Happy New Year!

Here we are in 2011 and in a spirit of optimism, I am making a few changes to The Self-Publishing Review.

Regular visitors will have noticed that I've not been posting here much lately. There were two reasons for that: I've been incredibly busy with paid-for writing, which has to take precedence over my blogging activities; and I've been getting so many ugly anonymous comments and emails from this site that I needed to rethink my approach.

The good news is that I'm on the home stretch of the book I'm writing; and I've now managed to collect the IP addresses of all of the people who were being less than polite, and I have now reported them to their ISPs. I find joy in such things.

So that I can deal more easily with any such sad obsessives in the future, I'm going to move this blog from Blogger to Wordpress. Comments here are now closed, but you can still take part in the discussions over at my new home.

I hope to see you there. Thank you, readers and especially writers, for your support over the last year. May 2011 be a splendid and productive year for us all.

I'm Still Here!

Apologies for my silence over the last month or so: I'm just a little bit busy with other projects but I will be back here in the near future, reviewing the stack of books I have by my side. There are a couple of treasures in that stack, I'm pleased to say. I'm still happy to receive submissions for review, and am blogging pretty much as usual on How Publishing Really Works.

Oh, Look: A Retweet Button On The Self-Publishing Review!

I've added "tweet this" buttons to my reviews here, and a separate one over at the side of the blog which will allow people to tweet links to the whole blog, rather than to specific posts here.

I've had "tweet this" buttons on my main blog for some time now, but resisted adding them here as I'm well aware that many of the writers I feature here find my reviews rather difficult to cope with: I didn't want them feeling that I was turning them into some sort of freak-show. However, many people (including some of the writers who have been subject to my reviews) have encouraged me to add the buttons here and so, after much careful thought, that's what I've done.

They might not be a permanent feature. I'm going to monitor how they're used for a while and, if I feel that retweets are being used to humiliate or poke fun at the writers who have been brave enough to submit to me, then I'll take them off. I welcome your comments about this either here or on Twitter where I have the user-name "hprw" (for some reason Blogger won't let me put the "at" sign in front of that, but if you click the link you should find me) and I hope that this turns out to be a positive thing.

Ghost Notes

I've been reading Ghost Notes by Art Edwards, in order to review it here.

I am thoroughly enjoying it: but wait; there's more! I'm on page 57 and so far have found only three minor issues and one slightly more worrying one (which the author should be able to easily work out). Art Edwards has a beautifully natural voice, full of feeling and depth; and Ghost Notes is a charming, witty book which is holding my attention beautifully. I'll review it here properly once I'm finished, but so far it looks like a winner.

Congratulations To Rosalie Warren!

I was more than a little pleased when Rosalie Warren, the author of Charity's Child, emailed me to thank me for the review I’d written here about her book. It was clear that she had thought about my comments, understood them, and had gone on to apply them to the rest of her book. I had no doubt that her writing would improve as a result of her positive attitude and I wasn't surprised when I subsequently learned that she has a novel called Low Tide, Lunan Bay being published today by a good mainstream publisher, Robert Hale. I shall buy myself a copy with a great big smile on my face. The best of luck with Low Tide, Rosalie: and thanks for being such a good sport.

Ghost Posts

Apologies for the few ghost-posts which Google Reader insists have been published but which have not actually appeared on the blog: I've been struggling to get things scheduled properly again. I think I've got it sorted out now, and in future reviews should appear every Thursday morning at 10 am, UK time.

Sorry For The Delay....

Due to a few sign-in problems I've been unable to add to this blog for some time. I'm happy to say that those problems now seem to be resolved. New reviews should appear from tomorrow.

Am I Still Here?

Yesterday I heard back from the Post Office about the P O Box number that I've applied for to use for this blog.

They wrote to tell me that my address isn't listed on their database and so, according to them, my house doesn't really exist. The irony of their writing to tell me this seemed to escape them.

I have now spoken with my local Council which has confirmed that my house really is where I thought it was. The Council has promised to tell the Post Office. And after that, I should get my P O Box number.

Until then, keep your fingers crossed.

An Update

I'm still here, and so is my blog. The Post Office, however, seems to have gone missing. Or at least, the application I made to them for a post office box number has.

Until that's sorted out I won't have an address for you to send your books to. I've been promised that it should only take ten days or so for this to all be sorted out, but that's what I was told a fortnight ago--the first time nothing happened.

Sorry for the delay. I'll let you know when I'm finally in posession of that mailing address. I hope it's soon.

Where Self-Publishing Goes Wrong

I've worked on many different books over the years and know just how painstaking the editing process is. It can take a professional editor and writer months of working together to get a book good enough to be published, and even then the odd mistake creeps through.

The number of writers who choose to self-publish their books has increased hugely over the last few years. The standard of most of these books is notoriously low: they've not been polished by their writers, they've not been copyedited, they've been published without any competent editorial or design input, or perhaps they just weren't good enough to be published.

And what of the writers? Many are novices to the game. Many have no idea how bad their writing is, or what is involved in writing well enough to be published. Many have been rejected repeatedly by the more traditional publishers, and are not prepared to put in the effort that's needed to achieve traditional publication, or are too impatient to struggle on without the validation that they feel publication brings.

Meanwhile the few people who self-publish books which do have merit find their work buried under the avalanche.

I want to help those few reach a wider readership. I want to review the best self-published books here, and acknowledge the talent that their writers have. And that's what this blog is for.