This site, Fiction Critique, was submitted to my resource directory a few days ago. The site is offering critique and editing services to writers but who is offering this service? There is not one singe word about the “editor”, who he/she is or what credentials he/she may have. The only contact information is an email address and a P.O. Box in New York. I checked the whois for ownership of the domain name but it’s “private”, meaning you or I can not see who owns the site. That is very annoying when trying to confirm ownership of any kind of business or service online. So, what is this editor person hiding and why would anyone use the services of some unknown entity?

Needles to say, I will not be adding this site to my directory. I can not, or will not, support a site that doesn’t provide verifiable information on its creator. I’m writing about this particular site but I could be writing about any site offering a product or service that chooses to hide their identity. Potential clients should be wary of using a service like this without knowing who they are hiring. Buyer beware!

There are legit editing/critique services that I have written about and/or have added to my resource directory. The Editorial Department and Dave King: Editorial Services, both of which co-authored the book, Self Editing For Fiction Writers, a book every writer should have on their bookshelves.

I came across a site, Writing Classes, offering online writing workshops as well as their physical workshops in New York City. This site was created by Gotham Writers’ Workshop, a privately owned creative writing school in New York City. Gotham’s instructors wrote and published a book entitled, Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide. There are excerpts of each chapter on their site. It’s well worth the time and effort to check it out.

There are detailed descriptions of the workshops with a sample of their online classes. The online workshops vary from 4 weeks to 10 weeks and are on a variety of writing genes. The price of the workshops are reasonable, though certainly not cheap but I’d guess participants get their monies worth. Even if you never plan on taking one of the workshops, check out their resource page. They have articles on writing, writing tips and character questionnaires.

I’ve looked at a lot of sites offering online writing workshops. Some looked credible and some looked iffy. This one has had a lot of good publicity from authoritative sits such as Zoetrope, Time Warner, Barnes & Noble and Draft. I read a writers blow-by-blow article on her experience of one of the online workshops. If I can find it again, I will add it here later. It was enticing enough to make me look closer at the site and what they offer. I’d take one of their workshop classes if I had the extra $. It might help in getting me out of the rut I’ve fallen into the past few years.

If anyone who has taken one of the workshops happens by, please leave a comment and tell me about your experience.

I just reviewed a new site, BookHitch.com, that was submitted to my Writing Resource Directory that allows authors and publishers to submit their books for free . There is a pay-for-premium-listing that includes an image of the book with more space for a description. The regular cost is $49.95 per year but right now it’s only $19.95 per year. Either price is reasonable for a directory type listing and cheap for any type of advertising. The only problem is that it’s a fairly new site with very little PR and book marketing is an extremely competitive market online. But, every site started out as new once upon a time.

The site is simply designed, nice and clean and easy to navigate. I’d prefer to not have to find what I’m looking for by having to wade through the drop-down list of categories but that’s probably a personal preference simply because I have worked on many directories and prefer to break up top level categories into smaller child-categories. It just make everything look cleaner and makes it easier for people to find what they are interested in.

I like the concept of this site and I’ve though about doing something similar but with more features. I guess I should get serious about adding a feature similar to this to my resource directory. Some of the features I’d like to offer will take some time to setup. I’d be curious to know what others think about the BookHitch, so please leave a comment and tell me your thoughts.

Update: After doing a little more research on BookHitch, I discovered that the only contact information on the site is an email address and that the domain record has a private whois. What that means is that the owner of this site is basically anonymous, yet you, as a customer, have to give him/her your personal information in order to get a premium listing. Now, why would anyone do that? Why would anyone hand over their hard-earned monry to an anonymous person? And why does he/she need a private whois record if they aren’t hiding something?

Nope, I can not recommend this site to anyone and will be removing it from my resource directory. If you want to read more about my opinion, along with others, read this post and the ensuing comments on Matt Cutts site, a Google employee. Also note that not everyone agrees with me but thus far I’ve only read excuses for hiding whois information behind a proxy. As a consumer, I can not risk giving my personal information to an anonymous business person.

Another Update: Because the marketing director and webmaster for Bookhitch decided to leave comments to this post, my curious nature took over and I went in search of more information. I’ve allways said that no business or person is as anonymous online as they would like to think they are. Apparently, Bookhitch is part of a print-on-demand publishing newtork, NetPublications, Inc., based in Poughkeepsie, New York. Each of the company’s business domains are registered to a Chris Thurtle, though he isn’t the actual owner. The owner is William R. Grogg and he is the founder of Bookhitch.

Now, why would Mr. Grogg want to keep ownership of Bookhitch a secret? There is complete contact details on his other sites and the whois records do have the same physical location. His other sites along with NetPublications other affiliations are on the company’s website. Why isn’t Bookhitch there and why the whois proxy? I can only speculate.

To be fair, I did not find any complaints about Mr. Gorgg or his companies. However, I didn’t really look for complaints. My focus was on discovering who owned Bookhitch and maybe get a hint as to why an online business would be using a whois proxy to hide behind. Once I discovered the main business along with his self-publishing and small press businesses, I looked even closer at Bookhitch. Doing random searches, I found every book published and printed by one of Mr. Grogg’s companies that I searched for was listed in Bookhitch as a premium listing. I don’t really see anything wrong with what they are doing unless they are recommending Bookhitch’s premium service to their self-publised authors and/or small press customers without disclosing ownership.

I came across a site calling itself a “Book Club” with the tag line, “Bringing Voice to New Authors.” The domain was purchased in March, 2006 and currently has 19 new authors who have put their manuscripts on this site for “Club” members to read and comment on. I’d be surprised if they actually have any “Club” members other than the authors. Who would pay $25 per year to read unknown authors work? I’m not sure who this site is actually marketing to. It appears that their focus is on marketing to authors who have not been able to get their manuscripts published through normal publishing channels. Not that marketing to authors is a bad thing but what does an author actually get from placing his/her book manuscript on a site like this?

Here is what the site claims they offer:

For authors, this site gives voice to your stories and excellent feedback from the members. It is for authors who are leaving no stones unturned in their efforts to get published. Our authors want out of the slush pile–or at least on top of it–so their voices will be heard.

It goes on to state that there is NO compensation for authors who places their book manuscripts on the site. Read, NO compensation! So, how will this site help get their authors out of the slush-pile? Well, they also market to agents and publishers. They even have an area setup specifically for them. They call it, “Special Invite For Agents and Publishers”. They ask publishers and agents to “Use this site as your pre-ranked slush pile.”

Pre-ranked slush pile? What does that mean and why would a publisher and/or agent care? It seems that this site encourages their members to read and review the new authors work. The reviews are supposed to “help” the authors hone their writing craft and rank the manuscript accordingly. Okay … I guess that could be a good thing but I’m not so sure an agent or publisher would take much notice at this point. Maybe if the site does well and it actually gets a large group of non-author members, then the agents and publishers might take some notice, though I doubt good agents and publishers have time to surf the net looking for that rare gem just waiting to be discovered.

Here is what the site actually offers un-published authors:

Your book will be featured when it first arrives. It will be featured both on BloodyGoodRead.com and on our sister site: UnreadTreasures.com.

You will receive feedback, from members, fellow authors and possibly even agents and publishers about your book. If there are problems with a portion of the novel preventing it from being the success you want, this feedback can be invaluable and is very easy to retrieve.

Your book may be featured in ‘top ten’ or ‘best of genre’ if it scores well (based on downloads and review ratings). Which means, if you have a really great book that is well liked by the members, the book will continue to receive high visibility, making it more likely to be read by an agent or publisher.

You can review ‘real time’ statistics about your book.
Your book’s statistics on average rating and downloads can be retrieved instantly, providing you with a real time view on your book’s popularity.

Certain aspects of the presentation of your novel can be ‘tweaked’ real time by you. You may improve the ‘marketing’ of your novel by improving the header and cover blurbs and by selecting better review headliners as often as you like.

Your bio is placed on the website. This enables members, agents and publishers to get a better understanding of you and what makes you special.

All of the above for a mere $250 per year for one manuscript or $600 per year for multiple manuscripts. The manuscripts are setup in pdf format with cover art by a “In-House” artist and an author’s bio page is included. I don’t know … the bio pages have very little content and took almost no effort to create. Turning a manuscript into pdf is a no-brainer and uploading it take seconds and adding the html can be done in minutes. The artwork is probably the most time consuming. $50 per year would be much more appropriate if an author really thinks this is a good thing to do.

Personally, I think it’s a big waste of money and time. Author’s can join a writing critique group and get the same feedback, probably better feedback and the likelihood of a reputable agent or publisher ever seeing their work is almost none existent. There more likely to get vanity press type publishers interested in their work then a real publisher, one that doesn’t charge you for publishing your book.

The sites design does not look professionally done. In fact it looks very amateurish and not very appealing with strange color combinations and bold brown text!. It doesn’t showcase the author or their manuscript in a professional atmosphere nor does it do anything to excite potential “Club” members to want to sign up and download a book manuscript. And why would anyone want to read a book on their computer? Non-fiction does far better in the ebook marketplace than fiction will ever do, especially in a pdf format. Fiction readers want to sit in a comfortable chair with book in hand.

The developers of this site may believe they are offering a valuable resource to new authors but I believe the developers are getting far more than they can possibly give their authors. My advice is to run in another direction and take your cash with you!

Go to the site, Bloody Good Read, and see if you can find any real value in placing a manuscript on the site, even if they didn’t charge way more than they should and leave a comment if you don’t agree, or even if you do agree.