Bring Me the Head…
Written: Oct 09 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Thorough. Helpful.
Cons: Would a couple of page numbers have killed you?
The Bottom Line: Just spring for the real Writer's Market. This is far too annoying to work with.
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| Darkmistress's Full Review: Novel and Short Story Writer's Market 2001: 2,000 ... |
Of the person who put this book together. Silver platter not required.
I bought the Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market because, at the time of my purchase, the regular Writer’s Market was out of stock and I had made up my mind to purchase that very day come heck or high water. Since I could not have what I really wanted, I got the next best thing. Or so I thought.
Writer’s Digest is normally exemplary in their publications. Every one I’ve seen has been thorough, well organized and helpful. Most are quite basic, but most people who want to be writers never put pen to paper anyway so it doesn’t matter if they explain what a "slush pile" is in every book. The Markets are usually of a slightly higher ability lever because it one is looking for markets for one’s work it can be assumed that one has written something. These books also tend to be packed with informative essays of all kinds which is a very good thing on the whole. This book is broken into 10 sections:
Craft and Technique
Personal Views
Electronic Publishing
For Mystery Writers
For Romance Writers
For Science Fiction / Fantasy & Horror Writers
Getting Published
The Markets
Resources
Indexes
So far so good. Each section has it’s essays and all three of the "For" sections have lists of markets appearing in this book. A good thing, no?
No. The first time I tried to use this book I flipped to the Science Fiction / Fantasy & Horror Markets Appearing In This Book, a subsection of For Science Fiction / Fantasy & Horror Writers and started my search for appropriate publishers for my heartbreaking works of staggering genius and this is what I found:
"Abberations
About Such Things
Advocate, PKA’s Publication
Affable Neighbor
Alembic
Amazing Stories
Amelia
Analecta…"
Do you see what’s wrong here? No I don’t mean that Amazing Stories is out is print. That is sort of expected in this sort of thing. No, what is missing here is page numbers. The titles of the magazines are listed here, in order to get the addresses you must flip to the back of the book and look up the page number in the index and then you must go to that page number and read the description of the magazine in question. This is a great deal of flipping to be doing in a book that runs 678 pages and whose pages are thin newsprint. Especially when you consider that, often, the first choice is not the best choice and you won’t know that until you get to the description.
Over all the book is great, covering topics from how to create fiction to secrets of successful readings. Everything you ever wanted to shut up the wanna be writer in your life. (You wanna write? This will help you get published. Now go. Write. Leave me alone until you have 15,000 words. Should take about a week.) The advice is good, the markets a split up conveniently. What more could you ask for?
I, for one, would ask that the pages numbers for the markets be on the market listings in the subsections instead of just in the index. This one thing would make to book perfect for me. Without this one thing I kinda want to heave the book out the window.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
Darkmistress
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Location: Concepcion, Chile
Reviews written: 484
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