{"id":291,"date":"2017-07-20T13:36:34","date_gmt":"2017-07-20T13:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/?p=291"},"modified":"2017-07-20T13:36:34","modified_gmt":"2017-07-20T13:36:34","slug":"three-stars-from-the-bbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/three-stars-from-the-bbc\/","title":{"rendered":"Three stars from the BBC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/sky-at-night-august-2017.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-293\" src=\"http:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/sky-at-night-august-2017-724x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Sky at Night magazine August 2017\" width=\"320\" height=\"453\" srcset=\"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/sky-at-night-august-2017-724x1024.jpg 724w, https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/sky-at-night-august-2017-212x300.jpg 212w, https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/sky-at-night-august-2017-768x1086.jpg 768w, https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/sky-at-night-august-2017.jpg 1091w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px\" \/><\/a>I don\u2019t often buy the BBC\u2019s <em>Sky at Night<\/em> magazine, chiefly because of its ridiculously high cover price (more on which later). I do, however, regularly exercise my democratic right to browse through its contents in W. H. Smith\u2019s. So I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the latest issue contains a prominently placed review of my book <em>Destination Mars<\/em>. I was less happy that the reviewer only gave it 3 out of 5 stars, but it was enough to prompt me to buy the magazine anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Actually it\u2019s not a bad review. The reviewer (who works for the European Space Agency, and hence presumably knows a lot more about the subject than I do) doesn\u2019t make any really negative points \u2013 it\u2019s more like one of my school reports that always seemed to say \u201ccould do better\u201d. The three-star rating is defined as \u201caverage\u201d \u2013 which I guess means 50% of all the books ever written are better than mine and 50% are worse. So I can\u2019t really complain (though I like <a href=\"http:\/\/popsciencebooks.blogspot.co.uk\/2017\/07\/destination-mars-andrew-may.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">four star<\/a> reviews better).<\/p>\n<p>In any case, there\u2019s no such thing as bad publicity. This is only the second time anything of mine has been reviewed in print, following the review in <em>Fortean Times<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/as-reviewed-in-fortean-times\/\">earlier this year.<\/a> And the <em>Sky at Night<\/em> magazine has almost 10,000 more readers than FT (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pressgazette.co.uk\/uk-magazine-abcs-winners-losers-and-full-breakdown-as-circulation-declines-average-6-per-cent\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">source<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s another point I ought to bring to your attention. The BBC magazine costs \u00a35.20 per issue, which strikes me as extortionately high for something that only has 100 pages and is packed with advertisements. My book has 160 pages (and the only advertisement is for another book in the same series), yet its cover price is only \u00a37.99. If you follow <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/1785782258\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=6738&amp;creativeASIN=1785782258&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=forteana-21&amp;linkId=4b4e894672640b89928fb7cd07f5f3e3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this link to its Amazon page<\/a>, you\u2019ll find that some sellers have it even cheaper than that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don\u2019t often buy the BBC\u2019s Sky at Night magazine, chiefly because of its ridiculously high cover price (more on which later). I do, however, regularly exercise my democratic right to browse through its contents in W. H. Smith\u2019s. So I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the latest issue contains a prominently placed review &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/three-stars-from-the-bbc\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Three stars from the BBC&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[37,21,43],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-mars","tag-my-books","tag-the-sky-at-night"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions\/309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}