Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge discussion

Use this space to discuss books you're reading or that might fit the 23rd Read Harder task.

Still Alice
RUN Ragged

I'm finding it challenging to determine if a book was self-published or not, any tips for how you're making that call?

I'm doing The Summer We Got Free by Mia McKenzie because it was published by the author's personal blog site.

I can highly recommend Blood Song It's perfect in so many ways!

I read Silence by Natasha Preston a couple of years ago, so I'm going to read the sequel Broken Silence. Great for fans of YA!

I believe Ursula Vernon a.k.a. T. Kingfisher self-publishes a lot of her work - she talks about it on Twitter sometimes. I've read quite a few of her stories written as Kingfisher and thoroughly recommend, she's wonderful.

I was sent a file of a book written by a friend here on GRs to review for him and I haven't finished it this year, so I'm going to use it for this task. Beds Are For Flowers

Would books published via Wattpad "count" in this category? Full disclosure, I know this author and his brother (mostly via Facebook) and I follow the brother's stand-up comedy.

https://www.wattpad.com/user/Chris_Burke

I'm using The Duchess War for this task. Almost all of Courtney Milan's books are self-published so many of them would be possibilities for this task.

Posted a bunch in the Task 9 thread. IIRC The Martian was self-pubbed before being picked up by a publisher and I know there are other cases of this for books. . . but I have no idea how to find a list. =/

I'm still undecided what book I'm doing for this one, but I've plenty of options.

I'm going to be reading The Library of Souls.

Also, I found a few lists using the tag 'self -published) here on Goodreads. I'm not sure if the books in each List will be valid, but it could be a good starting point if you're unaware of any self-published books.

https://www.goodreads.com/list/tag/se...

The Solar Grid #1: Wretched of the Earth looks good! It's a series of graphic novels that was in the Book Riot "50 books by egyptian writers" list, and which is published online by the author: https://thesolargrid.net/Read
The first book is even for free. :)

I'll be reading Rafe by Rebekah Weatherspoon!

I am thinking about Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by David Goggins. I believe it is self-published. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.

I've been doing some research on books that where initially selfpublished since the danish self-publishing scene is often... not that great.
I found out that Swann's Way was self-published and since I was gifted the series about a year ago, I'm going to dive into that one.

I believe Geoff Wolak k2 spy series was originally self published because I downloaded the first 6 books from his website http://www.geoffwolak-writing.com.

I may continue on in the Wool Omnibus. Those were originally self-published and then picked up by a major publisher, sort of like The Martian and Agent to the Stars.

Or maybe I'll go with one of the many self-pubbed works I've picked up at conventions.

Vanessa wrote: "I'm finding it challenging to determine if a book was self-published or not, any tips for how you're making that call?"

It can be tricky sometimes! A lot of Kindle freebies are self-published, and the easy ones to tell are those that don't list a company as the publisher. Some self-pub authors get a little more sophisticated about it and set themselves up as a publisher under a corporate name. Then you can look at the publisher's website and see if they've published any works by any other authors. Even then, though, there are a lot of "publishers" that are really just POD vanity presses, suckering in gullible people who are willing to pay huge sums of money for what they think is traditional publishing. So while Author House may have tons of authors on its website, those authors are actually self-pubbing. They just don't realize it most of the time.

I googled this the other day and found out that The Shack was initially self published. It is on my TBR list and so fits.

I can recommend The Book of Dog by Lark Benobi. I read this last year. It can also be used for the point of view of an animal task.

Here's an article on some bestsellers that started as self-published:https://curiosityneverkilledthewriter...

and another:https://electricliterature.com/11-boo...

AND another...http://mentalfloss.com/article/51567/...

Senlin Ascends is one of my favorite books I've read this past year, if anyone is looking for fantasy for this one. I highly recommend it. It is now put out by Orbit books, but it was originally self published. I was planning to do the third book in the series, that comes out next month, for this one myself before I realized it wasn't being self published.

If you like romance Jenny Trout is a good, funny author. I don't normally like romance but was given a copy of one of her books and very much enjoyed it.

I'm not sure if it counts as self published if the author owns the publishing company, but if it does The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan is a great book as well. It's a Science Fiction/Humor book.

Becky Chamber's The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet was also originally self-published, and it's great!

https://electricliterature.com/11-boo...

This article is a great list.

was Go Ask Alice self-published?

rae wrote: "was Go Ask Alice self-published?"

I googled that for you and the answer appears to be no; it was published by Prentice Hall.

There are two books that I have flagged for the Business Book category which would also fit here (and the Fewer than 100 reviews on Goodreads one too)

No Ceiling, No Walls: What women haven't been told about leadership from career-start to the corporate boardroom
and
Make the Most of Mentoring: Capitalize on Mentoring and Take Your Career to the Next Level

I have a book that's an essay collection--the essays are written by a variety of people, but the editor collects them all and then self-publishes the collection. I feel like that still counts?

In the editor's own words: "This journal, my tribute to the community, is compiled, edited, published, and—after the money from sales and gifts is collected—funded by me. And that’s the way I want it."

I'm part of a writing group so this is pretty easy for me. I'd recommend my fellow members Tim Walker and Jonathan Posner

I'll be reading Time Zone by Rv Hodge, which also satisfies task 9.


If I had not just recently finished Paladins: Anointing by Mark Vivian, I would read that for one or both of these tasks.

I'm planning on reading Angelfall, wich Ee originally published herself before being picked up by a publisher.

Allison ༻hikes the bookwoods༺ wrote: "I read Silence by Natasha Preston a couple of years ago, so I'm going to read the sequel Broken Silence. Great for fans of YA!"

Are all her books self published? I googled the publisher listed "Sourcebooks Fire" - it looks like maybe they are a company that helps authors self publish their books? I'm interested in You Will Be Mine for this topic.

We met Clive Goddard at a library event and he said all of his books are self published, we are looking forward to reading the Fintan Fedora Books - https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

I can’t recommend NPC’s by Dew Hayes strongly enough. It is self published and absolutely 5 star amazing.

Jessica wrote: "I can’t recommend NPC’s by Dew Hayes strongly enough. It is self published and absolutely 5 star amazing."

My husband really enjoyed the audio-book version and has recommended it to me so I'll definitely be going with that.

Therese wrote: "I googled this the other day and found out that The Shack was initially self published. It is on my TBR list and so fits."

It is on my TBR list too! Thanks for the suggestion as I will be reading it too.

Fall To Grace by Kerry Casey - My real life book club read this book in 2018 - we all loved it. It's one of those books that you find yourself still thinking about months after. Set in MN, the boys that are the main story, play hockey. But that is secondary to why they meet. Both lose their fathers to accidents on the same day and we see how they both deal with this loss. This is the first book in a trilogy and appears to be self-published.

I think I’ll read something by Penny Reid for this. I enjoyed her stories on Cocktales and from what I can tell all her books are self published.
Please correct me if I’m wrong/confirm I’m right! Self
Publishing seems a touch confusing in places.

Susanne wrote: "Becky Chamber's The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet was also originally self-published, and it's great!"

Oh, thanks, good one! I didn't know (or maybe forgot) it was self-published.

Are books published through Amazon Publishing considered to be self-published?

Since I'm re-reading Harry Potter this year, I'll be reading Dear Mr. Potter: Letters of Love, Loss, and Magic for this category afterwards, which I've had on my shelf for ages and have yet to read.

Two great books that would fit into this category are by Margaret Porter: Beautiful Invention: A Novel of Hedy Lamarr
A Pledge of Better Times

Hi there! I'm compiling lists of everyone's suggestions for the challenges in case it's easier for people (I know it is for me!) c:

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

Question about the intent of the category--I assumed that it was to read a book that was CURRENTLY self-published, not a best seller that was at one time self-published. Am I wrong? Does it matter?;)

Julie wrote: "Question about the intent of the category--I assumed that it was to read a book that was CURRENTLY self-published, not a best seller that was at one time self-published. Am I wrong? Does it matter?;)"
That's an interesting observation - and probably the intent.

I mean, I don't know if that's necessarily fair, as those books wouldn't have become bestsellers without self-publishing first.

Mandie wrote: "I mean, I don't know if that's necessarily fair, as those books wouldn't have become bestsellers without self-publishing first."

I kind of agree. Also, my reading time is so limited, and there are so many not-so-great self-published books out there, that I'd rather go with something that has been vetted somehow as being worth my time, and something that made the jump to trad publication is probably the most natural measure. It might sound harsh, but I'm just not willing to pick something at random on Amazon and read it for the sake of fulfilling the challenge.

I really think each of us has to figure out how we want to read, interpret and fulfill each task. If you broaden your reading the goal has been reached, in my opinion. We are thousands of people participating in these challenges. Our acces to books, to public libraries, to purchasing new books, to language etc will be different and all of this impacts the way we go about these challenges.

For instance - I’m danish. I have great acces to books via our public library system. On the other hand danish is a small language which means that to fulfill these tasks I will have to read a great deal in english (which is no problem for me personally), since some of the tasks are very specific and hard to meet in danish. I also have limited acces to eg self-published books since the danish scene is very limited and most often of low standard and our libraries rarely carry self-published books from other contries. I could buy something, but I’m not that keen on buying books I don’t really, really want to buy.
All of this means that I have to approach some tasks differently than some of you. And that’s fine by me, because that’s exactly what this challenge is about for me ☺️