Anyone Can Do it

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

Even if there were no more books published ever, there are still more books in existence today than anyone can read. And most of them suck. Good luck trying to find a good one. It's like finding a needle in a hay stack.
― Oliver Markus Malloy

Everyone thinks they're entitled to their 15 minutes of fame. And it's that narcissism that makes people, who have no business writing a book, think they can write a book.
― Oliver Markus Malloy

Another mostly grey and cold week here in no-progress-land, and one particularly dismal morning I read a book on my Kindle. I read a really bad book. A smart person would have deleted it and found something else to read, but honestly it was like a train wreck, I just couldn’t look away.

On a whim, I checked Goodreads for reviews, curious to see who else was as appalled as I was with this book, but to my surprise half the reviews were positive. Either this person has a lot of misguided friends, or there are a lot of people who didn’t actually read the book.

So then I looked the author up on Google. She has a whole series of these books and I can only hope her writing improved with subsequent books. I found it all rather depressing.

But I vented to my good friend Jamie and she slapped me upside the head (metaphorically speaking) and gave me a word to use for my three minute exercise. :-D

This is where tree books are superior to electronic books – quality. You may not like a tree book’s story, but at least you know it’ll be well written. A publisher has invested time and money to make sure of it.

An electronic book, on the other hand, comes with no such guarantee. Anyone can publish online, and they can publish anything they want. Amazon doesn’t care how bad it is. Kobo doesn’t care how poorly it’s written. Smashwords doesn't care the author only has a nodding aquaintance with grammar.

As readers, we take our chances with electronic books. Even had I checked out the reviews before I started reading the book, I probably would have read it anyway because of the number of 5 star revies it got. None of the reviews mentioned the head hopping, the lack of grammar, the structural issues.

Good thing Indigo delivered three new tree books to me this week.

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Wordage Report

Once again, the only new words I wrote were on the three-minute word prompts, so there’s not all that much to report here.

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 894+654+945=2,493
Three minute words = 116+113+110+215+101+117+98=870
Total words: 3,363 words

Still no plans for a new Wednesday series, but at least I got the Monday post done on my other blog.

EDITING:
*sigh*

Once again the only editing I did was the story for Friday’s post.

WHAT I’M READING:
I’m still working on, Stop the World, Snapshots From A Pandemic, edited by Lise McClendon. I’ve been reading it a bit at a time to make it last but I’m over halfway through it so I’ll probably finish this week.

On the Kindle I read a young adult story called Prince of Wolves, by Quin Loftis which put me in mind of The Twilight Saga only without the vampires. Now I’m reading Sex, Doug, and a Rocky Road, by Michele Bardsley. I’ve read several of her books and you’re guaranteed a fun time with her stories.

My new Kindle arrived yesterday, but I have not had time to set it up yet. Actually, it’s still in its package. Hopefully it can be charged with the cord from my old one. I ordered the Paperwhite that charges wirelessly, and the wireless charger won’t be here until the end of February.

LAST WEEK’S GOALS
Well, I nailed my first goal from last week. I did all my three minute words, and I posted part two of the cave story.
I’m about a third of the way through the afghan for my mother-in-law. I need to crochet faster because her birthday is in a week and a half.
And that’s it for the goals.

THIS WEEK’S GOALS
1. Continue with the three minute word, and continue the cave story.
2. Continue with my mother-in-law’s afghan.
3. Start the edits/rewrites on Elemental Spirit.
4. Look into online courses.
5. Write.

Happy writing.