Showing Tag: " reviews" (Show all posts)

Faction or fiction

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, April 17, 2013, In : Book reviews 

[NOTE:  Scroll down for review of Red Plenty by Francis Spufford]



While on holiday last week, I thought I would put the accuracy of my Goodreads recommendations to the test, so I chose some of the books they had suggested to me based on my own ratings of books I’d enjoyed (or not – but mostly the former).  So far, the recommendations have been somewhat wide of the mark.  Take “Ascent” by Jed Mercurio.  It’s about a Russian, Yefgenii Yeremin, who (after an appalling childhood in Stali...

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Amazon + Goodreads = end of world?

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, April 3, 2013, In : Self-publishing 

So, Goodreads is being acquired by Amazon - what does this mean for indie authors?  Well, if I put my ear to the floor, I do believe that I can hear the sound of the four horsemen of the publishing apocalypse galloping towards me at top speed, mercilessly crushing indie authors to a pulp beneath their pounding hooves.  Or maybe that’s just the kids leaping around again upstairs.

I feel a bit the same way about the Goodreads/Amazon tie-up.  At first, I was inclined to think that it was very l...

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Taking stock

Posted by Paul Samael on Sunday, January 6, 2013, In : Self-publishing 
 
It’s now more than 18 months since I set up this website and over a year since my first attempt at self-publishing.  So I thought now might be a good point to consider whether it’s been a worthwhile exercise so far.

Downloads are a fairly crude measure of success/failure – but for what it’s worth, here are my numbers as at 6 January 2013:



UPDATE 8.2014:  I have now discovered that the stats from Scribd are pretty unreliable, so in the interests of accuracy, you should ignore the totals...
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In defence of miserable, depressing stories

Posted by Paul Samael on Sunday, August 19, 2012, In : Writing fiction 
 

Well, I always knew it couldn’t last – having been fortunate enough to get five stars from my first few reviews, I now find myself the proud possessor of a 2 star review of my novel (equating to a rather unenthusiastic “it was OK”)  on goodreads.  This particular reviewer, Juanito, appeared to like one or two aspects of it but overall, he felt that it was too depressing and the protagonist wasn't sympathetic enough.  In fairness, he explains that he likes stories which are “redempt...


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More reviews!

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, July 4, 2012, In : Writing fiction 
 
Ah, reviews – they’re a bit like London buses, aren’t they?  You wait ages and then 3 come along at once.  Hot on the heels of this review by Bernard Fancher, fellow Smashwords author Tom Lichtenberg has penned thoughtful and generous reviews of both “In the future this will be necessary” and “The Hardest Word” – so my thanks to him as well as to Bernard.

I think I’m quite lucky to have started off with some positive reviews –  and I’d better just try to enjoy my current...

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Do you need permission to quote from reviews?

Posted by Paul Samael on Monday, November 21, 2011, In : Self-publishing 

In my last post, I discussed using peer review sites as a way of trying to get positive reviews in order to promote my work.  But is it really OK to use these reviews (or snippets from them) as part of your own publicity material?  Well, this post from the management of You Write On.com (YWO) suggests that it is OK so far as they are concerned:

http://www.youwriteon.com/forum/quoting-crits-on-blurb-Topic-11796-1.aspx

But there is a lot of online commentary suggesting that you need permis...


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About Me


Paul Samael Welcome to my blog, "Publishing Waste" which will either (a) chronicle my heroic efforts to self-publish my own fiction; or (b) demonstrate beyond a scintilla of doubt the utter futility of (a). And along the way, I will also be doing some reviews of other people's books and occasionally blogging about other stuff.
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