What do I value most in a web site? Honesty.

When you go to a commercial site (Apple, say), you know going in that everything you see and read was massaged by corporate drones to fit a corporate theme aimed at corporate profits. Whether you buy into the theme or not, it’s all a lie. It might even be a fun lie, like Disneyland, but it’s still aimed at your wallet.

This tendency infects almost everything, particularly in the U.S., because we’re a business culture. Whether you’re a top-flight CEO or a sole-proprietor, who people think you are and how they respond to that image will probably determine whether you get to eat or not. (Okay, maybe not so much with the CEO.) It’s not objectively wrong to put your best foot, face, cheek or assets forward — although how you go about doing so may say more about who you are than you intended to reveal.

All of which is preamble to introducing you to Levi Montgomery. Over the past six months, in reading Levi’s blog posts, I haven’t had a single moment where I thought Levi was shading his opinion for later advantage. Granted, that’s easy enough to do if you’re just shooting your mouth off, and there’s no shortage of such people on the web.

But here’s the thing. Levi’s involved. He’s part of Self-Publishing Review, he recently pointed me to and recommended The Self-Publishing Review (which allowed me to find HPRW again), and he’s walking the walk himself as a writer.

I don’t always agree with his reactions and opinions, nor he I’m sure with mine, but the thing is, he meets a critical bar. He rationally explains his opinions, instead of blithely assuming that anybody who doesn’t ‘get it’ is a dweeb. Take his decision to remove his work from Smashwords, including his view that the PDF file-type should be the e-reader standard. I disagree, but then I also know that Levi is interested in retaining more control over the look and feel of his work than I am. (I’m crazy big into transparency as an aspect of craft.)

There just aren’t a lot of people who say what they think and explain what they mean. Levi Montgomery is one of those voices. Add to that the fact that he’s not sitting on the self-publishing sidelines, and you’ll understand why I consider him a must-read.

— Mark Barrett

How Publishing Really Works (HPRW) is a [now-archived site] I’ve found and lost several times, as well as the gateway to several other interesting sites. I’m adding it to the blogroll because I’m tired of spending frustrated hours trying to find my way back.

Run by Jane Smith, HPWR aspires to make the complexities and absurdities of the publishing world a bit less obscure, particularly for people who have an interest in writing themselves. A sister site to HPWR — and here I will beg your keen attention for a moment — is The Self-Publishing Review (TSPR), which should not be, but easily could be, confused with Henry Baum’s Self-Publishing Review. On TSPR Jane reviews self-published works using what I think is very fair and useful criteria:

What’s the catch? I’m an editor, and expect published books to be polished. I’m going to count all the errors I find in spelling, punctuation and grammar and when I reach fifteen I’m going to stop reading. I’ll work my way through up to five pages of boring prose or bad writing before I give up. And I’ll list on this blog every single book I’m sent, including the books I’ve not completed, along with how far I got through each one.

TSPR, like SPR, engages the most important question hanging over (and being lorded over) the self-publishing movement: are self-published writers creating works worth reading? HPRW attempts to pull back the curtain (if not the wool) on the publishing industry, which also helps would-be authors decide how best to approach the self-publishing movement. As to how Jane Smith manages to keep multiple blogs going while also finding time to write, I have no idea — but I am taking notes.

Update: It’s with mixed emotions that I’ve killed my blogroll link to this site, on the heels of [a now defunct] this post by Jane. We can all agree to disagree, but honestly I can’t square Jane’s condescension on her HPRW site while also respecting the work she’s done reviewing self-published authors on her Self-Publishing Review site. If, as she says in a follow-up post —

…while “good enough” can be a little difficult to define, “not good enough” is very easy to spot: almost every single one of the self-published books I’ve been sent for my self publishing review blog has slotted into this category, some far more easily than others (and bear in mind that I’ve got a backlog of book reviews waiting to be scheduled for publication, and most of them didn’t make the grade).

— then I’m hard-pressed to understand why she’s wasting her time. If, as she argues, unpublished writers are unpublished because their writing stinks, why in god’s name is she defying her own logic and reviewing self-published books? Simply to prove her own logic? If that’s the case, what kind of legitimacy can her reviews really have?

Honestly, I liked Jane’s posts on both of her sites. But having this bit of ugliness spew forth feels like a revelation of the worst kind. It colors everything of hers that I’ve read, and make me wonder what other hostile sentiments have been left unsaid.

— Mark Barrett