To my great surprise I found a really good review of the Windows Phone 7 version of my app over on Bright Hub.
The author said my anthology was “Guaranteed to inform and entertain…”.
He also said, “Similar to xkcd, Galactic Beacon: Vol 1 is a remarkable collection of original sci-fi stories, essays and comics, offered in one easy to use browser app.”
While I can only aspire to being in the same sport, much less the same league as xkcd, I truly, truly appreciate the compliment!
The early reviews for Galactic Beacon: Volume 1 are in!
One thing I can say for my enthusiastic readers is, boy are they honest.
The very first review was in the WebOS catalog for the pay version and came from Arthur T who wrote:
Nice app. Good job developer.
That was very similar to the first Windows Phone 7 review from, um,TestDummy who said:
Content is funny, navigation is easy, and the app is really fast to page through. Good stuff!
Wow! This is great! My public loves me!
Oh, wait…
Next up we jump back to WebOS and hear from Daniel K on the free, trial version:
This works really well as an app. The formatting is good for the screen and everything seems to work.
Thanks Daniel for that glowing review!
What? You’re not finished? Oh, OK.
I feel bad saying so, but I’m less in love with the content. The essays are probably the best part, the rest was just a tad too self-aware and internety for my tastes. None of the stories were really compelling enough that I wanted to pay $6 for the endings. I’m not sure how much I’d pay for a regular stream of your non-essays given the wealth of similar sci-fi-ish non-fiction online, but that was the strongest stuff in my opinion.
Ouch, but thanks for the honest feedback.
I’m not sure where the $6 figure came from. I wouldn’t pay that much either. The price has always been $2.99. You want to know why? That’s the minimum price you can charge on the Kindle and still get to keep 70% of the coinage. I’m seriously contemplating trying out a sale price for a while to see how people feel about that.
Next we have Robert D who writes:
Like the concept. Not a big fan of the writing, but some of the comics were funny.
Again, thanks for the honesty, and I’m glad you enjoyed some of the comics.
I agree with both of these guys. I’m not the best writer in the world. I’m not ONE of the best writers in the world. I don’t KNOW any of the best writers in the world. My goal with Galactic Beacon is to turn it into a digital magazine filled with the awesome work of OTHER writers. To do that, however, I need to get enough money flowing in that I can pay those writers. The kind of writer that I AM is the kind I can get to write for free… Having said that, I still think my story “Sarah” is pretty good. Also “The Duel”. They are the kind of stories I like to read. Maybe I just have weird tastes?
Now for my ALL TIME FAVORITE REVIEW EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE, which comes from Henry G:
What is this? science well let me tell you something AT LEAST I BELIEVE IN GOD!!!!!
Thanks for clearing that up. I have frankly been worried about your immortal soul for some time. Just the other day I was sipping tea with the Pope and Dalai Lama, and I said, “Hey, guys, you know what I’ve been worrying about? Henry G’s soul.” They TOTALLY agreed. We all went kick-boxing after that. Man, let me tell you what, you have NOT been kicked in the head until His Holiness kicks you in the head. It is left as an exercise for the reader to determine which His Holiness (quite frankly I don’t want to upset either one of them).
That about wraps it up for now.
You know how you sometimes read the reviews of apps in the catalog and you think, “Hey! I think this is really the app developer using a different account to write good reviews of his app!”? I’ll bet you aren’t thinking that about my reviews!