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Jim Cox Report: August 2026
Dear Publisher Folk, Friends & Family:
Occasionally I get asked why, after some 50 years, I'm still passionate about reviewing books and still going my office 2 to 3 hours a day, seven days a week helping out authors, publishers, and publicists reach as widest possible audience for their books as possible be it libraries, bookstores, and the public at large.
Here's an example of why I'm still (at the ripe old age of 83) at the helm of the Midwest Book Review:
Grateful for Our Partnership - A Note from Karen Steele
7/28/2026 12:37:09 PM Central Daylight Time
Dear James,
I wanted to reach out personally to let you know that I have decided to retire from Baker Publishing Group after so many years there. It was a wonderful place to work, and I hold the Baker family in the highest regard.
Working with you over the years - pitching titles, sharing our authors' stories, and building what I always considered a genuine partnership - has been one of the true highlights of my career. I've appreciated your professionalism, your responsiveness, and honestly, just the good working relationship we built together.
I'm grateful for the coverage you gave to so many of our authors and their stories, and for the trust we built along the way. It made the work meaningful.
Wishing you all the best going forward, and I hope our paths cross again.
Karen Steele
My role as the Editor-in-Chief is to mentor the men and women who would like to share their opinions about what they are reading with others through the mechanism of a review. To provide them with an audience for their reviews. To help them understand the publishing industry. Learn how to craft a review that would best, fairly, and effectively represent their opinions and critiques.
I want to share with you my response to one of my newest reviewers who is currently learning the trade and asked my advice as her editor in trying to fairly review a political science themed book with whom she was in political and philosophical disagreement with.
Basically, should she reject the review assignment or should she carry on trying to review it.
This was my advice:
Just a quick note on the subject of reviewing stridently political books that you might disagree with (and brother, I have done hundreds of them over the past 50 years!).
For example -- I'm about as anti-Trump as it is possible for an 83 year old life long Republican who is heartsick over what that rapist criminal has done to my Republican Party and the looming destruction of our American democracy. All while having to fairly review some pro-Trump books by dedicated MAGA true believers.
The trick is to:
1. Determine if it is something (like one of those written by a Trump sycophant) that can be recommended for its intended audience -- e.g. MAGA readers albeit controversial to mainstream conservatives or constitutionalists.
2. How well it is written in terms of readability for political science students, academia, 'true believer' MAGAs, political activists. governmental policy makers, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in national discussions on a particular political or cultural issue, etc.
3. You do not endorse political, social, or cultural positions that you do not hold. The question to be asked and answered is just how well or effectively did that author express himself or herself in the pages of their book, and if it can or cannot be recommended for personal, professional, community, and/or college/university library collections on the subject(s) discussed.
Remembering always that while everyone is entitled to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts.
Hope this helps.
Jim Cox
Midwest Book Review
It turns out I was helpful and was then called upon for some further comment on my part -- and I wrote:
As a reviewer of other peoples books (and any political slants they may have), don't be nervous about having political views of your own that differ from theirs.
I have 3 rules for myself when reviewing a book whose politics or positions (such as on how to protect the environment, or how to balance the national debt, or a woman's right to control her own body with respect to reproduction -- I'm absolutely Pro-Choice).
1. Never belittle the author, name call, demean or be rude. There are a lot of ways to disagree without being disagreeable.
2. Always keep in mine the author's intended audience while calling out errors of fact, misinformation, bias or erroneous assumptions. The author may well exist in a bias bubble -- and so might you!
3. And if a book is actually dangerous -- say so and decline to review the book. Or better yet, present your best arguments as to why it's dangerous or so flawed that it cannot in good conscience be recommended to its intended readership (or anyone else) and let that be the review you send back to the author and/or publisher.
I'll get off my soapbox now.
Jim 'Your 83 Year Old Veteran Editor' Cox
Midwest Book Review
A note to the Jim Cox Report readers -- If you or someone you know would like to try their hand at book reviewing, have them send me an email (mbr@execpc.com) and requesting our Midwest Book Review Reviewer Guidelines.
Quote of the Month
"If nobody talks about books, if they are not discussed or somehow contended with, literature ceases to be a conversation, ceases to be dynamic. Most of all, it ceases to be intimate. It degenerates into a monologue or a mutter. An unreviewed book is a struck bell that gives no resonance. Without reviews, literature would be oddly mute in spite of all those words on all those pages of all those books. Reviewing makes of reading a participant sport, not a spectator sport." -- Patricia Hampl
Website of the Month
The Writing Center
https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/book-reviews
Here is a review that will prove of particular interest to writers, publishers, and bibliophiles:
Foundation: A Guide to Successful & Profitable Writing
Barry M. Willis
Cresting Wave Publishing LLC
9781956048346, $24.95 Hardcover/$9.99 Paperback/$2.99 eBook
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Foundation-Guide-Successful-Profitable-Writing/dp/1956048340
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/foundation-a-guide-to-successful-profitable-writing-kris-neely/1149046433
Diane Donovan
Senior Reviewer
Foundation: A Guide to Successful & Profitable Writing: (And to Everything You Didn't Learn in English Class) breaks the rules - some of the rules of standard English teachings about writing, that is. In so doing, Foundation sets new standards for writing for the ear and attractive results, offering a creative focus to successful rule-bending that can result in superior writing.
Important observations emerge in the course of examining a range of writing-related choices and opportunities, from understanding the difference between exposure and exploitation to employing AI without compromising a writer's style.
Unlike other guides to using language more effectively, Barry M. Willis attends to various kinds of writing and their particular challenges, from handling press releases, ghostwriting, and grammar to knowing when and how to break the rules which confine and limit writing.
Writers who well recall and employ traditional rules of writing will be pleased to learn how to reconsider and break them:
The Star Trek mission statement, "To boldly go where no one has gone before," has been criticized many times by grammarians who insist that it's wrong because inserting the adverb boldly between to and go yields a so-called "split infinitive." While Captain Kirk of the starship Enterprise might have been more correct to state "To go boldly where no one has gone before," it might not have the same dramatic impact. Scriptwriters for Star Trek were probably well aware of how they were structuring the captain's bold statement.
Don't worry about splitting infinitives because every native speaker of English splits them all the time.
Examples blend real-world experience with editorial jobs and concerns, judgment calls in applying rules to writing, and a lively historical review of how grammar standards came to be:
Centuries ago, the use of double or stacked negatives was commonplace in English, but it fell out of fashion due to the insistence of grammarians trained in logic. Their persuasive argument was that two negative elements canceled each other, so that I ain't got none should be interpreted as I have some.
The result is unexpectedly lively, especially considering its topic (grammar, English language, and writing acuity). Foundation draws unusual, important links between the process of writing and its impact on readers.
Writers at all stages of honing their craft will appreciate Foundation: A Guide to Successful & Profitable Writing's ability to reconsider the basics in a lively, involving approach that is not just informative, but engrossing.
Book clubs and creative writing groups and classes, in particular, will relish its unique voice and passion, as well as its considerations of writer's quandaries and broader topics that don't appear in most books about this finer art form.
"The Midwest Book Review Postage Stamp Hall Of Fame & Appreciation" is a monthly roster of well-wishers and supporters. These are the generous folk who decided to say 'thank you' and 'support the cause' that is the Midwest Book Review by donating to our postage stamp fund.
Mary Sebesta
Malcom Ward
Kieran Conaty
Susan Hageman
Violeta Durollari
Anonymous (Taiwan)
Victoria Montes -- "Stung"
Lo Orsini's -- "Showing Up"
Larry Ebert -- "Beanie's Web"
Ben Barbic -- "Rise & Climb"
Evelyn Exley -- "King Justice"
Tracy Harmon -- "Strange Seas"
Paul Midden -- "Simple People"
Deepti Kannapan -- "Fire's Ally"
Sarah Marsh -- "A Rogue's Ruin"
Vera Bell -- "Of Flaw and Scorn"
Kirsten Janz - "SIBO Uncovered"
Kirk Alex -- "Calder's Last Gasp"
James Te Ronde -- "Menticulous"
Deb Hazlett -- "Before Tomorrow"
Huck Smith -- "The Leaving Gene"
Stan Fairbank -- "Love Me Tender"
Phil Graffoe -- "Invisible Negotians"
Patrick Smith -- "The Last Revision"
Bob DeLuca -- "A Pigeon in the Pen"
Miribal Starr -- "Ordinary Mysticism"
Anthony Gurley -- "Deadly Dilemma"
Brian Hand -- "Ripples In Their Wake"
Patrick Wolfe -- "A Snake on the Heart"
Dwayne Ulliac -- "Birds Beyond Reach"
Lini S. Kadaba -- "Leftovers After Live"
Elliott Light -- "For An Uncertain Truth"
Saz KeuKan -- "Plow, or In the Hollows"
Thurman Watson -- "See You At The Top"
John S. Powell -- "Hunt for the Third Woe"
viennereawrites.com -- "The Love Ladders"
Franck Prissert -- "Between Obama's Lines"
Rob & Kat Martin -- "Raising the Remnant"
Philip Fischer -- "You Are AI's Best Friend"
Brenda Murphy -- "Kindling of a Firebrand"
Linas Deimantavičius -- "Humans and Cats"
Dale O'Neal -- "The Ancient Moon Goddess"
Veronica Iniguez -- "Captain and Me at Sea!"
Corrie Webber -- "Sophie Finds A Best Friend"
David Voda -- "Everyone Dies In Youngstown"
Kelly Lydick -- "Everything That's Left Behind"
Siobhán Bridget Kennedy -- "Before the Labels"
Leroy J Lowe -- "The Black Stone and the Light"
Bobby L. Butler -- "The Procrastination Solution"
Carolyn Korsmeyer -- "Riddle of Spirit and Bone"
David Voda -- "You Always Kill The One You Love"
Carolyn Niethammer -- "Home and Garden Emporium"
Charlotte Parker Caminos -- "Annabelle's Journey Continues"
Verena Ferrant Harp -- "World War II Veteran in the Army of Peace"
Prasanth Kumar Vinakota -- "Why Good People Are Actually Dangerous"
Kyle W. Elsbernd -- "H.E.L.P.: How Ethos, Logos, and Pathos Transform Your Teaching"
Syncra Press
Science180, LLC
Garrett County Press
M3thod Strategies LLC
Timebound Publishing LLC
Sacred Path Community Inc.
Finn & Finch Publishing Ltd.
ClinicalPsychotherapists.com
Ellen Johnson -- Vocal Visions
Elizabeth Frazier -- Waldmania! PR
In lieu of (or in addition to!) postage stamp donations, we also accept PayPal gifts of support to our postage stamp fund for what we try to accomplish in behalf of the small press community.
Simply log onto your PayPal account and direct your kindness (in any amount and at your discretion) to the Midwest Book Review at: SupportMBR [at] aol.com (The @ is replaced by "[at]" in the above email address, in an attempt to avoid email-harvesting spambots.)
If you have postage stamps to donate, or if you have a book you'd like considered for review, then send those postage stamps (always appreciated, never required), or a published copy of that book (no galleys, uncorrected proofs, or Advance Reading Copies), accompanied by a cover letter and some form of publicity release to my attention at the address below.
All of the previous issues of the "Jim Cox Report" are archived on the Midwest Book Review website at www.midwestbookreview.com/bookbiz/jimcox.htm. If you'd like to receive the "Jim Cox Report" directly (and for free), just send me an email asking to be signed up for it.
So until next time -- goodbye, good luck, and good reading!
Jim Cox
Midwest Book Review
278 Orchard Drive, Oregon, WI, 53575
www.midwestbookreview.com
James A. Cox
Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review
278 Orchard Drive
Oregon, WI 53575-1129
phone: 1-608-835-7937
e-mail: mbr@execpc.com
e-mail: mwbookrevw@aol.com
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