Month: September 2020

Posted in Book Reviews

August Roundup: What have I been reading?

Posted on by annakalingauthor

First let me announce that I’m having computer problems. My A, Q, and 1 keys are working intermittently, so there will be typos in this post. Don’t judge me. Actually, you probably should judge me, because I think the problem is that my keyboard is full of cat hair.

August was a pretty good month in one way – I had a week off work so I read 22 books in the month. But it was a big disappointment in that only one of those books included dinosaurs. I’ll do better next month.

Fortunately for you, patient reader, I have chosen just 14 to review here, and the reviews are short. Let’s face it; nobody reads them anyway.

The Odyssey, Homer – 5/5 lots of blood and sex, sometimes together.

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Posted in Writing advice that may or may not be completely wrong

How to Spot a ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’ Publisher

Posted on by annakalingauthor

Writers are warned to beware of “bad” publishers. But how are we supposed to know if a publisher is good or bad?

It’s taken me a long time to learn how to spot the good from bad, so I thought I’d share. Note that my research is focused on publishers of novels rather than poetry, screenplays, etc, which might be very different.

Before we get into that, we need to define what is meant by “good” and “bad.” For purposes of this post:

A good publisher will sell your work to a good number of readers.

What counts as “a good number” will depend on your genre and the form of writing, among much else, so let’s say that means “many orders of magnitude more than you could sell on your own.”

Bad publishers fall into two categories:

Some bad publishers are scammers, who will extract money from you and not sell your book.

Some bad publishers have good intentions but won’t be able to sell your book any better than you could on your own.

Good publishers sell your books in good quantities to readers.

So, how do you tell if a publisher is good or bad?

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