#1: Blogger King Rat on authors behaving badly towards reviewers who write negative reviews. I agree that authors have the right to respond to negative reviews. It may not necessarily be productive depending on how it is done, but if they feel the need they are entitled to do it. I don’t think authors have the right to encourage stalking by handing out reviewers’ personal contact details and trying to inflame readers to contact reviewer (or worse).

#2: An interesting piece over on Tor.com by Brian James on whether we should judge a book by its cover. I have to admit that I’m guilty of this. This is one area where self-published books really shoot themselves in the foot because the covers invariably have a quality that marks them as self-published.

#3: It looks like Alan Dean Foster is writing the first book in the new Star Trek universe, following his novelization of this summer’s movie. The novelization was listed at $20 for the paperback which I thought was a ridiculous price–even regular Star Trek books are priced ridiculously for the “Harlequin” of sci-fi. No news on whether regular pricing will return with this book. If you read the article closely you’ll see that there is already a sequel to this summer’s movie in the works (news to me, but then I don’t keep up on these things).