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Earlier in the year, Self-Publishing Review had an interview with Tessa Dick, last wife of Philip K. Dick, who has self-published a memoir about PKD called Remembering Firebright. Strangely enough, Philip K. Dick’s third wife, Anne Dick, has also self-published a memoir about her former husband, Search for Philip K. Dick. Why should someone close to one of the most beloved and well-known science fiction writers of all time be driven to self-publish? Anne Dick’s book is superlative, it’s one of the best biographies of PKD available – read SPR’s review. From an interview on io9[…]

This is a continuation of Reviewing the Reviewers: A Dialogue about Book Reviewing with Steven Reynolds and Carol Buchanan, which led to a very lively discussion.

Self-Publishing Review: When a self-published novel is awful, do you think the reviewer has any responsibility to spare the writer’s feelings?

Steven Reynolds: A writer will always be somewhat hurt by a negative review. You have to assume they’re reasonably happy with the book they published, otherwise why would they bother? So to have some stranger publicly detail its apparent failings is going to hurt.

When confronted with a book that doesn’t […]

The idea for this dialogue came after the controversy regarding the review of John Lacombe’s Winter Games.  If you haven’t seen that thread, check it out, it’s a long one – it has a lot of interesting commentary about how writers and/or their fans should respond to reviews, including examples of how not to respond to a review.  Carol Buchanan, who reviewed the book, didn’t like the novel.  Steven Reynolds, who reviews for SPR, liked the book in a review for the now-defunct Podler.  Carol and Steven got together to talk about the controversy and book reviewing in general. […]

A guest post by Judith D. Schwartz, a writer based in Southern Vermont and author, most recently, of The Therapist’s New Clothes, a memoir — and cautionary tale — about training as a psychotherapist. Her blog on using the Espresso Book Machine is: http://litadventuresinpod.blogspot.com.

As someone with a book manuscript making the rounds, I followed the growing acceptance of self-published work with great interest. It was reassuring to know that there were alternatives to letting the thing wither on my hard-drive. On the other hand, did I really want to do that? I mean, if I were a […]

When I read the blog entry about the launch of Book Oven, I saw this as a significant development in the changing landscape of publishing.  As I tweeted then, “Sometimes I feel like I’m fooling myself that POD’s losing stigma, but things really are changing.”  It was so refreshing to see a well-designed and maintained site talk about print on demand and other tools for publishers with no cynicism or apology.  As the site says,

There has been a revolution bubbling in the book world, and digital has arrived: ebooks, print-on-demand, and online sales mean you don’t need