Standalone books are often overlooked in favour of a series, but they deserve more attention. While there’s something satisfying about following the same characters over multiple books, standalone novels offer their own unique benefits. First and foremost, standalone books offer a complete story arc in a single package. There’s no need to wait for the […]
What do you think about authors recapping the previous book before the first chapter? For readers who are invested in a series, waiting for the next installment can be a challenge, particularly if it’s been a while since they last picked up the story. In such cases, some authors choose to provide a recap of […]
I have been spending less time in the YA community lately, as part of my ‘stepping back’ from both reviewing and the online community in general. Subsequently, I’ve been spending more time in the indie adult book community. Specifically, I’ve been interacting more with readers who devour indie published books. The ravenous readers. As this […]
Recently I’ve taken a step back from the online book community, mostly the YA space. This has been for a couple of reasons. The first is that I think the YA community has really moved to Instagram and Tiktok and really values aesthetics much more than writing book reviews. I value my privacy and I’m […]
At first glance, Kindle Unlimited seems like a good deal for those of us book dragons who consume many ebooks a month. For $13 a month or thereabouts, you can access a huge library and read as many books as you want. It’s great as a subscription service because many authors place their books in […]
Authors do not have to be morally responsible for the thoughts, decisions, and actions of their characters, and imposing that on authors restricts their ability to tell an engaging story. It’s absolutely fine if you only want to read about innocent, good, pure characters (Pollyanna eat your heart out!), but punishing authors who write characters […]
Why can’t YA be about actual young adults aged 18-early 20s and we have a separate Teen section just for teens? Short answer: logistics. Long answer: The entire industry from writers to publishers to booksellers to consumers would have to work together and the failed New Adult experiment proved that can’t happen. Defining YA has […]
On Twitter, which I understand has limited characters to write your message, I’m seeing more and more authors promoting their books via tropes rather than characters/story (note I did not say PLOT because a PLOT is different to a STORY). Enemies to lovers! Fake dating! Slow burn! There was only one bed! Yeah, but what’s […]
ARC = Advanced Reading/Review Copy Hi there and welcome to my first discussion post of 2022! Today I’m talking about why I cut way back on reviewing ARCs in 2021. I only reviewed 3 ARCs in 2021, which was down from 10-20 over the few years preceding. They say being a writer is like assigning […]
I’ve been listening to audiobooks for years, but I’ve only just started playing around with speeding them up. I could never understand why someone would speed up an audiobook to begin with. Can you still get the full effect of the story if the narrator is speaking too quickly? Book Riot writer Kelly Jensen recently […]
