The POD Critic Special Selection Seal

So, how exactly does one earn the Special Selection seal pictured right, you ask? Well, the answer is very simple. It will all depend on the quality of your book. Therefore, as many of these will be handed out as are deserved. And if that amounts to two books, so be it; to twenty, so be it. The seal does not involve a contest where books compete against one another for the top spot. No. The seal will be given to books that contain the things I’ve discussed on this blog. To loosely quote from one of my posts, a book has to have “everything going for it—design aspects, editing, [and] solid story elements.”

As to the question of the design aspect, while a book has to have a decent interior, it doesn’t have to have an extravagant, complicated cover, with all sorts of graphics applied. It can be very simple, so long as it is in keeping with your book’s message, or else points, in some way, to the material within. If that means that your cover will have nothing more than a title above or below the author’s name, and either an image or a few lines showing, well, it just has to work. For instance, I wouldn’t complain about a cover like this.

To earn the seal, the book also has to earn four golden eggs, and nothing less. This means it has to be “Simply Unputdownable” in my view. In other words, I have to really, really like it. This particular stipulation is actually dependent upon several factors: (1) how engaging your story is, despite the genre (2) the level of editing, and (3) the quality of writing—and I will take your prose style into special consideration.

To quote another of my posts—and this in order to give you a broader sense of what I’m looking for—consider the following:

Character development is something I tend to look for most in novels, especially when the material is character-driven, rather than plot-driven. If a story centers more on plot and action, then I will be inclined to lend greater consideration to the symmetry of the plot—whether there is a harmonious arrangement of the rudiments in the overall story; whether the story rises and falls with creative tension; and whether the author maintains a narrative and thematic balance. Be it character- or plot-driven, however, the story must be well-structured, being set inside a sturdy framework that includes a strong beginning, a captivating middle, and a satisfying end, with the usual character arcs and ebb and flow of events therein.

Well, there you have it. This is how it works, folks. So when you see a POD Critic Special Selection seal featured in a review, you’ll know why it was awarded.