u/Western-Telephone259

I just published Book 2 of my trilogy, and I've been getting a ton of obvious scammers claiming to be Bookstagrammers offering to review my book for a fee. Their Instagram accounts are usually only weeks old, have zero posts, and a few hundred (likely fake) followers.

For the actual reviewers out there:

• Do you normally cold-contact authors about reviewing their books?
• Do you expect to be paid for a review (aside from a free PDF/ePub copy)?
• Is any of this normal practice, or am I right to just block and move on?

I'm asking because I'm new to this bookstagram stuff.

Hello All!

I'm still kind of a new author. I just published book 2 of my trilogy. Check it out.

Sentinel's Return (The Sentinel Trilogy, Book 2)

Sci-Fi Romance / Alien First Contact

Antel and Becky are back on Earth, this time to set up first contact between the Terrans and his people. Only now she's Mission Leader and he's under her command.

The problem is that his whole instinct to "protect her at all costs" does not do well taking orders from the one person he wants to keep out of harm's way.

Then the team gets captured, and Antel's left alone with an impossible choice: rescue the woman he loves or stop a Terran weapons launch that could spark a war between worlds. He's out of time to do both.

Book 2 of The Sentinel Trilogy. A story of where loving someone and wanting different things both get to be true at the same time.

Book 2: 🔗 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GY5YFDF7

If you haven't read book 1 yet, grab it first: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FJW14Z9H

Available in Kindle Unlimited, too!

Hello All!

I just published book 2 of my trilogy. Check it out.

Sentinel's Return (The Sentinel Trilogy, Book 2)

Sci-Fi Romance / Alien First Contact

Antel and Becky are back on Earth, this time to set up first contact between the Terrans and his people. Only now she's Mission Leader and he's under her command.

The problem is that his whole instinct to "protect her at all costs" does not do well taking orders from the one person he wants to keep out of harm's way.

Then the team gets captured, and Antel's left alone with an impossible choice: rescue the woman he loves or stop a Terran weapons launch that could spark a war between worlds. He's out of time to do both.

Book 2 of The Sentinel Trilogy. A story of where loving someone and wanting different things both get to be true at the same time.

Book 2: 🔗 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GY5YFDF7

If you have read book 1 yet, grab it first: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FJW14Z9H

I'm curious if there are any Sci-Fi books (set in space or has some space travel) where it's in the MMC's point of view?

Preferences

• Both MMC and FMC are human (or at least the same species)
• MMC is a normie (or a bit above average) and not 6'11" with superhuman abs that can bench press 800 lbs.
• Audiobook (most of my free time for books is during my work commute)

I want to read/listen to some examples to see how the one I wrote compares to them. Plus, I find the stories fun to read/listen to.

I've been listening to a few I saw recommended in this community. They were great stories, but they were from the FMC's POV.

I'm writing a sci-fi novel set on a human planet that has never discovered Earth. Since they developed independently, their units of measurement are going to be completely different, and I'm struggling with how to handle this without killing the story's pacing.

Distance and mass should be easy. Pick a unit with a reasonable real-world analog, use it consistently, and readers figure it out from context. "We're still a hundred kilodritts from the capital." The reader feels the difference without needing a conversion chart.

Time is the problem.

Their day is slightly longer than Earth's and instead of dividing it into 24 hours, they use 10 (metric-style). Each of those is divided into 100 alien-minutes. This means, one alien-hour is about 2.5 Earth hours. So "I want that report in 48 hours" becomes "I want that report in 20 hours." A 3-hour movie is barely one alien-hour. It's just off enough to feel wrong without explanation.

The bigger wrinkle is that there aren't going to be any Earth characters in this story. Nobody can slip in and say "that's about two hours back home" because they've never heard of Earth. All calibration has to happen organically.

I've thought about:

• A preface (but front-loaded infodumps kill the opening hook)
• An appendix (reader won't see it until it's too late)
• Leaning on relative time ("a few hours," "by morning") as much as possible
• Having character reactions carry the meaning — "Twenty hours? That's barely time to sleep once."

Has anyone solved this in their own writing, or read a book that handled it well? Is there a technique I'm missing, or is this just a "trust the reader and move on" situation?

I'm writing a sci-fi novel set on a human planet that has never discovered Earth. Since they developed independently, their units of measurement are going to be completely different, and I'm struggling with how to handle this without killing the story's pacing.

Distance and mass should be easy. Pick a unit with a reasonable real-world analog, use it consistently, and readers figure it out from context. "We're still a hundred kilodritts from the capital." The reader feels the difference without needing a conversion chart.

Time is the problem.

Their day is slightly longer than Earth's and instead of dividing it into 24 hours, they use 10 (metric-style). Each of those is divided into 100 alien-minutes. This means, one alien-hour is about 2.5 Earth hours. So "I want that report in 48 hours" becomes "I want that report in 20 hours." A 3-hour movie is barely one alien-hour. It's just off enough to feel wrong without explanation.

The bigger wrinkle is that there aren't going to be any Earth characters in this story. Nobody can slip in and say "that's about two hours back home" because they've never heard of Earth. All calibration has to happen organically.

I've thought about:

• A preface (but front-loaded infodumps kill the opening hook)
• An appendix (reader won't see it until it's too late)
• Leaning on relative time ("a few hours," "by morning") as much as possible
• Having character reactions carry the meaning — "Twenty hours? That's barely time to sleep once."

Has anyone solved this in their own writing, or read a book that handled it well? Is there a technique I'm missing, or is this just a "trust the reader and move on" situation?

https://preview.redd.it/f5u19z20581h1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=8540e92a107b249e188e207bf523d7a58a40d2c0

Blurb:

Lieutenant Antel Ralnar and Becky Miller have assembled a team on a base on Mars to prepare for a critical return mission to Earth. Their goal is to foster a peaceful path toward first contact, but they face mounting pressure from conservative factions within the Rileean Empire who remain wary of the Terrans. But this time, Becky is put in charge of the team, and the friction between them risks the love they have for each other.

Meanwhile, on Earth, Major Daniel Scott and the U.S. government have begun reverse-engineering Rileean artifacts, bracing for a potential threat they do not fully understand. As Becky leads the team on a covert mission on Earth, they must evade discovery by the US military and finish the mission before something triggers a war Earth isn't prepared to fight.

Triggers:

• Military violence/gunfire
• Interrogation and detention
• Threats of interstellar conflict
• Explosions and property destruction

Exact Date of Publication: June 25, 2026

ARC Delivery Date: May 20, 2026

Review Deadline: June 20, 2026

Sign-up Link: https://forms.gle/6Kxo7pQjm3ZEk4Yj7

Sentinel's Dilemma (Book 1): If you haven't read book 1, I can get you a copy of that too, so Sentinel's Return makes more sense.