How Amazon Democratized Book Reviews
By: Ginger | Posted on July 25, 2018
Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program revolutionized the publishing industry – allowing anybody with a laptop to follow their dreams of becoming a writer. In the same vein, Amazon also revolutionized book reviews; taking the power of showcasing (or bashing) a book out of the hands of an editorial elite and letting anybody have their say. It’s one of the best things to ever happen to publishing – and here’s why. Before I became a whatever-the-hell-I-am-now, I tried my hand at many different careers. My first job was scrubbing foxhounds at the local county hunt, and since then I’ve also tried garden shed installation, radio sales, copy-writing and bar tending – all with various degrees of success (my Sapphire Martini is world-class, by the way.) When I first moved to America, I got a very curious job reviewing erotic books for a now-defunct online newspaper The Sex Herald, and this was… Read More >
Super Spy Summer Reading for Teens
By: Ginger | Posted on July 13, 2018
If you want to make sure your teens are keeping up with their reading, here are five super-spy themed series that will leave them shaken and stirred. Summer is often a tough time for parents, as kids and teens can be off school for two months or more. Unfortunately, most parents with jobs don’t enjoy that same benefit – and it’s a challenge to balance fun family activities with keeping the house in order. Throw in the pressure of making sure kids stay on top of their schooling and a lot of parents are practically at the breaking point! One great way to make sure kids keep up with their reading is to introduce them to a book series they simply can’t put down. Recent young adult sagas like The Hunger Games, the Twilight saga and the Divergent trilogy have kept kids addicted to reading – and there are plenty more equally… Read More >
The Good and Bad of Amazon’s $50 Review Rule
By: Craig | Posted on July 10, 2018
Way back in 2017, Amazon introduced a requirement that anyone leaving a review on the site had to have spent at least $50 at the store with an actual credit or debit card. Over time, that policy has evolved to become even more restrictive. While we understand and even applaud the intent behind the policy, questions remain about whether or not it has really made a difference in improving the situation it was designed to fix. And even more importantly, is it worth the cost to the real customers affected by it. The Current $50 Review Rule While the original rule was that customers have spent $50 in total on their account before being able to leave an Amazon review, it has since become more restrictive. According to the community guidelines page, a customer can only write a review if they’ve spent $50 over the last 12 months (that is,… Read More >
Five More Realistic Sci-Fi Books Like Artemis
By: Ginger | Posted on July 4, 2018
Recently I was in New York City with my two boys, and we got to see a fantastic installation commemorating the Audible launch of Artemis, by Andy Weir – the man who wrote the iconic book (and later movie) The Martian. Seeing real-life representations of items from the book – like the ‘Gunk’ which is a home-grown food source derived from algae, or the round air-filled bubbles that tourists visited the Apollo 11 landing site in – really brought the vivid realism of the book to life; and demonstrated how Weir had once again “scienced the heck out of” crafting his tale. Weir’s style of storytelling is often described as ‘science fact’ rather than science fiction, because it’s so well researched. No joke – I even attended a screening of The Martian with a former NASA engineer who’d designed one of the experiments sent to Mars on Viking 1. He… Read More >
The Case for Reading More Often, and Buying More Books
By: Tracy Stanley | Posted on June 22, 2018
Anyone in the book industry knows how tough it is these days to get people to buy more books and spend more time reading. Books have a lot of competition, and it’s not just from traditional things like movies or television. The internet has brought a whole host of new distractions, like streaming video and music or interactive online communities. But author Tracy Stanley is here to remind us that it’s up to us to make the case that there is still a lot of value in books and, compared to many other indulgences, they can be downright bargains. It’s tough. We all know how challenging it is to find readers and to entice them to pay a few dollars for hours of learning and enjoyment. Reading is one of the best investments people can make of their time and money. We know this, but how can we pass the… Read More >
For the Record, eBooks ARE ‘real books’
By: Craig | Posted on June 19, 2018
It’s time to put to rest the misnomer that eBooks aren’t ‘real books.’ It’s an outdated and offensive view and whenever someone uses it as an argument, it tells us far more about that person then it does about whatever book they’re referring to. As you may be aware, every day Hidden Gems Books sends out hundreds of free digital copies of books, on behalf of the authors themselves, to our subscribers. The hope is that most of them will read the book and then leave an honest review, which in turn helps the author get the word out about their book. It’s the whole premise of our ARC program, and we have so many authors and books to send out that we’re always looking for new readers to join our ranks. The program isn’t for everyone, of course, and that’s completely understandable. However, there is one objection to joining… Read More >
The Magic of Music and Storytelling
By: Rebecca E. Neely | Posted on June 15, 2018
There is a lot of overlap between music and books, both being rich and powerful forms of storytelling. It’s not often that we really stop and think about how closely they’re intertwined, and how one can be used to enhance or improve the other. Rebecca Neely is an author that has been affected by music her whole life, and is here to tell us about how she now uses it to help inspire her work as a novelist. Since the beginning of time, people the world over have embraced and celebrated the phenomenon of music in all its diverse forms. In turn, it embodies the essence of people by encompassing, reflecting, recording and communicating their diverse heritage, traditions, cultures, customs, races, ethnicities, languages and religions. Even geography, climate, economics and the use of technology contributes to the creation, artistry and performance of music. Indeed, as a whole it’s not only… Read More >
5 More Books Like ‘The President is Missing’
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on June 12, 2018
Want 4 more years because you can’t get enough of ‘The President is Missing’, by Bill Clinton and James Patterson? Here are five more presidential thrillers that’ll take you on a similarly wild ride. The President is Missing is poised to become one of the biggest runaway best-sellers of the year. Penned by superstar author James Patterson, with narrative direction by 42nd President Bill Clinton, it’s a taut thriller about the Commander-in-Chief’s desperate battle to save America from cyber-terrorism. Louise Penny, the bestselling author of Glass Houses, perhaps described the book best when she said it was “heart-pounding, gripping, terrifying. As I read, ferociously turning the pages, I kept asking myself, ‘Could this really happen’?” As is the problem with all good reads, even at a whopping 528 pages, The President is Missing is over all-too-quickly. The book itself is set over the course of just five days, after all…. Read More >
Characterization and Setting – It’s All in the Details
By: Naomi Bellina | Posted on June 8, 2018
When done properly, writing with rich detail and characterization is something a reader doesn’t even notice. It just pulls them into the author’s world and allows them to image the people and places that they visit. But how do writers create such vivid pictures? There are many techniques, and we asked Naomi Bellini to break some of them down for us. What she delivered is a great behind-the-scenes look at how it’s done that is interesting to both readers and authors. Don’t you love to fall so deep into a book you lose track of real life, and stay up way past your bedtime, because you have to read just one more chapter? Or look up from the page and totally expect to see the scenery and characters you were reading about? As authors, that’s what we hope happens when you read our stories. One way we accomplish this is… Read More >
Amazon Slams the Doors to Kindle Worlds
By: Jen Talty | Posted on June 1, 2018
First Amazon shut down the Kindle Scout program. Now, about a month later, they’re doing the same to Kindle Worlds. The issue affects both readers and writers alike, and Hidden Gems has been lucky to have worked with two prominent KW authors in the past. Jen Talty and Casey Hagen are speaking up to share their view and perspective on what exactly went down and what it means to the future of everyone affected. As the behemoth of the book world, what Amazon creates, it can decimate… Hundreds of authors with novels and novellas published within Kindle Worlds were notified by Amazon that Kindle Worlds would be no more. Finished. Kaput. This has a huge impact on both the seed authors, the author whose world was licensed with Amazon, and the authors who gave up time, energy, and their copyrights so they could play in the seed author’s sandbox. We… Read More >
