Saturday, February 17, 2007
I Should Have Complained Sooner
Yesterday I mentioned that I had yet to receive my review copy of Sally Stuart's Christian Writers' Market Guide. It came in today's mail.
This is a honkin big tome. Not as big as the full-blown Writer's Digest Writers' Market, but easily on par with WD's Novel/Short Story edition. I thumbed through quickly to see if the magazines I was published in last year were listed. Most were (Ray Gun Revival, a late starter last year isn't), though some of the payment info is out of date -- again it's possible it was changed or arrived too late (if at all) to make the 2007 edition. Still, compared to WD, it has many Christian-targeted publications the big guys miss. As a place to begin your market research, it's an excellent resource.
The accompanying CD was a bit of a disappointment, though. While it contains all the information in the hard copy, it doesn't take advantage of its new-media presentation (these appear to be production documents, Word and PDF -- the PDF has the printer's trim marks on the pages). Entries aren't hyperlinked from the table of contents or index. Websites and email addresses aren't linked, either. You can fix the latter by turning on the Autoformat "hyperlinks" option in Word, then running the Autoformat (get yourself a cup of coffee while it runs), and then Save As'ing to your hard drive, but that's a lot of work for something that would've been a not-too-hard fix for the publisher to make. The CD adds some value to the book, but I can't help thinking it could have added a lot more.
Bottom line, this is a great resource for a writer targeting Christian audiences. If you're thinking and hoping and praying that this is the year you'll make it into print (or make it into print more), get yourself a copy now. (The year's almost 1/6th over, for crying out loud.)
This is a honkin big tome. Not as big as the full-blown Writer's Digest Writers' Market, but easily on par with WD's Novel/Short Story edition. I thumbed through quickly to see if the magazines I was published in last year were listed. Most were (Ray Gun Revival, a late starter last year isn't), though some of the payment info is out of date -- again it's possible it was changed or arrived too late (if at all) to make the 2007 edition. Still, compared to WD, it has many Christian-targeted publications the big guys miss. As a place to begin your market research, it's an excellent resource.The accompanying CD was a bit of a disappointment, though. While it contains all the information in the hard copy, it doesn't take advantage of its new-media presentation (these appear to be production documents, Word and PDF -- the PDF has the printer's trim marks on the pages). Entries aren't hyperlinked from the table of contents or index. Websites and email addresses aren't linked, either. You can fix the latter by turning on the Autoformat "hyperlinks" option in Word, then running the Autoformat (get yourself a cup of coffee while it runs), and then Save As'ing to your hard drive, but that's a lot of work for something that would've been a not-too-hard fix for the publisher to make. The CD adds some value to the book, but I can't help thinking it could have added a lot more.
Bottom line, this is a great resource for a writer targeting Christian audiences. If you're thinking and hoping and praying that this is the year you'll make it into print (or make it into print more), get yourself a copy now. (The year's almost 1/6th over, for crying out loud.)
Labels: Book Reviews, Books, CFBA
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