, meaning that the publisher is letting the bookstores put the copies out as soon as they get them. Your best bet are BN and indie stores. We know for a fact that Powells in Oregon will ship copies early.
Please don’t worry about hurting our “numbers.” All of the early sales are counted toward our release day. Thank you so much for supporting us. We hope you’ll enjoy Ruby Fever.
Please feel free to share where you bought the book in the comments. If possible, could you please avoid spoilers in the discussion below? We are still 10 days out before the release. We will put up an official spoiler thread a little closer to the release day.
Well, now, I might just have to swing by BN on my way home tonight. Hopefully any BDH in my area won’t take all the copies.
Went to B&N after work. Spent a few minutes trying to remember what genre it would be in. I don’t pay attention to genres, I pay attention to authors. Finally remembered Ilona said it classified as Romance. Found 2 copies of Emerald Blaze. Asked a guy at the info desk. He had 1 copy… on hold until the 18th. ????????
I’ll try Target tomorrow. Their shelves were bare (except for a slew of Bridgerton books), so maybe I’ll get lucky tomorrow.
Waterstones in the UK has the paperback release date as 15th September!
Just double checked my Amazon ebook pre-order and it is definitely showing as 23/8 – phew!
I changed my plans today and stopped by Barnes and Noble. I got lucky and I’m over the moon happy. I feel like I need to thank the Academy. But will instead thank for IA and Mod R for the heads up.
I bought my copy in Pembroke Pines, FL at a Barnes and Noble last night. It wasn’t on the shelf yet, but a nice employee got one from the back for me. So make sure to ask at the help desk if you don’t see it on the shelves.
Just found my copy at B&N Wolfchase in Memphis, TN! ????????
B&N in Northern Virginia either has copies in stores or will be having them as soon as their trucks arrive.
Of course the three closest stores to me don’t have any copies but I was put on a wait list. The truck is supposed to be arriving now.
Headed out to The B&N at The Summit on 280 in Bham, Alabama. Website says they have in stock but you can’t order online. I’ll report back if I was able to purchase a physical copy!
B&N in the Bham area have them in store, you can’t order them online. Have to go in store to get them! So excited to start reading.
Oh my goodness this was the best news ever. Immediately called my B&N and they had it!!!
Pre-ordered from bookshop.org and it arrived early!
In the Metro Detroit area Barnes & Noble had two copies left on Saturday. I crabbed one!
ooh.. found it at B&N in Firewheel Mall in Garland, Tx (near Dallas).
BDH they had 2 more copies on the shelves in the romance section.
Off to read!!!!!!!
Ran over to the nearest Barnes and Noble and snagged a copy 😀
If you live in Fayetteville, NC the B&N has copies out on the New Release Romance table! ????
Barnes & Noble- Gaithersburg, MD. Leaving my house now to get my copy! Super excited!
I got my copy at my local bookstore, Paperbacks Galore. As soon as it came in I got it. Thank you it was very satisfying. Oh I got it last week and read it twice in a day. Passed it on to my daughter
Sighted in the wild. Classic.
Don’t think they’ve made it to New Zealand yet….further for migration flight.
ok wow this answers my request heading for BN in the morning for more copies
i ordered from
https://bookshop.org/books/ruby-fever-9780063243187/9780063243187
they mailed it early..but i want more for some friends
first read thru i went too fast … second read thru ok now we’re talkin
i hate to say this but read slow – it really is better and the end is more enjoyable
boy is it hard not to be a spoiler
the book shop dot org says:
“Every Purchase Supports Local Bookstores. A Better Way to Buy Books Online..”
is now my on line go to
If you buy from Bookshop.com, 10% of your purchase will be donated to a local bookstore. If you buy from the bookstore’s website (assuming they have one), their normal cut of the entire list price is at least 30% and up to 45% or so.
Please add people with brown skin and curly hair to your special people. It’s a big space. Surely not all the special people have white skin.
In addition, adding important people who have an (Edit Mod R re: outdated term: Asian, North African and Middle Eastern) appearance.
I have family (multigenerational IS citizens) with brown skin. I would like to share this with them, but not if they are excluded.
Hi Migs,
Thank you for your comment.
The world of Hidden Legacy has BIPOC characters, including the main protagonists, non-American characters, from Nigeria to the Basque region, LGBTQA characters etc.
There are Black Houses, Asian Houses, Latino etc, the Baylors themselves are mixed heritage. I am a tad confused what you are referring to? Is it the cover? Unfortunately, authors do not have input in the design of the cover of traditionally published books, they are decided by the publishing house. Nor are they literal interpretations of the content of the book.
I hope this helps.
PS: As per blog policy, I have had to edit a term in your comment which is outdated, generalizing and signalled as harmful by many of the people it concerns. It has been eliminated from legal documents last decade and has fallen into disuse in everyday speech. Here for more details https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/05/13/the-long-history-and-slow-death-of-a-word-used-to-describe-everyone-from-turks-to-the-chinese/ and https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112465167
There are many white authors you can accuse of only writing characters who look like them, Ilona Andrews are not on that list.
Actually I noticed IA will describe a characters as ‘white’ instead of just assuming that is the skin color. I like that. Runa is almost translucent, but there are a lot of darker skin colors in the books.
Truth. I have seen posters complain about it, in fact – not necessarily on this blog, but have definitely seen it happen online – because they don’t want to be told when a character is white. O_O
And I like that IA describes the different shades, because if you hold up a white sheet of paper to a white person, or a black one to a black person, the skin is not going to match the paper. As for brown, the more said, the better.
Hi Migs,
If you are looking for books where the cast isn’t uniformly white, we have you covered. Lenora Jordan, a very powerful and competent DA, is a Black woman. House Jiang, legendary water mages, are of Chinese descent. There is a Nigerian House of weather mages, Matilda, one of the most beloved characters in the series, has a Korean mother, who sadly passed away, and so on.
However, if you are looking for stories that explore what it’s like to have a non-Caucasian ancestry and the problems and tribulations POCs face in our very flawed society as told from the point of view of a non-white character, you will not find that exploration in our books. That is not our story to tell. We haven’t lived through those problems because both of us are white.
The issues of racism and discrimination are very important, and we do show them and their effect on people in our books, however we are not going to pretend that we know what it’s like to be a POC in US. Our voice would unauthentic, and it would bring more harm than good. There are many excellent writers who deliver authentic voices in that particular fantasy space. I have a couple of lists for you:
https://www.hypable.com/20-fantasy-books-by-woc/
https://pima.bibliocommons.com/list/share/324401457/1143825377
In particular, I think Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri might be a good fit, if I am reading your comment correctly, but you can’t really go wrong. There are some excellent books on that list.
Just got my copy of Ruby Fever at the Tyrone Mall B&N in St. Pete, FL
woohoo!
There is 1 copy left.
Cannot stay up all night reading!!!!
Found it in Salt Lake City!
The dedication made me cry. Thank you so much for being wonderful people.
I went to a local BN and got a copy today in Fairfax, VA. I have been reading all day. The book is wonderful. I am looking forward to getting my ebook and I also love to listen to books on audible. House Andrews is one of three authors whose book I buy in both ebook and audible. But I couldn’t wait so I had to buy a print copy too.
This was awesome!
Thank you House Andrews.
What store did you go to???
Our B&N didnt have it last week when hubby went to D&D at the store. When he walked in today, one of our book sellers had one waiting for him, well for me. Either way I was so happy. I’m going to miss my booksellers at this B&N when I move in two weeks.
I found 3 copies at the Oviedo Mall B Dalton/BN (2 copies now)
So I’m confused. Was Ruby Fever the last contracted book you had to write? Do first day sales matter for self-published books? I thought you were done with big houses, unless RF was the last one.
If you are self-publishing, I don’t know who would give you a bonus for big first day sales except the extra money you get.
Love all your stuff, and really looking forward to the next Hugh book.
Yes, Ruby Fever was the last contracted book with Avon HarperCollins 🙂
First week sales always count, whether trad or self published, as they decide whether the books makes it on the famous Bestseller Lists, like NYTimes etc, which impact visibility.
Hope this helps!
Thanks!!
YASSSS! Clarence, NY, B&N!
BN Schaumburg IL.
Congratualtions on your book-birthday!
And thanks for the ‘soft release’ tip;
I just called B&N and will pick up my copy tomorrow morning.
Congrats to everyone who’s been able to get a copy early. Called the B&N around Phoenix, AZ. None of them have received the books yet. Will keep trying for this weekend.
My local B&N didn’t have them in the computer yet, but were able to find 5 copies of the book when I explained that the book was having a ‘soft launch’ so we didn’t have to wait for the formal release date. Hope this helps.
Thanks for sharing this. I was able to snag a copy!
Both BN in Tucson patiently explained to me that the book won’t be released until next week and offered to place an order. I called Powell’s and paid for overnight shipping.
I visited the BN store at the Fountains at Farah in El Paso. Monday afternoon, they will not release Ruby Fever until the 23rd. There is another BN on Sunland Park Drive, but the freeway is too filled with orange cones to make the long drive comfortable. I’ll wait until the 23d.
I’m not sure if we have them in stock yet, but I work at Toadstool Bookshop in NH, and we will ship them as soon as we have them.
10 days! Hard to wait! Good luck with everything.
Only 7 ????, it releases next Tuesday the 23rd of August
I was the second person to purchase Ruby Fever earlier today at the Barnes and Noble in Brentwood TN. I called first to put a copy on hold and the woman who answered goes “let me double check because I just sold a copy earlier” so I’m not sure how many copies that location received. BUT the other Barnes and Nobles in Murfreesboro supposedly had copies too according to the BN website.
I walked over to Powell’s today on my lunch break – no luck!
I’m a NYT bestselling author at HC and I just found out that it’s not true that all early sales will count for the NYT list in any case. They only count sales that are paid for on release day or later, so preorders that are only shipped out on pub day do count but nothing paid earlier. It’s actually stated clearly. Another author with massive Book of the Month sales didn’t make the list because BOM rings the sales through as they are ordered and the order date began in the week before their pub date. None of those sales counted for NYT. That all early sales count for the list is something everyone in publishing tells authors but it’s not actually true.
The BOM author’s entire team at FSG and her agent were shocked when she didn’t make the list as well because everyone believes all early sales count. The NYT states:
Sales are defined as completed transactions by vendors and individual end users during the period on or after the official publication date of a title.
https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/methodology/
PS. Forgot to add, as unfair as it is, money is money. Boo on BOM, but huge congratulations to your friend for the massive sales. 🙂
Hey JK,
Yes, a publisher can make sure that presales are reported during the release week and no earlier. It works like this: the store sells the books, records the sales, but sits on that data until the release week when they sent it into USAT and NYT. It depends on how big the publisher thinks you are and on the terms of your contract.
The first is screwed up but true. If an author is coming up on the list but falling just short, you would think the publisher would make sure all sales were counted on release date to give that author a push, and you would be wrong. But if you are a BNA, they will make sure that only release sales count when they need to be counted.
The second depends on whether or not the contract has a list bonus. Our contracts with PRH used to pay use extra if we hit a list and the higher we hit, the bigger chunk they would advance us.
Here is how you can tell when the sales are counted. I forget which book it was, I think maybe Magic Strikes or Magic Bleeds, but the soft release was so large, the book hit NYT the week before it was released. I couldn’t believe it. Our editor wasn’t even looking so I called her and told her we were on the list. Our agent came out swinging, because instead of a single week and much higher number, we had two weeks of lower numbers, which cut into our bottom line. Never happened again.
To be blunt, at the volume we sell, we would chart on USAT/NYT next week if they just count the mass market print sales. We’ve had a soft release on every single title in HL series, although none of them 3 weeks before the damn release date like this one, but they were all soft released, and we never charted earlier than we were supposed to. So let’s wait and see. I don’t expect it, but given how epically screwed everything about this book went, I wouldn’t be awfully surprised.
As far as NYT, their rankings are determined by dark druids sacrificing a black chicken in the depths of the woods by the moonlight. They are heavily biased toward traditional print.Jennifer Armentrout hit #1 on USAT but NYT refuses to acknowledge those sales exist, because the title wasn’t available through Ingram.
You will hear weird numbers about how many copies you need to sell to hit the lists etc. It heavily varies from week to week, but overall, 4-5Kper week is a safe number. So if you friend had 4,000 of sales and none of them counted, this is on BOM. NYT doesn’t have magical access to their data. They either chose to give that data early to NYT or NYT chose to not count it. If your friend sold at least 4K units in one week and charted on USAT, then it’s on NYT. If she didn’t chart anywhere, it’s on BOM. I would have the agent invite the editor to a lunch and have a serious discussion regarding this issue.
Fascinating, I had no idea the publisher had that amount of control over the reporting. Had to laugh at the dark druid black chicken sacrifice. I’m not sure what my friend’s pre sales were but the final BOM number was around 35K so I imagine she must have hit 4 to 5K early. I think it was definitely a BOM issue but I think also their policy to report early.
Anyway, thanks for the info, I’m a huge fan and can’t wait to read Ruby Fever.
P.S. She’s extremely annoying in that she doesn’t need the money but she’s a good friend anyway.
ARRAGGH, RAGING. Kindle version.
7 days, 7 days, 7 days, 7 days, 7 days, 7 days, 7 days, 7 days, 7 days, 7 days, falalalala. At least the kids will be back at school. Wait, they’ll need to be up early so I can’t lie in bed reading it until I’m done.
I CANNOT WIN.
I went to BN today and grabbed a magazine and left. I did not look!!! Aaarrgghhh!
Has anyone had any luck finding a copy in the UK?
What are you planning next after Ruby Fever? I know you are still working on Inn Keeper but what other projects are in the pipe line?
The main drive at the moment is Sweep of the Blade (Innkeeper 5).
There are other projects in progress, but House Andrews have decided not to announce what they are working on until it is ready and they are comfortable announcing a release date. More details here https://ilona-andrews.com/2022/on-being-difficult/
“In the past, we always shared with you what we were working on. That’s not working so well anymore, because no matter what we choose to work on, someone is always unhappy that we are not working on the thing they like the most. From now on, we will be like Beyonce dropping her surprise album. We will quietly work and then go, “Here it is, all done!”
We both want to work at our own pace and take our time. We don’t want the stress of not meeting a deadline. If we don’t meet one, nobody has to know. When things are ready to be published, they will be up on the Release Schedule. We will announce them on the blog and in the newsletter. The retailers will also notify you of availability. We got this.”
Which makes complete sense.
So I am moving to the San Diego area from Germany on Thursday. I am considering taking a drive up to Oregon just to find a copy but that might be overkill for my first couple of days in the US!
LOL! But it would be a great drive!
And really, since people are reporting copies all over California, if the book was your only goal, you likely wouldn’t need to drive all the way to Oregon to get it. If it were me, I’d stop driving the moment I found the book, bc reading paper copies of books while driving is strongly discouraged. Also, you’d miss the view. It’s lose-lose.
That’s what I get for commenting before I read all the comments. Will be checking out every BN in San Diego tomorrow – and letting my friend be my chauffeur so I can read ????
Has anyone found it anywhere in Colorado? I am striking out.
As far as I can tell, no. I looked on Monday in Westminster with no luck, it looks like Monday in Ft. Collins was no luck and Tuesday in Aurora and Lone Tree was no luck.
I just finished last night. WONDERFUL!! I can’t wait for my preorder of the audio to hit.
I got mine Sunday night at the Barnes and Nobel in Cary NC. They had 5 or 6 copies but I know people were heading to get them. I’d call to see if they still have them.
I got a copy from the Destin, FL B&N and they still had a couple of copies after I grabbed mine. No buy online pick up in store option so I did call the store and make sure they had it on shelf before I drove there. Thanks Paul the Bookseller!
I am on vacation and my Amazon account will deliver me the e-edition and the warehouse will mail me a paper copy but when I saw that BN may have them early, guess who stopped at a nearby BN on their vacation? I got two paper copies! Woo-hoo! I can’t wait to ignore everyone and hole up in the hotel room now!
Hello,
Bought the book in Kobo.com, available from 23/08/2022.
Tchau!
Well you cannot get the books in Northern Virginia as they were all sold out and will not be available until next week.
I tried B&N in Lone Tree, Co on Monday but no luck. I drove on Tuesday to BN in Aurora Co during a rain storm but no luck. I am grand cat sitting in Colorado but from Texas. Darn the luck. When ever it comes out here I will get my copy for a good cause.
Nooo! Please call the bookstore first, if that’s an option, save yourself the drive, especially on wet roads!
The definition of insanity is calling every bookstore in the greater Sacramento area and asking if they have a copy of Ruby Fever and expecting on of them to miraculously say yes
Welp, at least I’ll be in the Midwest in a few days, then I can walk into just about any Barnes and Nobles and find it!
Ordered mine from BAM in Florence, AL. got it today. yay!