There are two kinds of people in literatureville: those who look a gift horse in the mouth and those who are grateful for a ride.
Recently, I approached a reviewer–a pretty good reviewer–of indie books. I wanted to collaborate with her to select good indie books to feature (at no cost to anyone) here on The Deepening. (I’m always looking for good indie books!) Instead of just mining the reviewer’s list, I asked–a huge mistake. I should have just mined her list and told her nothing at all, since then the good authors on her list would get the free publicity. Now, though, instead, “her authors” won’t get the free publicity. I’ll go elsewhere and continue to select books as I find them.
This woman insisted on jumping to (erroneous) conclusions that my only interest in, as she put it, “her authors” was to solicit money from them for paid features here on TD. Nothing could have been further from the truth. But she wasn’t willing to listen when I tried to explain that to her. She just kept up her nasty sniping at me. (I figured she must be having a very, very bad day.) So, after once again offering her time to reconsider her embittered response, I excused myself.
A WORD TO THE WISE: If I seek out a reviewer’s list or an author, the features I do are completely free of charge. The only time a feature is paid for is when the author or publisher solicits a feature from The Deepening by filling out our form. It’s how we try to cover our server fees, for those who wonder about ‘why’, and we do a legitimate good service for authors and publishers which takes time, effort, and, yes, money.
In essence, you can, as authors and publishers, take your chances that I’ll happen to see your book and decide to feature it, or you can pay a very small fee to guarantee that it gets on The Deepening, a fee that goes to help defray the substantial cost of running this site. Either way, at least one novel and one non-fiction book get featured every weekday here on The Deepening, usually more. It’s the luck of the draw if it happens to be yours.