Captain Kirkus (the downfall revealed)

Yowza - here's your daily five:

P5 for Thursday, July 28th, 2005:

(1) SUFFER IN SILENCE : 12,396
(2) COOKIN' FOR LOVE : 17,587
(3) INFERTILITY SUCKS : 26,771
(4) THE CIRCLE OF SODOM : 105,383
(5) I WAS A VACUUM CLEANER SALESMAN : 129,656

I've had a surprising number of emails regarding the Kirkus scam/thing from yesterday--all of them defending Kirkus.

I'm confused.

People are quick to jump on the bandwagon of "there is no prestige/pride in paying to publish" though I would suggest you get something in return (even though you may have paid too much): a book.

When you pay Kirkus, however, you get nothing--except a three paragraph statement about your book being tied solely to the fact that they're Kirkus. No one pays me to review books. Why? Because I'm not Kirkus. They have built a name for themselves by having been objective reviewers for almost 80 years. Having a hybrid version that can be procured sucks the life out of the credibility (for the Discovery portion, at least.)

Even Amazon does not treat Discovery and Traditional equally (Discovery reviews are usually submitted by the author and then limited to the 20 word entry as other self-submitted editorial reviews.)

If anyone--anyone--feels it was worth the $300, please email me, and I'll post our discussion right here.