No more reviews for a while! Doctor’s orders!
Just kidding—that doctor’s a quack. But seriously. No more reviews for a hot minute. The site’s going quiet for a month or two. But don’t panic! We’re not dead… yet! Just taking a break to go heads down on other projects.
While doing reviews is fun and rewarding research, it isn’t easy. Sure, I’ve gotten offers from outside writers to submit articles and think pieces. And I’m very tempted to say yes. Outside voices would be welcome. But the truth is, reviews usually involve me having to edit their work. Collecting all the links, verifying the usability of their pictures and finally settling on a layout. Our latest, the Moon Knight compendium, took a couple of weeks. Even shorter ones, like the Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy review still require a few days to get juuuuust right.
It’s labor. A lot of labor. Sure, I enjoy reminding people we’re still here, still active. But it can also be a distraction. Time, sweat, and effort that I could spend reviewing stuff, or working on our own publications. Like maybe getting ready for our next submission window.
Yeah, you read that right. This forthcoming one will again be set in San Cicaro. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you pick up copies of the first and second books in order to get a feel for what we want. But don’t go dashing off to write your submission just yet! There’s a surprise theme for this one, and it’s not going to be cinch. However, we’ll be giving people plenty of time to submit.
Urban Fantasy not your thing? Well I’ve got good news for you! We’ve got our eye on another open call, coming next year for a brand new project. Sorry! Can’t give any details yet except that it may have something to do with a forthcoming novel line. We’re dreaming big, people.
We want to prove that a book means something to us, and isn't just catalog filler. There's enough "publishing farms" out there as it is...
Finally, some people have reached out, asking if we’re accepting novel submissions. The answer is no, not yet. And there’s a damn good reason for it. See, the guys who founded this company have been burned by small press publishers before. We’re not talking giant dreams of “roaring auditoriums of fans” success. I mean more like, you know, basic things:
- Paying us on time. (This happened.)
- Actually publishing the book instead of pinning it all on a lousy KickStarter. (This also happened. Seriously.)
- Ho-humming one’s way out of contracts. (Yep. Been there.)
- Paying us. (You know, like when they promised to.)
- Paying us at all. (If it’s for charity, sure. Otherwise come on… at least offer a token here.)
- Slapping a cover and an ISBN on it, and pretending our opinion matters before putting it for sale. If we’re lucky, you’ll even tweet about it. Once. (Avoided that one.)
And then there’s the feeling of actually making a book stand out. Anyone can plop a book on Amazon and bug their friends to buy it. But a publisher should do their best to make titles stand out. Do more to make them pop. And we want to prove we can with just a few titles before we open ourselves to the world. We want to prove that a book means something to us, and isn’t just catalog filler. There’s enough “publishing farms” out there as it is…
So no more reviews for a while. We got work to do.
—James, aka “The Bitch”