A Hypochondriac’s Nightmare…
Swine Flu. Oh, joy. The bane of my recent sleepless nights and new gray eyebrows (seriously – that’s the only place I can see gray hair!).
This Makes Me Sick: How Far One Company Will Go to Snare Hopeful Authors By Angela Hoy
My POD Best Practices articles series states that POD publishers “should not do business of any kind under a false name.”
A reader notified me last week about a website that appeared to be set up to help authors find the best “indie publisher” for their book…
Letters To The Editor For April 29th
This Week:
- Amazon Reviewers
- Thinking of Selling Your Books With An Amazon “Seller Central” Account?
Too Cool for Rejections? By Alice J. Wisler
When it comes to submitting a query, article, manuscript or poem, I’ve broken every rule. My problem stems from my elementary school days. I was told by teachers and friends that I could write. I made my best friend, Josephine, weep over my love stories. My first grade teacher marched our whole class into the third and fourth grade classroom to read my story about the birthday party. (True, it was only a small international school with combined classes.)
Spread Your Skills and Markets By Abby Williams
Six months ago, the credit crunch seriously hit my writing income. I’d made the fatal mistake of ‘putting all my eggs in one basket’. That ‘basket’ – a women’s weekly – changed its format and no longer needed the well researched features I’d been supplying.
Whispers And Warnings For April 29th
COMPLAINT about Shakespeare Squared / ShakespeareSquared.com / The Shakespeare Squared Foundation – Interesting (defensive?) response from publisher.
COMPLAINT about Cantara Christopher / cantaraville / cantaraville.com / cantarabooks / cantarabooks.com – Publisher’s email to writer was, in our opinion, unprofessional and downright mean. What do you think, readers?
The Butt Box Is Complete!
Last week, I told you the road was clear and that we could get to our land in Western Maine. Despite having a terrible cold, with a cough I can’t seem to shake (no, it’s not Pertussis), we drove to our land on Saturday. It was a perfectly beautiful Spring day! The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the trees on the mountain, while still pretty bare, had tiny buds that you had to squint to see. The stream was gurgling from the recent snow melt and Max and Mason tossed in one pebble after another.
POD BEST PRACTICES – Part IV of IV
There are lots of snakes in the Print on Demand (POD) industry. While most companies charge too much, way too much, there are a few that offer good services at reasonable prices. Some of those even offer reasonable customer service!
This week, we are consolidating the entire list from Part I, Part II, and Part III.
But, first, I need to rant. Being a POD publisher myself, I hear from authors who have been ripped off by other POD publishers on almost a daily basis. Some of their stories make me sick. From elderly authors who were convinced to give more and more and more of their retirement money to the POD publisher (who knew all along that person’s memoirs would likely never sell more than a few copies to family members), to authors who paid thousands when they could have paid hundreds to a better POD publisher, to authors who were forced to pay hundreds to fix the POD publisher’s own mistakes, to authors who gave up rights to their current and future books to a company that pretended to be a “traditional publisher” but who was just another form of vanity publisher, preying on authors and hoping they would buy more and more and more books.
Letters To The Editor For April 22nd
Angela is on Spring Break with her children and hubby this week (meaning she’s working part-time). Letters to the Editor will return next week.
Thinking of Selling Your Books With An Amazon “Seller Central” Account? By Jim Sala
Until recently I have always been a staunch proponent of free enterprise, laissez-faire capitalism and Atlas Shrugged. But that’s coming to an end.