Cate Baum | Self-Publishing Review

Announcing The Finalists of The SPR Book Awards 2016!

It’s been a very competitive year for The SPR Book Awards, as self-publishing continues to flourish with some really nice book covers, interiors, and storytelling. This year, the SPR reviewers decided to focus on the writing skills and presentation of the words – we wanted to really enjoy to the material the authors created themselves. In a few hours, we’ll be announcing the winners, but we are proud to announce the following finalists.

FINALISTS – Announced 8am PST December 15, 2016

All Finalists will be invited for an author interview at SPR over the next weeks. Congrats to all […]

Cate Baum2019-04-12T14:11:36+02:00December 15th, 2016|Categories: Features, News|Tags: SPR Book Awards|

Authors – Use This Cunning Trick To Protect Your Book From Plagiarism!

There’s a clever way to find your pirated book online if you follow this simple trick, sometimes used by dictionary and reference book publishers. All you have to do is use a Mountweasel.

Yes, that’s right. A Mountweasel. A Mountweasel is a made-up word that is unique to you, and makes it entirely easy to Google your book’s contents to see if has been pirated or plagiarized. Lillian Mountweasel was a fountain designer and postbox photographer whose fame was eternalized in the 1975 New Columbia Encyclopedia. The thing was, she was fake, and entirely a Mountweasel herself!

The word Mountweasel […]

Cate Baum2016-12-13T08:20:51+02:00December 13th, 2016|Categories: Features|Tags: Book Editing Tips, Copyright for Authors|

Review: Finding Moana by James Halemanu

★★★★

Moana is a 13-year-old Hawai’ian orphan from Kau’i. He is an outcast, with his wild hair and ways, but now must survive an attack on his village by cannibal snake zombies and their evil queen! If that doesn’t sound amazing, maybe a rescue party of cave-dwelling beings who teach Moana magical skills, or a time-traveling island and a couple of rather bizarre animal companions might just intrigue readers looking for something completely different.

Will Moana find out what really happened to his parents? What dark and mysterious feelings will he have to overcome to find out the truth about […]

Cate Baum2017-02-10T03:11:09+02:00December 6th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Young Adult Book Reviews|

Not Just Talent: The Millennials Redefining Talent and Human Capital Management by Philipe Bruce

Not Just Talent Philipe Bruce has a passion for human resources and how to maximize potential in a diverse workforce. Millennials, otherwise known as Generation Y, are changing – and breaking – the rules of business, and talent management heads are going to have to learn how to make the most of this resource, as millions of young workers enter the job market.

Bruce tackles the dilemma of how to demograph and analyze this new skillset. There are some generalizations that can be made and proven to be true: Generation Y are “digital natives” and have skills that come naturally other generations had […]

Cate Baum2016-12-02T05:10:02+02:00November 29th, 2016|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Business Book Reviews|

An Interview with Thomas Drago: Author of the Crow Creek Series

Thomas Drago Thomas Drago is the author of the Crow Creek series and teaches drama and English in North Carolina. He has published poems, song lyrics, and short stories, appearing most recently in The Explorer, a local literary magazine.

He’s a member of the Horror Writers Association. Family legends trace his ancestry to Vlad Dracula. Maybe. His favorite number is 29.

His new book Winter is out now.

Why did you choose to self-publish?

I sold the rights to an independent press that went out of business shortly after, so I figured I’d handle everything myself. Horror has a limited audience. I […]

Cate Baum2017-01-20T04:32:12+02:00November 28th, 2016|Categories: Interviews|

Review: A Pyre of Roses by Roland P. Joseph

Michael Attzs is a man with no past. He has but a flash of memory of a man leaving him in an orphanage in a Trinidadian village under the iron rule of Catholicism and colonialism, but this is all he has of his childhood. When his wife and child are brutally killed, a mysterious stranger wants to finger him for their deaths. Even police procedural documents show different events, while secrets and lies hide the truth – but why? Things get really strange when he marries a woman that seems to have just as little past as he does, and […]

Cate Baum2019-02-11T09:09:45+02:00November 23rd, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Mystery Book Reviews|

Dead Lemons by Finn Bell

Author Finn Bell’s exciting New Zealand thriller about a missing girl and a suicidal disabled man on a mission opens with a quote from Hitler about God. This powerful start is surprisingly the exact scene-setter for what can only be described as an unforgettable, cutthroat fable that examines ego and self-obsession in the face of murder. All of this in a book set in New Zealand, it’s unlikely readers will have picked up anything quite so original in this genre for some time.

Finn Bell, the protagonist and author of the book you are reading, takes us on a journey […]

Cate Baum2016-11-28T07:14:09+02:00November 23rd, 2016|Categories: New Releases|Tags: International Thriller Book Reviews, Thriller Book Reviews|

New Amazon Guidelines Prevent Customer Reviews For Free/Discounted Products – Except Books

In all this election fever, you may have missed that Amazon has changed their Community Guidelines on October 03, 2016 prohibiting authors from seeking Customer Reviews by offering a free or discounted product. As website ilovetoreview.com reports, “Specifically, Amazon sellers can no longer give a discounted or free product to anyone in exchange for a review, honest or otherwise.” This is a huge blow for sellers – EXCEPT AUTHORS! Good old Amazon adds, “The above changes will apply to product categories other than books. We will continue to allow the age-old practice of providing advance review copies of books.” […]