Space Opera Fans discussion

Reader Pick is for books from traditional publishers, available just about everywhere including brick and mortar stores.

Indie Pick is for books where the author has to do the advertising : self published or from a micropress.

So.... Rebel Base Books is an imprint of a traditional publisher but doesn’t fit either of these. The books are published as ebooks, with trade paperback available but printed at time of request, the way that Amazon handles self published books. That is, if a customer wants it in paperback, he orders it, it gets printed, then is shipped. You don’t see these books in brick and mortar stores.

Rebel Base Books and any similar publishers fall through the cracks.

We have another category of books that falls through the cracks: books from traditional publishers that are out of print in paper but available as ebooks. We decided that those just qualify for Themed Pick.

Question: do we want to limit Rebel Base Books to Themed Pick as well, or allow them to count as Indie? Or even allow them to count as Reader? If we count them as Reader then we would need to relax the rules for Reader (how important is it that the books be found in brick and mortar stores?).

Discuss. If we don’t get a clear consensus I’ll make a poll on this.

I do almost all of my reading on my kindle, but I know there are a lot of people who don't like to read e-books. I would hate to see some of our members not be able to participate because a selection is only available in digital form. On the other hand, more and more books are being published digital only, so we're restricting our choices by insisting on multiple formats.

I don't have strong feelings either way, but I think if I had to I would support allowing the Indie category to include Rebel Base and other similar publishers.

Neither fish nor fowl, eh? I can see the argument for any of the categories, but I’d think Themed fits best.

Maybe it’s time to rethink the categories entirely. Perhaps collapse it down to two, such as “traditional publishing” and “ebooks only”, with things such as these appearing in the appropriate section on a case-by-case basis.

With Rebel Base Books, Kensington Publishing Corp. -- the largest independent publisher in America -- has blurred the lines a bit but also afforded writers like me a great opportunity for increased exposure.

Since they do provide a method to obtain the trade paperback editions as Payment On Demand (POD), I do not think they should be classified as "ebook only." Yet POD is not mass market paperback stocked in brick and mortar stores either.

So maybe a new category for POD and ebook?

Or perhaps just keep Reader as is, and instead of Indie have a category that is “anything else” with a better name to it. Three separate nomination threads a month is all I can handle, and Themed gets more attention than Indie does.

I’ve created a poll to get more feedback. When I send the monthly email about the nomination threads, I’ll include a link to the poll.

Which books would be Rebel Base? Which Imprints, for example?

This was an old discussion. Since that time, we replaced Indie by Limited. If a book can be ordered as paperback and is available in multiple ebook formats, it’s acceptable as Reader now, and anything else goes in Limited.

And here’s a link to Rebel Base which is an imprint of Kensington books: https://www.kensingtonbooks.com/pages...

Thanks!