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jaceyI don't know that this is an entirely fair assessment because what there was was fine - but this chapbook was disappointingly content-light.
I'm reviewing this here because it was sold as a book, but this leads me to ask: what is a book? Or perhaps, more specifically, what constitutes an e-book? When you can't see the thickness of the spine, or flick through the pages, or pick it up and weigh it in your hand, how do you know - in advance - what you are getting for your money? This is at best an essay and looks as though it was originally produced for a con goody-bag with almost 40% of it being about Vonda McIntyre and therefore not entirely what it says on the package. With just 36 kindle pages/screens dedicated to the actual advertised subject matter (and plenty of white spaces on those pages) I read it in about ten minutes.
OK, going back to the Book View Café site I admit that it calls this a 'chapbook' but all it contains are 14 brief points which are (mostly) about writing in general and not specific to writing science fiction. I admit they are 14 good points, such as 'don't infodump' but I expected things much more specific to SF like whether to write hard SF and stick to the physics of FTL and time dilation or to sacrifice physics to story.
There's no information here that you can't pick up on the web for free, so at $2.99 for a few brief pages this is not great value for money. On the other hand Book View Café is a good enterprise, being an author co-op, and I've had some excellent fiction from there so I'm glad to support it.
I'm reviewing this here because it was sold as a book, but this leads me to ask: what is a book? Or perhaps, more specifically, what constitutes an e-book? When you can't see the thickness of the spine, or flick through the pages, or pick it up and weigh it in your hand, how do you know - in advance - what you are getting for your money? This is at best an essay and looks as though it was originally produced for a con goody-bag with almost 40% of it being about Vonda McIntyre and therefore not entirely what it says on the package. With just 36 kindle pages/screens dedicated to the actual advertised subject matter (and plenty of white spaces on those pages) I read it in about ten minutes.
OK, going back to the Book View Café site I admit that it calls this a 'chapbook' but all it contains are 14 brief points which are (mostly) about writing in general and not specific to writing science fiction. I admit they are 14 good points, such as 'don't infodump' but I expected things much more specific to SF like whether to write hard SF and stick to the physics of FTL and time dilation or to sacrifice physics to story.
There's no information here that you can't pick up on the web for free, so at $2.99 for a few brief pages this is not great value for money. On the other hand Book View Café is a good enterprise, being an author co-op, and I've had some excellent fiction from there so I'm glad to support it.
