Thursday, October 14, 2010

The Podpeople Invite You to the Goodreads Indie Page 99 Group

Ford Madox Ford said, "Open a book to page ninety-nine, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you."

As many of you know, we are all about the Indie book community, not in a fluffy bunny sort of way, but in an honest advocacy sort of way, and we are always looking for new reviewers and new content. We have recently started up our My Story column again, and we have also begun a new promotional column which follows the theme of the Page99 Book Test in light of the startup of Page99Test.com

Those who know me and read my regular column know I agree with Ford Madox Ford. I have never been a first page "hook" person. The real writing is in the middle of a book. I've always believed that, so in the coming weeks The Podpeople will be featuring the page 99 of submitted Indie titles. We hope to make this a regular thing, and we ask our readers and Indie author supporters to spread the word. As a secondary part of this project, The Podpeople are now sponsoring a group over on Goodreads where independent authors of all kinds can post their page 99s for the Goodreads reader community. Details and Rules for posting can be found on the group homepage and are the same for submitting here to the blog:

Please add your book to the shelf, include a purchase link for the book and the following information in the body of the post:
Title:
Author:
Genre:
Copyright Notice: Date, Copyright holder's name, and rights reserved.
Please provide the cover copy from the back of the book as well, or the book description if it's ebook only and a good quality jpeg of the cover if you want it posted on the blog. The books must be for sale, include a link to your preferred sales site or sites. All Genres are welcome. No erotica. We would like to keep this a rated G/PG-13/R group. Use your discrection, please.

I will be cross-posting all books submitted to The Podpeople Blog. Self-published authors and Indie Press authors may post their page 99s directly to the group, but the only way this will work and attract readers is if the contributors spread the word. Goodreads is only as good as its community. The purpose of the group is to expose readers to a wide variety of Indie books -- without charging anyone anything -- and the best way to do that is a preview. The Podpeople are not endorsing the books posted to the group nor will we be posting recommendations. This group is all about letting the writing stand on its own. It's for the reading community. Readers may comment freely, and we hope they do. I didn't want this to be another one of those critique sites where Indie authors just comment on each other's work. I wanted it to be very reader centric, as it should be, so the work must be for sale in some format or another.

If you want your page 99 featured here on the blog *and* posted to the Goodreads group, send us an email containing the above information to: podpeep at gmail dot com with the subject line Page 99. If your page 99 happens to be a chapter start or chapter end and does not comprise a full page, you may use the full page before or after your page 99. If your book is a novella and does not have a page 99, you may use page 69. One page only, and again No Erotica please. I will be able to post erotica on the blog but not to the Goodreads group for obvious reasons. Use your discretion when submitting work to the Goodreads group. Rated R is the limit, and I will be moderating.

http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/38930.Indie_Page_99

Cheryl Anne Gardner

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