Category: Site Announcements
Oops!
Well, this just goes to show what happens when you don’t save things as drafts but schedule them for the day you expect to publish them. Some of you know what I’m talking about because the cover and blurb for The Eye of Erasmus by Teresa Geering showed up in your reader with absolutely no review. So sorry about the confusion there.
The Best and Worst of April
Well I’m happy to report that my total views are up since March, reaching 3,748 instead of 3, 548. Part of that I credit with the fact I reviewed books by authors who publicized my posts and the fact that I had a huge giveaway in conjunction with Carla Hanna. Giveaways always bring up statistics.
Enough about that for now. What were the most popular posts for April?
1. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
2. Giveaway: Starlet’s Web & Starlet’s Run by Carla J. Hanna
3. End of Days by Eric Walters
5. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
I definitely have my theory as to why my Hunger Games article soared to the top this month: a teacher is using it in their curriculum. How do I know this? I followed the link that was giving me so many referrals and logged in as a guest on Owensboro Public Schools Moodle (an online correspondence course tool). It seems my article is being used to help teach The Hunger Games to students and that makes me very, very happy. I suspect some school(s) is/are doing a novel study about Eric Walters’ End of Days because it fits in with the themes that are supposed to be covered in most curricula. As for the others, they’re very popular books or giveaways; those things normally get plenty of traffic.
So if The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome is at the top, what are some of the bottom ones?
1. Kaiulani: The People’s Princess by Ellen Emerson White
2. Why Books Should be Rated on a Logarithmic Scale
3. The Host by Stephenie Meyer
5. Lady of Palenque: Flower of Bacal by Anna Kirwan
What’s not surprising is seeing two books from The Royal Diaries on here, but I’m disappointed that Margaret’s hilarious guest post Why Books Should be Rated on a Logarithmic Scale isn’t doing so well. It’s definitely not for a lack of effort or creativity on her part, but I suppose it isn’t all that clicky (not a lot of keywords people search for). As for The Host and Extras, they’re not exactly the most popular books around, but with The Host movie coming out you’d think there’d be more traffic. Oh well; it wasn’t the most flattering review anyway.
That’s how my April went. How was yours? Anything new going on with you guys?
Fallen by Lauren Kate
Today I’m guest posting for Savindi over at The Streetlight Reader. So I decided to review a book that has been on my radar for years: Fallen by Lauren Kate. I was attracted to the cover, but was judging a book by its cover the right call? Find out by heading on over. And while you’re over there, check out both Savindi’s awesome book reviews of very diverse fiction as well as her occasionally successful cooking attempts.
Starlet’s Web & Starlet’s Run Giveaway Winner(s)
First off I would like to thank everyone who entered and publicized the giveaway I had with Carla Hanna for paperback copies of Starlet’s Web and Starlet’s Run. Thank you for making this my most successful giveaway yet.
Secondly, I would like to give a HUGE thank you to Carla Hanna, both for sending me her great book(s) to review and for agreeing to go along with this giveaway. (As a side note this giveaway was the first she’s ever done with a blogger.) Her questions for you guys were amazing and brought up many thoughtful entries, but it’s her replies to those entries that really seemed special for me. Carla took an active role in the giveaway, tirelessly promoting it and giving her best responses to your entries. She really is an incredible woman.
I digress. Here are the results of the giveaway:
All thirteen people that entered the giveaway will be receiving a prize pack consisting of print copies of Starlet’s Web and Starlet’s Run.
Carla had such a hard time picking out just one winner and she was so grateful for the thoughtful entries that, yes, she has decided to ship out a prize pack to every single person who entered as a thank you. Not every author has the resources to do this, so I ask only one thing of the winners: that you leave an honest review of her books on whatever sites you want, whether it’s Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads or your own blog.
It doesn’t have to be a thousand words and it doesn’t even have to be positive. But I would ask you all to show Carla some thanks by leaving a couple sentences or even paragraphs about her books. After all, there are very, very few contests where everyone is a winner. So please, make this one count.
The Mad Reviewer is Open for Submissions
I’m going to discuss a couple of things in this article, but I’ll start with the most important bit first:
1. I am now initiating an open submission call!
So if you’re an author, whether traditionally, independently or self-published and want your book reviewed, you are free to request a review. THIS IS ON THE CONDITION YOUR BOOK FITS MY REVIEW POLICY!!! As always, I reserve the right to accept or request your book on a case-by-case basis. I’m expecting quite a few submissions because of my big submissions announcement, so don’t be surprised if I’m closed for business pretty soon.
2. If you had submitted your book to me last time and haven’t heard back from me, you are free to resubmit.
I may have accidentally deleted your email and for that I apologize. Admitting this here on my blog is pretty embarrassing, but I have a feeling I actually did do this to someone. It’s not because I hate you or your book; it’s because I’m a disorganized idiot. You are now my top priority and once you resubmit your book, can expect a review in 1-2 days.
3. I will now be prioritizing requests.
No, this is not because I want to pick favourites. I will now be officially prioritizing requests to make things a little more fair. Here is the order in which I will be reading books:
- Any resubmitted requests because I accidentally deleted an author’s email.
- Anyone who sends me print copies.
- Authors who sent me the first book in a series, got a good review and want to send me their second book.
- Everyone else on a first come, first serve basis.
#1 seems pretty obvious to me, but #2 may be a bit controversial. As a matter of personal preference, I love print copies because reading on the computer too long hurts my eyes. I don’t have an e-reader so I can take print copies with me everywhere and usually finish them immediately. From an author’s perspective they are taking the risk by spending their own money to send a print copy of their book all the way up to Canada for a possibly bad review. So if they take that risk, the least I can do is give them a much quicker, but still honest, book review.
#3 actually serves a more practical purpose: I read a lot of books. As a result, if I wait a couple months to read through my entire list before starting the second book in a series, I often forget who the characters are and what they did and get confused. However, #3 is conditional. I absolutely have my limits on how many books in a series an author can send me and this is only applicable for first books I give a rating of 4+ stars.
4. I will be better at updating my In Progress page.
Before I closed submissions and afterwards, I sucked at updating my In Progress page, I know. I would often change the dates in which I expected to start books. But no more! Authors, you can be reasonably sure that whatever timeline I give you on that page now is more concrete than before. It won’t be perfect, but I promise it will be better.