I stumbled across Blood Song by Anthony Ryan from a Books on The Knob post. She said it was at the upper end of her "bargain" category, and at $4.99 I had to agree with her. However, I was in the mood for an epic fantasy, and I decided to give it a look and check the ratings. Holy Stars, Batman! The book had over 700 reviews and an average rating of about 4.8. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen something like that. Of course, I read a selection, and they didn't sound like sock puppets. Suddenly $4.99 was...

We've all heard by now about the success of the latest e-book indie darling, Hugh Howey—when his self-published Kindle series became a Kindle best-seller, he made a deal with the big publishers—but in a ground-breaking twist, the deal included only the print rights, and Howey continues to sell the e-books himself. Howey is also notoriously anti-DRM and I dig that, so I finally picked up the Wool Omnibus to see if it was worth the hype. And for the most part? It is. The book is split into five novellas, each taking place in an apocalyptic future where the remains of humanity survive in an elaborate community...

I recently reviewed The Passage by Justin Cronin, the first book in his Passage series. As I said in my previous review, I had enjoyed the first book and was eagerly awaiting the sequel, The Twelve. I'm happy to report that the second book is every bit as good as the first. The e-book version is well done; formatting is good. I saw a few typos, but not enough to detract from my enjoyment. Each major chapter heading had a picture and quote. The image displayed well on both my Nexus 7 and Kindle Touch. The quotes in the image were...

So you may have read my review of How to Format your eBook for Kindle, NOOK, Smashwords, and Everything Else. You remember that one, where I sort of missed that the book was no longer for sale? The author was kind enough to send us a review copy of his revised book, The eBook Design and Development Guide, and I will make up for my goof by reviewing the revised version. I prefer the new title. It's more professional and will, I think, clue potential readers to the fact that this a serious book which goes beyond e-book formatting. Salvette has added...

Sometimes a book comes along that is so good you know it'll stay with you forever. Tears in Rain is one of those books for me. I found it by accident. It showed up on my Kindle with Special Offers earlier this month. I saw it was about replicants and was Prime Lending eligible. I wasn't expecting much, but hey: Free! Now I intend to go back and buy it. It's that good. The story is a thriller. The main character is a replicant private detective who has been hired to investigate some gruesome murders. Bruna Husky is well drawn and three-dimensional. She's...

I read this one back in 2010, when it was first published, and I enjoyed it then. The sequel recently became available from my library in e-book format, and I decided to re-read the first one while I waited through the hold period for the second one. I read Justin Cronin's The Passage as an e-book, and I'm happy to report that the Kindle version is just about perfect. I saw few typos and no formatting errors. The table of contents worked as expected, even with all the sub-chapters. It contains real page numbers, and is a long one, at more than...

If you're a do-it-yourself kind of author, you've probably encountered the "fun" of formatting your book for the various sites. I had no problems uploading my fiction book to Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I created a clean HTML file and followed all the prompts. Presto! Published. My non-fiction book was similarly easy to upload to Amazon. But Barnes & Noble stopped me. No matter what I did, I couldn't make the bulleted lists display properly. Being stubborn, I refused to pay someone else to do it for me, so I went in search of a good e-book formatting guide. After reading...

This is Not the End of the Book is a fascinating and intriguing find that I browsed at the bricks-and-mortar bookstore—and then came home and bought for my Kindle. Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carrière, both authors and academics of note in their native countries, spend the book in breezy, gentle dialogue about books, publishing, literature and media. They cover some questions which were new and different, and they cover other questions (such as 'is the book really dead?') which have been debated elsewhere, but seldom by two such educated, erudite bibliophiles. One thing I liked about the dialogue is that Eco and...

From an article in paidContent: Media Source, the company behind review publications like Library Journal, School Library Journal and Horn Book, is launching a subscription-based site, BookVerdict.com, that aggregates over 300,000 reviews from its publications. The site is aimed at book-buying librarians, though anyone can subscribe. It includes over 20 years of reviews, including starred reviews, “best” lists and Junior Library Guild selections. “This website extends the value of our reviews beyond print, offering librarians one highly functional yet agile tool to support collection development efforts, while bringing online access to professional reviews of books and media to avid readers everywhere,” says Ian Singer,...

I write to warn all who read this of a growing problem that has permeated deep within several groups I associate with, namely those referred to as book reviewers, a.k.a. “the damn critics!” As a writer of fiction, myself, I am known in some reviewing circles as being “easier” on new/young writers than some of my peers, and thus have been sought out by hundreds of authors for a gander at their work and an opinion thereof. However–as of late–even I have had to draw a rather thick line in the sand regarding reading and reviewing certain genres of fiction. The...

This sounds strange to me - paying a reviewer to review your book.  I can't imagine that too many bad reviews will come out of this service.  However, since it is connected with the superb Publishing Perspectives it lends the venture credibility and is probably worth a look.  It is certainly hard enough to plow your way through the morass of self-published books.  Here's what they say about their new service: … my company, BlueInk Review, is excited to be collaborating with Publishing Perspectives to bring you some of the best work emerging from this new mountain of material. BlueInk Review is a...

Got this email from Brigid Alverson and thought it was interesting enough to share.  I went in and looked at the remaining reviews and they make interesting reading: Hi Paul,I write about digital comics, and I'm a big fan of Teleread. I just ran across this on Amazon and I thought you might be interested:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005VRAZOS/ref=cm_cd_asin_lnkLong story short: The book had something like 250 5-star reviews, all of which were apparently planted by the author or his surrogates. He even took the time to leave feedback on his reviews. People started complaining and Amazon took them down. There are now six reviews...