I'm up way too late, but I can't sleep, so I may as well blog. My husband and I have been watching Lord of the Rings. No wonder I can't sleep.
I have over a hundred blog entries on Google Reader that I need to catch up on. The only thing I did blog-related over the weekend was answer comments.
I also came to a decision. I've been getting a lot of requests to check out POD books lately. I don't think I can cover them. This blog has a narrow focus on purpose: I have very limited free time. I have a disabled child and it takes me over a week to read a single book. If it is a very long book, it takes me even longer. When my life takes an unexpected turn, as it has in recent weeks, my reading time becomes embarrassingly long. In fact, this blog has come to be more about debut news than reviews. I hope to turn this around as I get caught up by the beginning of the year. However, in order to get caught up, I need to focus.
Therefore, I will no longer attempt to cover POD books. I will limit my coverage to major publisher debuts and certain well-vetted small presses. I have already adjusted my What I Do Here post to reflect this policy.
In order to be helpful to POD authors, I looked for other places online that specifically covers POD. The leader of the pack appears to be The Podler. The Podler reviews lots of types of books and has an annual award, the IPOD. I swiped these links off the Podler's sidebar. They are all members of The De Facto Pod Review Ring.
- Odyssey Reviews
- Leo Stableford
- iUniverse Book Reviews
- Darryl's Library
- None may say...
- POD People
- POD Critic
This in no way reflects on the POD book that I am currently reading. I intend to finish that book this week. It will be my first and last POD review.
In other news, I've expanded my attempts to find recently-announced authors who are willing to guest blog. I find that a lot of them are! I have two guest blogs upcoming this week, both small press authors. I will post one on Tuesday and the other on Thursday.
Now to try to get some sleep!
12 comments:
I do reviews for SQT's Fantasy & Scifi Lovin' Book Reviews and I'd be willing to do the occasional POD book. So, if you like you can put up my info or something. Thanks.
Sure! Do you want me to list one of your blogs? If so, which one?
Hey there, woman!
I think you might have to do a post concerning your policy toward e-books. Lord knows, it's tough on one's eyes (and butt) sitting in front of a computer. And it's tough on one's printer and paper usage.
-C
Good point! I have to update my What I Do Here post.
Okay, from this post you make it sound like POD are just not worth your time, as if they are vanity presses. Knowing how fair you usually are, I'm hoping this is not what you meant to say, Tia. A lot of very good small presses use POD technology. That's all it is, a type of printing, not a label of quality. I've seen crap come out of many of the major presses over the past few years and gems from the smaller presses. I think the smaller presses get enough abuse from the big corp book stores without there books being alloted to "special sites" that specialize in reviewing POD. What you read is your business, I just think by basing your choices on the tech used to make the book you're gonna miss a lot of great stuff. The big boys are getting lazy and the stuff they are publishing is becoming very cookie cutter in many ways. POD technology is allowing many small presses to do more quality stories without going bankrupt. JMO.
Moon
This decision is really a matter of what I have time for. I can either cut back on what I do, or I can burn out and give up this blog altogether. I the past, I have tended to go by how much effort that the author has put into publicity. Both Lisa Nevin and Jim Melvin have done an amazing amount of work getting their books out there and I respect them for that.
I cover plenty of small press. This week, I'm going to feature guest posts by authors at Juno books and Rain Publishing. They may well use POD technology -- I don't know. I have another book on the way by another Juno author.
I have tried in the past to find a partner blogger to cover what I don't cover. This offer is still open. This concept would work well as a team blog. I just need to find some teammates. I would love to find some blog teammates to cover dark fantasy and the edgy stuff that I don't usually read. If someone wants to cover POD books for this blog, I would be open to that as well. Plus, I would be willing to be part of a "blog family" similar to what the Podler belongs to.
I suppose all of this is worth a post of its own.
http://wisb.blogspot.com/
Use that one. My contact info is on that page too. I'll let anyone who happens to contact me know that the review will show up on SQT's blog though.
Moondancer: I agree that the small presses need more attention. I've contacted just about every small press I could find that deals with SF/F. I'm doing reviews for Aio and Edge/Tesseract right now, and hoping to do reviews for others, if they'll write back. I'm primarily interested in small presses at this point because I think the big guys get more than enough attention as it is...
Thanks. I'll also be in touch about that book I'm sending you.
Didja ever finish Auralia's Colors? I'm really curious to see what you'll say about the novel once you've finished it. Who knows, Overstreet may be willing to do a guest post... You can find him here: Auralia's Blog.
I've set that one aside temporarily. I just want to get through the shorter books on my reading stack. I hope to pick it up again this week. Thanks for pointing out that blog. I've been following a different Jeff Overstreet blog!
The POD 'family' of blogs loses members a lot. People burn out and it really is wise to define your niche.
Of course using 'POD' to mean self-published is lazy slang. Although I run POD People I am myself POD-publisher but not self-published (with small presses). But POD is just snappier and lends itself better to puns.
Funny how even while defending one minority appraoch (POD) folk tend to turn around and exclude another ('vanity'). ;)
I have found that it is easy to burn out when reviewing a certain type of novel. Yes, I read a lot of fantasy, but I also read a lot of mystery. Plus, I like to read books by my favorite authors, and of course they are not debuts!
Therefore, I can understand why POD reviewers burn out easily.
As for defining my niche, that's what I'm trying to do here.
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