Blogcritics: Comments on Burrito, Illinois by Jason Tanamor

Comment by Bryce Eddings

Tue, 7 Dec 2004 18:08:39 EST

Scott says: "Even if PA does reject 80% of what they receive, it's hard to apply the term "discriminating" when you consider that most traditional publishers reject 99.9% of unsolicited manuscripts." It's funny; if you look at the "about us" section of the PA website, they actually point proudly to this fact. This is why they are better than other vanity press houses, they claim. I had to chuckle when I read this for the first time a few months ago.

Comment by Scott Pepper

Tue, 7 Dec 2004 12:53:36 EST

Even if PA does reject 80% of what they receive, it's hard to apply the term "discriminating" when you consider that most traditional publishers reject 99.9% of unsolicited manuscripts. And, despite the smoke and mirrors, PA does still fit the definition of a vanity press according to this independent lawyer, based on the fact that under their contracts, (a) the author retains the legal title to the work and (b) capital flow post-publication is toward the publisher not the author. The link Bryce provided above has further links to rants by some incredibly pissed off writers who didn't see through PA's scheme before buying into it. The message for most would-be writers definately seems to be "stay away."

Comment by Bryce Eddings

Tue, 7 Dec 2004 12:08:02 EST

Listed at Advance. Nice review and interesting discussion. I looked into this one and saw that the problem might not be as much with the author as the publisher. That's not to say that more polish could have been applied before Mr. Tanamor submitted his work but, and I think that this was ZMethos's main idea, the main blame lies with a publisher, in this case PublishAmerica, that didn't put the work into this book needed to make it what it might have been. The review hints that this might have been an interesting story but the stack of errors was too high to get around. According to the discussion after, ZMethos admits to working in the publishing industry and so is more likely to identify these problems. A "lay" reader might just have seen a convoluted story not worth their time. In any case, PublishAmerica and others of its ilk seem to be a real problem. While PA is not a print on demand or fee driven "self publisher" the sting about being published by them is that they only sell to book stores on a non-returnable basis. I don't know a lot about the book selling business but I know enough to know that this is a killer for trying to sell in many bookstores. Returning unsold books is almost a right of bookstores and their business model is built on being able to do that. If you want your book on very many shelves, PA is not the way to go. Going by this book, it seems that they go on the cheap with their editing as well. Here's an interesting link: http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/pebp.htm The listing is alphabetical so PA is about 2/3 of the way down the page. The issue here is exploring PA's claim that they are so discriminating that they reject 80% of the books submitted to them. Anyway, it's an interesting discussion. I recently finished my own novel and have been searching for an agent. I considered going with one of the dozens of non-traditional publishing houses out there but they all seem to end with horror stories. This reinforces my wariness of them. Thanks for the review!

Comment by ZMethos

Mon, 6 Dec 2004 11:37:48 EST

Thanks, Aaman. I'm not going to mix in here except to say that, as a person who works in publishing as an editor, I feel like I know "unpolished" or "rough" writing when I come across it. And it's not as if I enjoy giving bad reviews; I'm hoping the author can take some of my pointers into consideration when he starts his next project. Best of luck to him. And that's all I'm going to say on the matter.

Comment by Aaman

Mon, 6 Dec 2004 11:28:10 EST

Those two excerpts alone are enough to put one off this burrito. ZMethos, from your references to "Get Shorty" and "Strip Tease" one gets an idea of the kind of book this aspires to be - thank you for the review. The Internet is lacking in any reviews of this book, other than the usual press releases. From the author's site, a bio of the author - evidently a pop insider

Comment by Eric Olsen

Mon, 6 Dec 2004 11:17:07 EST

But as I said, the review directly addresses the most relevant issue with the book in a clear and concise manner, with examples. So how is it a bad review?

Comment by Allison

Mon, 6 Dec 2004 10:47:32 EST

Writes, "perhaps Allison is related to the author." Yeah. And you're just not the head honcho here defending your bad reviewer? And how about the Scott Pepper, Mr. "Husband" of said bad reviewer. Get a life. If it's a bad reviewer then it's a bad reviewer. Not hard to figure this out here.

Comment by Eric Olsen

Mon, 6 Dec 2004 08:52:46 EST

perhaps Allison is related to the author perhaps the most important task of the reviewer is to give an overall reaction and state why: the overall reaction here is that the stylistic and editing problems detract so much that its too hard to get into the story. That seems like a good review to me.

Comment by Scott Pepper

Mon, 6 Dec 2004 06:18:09 EST

That's funny--I thought this review was incredibly helpful in terms of trying to decide whether to read this book or not. The fact that the reviewer doesn't pull any punches in letting us know that that amateurish (to judge by the quoted text) writing gets in the way of the story tells me all I need to know. Well, that and the fact that it was published by a vanity press and not real publisher.

Comment by Allison

Mon, 6 Dec 2004 05:54:42 EST

I must say, the reviewer who reviewed Burrito, Illinois has no clue on how to review a book. What does any of this have to do with the story? Writes, "...and clearly lacks the polish of a good editor"? What? Are you a high school teacher or something? If I am deciding whether or not to read the book, how is a review like this going to help me? It has nothing to do with the story. The reviewer needs to think about the readers and not slam authors because he or she happened to not like it. So, I will end this by saying your review is like reading something from a high schooler which clearly lacks the polish of an intelligent person.