{"id":11546,"date":"2015-05-09T10:15:16","date_gmt":"2015-05-09T14:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thegreathorse.com\/?p=11546"},"modified":"2017-11-22T18:42:21","modified_gmt":"2017-11-22T22:42:21","slug":"irene-watson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/2015\/05\/irene-watson\/","title":{"rendered":"Adventures in Publishing: Irene Watson &#038; Reader Views"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>The Legend of the Great Horse<\/strong> is a historical fiction account of a young horsewoman&#8217;s adventure through history &#8230; publishing the story has been an interesting journey of its own. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/gh1-bkcv_90x135px-72dpi.jpg\" alt=\"ECLIPSED BY SHADOW | &#039;The Legend of the Great Horse&#039; trilogy book cover (90x135px)\" width=\"90\" height=\"135\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-10141\" \/>In 2008 the trilogy opened with a close. Its small press publisher went out of business as the (ongoing) financial crisis was initiated&#8211;since that time we&#8217;ve seen endpoint consolidation of publishing, the advent of both ebooks and social media, Amazon&#8217;s rise as the newest industry monopoly, and the closure of 1\/3rd of all US bookstores. It&#8217;s been an interesting ride.<\/p>\n<p>Along the way I encountered obstacles and many &#8220;good guys&#8221; too &#8230; often these were honest book reviewers, perhaps because this section of traditional publishing was among the first to be taken down by corporate consolidation and its all-excusing bottom line.<\/p>\n<p>One of these good guys was a woman, <strong>Irene Watson<\/strong>, who had the idea to build an organization (<a href=\"http:\/\/readerviews.com\/\">Reader Views<\/a>) to provide free reviews to small and self publishers &#8230; while offering promotion assistance as an optional paid service.<\/p>\n<p>Only <strong>Library Journal<\/strong> and <strong>Reader Views<\/strong> offered an all-important <a href=\"https:\/\/readerviewsarchives.wordpress.com\/2014\/01\/23\/eclipsed-by-shadow-by-john-royce\/\"><em>pre<\/em>publication review of <strong><em>Eclipsed by Shadow<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. Irene and the support staff of Reader Views were unfailingly positive and supportive. The story went on to win several national awards: only Reader Views and the traditional, highly-respected Library Journal noted it beforehand.<\/p>\n<p>Amazon did later crush her business, removing many thousands of ReaderViews reviews (and those of the Midwest Book Review, another ugly incident). <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/targa-small.gif\" alt=\"targa-small\" width=\"150\" height=\"98\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1986\" \/>Irene died of pancreatic cancer the following year. Today the site is being carried on by Irene&#8217;s supporters, preserving the path that her vision, energy and solution-oriented approach brought to independent publishing. <\/p>\n<p>As traditional publishing completes its folding up and vanishing act, it will be ideas and energy from people like Irene Watson who can show new paths &#8230; may her memory be honored. The future contains challenges, and I wish Reader Views success in blazing even brighter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Legend of the Great Horse is a historical fiction account of a young horsewoman&#8217;s adventure through history &#8230; publishing the story has been an interesting journey of its own. In 2008 the trilogy opened with a close. Its small press publisher went out of business as the (ongoing) financial crisis was initiated&#8211;since that time &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/2015\/05\/irene-watson\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Adventures in Publishing: Irene Watson &#038; Reader Views&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[213],"tags":[118,381,125],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11546"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11546"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15357,"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11546\/revisions\/15357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}