Can a Fee-Based Review Be Credible?
Absolutely.

All review publications must find funding somewhere. Traditionally, print publications have been financed in large part by advertisements from the publishing industry, and there has always been an inherent tension between the needs of those advertisers and the goals of critical objectivity. The key to ensuring objectivity has been in maintaining a firewall between critics and advertisers.

Funding at BlueInk Reviews comes from authors, who pay a fee to have their books reviewed. As with print publications, we manage that inherent tension between author and critic by strictly maintaining that firewall between the two parties.

Our reviewers will have no contact with the authors funding the reviews. In fact, our authors will never know which reviewers have been assigned to critique their books. Our critics – who come from the traditional publishing world and are well aware of traditional review ethics — will follow written guidelines instructing them to craft objective, honest reviews, noting both the positive and negative points of any book. Editors will oversee all reviews, with an eye toward insuring fairness and honesty.

Authors pay in advance and will not be refunded if displeased with the reviewer’s assessment. They can, however, opt to remove their review from our website.

While this approach may be a new one, we see it as one solution to the fact that few, if any, mainstream publications have the resources or space to review self-published work, especially in this era of downsizing. In fact, we see a not-too-distant future where even traditionally published authors will seek our guaranteed, fee-based service rather than the uncertainties of a “free” review — which may never actually appear.

Yes, we are following a non-traditional funding model. In the digital world, it has become a necessity to find new ways of supporting editorial ventures. But at BlueInk, we work hard to insure that our reviews adhere to time-honored ethical standards and are worthy of our web audience’s trust and respect at all times.

Publishing Veterans Launch Website Devoted to Professional Reviews of Self-Published Books

NEW YORK, BookExpo America — An internationally known literary agent and an award-winning former book review editor announce the launch of BlueInk Reviews, a website devoted exclusively to reviewing and highlighting self-published books.

The move comes on the heels of industry reports that the number of books released from non-traditional channels doubled between 2007 and 2008. It nearly doubled again between 2008 and 2009. Furthermore, U.S. book sales fell 1.8% in 2009 to $23.9 billion, while e-book sales tripled to $313 million. Many of these e-books are self published.

“Independently published books are increasingly becoming an important part of the publishing scene,” said Managing Partner Patti Thorn. “With BlueInk, we aim to become the gold standard in reviews of self-published work.  We are committed to addressing the urgent needs of the self-publisher for credible critiques without compromising the values of the traditional publishing industry.”

Thorn was books editor at the Rocky Mountain news for 12 years, prior to the newspaper’s closing in 2009. She won many awards for her arts and entertainment criticism and accolades for her incisive column about books and the publishing industry. She joins Patricia Moosbrugger in this venture. Moosbrugger is a former subsidiary rights manager and literary agent who represents New York Times bestselling authors Kate Furnivall and Louise Penny and was formerly with the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency, where she worked with bestselling authors Sebastian Junger, Nathaniel Philbrick.and Steven Covey.

While fee-based, all BlueInk reviews are written by professionals whose bylines have appeared in major publications, such as The New York Times and Washington Post, or who have served as editors at well-respected publishing houses, including Penguin, Viking and Crown.

As BlueInk critics discover worthy reads, the best of these titles are then featured in high profile positions on the BlueInk web page and promoted to publishers, librarians, literary agents and booksellers. They are also further vetted by the BlueInk Board or other industry professionals to determine their merit for a BlueInk Best Book Award, our highest honor.

In this way, more than a simple source for reviews, BlueInk acts as the primary means for readers and industry professionals to find the “next generation” books worth selling, stocking, purchasing and reading.

BlueInk offers a host of other services as well, including: articles with self-publishing tips; places for independently published authors to tout their sales successes; lists of important writing resources; classifieds and other ads targeted to authors and more.

In short, BlueInk is a vibrant forum for authors, as well as the go-to source for red-hot reads in the self-publishing realm.

As the world of self-publishing continues its exponential growth, BlueInk Reviews would greatly appreciate it if you’d let your readers know about its arrival on the scene. Meanwhile, check us out at www.blueinkreviews.com!

Jeff Mayersohn and his wife Linda Seamonson own the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As might be expected, it carries some very old books. What is not so predictable is that it carries 4 million of them. It happens that they installed an Espresso print on demand press.

Customers access Google’s vast database of titles, many of which are facsimiles of antiquarian works worth a king’s ransom in the original but only a few dollars in replica. Writes Mayersohn: “The first book that we printed on Paige [the owners' nickname for their pet printing machine] was the Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in English-speaking North America. The original was printed on Stephen Daye’s press in Cambridge, about a hundred yards from the location of our store, almost four centuries ago. There are 11 extant copies of Daye’s original printing. Now any customer can own a scan of the original book.”

Interestingly, though customers can download the Google  e-book versions of these editions free, they like the feel of a printed book in their hands, and the look of it on their shelves. “For many readers and for writers, the allure of paper remains,” says Mayersohn. ” Watching the joy on their faces leads one inevitably to the conclusion that we still cherish the experience of the printed word, preserved for eternity in the pages of a book.”

But reprints of ancient tomes are only one part of ye olde booke shoppe’s custom. Of the 1500 or so books that “Paige” prints monthly, three quarters are self-published works, Mayersohn explained in the “Soapbox” feature of a recent Publishers Weekly. You can read details in Hit ‘Print’: How One Bookstore Uses Its Espresso Book Machine.

You can expect to see more Espressos popping up in bookstores as the technology is perfected and miniaturized.  Indeed, as we recently pointed out, there’s no reason why POD kiosks need to be restricted to bookstores.  See I’ll Have Four Sesames, Four Poppy-Seeds, and One Copy of War and Peace

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by Publishers Weekly.

(While waiting for news about Borders we thought we’d reprint a post from last spring)

The headline of this posting is a shameless trick to drive eyeballs to our website. We were inspired to use this ploy by David Carr, whose New York Times article Taylor Momsen Did Not Write This Headline focused on how headlines are designed “to get the search engines to notice.”

“Headlines in newspapers and magazines were once written with readers in mind, to be clever or catchy or evocative,” says Carr. “Now headlines are just there to get the search engines to notice. In that context, ‘Jon Stewart Slams Glenn Beck‘ is the beau ideal of great headline writing. And both Twitter and Facebook have become republishers, with readers on the hunt for links with nice, tidy headlines crammed full of hot names to share with their respective audiences.”

We’ll check the metrics on this particular blog to see if they spike. If they do we’ll know it wasn’t because of our brilliant content (you’ll search in vain for any here). It will all be due to a coldblooded effort to manipulate our search engines. Read Taylor Momsen Did Not Write This Headline and you may never look at a headline the same way again.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by The New York Times.

Last year, on Valentine’s Day, Write on New Jersey ran a list of lame pickup lines. Among the lamest were:

• Help the homeless: take me home with you.
• Hi, I’m Mr. Right. Someone said you were looking for me.
• Here I am! Now, what were your other two wishes?
• I lost my Teddy Bear. Can I sleep with you?

How crude.  These losers should have taken a page out of the books of some famous writers who really knew how to pitch the blarney. Kathleen Massara has delved into some classic and not-so-classic literature to learn how the literati phrase it when they’re making a pass. She’s compiled a bunch of them in that include deathless pickup lines by the likes of Oscar Wilde, Vladimir Nabokov and Philip Roth. Next time you’re at a book-signing soiree, try these:

Henry Miller: “What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.”

Pablo Neruda: “I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”

And Dorothy Parker: “I require only three things of a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid.”

From 30 Literary Quotes That Just Might Get You Laid

Richard Curtis

LTC HVD  I/U RC

On Valentine’s Day treat yourself to a lavish bouquet of highland heather with E-Reads’ bestselling women’s author Hannah Howell. Howell’s lush and erotic romances set in the treacherous and tempestuous Highlands of fifteenth century Scotland.

Start with Highland Bride, a passionate tale of a feisty beauty determined to uncover the softer side of the iron-willed warrior who has wed her, bedded her…and stolen her heart. Though she has yet to be courted by any man, spirited Gillyanne Murray decides the time has come to visit the dower lands gifted to her by her father’s kinsmen. She arrives to find the small keep surrounded by three lairds, each one vying for her hand…and property. Though resolved to refuse them all, the threat of battle on her threshold forces her to boldly choose a suitor: Sir Connor MacEnroy, a handsome, daring knight of few words. As his wife, Gillyanne is stunned by his terse, cold distance–and her own yearning to feel passion in his arms. Now, bringing her healing touch to a land and a keep ravaged by treachery and secret enemies, she dares to reach out for the one thing she fears she may forever be denied…her husband’s closely guarded heart.

And if Highland Bride steals your heart away, visit Howell’s author page where there are plenty more Highlands where that one came from.

On Valentine’s Day we celebrate romance, but if your predilections are for lustier fare you may want to immerse yourself and your Significant Other in Marco Vassi’s erotic fiction.

Vassi was, without a doubt, the foremost erotic writer of our generation. Praised by Norman Mailer, Kate Millett, Saul Bellow, and Gore Vidal, he was not only the quintessential sexual explorer, but a literary craftsman whose own life experiences became the stuff of his fiction—expanded, of course, by a grand imagination and a full sense of the absurd. Tragically, Vassi died from pneumonia after he had contracted AIDS.

Start your journey with The Gentle Degenerates in which a young man let loose in the human potential movement travels from one end of the country to the other, opening himself to all the possible variations of sexual experience and trying to find love in the midst of explosive and unlimited sensuality. The protagonist of The Gentle Degenerates sounds very much like the Marco Vassi whose extraordinary memoir The Stoned Apocalypse captured the glorious, mind-blasted sixties like no other book of its time.

For a complete list of Vassi’s groundbreaking work visit his author’s page. And if he fascinates you as he has fascinated so many others, read our profile of him, An Intrepid Voyager to a World of Searing Erotic Fantasies.

Richard Curtis

With The Glasswrights’ Apprentice E-Reads rolls out Mindy Klasky’s rich and romantic Glasswrights fantasy quintet.  This debut novel won Klasky Barnes & Noble’s Maiden Voyage Award for best new speculative fiction author.

******************

Rani Trader was born a merchant, but now she is an apprentice in the prestigious Glasswrights’ Guild. When Rani witnesses the murder of the Crown Prince, she’s accused of being the killer.

On the run and labeled a traitor, Rani must travel the city streets, masquerading through her kingdom’s strict castes as she attempts to discover the actual assassin. Along the way, Rani meets true friends and false leaders. She discovers a secret brotherhood, and she must determine who is her greatest ally… and who is her most bitter enemy.

“Mind your caste,” Rani is told. But what good will that do, if her caste gets her killed before she can expose the Prince’s actual murderer?

Romantic Times called The Glasswrights’ Apprentice “a dark twist on a familiar fantasy theme. A young apprentice ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time and becomes entangled in a ruthless conspiracy to steal the throne. Ms. Klasky creates remarkably shaded characters, especially the heroine, who through flawed choices, learns in the end she can only speak truth. The result is an absorbing reading indeed; look for this author to develop in fascinating ways.”

And develop she did, following up with four more adventures chronicling Rani Trader’s growth from apprentice to master.  You can view and sample all of them on Klasky’s author page.

RC

Of the thousands of books I have represented, there are very few about which I can say it was an honor to be associated with them. On Killing by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman is one of a handful that occupies a very privileged place in my heart. That it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize validates my contention that it is an extraordinarily significant work. It is currently E-Reads’ bestselling e-book.

By the time Col. Grossman submitted his manuscript to me in the mid 1990s, the Viet Nam War, from which he had drawn so many poignant lessons for his research, had been ostensibly over for two decades. I say “ostensibly” because, for the traumatized veterans that he worked with as a combat psychologist, the war raged on in their tormented memories. Even as he comforted and helped heal countless men in veterans’ facilities, he was also asking questions of them that few had had the courage to ask, and formulating insights that enabled him to understand the experience of killing in ways that historians and social scientists had seldom grasped. I remember his telling me that killing was the last intimate act between humans that had not been explored scientifically. How odd, that an evil to which humankind has forever been exposed, should be a black hole in our understanding.

Out of his intensive studies, observations and interviews Grossman formulated a science he calls “Killology.” It’s a disturbing term but it pins us to his topic like a bayonet and forces us to gaze, eyes wide open, at an act that is both obscene and profane. Yet at the heart of his thesis is the contention that humans have an innate aversion to taking life. Given the sad history of our race that’s a large pill to swallow, but if you suspend skepticism and grant him this assumption your journey into the heart of darkness will be rewarded with a note of hope. Whether you are willing to extend to perpetrators a fraction of the sympathy that you extend to victims is a question only you will answer when you finish the book, but you will certainly appreciate the torment of men in war and war’s aftermath better than you do now.

What makes On Killing doubly significant is its extension of the experience of war to that of peace. Are children who are exposed to violent movies and video death-games more susceptible to murderous hostility? Are they stimulated to killing rage? Do they become more tolerant of mayhem?

Read On Killing and judge.

–Richard Curtis

Interview with Lt. Col. Dave Grossman by E-Reads

E-Reads: As you’ve grown older and wiser, have you modified your views about the nature of killing? About human nature?

DG: No, not really. I’ve expanded the model a little, and have placed that in my latest book, On Combat.

E-Reads: In your dealings with veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq, is there a material difference between the nature of their stress and the stresses suffered by Vietnam veterans?

DG: Today we are rotating units into combat (as opposed to individual replacements in Vietnam) and they are all wartime volunteers. They enlisted or reenlisted in time of war. This makes for a significant reduction in psychological trauma and incidence of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).

E-Reads: You tour extensively. Who is your main audience? What are some of the most often-asked questions?

DG: Roughly 50% of my audiences are law enforcement. Another 30% are military units, and 20% educators.

The most commonly asked questions revolve around the incidence of PTSD in Iraq and Afghanistan. My best answer to that is in the 2nd edition to On Combat, which was released just this year. I’ve included a clip from On Combat (below) that addresses this issue.

“Sadly, it is not difficult to find people in the mental health community to support the thesis that anyone who kills, experiences combat, or witnesses violence (or any other fill-in-the-blank ‘victim du jour’) is doomed to lifelong PTSD and, consequently, needs lifelong mental health care. Too few mental health professionals communicate to their patients that 1) they can recover quickly from PTSD and that 2) they will become stronger from the experience. Yet that expectation must be there if there is to be hope of anything other than a lifetime of expensive counseling.

[ ... ]

PTSD is like being overweight. Many people carry around 10, 20, or 30 pounds of excess weight. Although it influences the individual every minute of every day, it might not be a big deal health wise. But for those people who are 500 pounds overweight, it will likely kill them any day now. There was a time when we could only identify people who had “500 pounds” of PTSD. Today we are better at spotting folks who carry lesser loads, 30, 40 or 50 pounds of PTSD.

I have read statistics that say 15 percent of our military is coming home with “some manifestation of psychological problems.” Others claim it is 20 percent and still others report 30 percent. Well, depending on how you want to measure it, 30 percent of all college freshmen have some manifestation of psychological problems. Mostly what is being reported on today are people with low levels of PTSD (30, 40 or 50 pounds of PTSD) who in previous wars would not have been detected. We are getting damned good at identifying and treating PTSD and, when the treatment is done, most people are better for the experience.

PTSD is not like frostbite. Frostbite causes permanent damage to your body. If you get frostbite, for the rest of your life you will be more vulnerable to it. PTSD is not like that.

PTSD can be more like the flu. The flu can seriously kick your tail for a while. But once you shake it off, you probably are not going to get it again for the rest of the year. You have been inoculated. PTSD can kick your tail for a while (months and even years). But once you have dealt with it, next time it will take a lot more to knock you off your feet because you have been stress inoculated.”

E-Reads: Do you feel your approach to killing has had a positive effect on our understanding of human behavior? Do you think human nature can be changed for the better?

DG: I don’t think that our basic, underlying, innate nature can change much, but we can do a better job of warning and preparing people. And my books, On Killing and On Combat have proven themselves to be very valuable resources to help warn and prepare or GIs and their families.

On Killing and On Combat are both on the USMC Commandant’s Required Reading list. (I think I’m the only author to have two books on the list.) Both books are also required reading at West Point and many other military and law enforcement academies. We have been at war for 6 years now, and we have learned a lot. All nonessential ideas and material have been jettisoned in the unforgiving ‘acid test’ of war. For these books to still be held up as required reading indicates that that they have something valuable and timeless to contribute, and it is a good feeling to be of service.

Perhaps most important of all, On Killing‘s final section (on media violence) has been supported with important new research. Sadly, that section has been validated by many tragic incidents of juvenile mass murders in the school.

———

Lt. Col. Grossman continues the research that let to the writing of On Killing, does regular public speaking engagements on the subject and maintains a website, Killology Research Group, which constantly adds new information on the topic.

When Hyundai Equus owners want to know when to rotate their tires, they reach into their glove compartment and open their…iPad.  That’s because their owner’s manual is an app.

It’s “part of Hyundai’s effort to create an aura of exclusivity around its new flagship sedan” says Anita Lienert of insideline.com. Wealthy geeks can use the device not merely to look up the meaning of those puzzling icons on the dashboard but schedule service appointments as well.

“The manual-on-an-iPad appears to be an industry first—part of Hyundai’s effort to create an aura of exclusivity around its new flagship sedan,” writes Lienert in Buy an Equus, Get an iPad.

A few questions come to mind, like – do you have to get into your car every time you want to play Plants vs. Zombies?  What happens if you keep your iPad at home (to play Plants vs. Zombies) and forget to return it to your Equus which then starts making this funny noise on Route 80 South?

And – call me a New Yorker -  is a glove compartment the wisest place to store an iPad?

Richard Curtis