Amanda Hocking, the indie e-pubbed bestseller, credits book bloggers for taking her from a minimum-wage, dead end job to millions of books sold through Amazon and Smashwords and a seven-figure contract with St. Martin’s Press.
This news has started an avalanche of review requests by self-e-pubbed authors into book bloggers in-boxes. So much so that Big Al, of Big Al’s books and pals, has stopped accepting unsolicited review requests.
The statement under Big Al’s submission guidelines sounds strikingly like something an agent or publisher might put on their website:
Big Al says: “As of May 17th. We are currently NOT accepting unsolicited review submissions until we catch up with evaluating those already received.”
I’ve heard many editors, authors and agents express concern about the e-publishing industry, and the biggest worry seems to be about who will be the gatekeepers of modern publishing. Big Al’s announcement proves that book bloggers will be covering one gate. How can I tell? It just slammed closed until further notice.
