Has anyone heard of PubIt! yet?

Ok, so I'm signed up to the Barnes & Noble email listing for updates and whatnot, and they sent me an update on their new program: PubIt! It's basically, from what I gather, a more reputable Lulu.com for e-books. Perusing through what they have for sale there--and I found a lot of really cheap good sci-fi so I might invest a couple dollars--I started looking specifically for the self-published people... and I found 'em! A couple of these look just hysterical:

A Midnight Infatuation: "No, really, it's not Twilight!"
Deaths Desire: I have no idea what it's about, but the skull drawings and awful "sample" prose (WTF kind of sample is that??) cracked me the hell up.
Hunted: I have GOT to quote you guys the sample prose for this one--

Quote :

The movie lets out a little before midnight. The small shops, odd boutiques, and quaint restaurants that line Richmond's Carytown district have closed, leaving behind an empty street through which the wind whistles as it rustles through the trash that lines the gutters. A small crowd exits Carytown's vintage movie palace, the Byrd Theatre, which had played a late show and now locks its doors against the wintry wind. Hartley Smith takes his sister's elbow and leads her away from the theatre down Cary Street, away from the crowd. It's late. Not even the bums are out, begging for change on the street corner.

Giselle [END OF SAMPLE]

Holy mixed tenses, Batman! I just love that the sample stopped after the first word of the second paragraph too. XD

EDIT: OMFG NO WAI. Someone "published" their own graphic novel. It looks pret-ty... lulzy. Rain: Graphic Novella And sadly, no sample. But you can find a YouTube sample of her story at her website!

SECOND EDIT: stories with bite o,.,o. *sneeerk*

THIRD EDIT: Oh, god, why do I stop editing?! The Crystal Rose Just... for the cover man. Just for the cover.

Maximilia wrote:

Rain: Graphic Novella

Ahahaha! Oh my god, the art looks like something I used to do when I was 10. She' getting a little ahead of herself considering at the level she's at. I've been drawing my comic for years and I still don't think I'm ready to self publish it.

I won't comment on the writing coz for all I know it could be amazing.

Could someone else give me their impression of what's going on on the cover of 'The Crystal Rose'? Because I swear, it looks to me like some girl's pulling a used tampon out of her vagina, and I KNOW that can't be right.

Rabid Badger wrote:

Could someone else give me their impression of what's going on on the cover of 'The Crystal Rose'? Because I swear, it looks to me like some girl's pulling a used tampon out of her vagina, and I KNOW that can't be right.

Oh good, I thought I was crazy. That's exactly what I see.

Miss Prince wrote:

Rabid Badger wrote:

Could someone else give me their impression of what's going on on the cover of 'The Crystal Rose'? Because I swear, it looks to me like some girl's pulling a used tampon out of her vagina, and I KNOW that can't be right.

Oh good, I thought I was crazy. That's exactly what I see.

I think it is a filter-fucked photo of a rose laying between two boobs. I thought it looked like the original was a movie poster, but I cannot recall what poster so I am probably wrong about that.

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

Miss Prince wrote:

Rabid Badger wrote:

Could someone else give me their impression of what's going on on the cover of 'The Crystal Rose'? Because I swear, it looks to me like some girl's pulling a used tampon out of her vagina, and I KNOW that can't be right.

Oh good, I thought I was crazy. That's exactly what I see.

I think it is a filter-fucked photo of a rose laying between two boobs. I thought it looked like the original was a movie poster, but I cannot recall what poster so I am probably wrong about that.

See, originally I saw the boobs and the rose. Now I can't unsee the tampon thing. It's like the weirdest, worst Magic Eye ever.

What did Edward in Vampires Suck say, again about fads? In the 80s, it was cocaine, in the 90s grunge (and I still listen to Nirvana thankyouverymuch), and now it's vampires.

They are everywhere. You can't go into a single book shop without stumbling upon a legion of impossible vampire romance novels.

And this... you can't even say it's plagiarism because they're all alike. Every single one of 'em. Who started this, anyway? Was it SMeyer? I hear she was accused of plagiarising someone else's crappy vamp tale, herself.

Rabid Badger wrote:

Could someone else give me their impression of what's going on on the cover of 'The Crystal Rose'? Because I swear, it looks to me like some girl's pulling a used tampon out of her vagina, and I KNOW that can't be right.

I see an infected and swollen follicle:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

with the added bonus of a louse egg attached to the hair shaft.
Yes, my daughter just started kindergarten, why do you ask?

Rabid Badger wrote:

Could someone else give me their impression of what's going on on the cover of 'The Crystal Rose'? Because I swear, it looks to me like some girl's pulling a used tampon out of her vagina, and I KNOW that can't be right.

I see a rose between boobs that have been photoshoped straight into monochromatic hell.

The Scientist wrote:

And this... you can't even say it's plagiarism because they're all alike. Every single one of 'em. Who started this, anyway? Was it SMeyer? I hear she was accused of plagiarising someone else's crappy vamp tale, herself.

We can't blame Meyer's for the vampire trend-it's actually been going on since Anne Rice wrote 'Interview with a Vampire." And quite a few of the Sookie Stackhouse books, that were turned into the TV series "True Blood' were published and popular long before the Twilight series was a gleam in S. Meyer's eyes (if anything, I think she plagarized a fair amount of Charlaine Harris' material)

What we can blame her for is taking every convention ever created about vampires and twisting it to the point where it's no longer recognizable. She's made vampires into beautiful creatures and being undead into the ultimate achievement. Sane, rational people shouldn't WANT to live forever. It's boring. While I don't like Anne Rice, at least the fact that her vampires kept complaining about the emptiness and meaninglessness of an unending existence seemed a clearer view of what being a vampire would actually be like than a brainless sparkly forever. I mean, think-unless someone kills you, you will live FOREVER. You'll watch everyone you ever loved die, and you'll continue your undead life until the sun burns out or the Earth is hit by an asteroid and blown to bits. And even then you may not die.

I'm sorry, but I prefer my vampires old school, like Dracula or Nosferatau. As Freddie Mercury of Queen said "Who wants to live forever anyway?"

I'm not actually blaming Stephenie Meyer, but she is part of this trend and has made it so popular that it started a landslide of bad vampire novels. This is why I said that you can't even tell who's plagiarising whom.

I agree with your take on vampires. They're undead. It must have some psychological effect other than "boo hoo, I have no soul and I sparkle".

Becoming a vampire should be a curse and not a desireable goal.

Maximilia wrote:

EDIT: OMFG NO WAI. Someone "published" their own graphic novel. It looks pret-ty... lulzy. Rain: Graphic Novella And sadly, no sample. But you can find a YouTube sample of her story at her website!

Hmmm... That website is only dedicated to the Rain novel.. I wonder if... OMG GUYS! GUYS! Her other website!

This is superb!


Turns out our Ami Blackwelder is quite the prolific writer... Either that or she's addicted to selfpublishing.

I've gotta share some gems... First that video of 'Rain'