#reactor publishing

Do not enable Publishers that are moving books towards a very clear and blatant attempt as a "Subscription Model"-- towards "DLC Culture for Books".

Do not enable Publishers that split novels into multiple short stories so they can be published three months apart as separate standalone pieces that you're then charge door-stopper prices for something only a fraction of the length.

Do not enable Publishers that keep upping their prices to exorbitant amounts ($16-20+) for a book that isn't even a centimeter thick.

Do not enable Publishers that use AI generated covers repeatedly, and claim "Oh, our artists just didn't realize the stock image they bought was AI!" even *after* someone unearthed the original, near-unaltered AI generated image that the digital artists at said publisher literally had to badly photoshop legs onto the person on the cover because they literally didn't have any legs in the original image.

Do not enable Publishers that parcel out novels into 4 books so they can charge you $80 instead of $15-$20.

Do not enable Publishers who sell completely unedited Wattpad fic with AI generated covers that they're charging you *more* than the full price you'd pay for a fully edited, amazing, doorstopping novel that uses every page with purpose.

Don't support Publishers charging $13 for an ebook that is barely over a hundred pages and can be read in two hours flat, leaving many readers absolutely flabbergasted because they thought from the price they were purchasing a full-length novel.

They're counting literally all the pages that come before actual page 1 chapter 1 as pages of the story. The title page. the second title page. the list of other books she wrote that they purposefully spread across 2 pages literally just to use up another page very blatantly. the third title page. the copyright page.

They're counting all that shit as part of the story.

So they're pretending that Chapter 1 Page 1, is actually page 9, so that they can claim the entire book has more pages of story than it really does.

And then each page's text has an absurdly high margin at the bottom, so that they can artificially spread the text over as many pages as possible, while already lying to you about what page number you're actually on.

All of it is such a brazen scam. And yet somehow I've never seen anyone point out that they literally lie to you about what page number you're on.

And then after all that there's no less than 7 whole entire blank pages at the back of the book. To make the book seem bigger than it is.

same reviewer:

"I mean, sure, it took til page 300-something of the 400+ page book for me to actually care about the characters or even remember their names, but that last 100 pages, the pacing really picked up and I felt something for the characters!

"I can't wait for the sequel, because there was a LOT of things that didn't get any conclusion to at the end of the book!"

[this book was endlessly, deliberately advertised as a standalone to get people to read it in the first place, only to have the rug pulled out from under readers feet when they finish the book and nothing has any kind of satisfying conclusion, the main plot points have been completely glossed over, epic final battles have been skipped over completely with a time skip, and the book is one big hunk of shallow, poorly-executed tropes that got speedrunned by cardboard cutouts in the background]

It's literally hilarious how even the "positive" reviews trying to praise the book ends up pointing out its fatal flaws.

Hint: a book shouldn't be a slog to read until the final 50 pages-- that's just bad writing.

If it takes you suffering through 300 pages in a 400 page "standalone" to actually LIKE the characters, that's just bad writing.

If a book was deliberately, exclusively advertised as "An epic, standalone fantasy novel" only for it to

1) not be an epic fantasy by any definition, to the point "positive" reviewers warn people not to read it with that expectation

and

2) not able to stand on its own two feet with a well-built world or characters like a standalone novel REQUIRES

3) LITERALLY not be standalone because now its gonna be a fucking trilogy?

review title: Lousy way to make money off the reader

Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2022

Verified Purchase

And the cover. Is peeling.

I have literally never in my life had this happen, even with books that have been read dozens of times and are multiple decades old.