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New! The indie ebook hall of fame
January 17, 2011 | 9:02 am
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By Joanna
I have a major announcement! I’ve been working away this weekend on a little webpage I’m calling The Indie eBook Hall of Fame. This site is designed to be a one-stop filter for readers to help them find the best of the best indie ebooks being reviewed out there in Blogland. To land on the list, the book must be available in ebook form in multiple formats, and must have been reviewed (and recommended!) by at least three independent bloggers—not just Amazon, Smashwords or Goodreads reviews, but full-on write-ups by bloggers who are reviewing indie books.
The internet indie scene can seem at times like the world’s biggest slushpile. This site offers not just one, but THREE gatekeepers who have screened the content for you and found it worth recommending. Each of these books was found worthy by more than one reviewer.
I started by combing the archives of my own reviews and those at a handful of other blogs I follow, looking for repeat appearances. And I’ll keep my eye out for more. But of course, I can’t do it alone. Here’s where you can help me:
- If you are an author, you need to set up a Google Alert on yourself so you can tabs on who is reviewing your stuff. When you hit the magical three excellent reviews, send me the info on your book and where it’s been reviewed so I can check it out.
- If you are a blogger and you have a book you’ve read that is worthy but doesn’t have three reviews yet, send me the info and I’ll add it to the ‘Almost’ Page, where other bloggers who are trolling for their next great read can go and look for something. And of course, if YOU are trolling for a new read, why not check out the ‘Almost’ Page yourself?
- If you are a blogger who regularly reviews indie books, and you are not yet on the Blog Roll at the side of this blog, email me so I can check out your site and add you.
I am very excited about this page—it’s not just me, recommending these books (in fact, there are a few on there already which are patently not my thing). It’s the entire blogging community. Please spread the word so those who have intel about thrice-recommended books I’ve missed can get it sent to me. Let’s create a true one-stop resource where readers can connect with truly excellent indie reads.
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Comments:
Here is one little site that is trying to organise reviews for indie authors.
http://www.simon-royle.com/latest-indie-book-reviews-from-around-the-web/
The bloger – an indie author himself found that there isn’t some central place where reviewers could get into contact with authors and authors with reviewers. So he set out to help a little bit.
Despite limited success with indie authors in the past, I’m going to try two: Radium Halos and Sleight Malice. I’ll have to wait to read them for further judgment. Overall, I probably wouldn’t be very interested in most of the titles.
As a self-published eBook writer I encourage and admire folks that bravely put forth their books for critique BUT still have a bone to pick with a few of my fellow authors… more specifically the ones that don’t update their covers. We redesign our covers once (soetimes twice) a year to match changing trends; some o four first covers seems awful in comparision and were justificbly done away with.
Fonts do get overused and many of them quickly wear out their welcome. I may just vomit if I see one more pixelated/cheesy cover harboring the overly-overly-OVERLY-used Papyrus font. Times new roman, or even Courier New, but please no more Papyrus.
Personally, I gravitate towards a main title in Dante all caps, with no more than 2 fonts types on the entire cover.
I apologize for the many misspellings above… I should have gone to bed earlier instead of writing until 2:42 AM…
Joanna – a great idea and I wish you the best of luck with it.
On the subject of reviews I think that the review style on Amazon is one which I would love to see used more widely. There is an Average rating yes, but there is also a distribution between the ratings which give a good idea about how varied the reviews are.
Joanna, thank you for including Radium Halos! Greg M., thanks for giving me a chance!
@Joanna – You might want to checkout my wife’s blog which is pretty much dedicated to indie small house publishers and authors. http://lauriethoughts-reviews.blogspot.com/ She reads about 7-8 books about every two weeks and publishes her reviews. Right now she is editing a book for one of her authors before publication.
Joanna, wishing you the great of success with this.
Great job, Joanna! Thanks for setting this up (and including mine!)
What happened to this website? I saw it a couple of months ago, went looking for it again, and it now gives a dead link!