Greetings and Salutations -

First, final call on participating in the Secret Santa! Please email me if you want to be a part of the fun :).

Second, a number of editors and visitors have asked me about expanding Mused (our Literary Magazine) to including full length novels. They love how we promote poetry and short stories and wish we could do the same for longer works.

Mused just can't handle that length. Also, Mused prides itself on providing feedback, to help artists grow and improve. To do that for full length novels would take an immense investment of time.

Still, I always try to mull over ideas and suggestions. So I've been pondering the idea of BellaOnline offering an award program for self-published books. This would be open ONLY to self-publishers, so we can help all those people who are striving to be heard. Also, with us offering feedback, we'd help those lost souls who just don't understand why they're not selling. We might be the boost that helps them get things together and succeed.

Here's a mock-up I did of what the page might look like:

http://bellaonline.com/ebookawards/

What do you think? Editors would be eligible to enter. I've gone around and around about reading fees. My concern if there's no fee is that we'll be deluged with millions of people wanting free editing help and there's just no way we could keep up with that. A $40 fee seems reasonable that those who wanted help could manage it, without excluding anybody. And it helps ensure that only those who really want help submit, vs people deluging us with everything they have in their hard drive files to get free help with them all.

I'm very open to suggestions and ideas. I want to do our best to help these people. I want it to be fair and equitable. I want us to help self-published books that are deserving get the credit and acclaim they've worked for.

Lisa Shea, owner
BellaOnline.com

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