Suspended Animation

Image courtesy of Futurama Wiki

Back in March of 2010, I submitted my novel Armistice Day to this blog in hopes of scoring a review. I was a newly minted indie author with a box full of copies that I bought from my printer (Lulu). The book was several years in the making. I'd attended the local adult ed writers workshop for several semesters, had the book professionally edited, sent out dozens of agent queries, and after realizing I had to publish it myself, commissioned a freelance artist to make the cover. It was now time for marketing.

I figured the easiest way to get my name out there was to submit my book for review to whichever blogs would take it. I don't believe in spamming people, so I carefully researched for the right sites. At the time, indie authors were treated like vermin. Scant few blogs would review indie authors, and only a portion of them reviewed sci-fi. This blog was one of the few. In fact, it was dedicated to self-published authors.

The blog's owner, Podler, agreed to do it, but he also invited me to join him in becoming a reviewer of the blog in order to review more indie authors who deserved to be recognized. The mission was to remove the stigma associated with indie authors, just as Girl-On-Demand had done with her PODdy Mouth blog (long since retired, but still linked to way down on the right-hand column). I was flattered to be invited and immediately accepted, for I was a true believer in the cause. I joined S.B. Jung and Libby Cone, other recent invitees who'd accepted. He told me that other authors who'd been invited just didn't have the time. I didn't realize at the time how true those words were (are).

In June, after I'd had my first review published for the blog—and my book reviewed—Podler disappeared. After transferring ownership of the blog to Libby and me, he deleted his blogger account and corresponding email address, taking many book cover images with him. He left no note. There were no warning signs. He was just gone. And since he'd used a pseudonym, we had no way to track him down. All of a sudden, we new recruits were put in charge.

We scrambled to right the ship. We created a new email address for submissions, tracked down the broken book cover image links, and found the email addresses for the authors left adrift in the slush pile. I think we did a fine job.

As time wore on, real life caught up to S.B. and Libby, and I assumed administrative control of the blog (slush pile, rejection notices, etc). We invited people to join us. Reviewers came and went. We reviewed a lot of great books (and a few that fell short). We expanded the blog: links to other blogs designed to help indie authors, a list of editors, and a list of affordable cover designers. We hosted cover reveals, sample chapters, kickstarters, and author news. One author even credited us with helping her land a book deal with a publisher because of the review we gave her book. While I don't know if that's even remotely true, it was a wonderful thing for her to say, and it made me feel like we were accomplishing something. Just seeing the public's attitude about indie books change overall was great. Successful indie novels have been scooped up by major publishers and even made into movies! These days, a well produced indie novel is indistinguishable from the traditionally published.

As I came upon my sixth year on the blog and considered adding a paid review format (whereupon those that paid would get a one week turnaround while everyone else had to wait the typical amount of time), it dawned on me that it had been six years since I published my novel and the sequel was only 20% done. Yeah, I published my short stories in an anthology, but the grand series that I'd envisioned was going nowhere. Fellow indie authors that I'm friends with had each published several books in that time, and I was still working on my second book. I'd spent the last six years promoting the work of other authors instead of writing and promoting my work. This wasn't what I signed up for. I'd meant to be a reviewer on the side while I wrote, not the other way around.

As you know, there are only so many hours in a day. There's also a finite number of days in this life. Please excuse me for sounding maudlin, but 50 isn't that far off for me. I've always been haunted by that line from "Time" by Pink Floyd.

And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun

Something has to give. I'm sorry, but I can't run this blog anymore. I have to focus on my writing now.

So what does all this rambling mean after the walk down memory lane? It means this blog is going on an indefinite hiatus. There's no one available to take over as administrator, so we're closing up shop. It might not really be the end though. Richard has expressed a desire to have an outlet to publish reviews for indie books that he comes across. That seemed reasonable to me (I might do the same) so I agreed. But it definitely means that we're not accepting anymore submissions for the foreseeable future. Like poor Fry, the blog is going to be cryogenically frozen in a way. But unlike Fry, we might be unfrozen from time to time for a review. Then again, maybe it'll be frozen for a thousand years, at least until Google's server farm bites the dust.

I'd like to thank everyone who's worked on this blog with me over the years. While part of me resents Podler for abandoning us, the opportunity has enabled me to make many new friends that I never would have otherwise. And for that, I am blessed.

See you around,
\_/
David "DED" Drazul

Blogger Issue

It would seem that ours is one of several blogs that were damaged overnight. All of our links to our book reviews are gone. All of our links to other book review blogs are gone. Still trying to get a handle on this. I'm hoping that they can be restored from a backup as restoring all of them on my own would be exceedingly difficult.

UPDATE 9:25 AM EST: Used one of those archive websites to salvage the links just in case Google can't restore them. That knocks the task down from "Herculean" to a "slog."

UPDATE 9/30 12:00 PM EST: I received this message:

Restoring the gadgets may take up several days. You can add and fill the gadgets yourself, or wait for Blogger engineering to restore the repaired gadgets.

With no immediate resolution to this problem, I suppose I'll have to restore them myself when I find the time.

UPDATE 10/21 8:00 AM EST: I have finished restoring all of our blogrolls and book review link lists.

\_/
DED

Welcoming Our New Reviewer

I'm pleased to announce that author Richard Abbott has joined the ranks of the New Podler Staff. Richard is the author of Far from the Spaceports, which I reviewed earlier this month. Besides science fiction, Richard also writes historical fiction. His other novels include The Flame Before Us, Scenes from a Life, In a Milk and Honeyed Land.

Richard will be joining us as a reviewer. He hopes to discover some science and speculative fiction that offers optimistic, rather than pessimistic, outlooks with good characters and prose to boot.

Welcome aboard, Richard!

We're Still Here

We apologize for the lack of posts. We've been busy cleaning out the old slush, taking much needed vacations, recruiting new reviewers, and getting caught up on old reading lists. But fear not, we will have more reviews.

As I write this, the Bookworm's Fancy is crafting a review. Rob and I are reading our next selections. Our new recruit, Bertha Thacule, is eagerly anticipating the arrival of her first book for review. Libby is still searching for a match. And the submissions keep coming.

Over on GooglePlus, we're having some problems with our update stream. It seems that most of our announcements have gone missing. And the Bookworm's Fancy has learned that we are not alone. Perhaps we need to have Twitter as a fallback platform for G+. ;)

\_/
DED

UPDATE 9/10/13: Ok, it looks like Google+ is back to normal. The missing announcements have returned.

Forward Unto Social Media

We've finally done it. The New Podler Review of Books has taken its first step into social media. You can now find us on GooglePlus.

So why did it take us so long? Because no one wanted to do it.

Back when the blog's namesake founder was here, site promotion was his responsibility. There was a MySpace page, but when he went AWOL that page stagnated and died. And then MySpace died too when everyone abandoned it for Facebook. While MySpace has come back from the dead as some music and movie industries promo monster, its new form is alien to us.

So that left the members of the Podler Staff to handle PR. Yes, we received your invites to friend you on Facebook but no one wanted the responsibility of managing a Facebook page. I abhor Facebook because I'm an anti-social curmudgeon. Excuse me a second. Hey, you kids! Get off my lawn! Where was I? Oh yeah, Facebook. So while I hate it, the others all have busy lives and didn't need the extra time suck.

So why are we now on GooglePlus? It's all Rob's fault.

Rob dragged me, kicking and screaming, to GooglePlus. After sitting around for a while, safely ignored under my rock, I realized that as far as social media goes, it wasn't so bad (I prefer GoodReads but that's different). I created a page for the Podler blog and invited the other staff members to become "managers" so that they can share in the headache... err uhh I mean why should I have all the fun? ;-)

So when we have reviews or other posts, we'll post a link there. There will be GooglePlus only content like the +1's and links to other articles. Hopefully someone with more social media sense than me will figure it all out and show me how it's done.

\_/
DED

A New Year, A New Reviewer

On behalf of The New Podler Review of Books, I'd like to welcome Erin Eymard to our review staff.

Erin is a mother, geek, and avid reader. She fell in love with First King of Shannara in the seventh grade and has been hooked on sci-fi/fantasy ever since. Among her favorite authors are Terry Brooks, Anne McCaffrey, David Edding, and Dawn Cook (Kim Harrison). When she isn't reading, working, or being a mommy, she enjoys fishing and watching football.

Erin runs her own blog, The Bookworm's Fancy, which is a mix of reviews, author interviews, and musings about writing and the publishing industry. Details regarding her reading preferences will be found on our Submission Guidelines page when we're open.

Welcome aboard, Erin!

Separating the Wheat from the Spam

Our email address has been snatched up by an email marketing company. No real surprise there. This is the Internet Age after all.

We don't mind having our site listed on indie book reviewer lists. Most of them are courteous to both author and reviewer. They list the reviewer's likes and dislikes and other submission guidelines, and even provide a link to the reviewer's site. This is the right way to go about it. They save the author time in their hunt for reviews and the reviewers from having to deal with books they're not interested in.

But that's not how this marketing company operates. Authors pay a fee to generate an email marketing campaign. Judging by the format of these emails, they fill out a form listing pertinent info about themselves and their book. Upon completion, it gets shot out to every book reviewer in their database, regardless of the reviewer's book preferences.

We're tired of this.

There's a reason why we have submission guidelines. There's a list of what we're not interested in and who's available and what they like to read. It's a waste of our time to have to go through these blind submissions, telling Joe Schmoe that his 101 Ways to Serve Lima Beans cookbook isn't what we want to read.

The other interesting trend to these spam submissions is the quality. There's a definitive lower level of quality to this group. As a sweeping generalization, I'm going to accuse the mass mailers of trying to do things on the cheap. Many (not all) don't utilize an editor or spend the extra time proofreading their own work. Acceptances are far lower for this group than for those who follow procedure. We still have to read the submission, track down some sample chapters on the Web, and, after confirming the material is third rate, send out a rejection letter. More time lost.

As a whole, authors who take the time to check us out and follow our submission guidelines have invested more time in their work. And it shows. Even if we reject them (we have to; there's just too many), 80% of the time quality is not an issue.

We could just ignore everyone who lacks "submission" in their subject line, but that would be rude, right?

Instead, filters are in place to weed out spam-like marketing campaigns. Submissions from people who blindly submit to us via these mass mailers are deleted unread. We're not completely heartless though. An auto-responder lets them know that their submission is "improperly formatted" and provides a link to our submission guidelines page.

I'm hoping that the lazy authors will see what they have to do and either improve the quality of their work or just go away.

I don't know if this post comes across as a rant, whining, or rational. Frankly, I don't care. We're up to 30 submissions a month again. There's only time to review a fraction of those books. The less time spent sifting through the slush to find something of quality we want to read, the better.

If you have the time and the desire, why not join us? Take on some of the load. It doesn't matter if it's just one book review per year (though the more the better). Help us shine a light on those indie authors who deserve some time in the spotlight.

Blog News 7/11/12

Yeah, we're still here. Everyone is busy so there isn't much time for reviews.

We've added some social media buttons. They'll show up at the bottom of each post and review. You'll now be able to email, blog, tweet, post to facebook, or google+ whenever you see something here you'd like to share with the rest of the world. These buttons are located down near the link for comments.

For authors, we've got text at the top of the right column that will tell you whether or not we're open to submissions. That will save you from having to click on the "Submissions Guidelines" tab to find out our submissions status. However, you'll still have to click on it to find out who is accepting submissions and what they're interested in. And if you're reading our blog on a small wireless device, both the left and right columns are cut off so you'll have to click on the "view as webpage" (where available) link to see it. Otherwise you'll have to still rely on the "Submission Guidelines" tab.

And, as of this moment, we are indeed open to submissions. Well, Rob is anyway. Libby and I still have a couple of books on our plates. Visit the Submissions Guidelines page to see what Rob is interested in.

I expect to post a review for Trust, the sequel to Trang, later this month and then one from bizarro author Jeremy Robert Johnson in August. With luck, I'll be looking for slush in September.

In the meantime, if you have any desire to write reviews for this blog, get in touch with us. The more reviewers we have on board, the more indie books we can review.

\_/
DED

Submissions Update

A month ago, we closed our submissions window and yes, we're still closed.

The good news is that we've finished with the February submissions. The bad news is that there were a lot of submissions in March. And the pace continued into April.

One of our blog's readers stated that he felt the onrush of submissions was due to a surge in our popularity. Perhaps. I suspect it's due to our appearance in Christy Pinheiro's Indie Book Reviewer Yellow Pages. Now that indie writers can turn to a singular source to obtain dozens of names of indie book review blogs, it's easier for them to find us. Sure, there was Google, but scrolling through a list of hundreds of links isn't as user friendly as a nicely formatted guide full of blog names, what genres they like/dislike, where to submit, and so on. Christy did all the work for them.

I can tell that people are finding us in there (rather than here), because we've received a few submissions after we closed. If these authors had checked us out for themselves at any point, they would've seen that we were closed and threatening to delete all who disturbed us while we got caught up.

We hope to open soon, but the way things are going, I'm thinking that it's going to be at least another month.

Submissions Are Closed

We're sorry to announce that we are closed to submissions. We have too great a backlog of stories to go through and we feel that it is imperative that we catch up before we accept any more.

Any submissions received from this moment forward will be deleted unread. Sorry, but closed means closed.

Keep watch on the Submission Guidelines page. When reviewers names appear there again, then you'll know it's safe to start submitting again.

Reviews will continue.

Thank you for your patience.

\_/
DED

Our Two New Reviewers

On behalf of The New Podler Review of Books, I'd like to welcome Rob Steiner and Bob 5000 to our review staff.

Rob Steiner has been with us since last fall, so this welcome is overdue. He is the author of The Last Key. When he's not spending time with his family or writing books, he's dreaming of one day taking over for Guy Fieri on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.

Bob 5000 is a guitar player for Terror From the Year 5000, who were inspired by the movie of the same name, or perhaps the MST3K send up of said film. Bob is a professional software engineer by day and a semi-professional beer drinker by night.

Details regarding their reading preferences can be found on our Submission Guidelines page.

Welcome aboard, guys!
\_/
DED

Submissions Update

Hi all,

We've received a lot of genre submissions of late so we're going to close the door to anything in the horror, fantasy, alternate history, thriller and science fiction categories. Rob, S.B. and I have enough to keep us busy for a while. Our two trainee reviewers are wading through the slush trying to get something together.

Fortunately, Libby, our literary reviewer, is still available to read your submissions. Just make sure that what you're submitting suits her tastes. If you're unsure, check her past reviews to get an idea.

Genre authors should check back sometime in January before submitting. Checking the "caught up through" date will give you an indication of our progress, though rejections will come sooner.

Reviews will continue. Rob Steiner will be posting one shortly. Libby, the trainees and I are reading submitted stories and will post our reviews when time permits. The holidays tend to get in the way. :)

\_/
DED

New Service: Editorial Referral

We'd like to announce a change in leadership at The New Podler Review of Books. Since Podler (the founder) has stepped down, the four of us have decided to carry on with the blog. Nature abhors a vacuum, and without Podler around to make decisions, we've discussed adding new features and practices to our reviews.

The first change is editorial referral. Sometimes we get submissions that look very much like rough drafts. Instead of giving them a poor review, we will respectfully decline them from now on and recommend an editor. We're building that pool of qualified editors, starting with our contributor, Sarah Cypher. To clear up any perception of potential impropriety, let it be known that none of the reviewers will receive a commission or referral fee of any kind. We do this with the intent of improving the quality of self-published books in the marketplace.

We welcome your comments and suggestions, and as always, look forward to providing the indie publishing community of writers and readers with helpful book reviews.

Update 9/3/10: We've now added Linda Chiara, Amberly Finarell and Den Fischer to our Editors' Pool.

Submissions Update

We've finished reviewing the submissions that came in through April 30th May 15th. If you haven't heard from us, then we won't be reviewing your book. We apologize for the general, impersonal announcement but we're desperately trying to catch up on the backlog.

The New Podler Review of Books Staff

The Independent Novel Award for 2008

You may wonder what happened to the Independent Novel Award in 2008. Unfortunately, the blog did not receive enough quality submissions in 2008 to make the judging possible. Waiting for Spring was the only submission to emerge from the submission pile and The Ant King was an Internet find that I came across. The rest of the books reviewed were not self-published titles and so were ineligible for the award. Can't really award the award based on a pool of two books. Another problem that exists right now is that I am trying to figure out a new material submission procedure for the blog.

Currently I am reading The Sum of Life: The Worst Kind of Lies by John Patrick Lamont and Messages to My Son. I am also reading some books that I received from publishers to review. So despite the lack of activity on the blog, The Podler is busy. If you read the new Self-Publishing Review blog run by Henry Baum, you'd also see my review there. The Hidden Layer was another cool find that I came across.

Recognition

I was recently checking out the review blog of a distinguished fellow reviewer, POD Critic, and found, to my great joy, the PODler mentioned in his official de facto POD review ring. Thank you POD Critic for your recognition! But my pleasant surprise did not end there. I also noticed that the PODler, along with three other fellow reviewers, is mentioned at the Science Fiction Writer's of America. How wonderful. Hopefully this will mean more visitors.