Category: Site Announcements
Help Me Improve The Mad Reviewer
It’s been a while since I’ve done a survey of you guys, so I thought I’d do yet another one. As always, writing a blog is a constant journey and you’re always finding ways to improve your readers’ experience. When I look back at some of the early posts and reviews I did it’s a wonder I got as many followers as I did. Yet I feel I’ve improved over time and have found ways to add new blog features without changing The Mad Reviewer all that much.
I digress, as usual. Basically, if you’ve taken the time to read that reflective paragraph, please take the time to answer these questions so I can improve your blog-reading experience:
Just as a note if you voted and feel comfortable discussing your choices, I would definitely love to hear the reasons why you voted the way you did.
Taking the Weekend Off
This is just a brief note to let you guys know I’ll be taking a break from posting for just this weekend. I’ve got a case of blogger burnout and I want to catch up on a lot of reviews that I haven’t been doing. I’ll still be participating in the discussion post about strong female characters, so feel free to comment away and see you on Monday!
Thank You
After the drama of the long weekend, it’s been difficult to get back to my regular blogging schedule. Comment moderation and replying is slower than usual, but rest assured that I will get my act together after another day and all comments will have the replies they deserve.
With that said, I want to give a huge thank you to the book blogging and self-publishing communities. Thank you to everyone who showed me support through a comment, tweet or Facebook post. In a way, it’s sort of restored my faith in humanity because it shows that the behaviour of the author involved is completely unacceptable to pretty much everyone. As it should be.
I would also like to thank you guys for not (as far as I know) perpetuating the cycle of hatred that the author started. Trolling, death threats, etc. were not a part of this incident as far as I know and I’m very grateful for that. There’s no excuse for anyone to do that, especially when it’s in retaliation for that same behaviour. I’m not a really dramatic person, so thank you so much for keeping the drama to a minimum.
Even if it means there will be incidents like this in the future, I will make this promise to all of you here and now: I am not giving up on the self-publishing community. I will continue to fight for your right to be recognized as legitimate authors and after a bit of a break will support you through reviews and interviews as I’ve always done. I’ve made my decision and I know that after my break I will not be closing submissions to indies because of the actions of one person. That’s unfair, especially considering how many good experiences I’ve had and all the new friends I’ve made in my year and a half of blogging.
My New Review Request Policy
As anyone who’s been on my blog for the past three days knows, I had a bit of a nasty incident when an author reacted badly to my refusal to review his book. Even though in my review policy it says in bold letters I am closed for business. The fact that he wanted a review despite this policy is not unusual, but his over-the-top reaction was definitely unusual. For that I’m thankful.
However, this incident and the drama that has resulted because of it (partly my own fault, but still) has made me re-examine how and when I accept book review requests. Do I really want this kind of drama anytime soon when my health is getting worse and I’m working six day weeks? The short answer: No.
That’s why I’m going to do one thing for sure and see how it works and depending on the results I may do one of several things:
I AM COMPLETELY CLOSING THE DOORS TO ANY UNSOLICITED REVIEW REQUESTS (BOTH PUBLISHERS AND AUTHORS) UNTIL 2014.
Yes, this can be perceived as letting the bad authors win and letting good authors suffer. The latter will certainly happen as I know I’m one of the more self-publishing friendly book blogs out there. Yes, good authors will suffer because of my policy and I will be limiting myself because I will not be finding good books that I otherwise may have stumbled upon. At this point, I frankly don’t care. Book blogging has always been and likely will always be a hobby for me and when a hobby stops being fun it quickly becomes work.
Now, depending on how fast I get through my backlog and whether any further drama results out of this recent incident or future incidents, I may do one of several things:
1. Reopen submissions once I clear my backlog and write a disclaimer on my review policy that I reserve the right to refuse or accept requests for any reasons, not limited to my level of interest, how busy I am, book length, the phase of the moon, etc.
2. Finally take Mark Lee up on his offer to work as part of The Masquerade Crew and have someone else handle all author book review requests and any attached drama. This means that I won’t be dealing with authors firsthand which can be a blessing in certain circumstances, but also a pitfall because I love most authors.
3. Steal The Masquerade Crew’s idea and have open submission weeks where only one genre is able to submit. After I’ve finished reading all the books submitted in that limited period of time, I’ll have a submissions call for books of another genre and so on and so forth. Either that or have one week every quarter where anyone within my review criteria can submit. The idea here is to limit the number of submissions.
4. Permanently close review requests and only seek out authors whose books I feel I will like or old authors whose books I’m pretty certain I will like. This appeals to me because of the level of control I have, but I know I’ll be missing out on a lot of good books out there.
5. Reopen requests in the fall like I had planned but write a pillar post in which I politely explain why ignoring review policy criteria is a great way to get rejected and that it’s the author’s fault for such a rejection.
In truth, I may do one of these to the letter or combine several of them to create a strategy that works for me. But until then, my review requests are completely closed.
The Mad Reviewer is Closed to Submissions (Temporarily)
With so many requests coming in as well as my own not-so-great health, I’ve decided to close submissions for reviews from authors until the fall. This will give me more time to focus on my health, but also to catch up on those authors who have been waiting and waiting for months while I’ve only had time to process the numerous review requests I’ve received. If you got your request into me before 8:26am MST I’ll still process it.
There are, however, two exceptions for the closed submission policy:
1. If you’re an author who has a series and I’ve read your first book and liked it, you are free to submit your second book for review. If I like that, then your third book and so on and so on. This is so I don’t forget the characters’ names in a series, let alone half of the plot points before I get to finish it!
2. If you are a publisher contacting me to review an ARC or galley copy as long as it is a print copy I will process your request. This is because I usually have more time to read print copies.
For those of you wondering, I will likely be re-opening for business sometime in the fall.