Malasz

Each year, the reviewers here at the New Podler Review of Books pick the book (or books) which we feel are the very best independently published (or small press) works. The only other requirement we have is that the book was reviewed here on the blog during the calendar year. Here are the winners for 2016: Bertha Thacule: "I chose Madam Tulip . Its eccentric characters and witty observations make this an immensely enjoyable contemporary mystery/thriller set among denizens of Dublin's theater, art, and entertainment worlds. Fans of the first novel will be pleased to hear that a second installment in the series, Madam Tulip and the Knave of Hearts , is now available ." Richard Abbott: " The Colony , by RM Gilmour, gets my vote for 2016. It is primarily a story about travel between parallel universes, but with enough plot twists and variations that you're not always sure which way events will turn. I found the central characters compelling, and also the basic pr...

Each year, the reviewers here at the New Podler Review of Books pick the book (or books) which we feel are the very best independently published (or small press) works. The only other requirement we have is that the book was reviewed here on the blog during the calendar year. First off, I'd like to give an honorable mention to Rob Steiner for Citizen Magus and Muses of the Republic and M. Terry Green for her Chronicles of White World series. I thoroughly enjoyed their books, but as I was proofreader for them, I was disqualified from reviewing them here. Definite bias there. There were five books I reviewed here on the blog that were in the running for best of 2015. I could take the easy way out and nominate all five, but that would be a cop out. Unfortunately none of them stood far enough apart from the pack to make this an easy decision. So I had to decide if what I considered a flaw would be just a petty gripe to other readers. In the end, I decided that the book I chose would...

Sometimes, for whatever reason, the vision an author has for their book cover fails to connect with the targeted audience. Michael John Grist takes us through the process of the cover creation process for Mr. Ruins. Much like what he did to his protagonist, Grist had to tear down his idea for the book cover and rebuild it. Mr. Ruins originally had a cover I poured all my ideas into, but people thought it looked like a bunch of worms sitting on an eyeball. :(. It wasn’t meant to be that. So now I’m talking about the glorious misadventures I had on the path to make it, what it became, why it didn’t work, and the new design that has replaced it. To read more and see the previous incarnations of the cover, please visit his website .

Each year, the reviewers here at the New Podler Review of Books pick the book (or books) which we feel are the very best independently published (or small press) works. The only other requirement we have is that the book was reviewed here on the blog during the calendar year. Here are the winners for 2014: Rob: Jim Melvin's Chained by Fear gets my vote for "Best of 2014." It's book two of the Death Wizard Chronicles , which follows the adventures of Torg the Death-Knower in his quest to free the world of Triken from the mad sun sorcerer Invictus. It's adult fantasy on par with G.R.R. Martin, but with far more magic and monsters. Highly recommended. DED: There were a few titles that I thought were very good this year. In order to narrow the list down I had to pick out the flaws in the choices, no matter how small. That got my list narrowed down to two. It was a tough decision, but ultimately, I chose Noise . In my review, I wrote: " Noise is a revenge ...

I may be opening up a can of worms here, but I want to try something new. If you're an author whose work has been reviewed by us, we'd like to do a little more for you. Typically, our relationship with authors ends after we review their work. Some authors like our reviews and stay in touch with us, even if there is little reason beyond hoping we'll review their next book. We want to do something more. Promoting indie authors is tough. Very few get the recognition they deserve. Some get more than they deserve, but that's another topic entirely. So let's work on that author promotion stuff. If you have something newsworthy to share, let us know . What do I mean by newsworthy? Yeah, I'd better clarify that. What might seem important to you might not be important to us. So I'm going to list what we do consider newsworthy. Here's what you can share with us: Awards and nominations for awards . Real ones. Not those awards that you can buy: "Send us $20 t...

Last week I received an email from a reputable indie publishing blogger inviting me to a webinar where I could learn how to double my sales from a successful indie author. It sounded too good to be true, but since this was a reputable indie publishing blogger, I decided to give it a shot. The webinar was packed full of writers, and many went around introducing themselves and where they were from. Judging from the introductions, many were either new writers working on their first book or veterans struggling with limited sales of their first book or two. You can put me in the latter category. The successful indie author hosted the webinar and (surprise) primarily spent his time plugging his new book, which featured ways that indie authors everywhere could double their sales. He started off relating what he did and gave case studies demonstrating how so-and-so applied the techniques from the book and saw their sales blossom. But every example he gave involved a non-fiction author. And our...

Over the last couple of years, I've written about how important it is for an indie author to have a good cover for their book. I've invited several indie authors here to talk about the process they went through to get their covers, whether doing it themselves or hiring a professional. M. Terry Green pointed me in the direction of affordable, professional designers who offer pre-designed and customizable covers—the growing list can be found by clicking on our "Book Cover Designers" tab. While we've seen a decrease in the number of bad covers submitted here, there seems to be no shortage of lousy covers out there. So I'm going to throw another resource at you: CoverCritics offers a snark-free environment (the host, Nathan Shumate, prohibits it) where indie authors can receive constructive criticism of their book covers before they go to press. I'm heartily recommending that any indie author who designs their own covers, isn't sure about a cover they...

Adam Copeland , fantasy author and friend of the blog, has launched a funding campaign for Ripples in the Chalice , the sequel to his debut opus, Echoes of Avalon , on Kickstarter . If you read Echoes of Avalon or are a fan of historical fantasy a la Marion Zimmer-Bradley, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

This Saturday, November 23rd, is the first Nutmeg Book Festival in New Milford, CT. The NPRoB's own David Drazul will be one of twenty indie and small press authors gathered together to meet the public and hopefully interest some of them in their work. Please visit the website for more information including location, author roster, and genres covered. While there are gatherings of this nature all over the world, if you're an indie author or small press whose work has been featured here on the blog and you're participating in a similar event, let us know and we'll throw a shout out here on the blog and Google+.

Mick Rooney of The Independent Publishing Magazine offers a link to a Forbes article about a new indie outlet: Libiro . The article claims that Libiro is intended to compete with Amazon. One of the site's founders laments that indie authors get lost in the sheer volume of books offered by Amazon, not to mention the mammoth marketing budgets that the big publishing houses have at their disposal. No argument here, but there already is an alternate outlet for indie authors: Smashwords . Smashwords, for those unaware, offers indie authors (and small presses) a venue to sell their work as well as distribution to the major online retailers. Name the outlet and Smashwords probably distributes to them. While the site isn't without its problems (the manuscript upload engine is called the "grinder" with good reason), it provides a valuable service to indie authors. Unlike Smashwords, Libiro isn't offering distribution to major online retailer outlets. It intends to be an...

For those who don't already know, Smashwords is an all-in-one platform for authors to publish and distribute their e-books. It has its pros and cons for both writers and readers, which I don't have the time to go into right now, but it is very popular in the indie community. Authors who publish with them are able to track their sales and story sample downloads to gauge how well their works are faring on Smashwords. There's also aggregate reports of daily sales on other platforms that Smashwords distributes your work. But last year, Smashwords began collating all of that data to see if any patterns can be discerned from it or if its random noise. Every indie author should read the findings for themselves . The data regarding price point, title length, length of book, and sales are definitely very interesting and something to be taken into account when an author publishes their work. Anyone wishing to discuss it in the comments section, please go ahead! I've always had ...

It has been a long standing tradition of independent publishing that lousy book covers were the norm. So many authors shunned investing any money in their covers that they doomed themselves to ridicule (at best) or obscurity. While it might not necessarily be prudent to judge a book by its cover, all too often it was a safe bet that a crappy cover meant crappy writing. Potential readers chuckled and moved on. In defense of the mass of indie authors who chose low quality covers, the big stumbling block to a quality cover was price. Spending five hundred to a thousand dollars on a cover for a book that would be exceptionally lucky to earn $100 for the author was an investment most chose not to make. When I scored a cover for my novel for $200, I was psyched. But I'm here to tell you today that everyone can have a professional looking cover for $200 or even much less. I was relating my tale of book cover design woe (which I'll share in a later post) with my friend and fellow ind...

One thing that an indie author has to be is resourceful. Book covers can be expensive and sometimes you just don't have the money to splurge, especially when you're publishing a short story for 99¢. Libby Cone explains how public domain artwork and graphic design shareware can be an indie author's best friends. I have designed the covers (if you can call them that) for all my Kindle books and short stories. I hired a designer I found on LinkedIn to execute my idea for the self-published paperback edition of War on the Margins . She did a very good job. When I published the Kindle edition of Flesh and Grass I used a Dutch painting that I thought was in the public domain. When I found out it wasn't, I obtained a public domain painting. I did the "cover" for "Quantum Fashionistas" using GimP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), but had to redo it when I realized its definition wasn't high enough. GimP is somewhat daunting, but I eventually figured ou...

When hunting for an illustrator, the Web is often the best option for an indie author. Online galleries are the most convenient place to check out an artist's work. Adam Copeland realized that freelance artists are in the same boat as indie authors. They're unknowns looking to make their mark. Working together is a win-win for both parties. When it came time to choose a cover for my book I perused DeviantArt.com , looking for artwork that was similar to what I had in mind. I found it, and made sure the artist was someone who was good, but not a professional (i.e., didn't make his living from his art). I emailed him and asked if he would be willing to be paid to make cover art for me. He was thrilled that someone wanted to offer money for his hobby and agreed. My original concept, however, was still very complex, time consuming, and expensive, so we compromised on a simpler version. The result is the art I have now, which I've had nothing but compliments on. I've had...

In his search for an illustrator, sci-fi author Thomas Carpenter found one much closer than he thought. He graciously shared his book cover experience with us and offers some advice to other indie authors. Initially I hired out cover design to a friend that did work similar to book design. The first covers he made for The Digital Sea and The Godhead Machine were passable, but not exciting at all. After he made those, I asked him to do the cover for my YA dystopia novel called Gamers . Unfortunately, we didn't see eye-to-eye on the design process. He hadn't read the book and didn't understand the YA market, so I fired him. In the meantime, my wife had purchased Photoshop with the idea that eventually she could make covers. Once I fired the other guy, I asked her to go for it (she'd done a short story cover by this time, which was a good starter cover). We'd walked the bookstores and studied covers for a while so we know want we wanted. The only problem was that we...

M. Terry Green is one of those authors fortunate enough to have graphic design skills. However, she learned that the path to cover creation can be a tortuous one. She was generous enough to provide us with a history of her Techno-Shaman series book covers. Hired an Illustrator First Novel - For the first book in my urban fantasy series, I hired an illustrator who did a great job and I was thrilled. She created the raw artwork by painting in Photoshop and then I put the cover together using Photoshop and Illustrator (I have some background in graphic design). Although I liked the cover (in fact, it’s still my favorite), I did receive some negative feedback from reviewers (which wasn’t specific). Second Novel - Prior to releasing the second novel, I wasn’t yet convinced I needed to change the first cover and so went back to the illustrator who had done it and asked for artwork for the second book. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to visualize my protagonist in quite the same way. We cal...

A great book cover inspires readers to ask the question the book seeks to answer. Since my design skills scream “amateur” (to put it kindly), I hired professionals to design great covers for two books I will publish in 2013. I think both designers did a fantastic job conveying the question of each book, and it was a pleasure to work with them both. ZERVAKAN ZERVAKAN is a fantasy novel set in a world with 19th century technology -- steam engines, guns, telegraphs -- where two magical bands of light suddenly appear in the sky one night, spanning the horizons like rings around the planet. A scientist and a priest must discover the mystery behind the rings before their world is consumed by an evil they're not ready to fight. Given the setting, I wanted a cover with a 19th century feel, but one that said "fantasy" and not "historical." TJ Lomas brought my vision to life. He found an old photograph and added two bands of magical light on the horizons. He added c...

You can't judge a book by its cover. While that statement is generally true in the figurative sense, when it comes to actual books we readers really do judge books by their covers. Despite all the lofty talk about literature being a form of art, the hardcore truth is that it is primarily a form of entertainment . The publisher, whether corporate behemoth or indie author, has to convince people that reading the book will entertain them. How do they do that? By capturing your eye with an appealing cover. Which of the following covers looks more interesting?   There is no right answer. Some might prefer the simplicity of text. Others are drawn in by the illustrated cover of a scientist at work in his lab. I prefer the illustrated cover and I suspect most people do too. It offers a glimpse into the story. While The Time Machine is a sci-fi classic known to a great deal of people alive today, there will always be a new audience that has never read the work. It is up to the publisher t...