1. Sang Froyd begins the saga of the Kuhl Family, 15-year-old sticky-fingered Joseph in the forefront. "hilarious" (May no longer be iavailable.)

2. Finding Dad has 16-year-old narrator Joseph Kuhl and his astonishing Cousin Nim searching Balona for Joe's suddenly missing father. "...a funny learning experience"

3. One Brick Shy presents Joe and Cousin Zack attending a dance which turns into a splendid riot, fire, and flood."...side-splitting"

4. Spring Break offers Joe and Zack trying to get rich from the accidental flooding of Balona by a member of the Kuhl family. "...continuously funny...""

5. Heavier than Air provides the Kuhl family with the potential of enormous wealth. Will the bounty last? "...mostly a gas"

6. The Chocolate Korndog demonstrates how Balona responds to Kenworth Kuhl's drool-inducing dream. "...not exactly appetizing, but hilarious"

7.A Cuisine of Leftovers features a home-made cover and consists of short stories about some stars of Balona Society (high and low). Probably more interesting to grown-ups and more mature young adults. "mixture of wonderful and insane"

BalonaBooks is not a subsidy publisher. But if a writer is super-eager to be published, he or she may be willing to pay dearly to get into print. A subsidy publisher may be the answer. IUniverse, Author House, Xlibris, The Writers Collective, and Infinity Publishing are examples of subsidy publishers. Some such publishers may do a good job, if the original product is any good. If the original is no good, the published product will not be good. If the cover art, for example, is not a professional product, that fact will be noticeable. If the text has not been professionally edited and the book not professionally designed, the reader will soon discover errors or problems in trying to read the book.
   Some subsidy publishers charge a flat fee that includes everything, except that the author must buy the finished product at the publisher's price.
   To try to ensure high quality--and to make additional profits for the publisher--one unusually crafty subsidy publisher requires that authors pay a "membership" fee, pay a fee for the ISBN (the book number), pay a distributor's fee, pay a publicity fee, and contract with the publisher's stable of experts in editing, cover art, and book design. Each of these aspects requires a separate fee, a portion of which is very likely exacted by this publisher. Then, of course, the author also pays the printing fee for a minimum number of books.
   A subsidy-published book is also often (not always) more expensive to buy than a regular trade book.
   The author of the seven books illustrated above was so eager to become a published author that those seven books are all products of subsidy publishers. Some of the stories are very good; others are so-so. An author who uses a subsidy publisher will likely tell other prospective authors: "Read the fine print."
   If you click on a cover above, you will get a page on which you can connect with the publisher. If you should buy one of these, we'll be really interested to know your opinion of the product.