Did you hear the recent news about the author who just signed a two million dollar book deal for her debut self-published book, The Lace Reader and its follow-up? The entire story about the the $2,000,000 payday and how self-publishing helps launch writing careers is in the January 13th issue of the Boston Globe.

Here is another success story...

Writer's Digest Judge Loves The Long Lake

When Outskirts Press author Daril Bentley submitted his poetry collection, The Long Lake to the 15th Annual Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards, he knew he had something special. So impressed was the Writer's Digest judge, in fact, that he invited Mr. Bently to submit additional work to him personally within the body of his commentary on The Long Lake, which follows:

“This book, in every way, is an illustration of self-publishing at its finest. It is not an excuse to allow error or the author's own predilections, unresearched, unrehearsed, unedited, and indiscriminate to be compiled in a volume; it is an opportunity to choose the venue, format, time frame and style of one's book design. Ideally, every author should have the good taste and judgment to do this as well as this one has. The quiet elegance and well-crafted lines like:

those sheds must have glowed blue
at their clapboard cracks with fit
of the long lake's skin
summer well
into the lemonade chilled and the clocks
lazy with counting...

...Or...

Every tree of summer is to me dead
and at the living pith has frozen
and carries with it not a single bird...

... or the strange, brilliant vision in

In each of these drops of water
I have saved since winter
is an icicle kept in a jar
of the mind...

... recall at turns, Williams, Stevens and Frost.

It is clear the author has editorial as well as writing skills, so that the book looks as professional as anything I regularly purchase from bookstores. I am an avid reader of poetry and have judged for Writer's Digest for three years now as well as edited for various journals, and this book is the most professional of any I've seen in my judging for W.D. and as accomplished as anything I have seen while judging for other competitions.”

Congratulations to Mr. Bently, and all the award-winning, deal-signing, career-defining, successfully published writers at Outskirts Press.

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