Review Submissions
Renaissance Writer is open for review submissions.
If you are a serious writer and if your work has been polished sufficiently, I would be pleased to consider your submission.
I am most comfortable with fantasy, alternate reality, science fiction, and humour
I am well-qualified to review play and movie scripts
I am familiar with paranormal and YA of all genres
I read a lot of murder mysteries
I also read just about any genre, fiction or non-fiction. Send it along. The worst I can say is “no”. The worst I will probably say is “This book is not ready for publication.”
Ebook submissions: in .epub, .mobi, .pdf, or .docx to <gordonlong@airbornpress.ca>
I often choose books based on the “Read Inside” function on Amazon. If that is not available (usually because the book is not published yet) then it’s best to just submit a full eMS. Three or four chapters will do, if you’re the cautious type.
Hardcopy submissions: you might want to enquire first to avoid wasting your shipping costs, then send to:
Gordon A. Long
4958 10A Ave.
Delta, B. C.
V4M 1X8
Canada
Reviews will be posted to this site, to Amazon, and to Goodreads. Elsewhere can be negotiated.
Editing Needs
If you are a writer seriously interested in improving your work, I offer full editing services at lower rates than any of the larger services can offer: developmental, structural, copy editing and proofreading. I also do formatting for ebooks and hardcopies for Createspace, and can recommend a good graphic artist for cover design.
Short Stories and Poems
If you would like to have either of these published on the Airborn Press site, please submit as you would for a review, above.
Warning and Disclaimer
It is a common complaint among internet reviewers and writers that everybody and his dog (Please read “The Art of Racing in the Rain” if you don’t believe me. It’s a great book.) can publish something nowadays, and many of the results look like it.
With all this junk clogging up the retailers, it’s hard to find a book that isn’t going to disappoint you with lousy spelling and punctuation, poor characterization, multiple point of view switches, and all sorts of silliness that a touchup by a good editor should have corrected.
If anyone asks me to review an editorial travesty, my response is, “This book is not ready for reviewing.” I hope that lets the author down more gently and sends the message more clearly than, “This book is a pile of junk.” Or less polite words.
So anything that I review has reached a certain standard of writing professionalism.
There will be some books – usually self-published but not always – that I will review in spite of what I think is poor editing, because they have other redeeming values. Genre fiction of the simpler sort comes to mind. I like a rollicking space opera or paranormal romance, and the accepted standard for this type of book is lower. I might toss in a sentence to warn finicky readers, but that’s all. When it comes to the crunch editing is an art, and sometimes the problem isn’t poor editing, just an editor who makes different choices from those I would have made. Use of commas comes to mind. Adjectives and adverbs are a big bone of contention as well.
The moral of the story for beginning writers is, “You Can’t Edit Your Own Work.” Tattoo that on the inside of your eyelids and read it over every night before you go to sleep.
For prospective readers of my reviews, it means that any book I comment on at least shows evidence of reasonable editing, although that does not guarantee it a rave. It also means you won’t be subjected to my litany of complaints in every review: a win-win situation all round.
If you are a writer looking for a review and the above hasn’t warned you off, submissions are cheerfully accepted.
Happy Reading
Gordon A. Long