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Hydra Publications

JaneD

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I hope this is the right place to ask this question (my very first!), but has anybody heard of Hydra Publications?

http://www.hydrapublications.com/

They look quite reasonable to me, judging by the website, but they don't seem to figure on any list, for good or ill. Can the experts see why?
 

priceless1

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They don't appear to have any disribution. None of their titles show up on Bookscan, which would indicate that they have zero store placement with any of the thousands of outlets who report their sales to Bookscan.

Their website is geared toward writers, and not readers.

For a small press, they accept quite a few genres, and one might wonder how they can effectively edit, market, and promote titles from so many unlike genres, such as childrens', horror, fantasy, mystery, romance, and YA.
 

JaneD

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Thanks Priceless. I looked on Amazon and none of their books do better than very average. Maybe it isn't one to go for after all.
 

aliceshortcake

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I wasn't impressed by the editing of some of the Hydra Publications books you can sample on Amazon. This one, for example:

Wincing, she bit her tongue, holding back wretched screams that sought her torment.

Swallowing against invisible tears, Nardrissa calmed her breath to an even cadence, the rise of her chest rhythmic to the waiting silence.

The trolls of Vvaarlek were fierce, brutish beasts - mountainous giants with rough skin of gray and calloused faces. Gromlics fared similar marks...their deceptive needs allowed they horde what is not their own...

...the creatures of stone despised tolerance, reacting harshly towards outsiders and suppressing passerby with violence.

To venture west would claim eyes on Erandor, the ancient nation of man. Not far from its walls spanned an ancient wood...

Such is the advantage of the dryad, for with no means to decipher a distinction, many a chance passerby becomes entranced with its death-song, with no choice but to obey the creature's every beckon.

And so it continues , a cavalcade of misused words and contorted grammar. Hydra Publications has done the teenage author no favours by publishing what reads like an unedited novel.
 

JaneD

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That snippet is breathtaking. If that's the kind of thing they're looking for then I wouldn't fit. And as my grammar and punctuation skills are pretty hazy, I think I need a rather more rigorous editor.
 

aliceshortcake

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Quite a few Amazon reviews mention typos, poor grammar and weak editing in Hydra books. To be fair, though, the one I quoted above is in a class of its own!