Latest Articles from The Vandal AKA Derek Haines

How To Get Amazon Book Reviews

Getting Amazon book reviews is hard work It’s no secret that the more reviews a book has on Amazon, the more likely it is to sell. While there are countless other marketing tools that can be used when promoting a book, reviews are, and have always been, the most important element in promoting a book. In days past, publishers sent out hundreds of advance copies to beta readers, newspapers, television and radio stations as well as well as well-known authors to gain reviews that very often ended up being quoted on the back of the book when it was finally published. The same process is being used today, however with

What Is A Portmanteau?

What is a portmanteau in grammar? When I formed my publishing company (Portmanteau Press LLC), I was shocked and appalled that I received the following question from numerous people (my CPA, the lady at the bank, my mother!): what is a portmanteau? Now, I feel the need to educate people about this wonderful language device. Being that Derek’s blog is called “Vandalism of Words,” I felt this was an appropriate forum. A portmanteau, in short, is when you take two words and squish them together to form a new word. For example, you have a meal that is halfway between breakfast and lunch? Brunch. You have an eating utensil that is

I Hate Having Advertising On My Blogs, But…

Advertising on my blogs is an unfortunate necessity It’s the devil of the Internet. How does one make enough return to recover the costs of serious blogging? Sure, there are free blogging alternatives, but when it comes to blogging for real, only self-hosted blogs offer the tools that can attract decent daily levels of daily traffic, and hence interaction, and if I may be so bold, attention. In my case, keeping my blogs online costs around $2,500 per year, which includes hosting fees, software and theme purchases, annual upgrade fees, plus the costs of site development by my (absolutely brilliant) WordPress developer. While clicking around my blogs may work seamlessly for my

You Are Too Scared To Speak Your Mind, Aren’t You?

Too Scared to Speak Not only are you too scared to say what you think, you are too frightened to even comment, like or favourite articles you come across that you earnestly agree with. You have been silenced. Hello, Winston Smith. Why do I say this? Because I have seen and felt the change in what I read on social media, and how people react, or in fact not react at all to anything that could be classed as, well, topical, or involving something that could be remotely seen as political. Political debate and free speech have not been enhanced by social media; it has been strangled, squashed, killed off and defeated by