Tagged: book review requests

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 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:

  1. Any resubmitted requests because I accidentally deleted an author’s email.
  2. Anyone who sends me print copies.
  3. Authors who sent me the first book in a series, got a good review and want to send me their second book.
  4. 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.

How to Alienate Book Reviewers

Hello!

I was wondering if you would like to review my book, Random Name.  The blurb is below.

[Big long blurb I’m too lazy to read.]

Have a nice day,

Random Author Person

I get these all of the time.  They’re form emails and they can turn a great day into a bad one because my blood starts to boil after reading only a few lines.  And it’s about time I’ve tackled them on my blog because they are rampant in the book blogging community.  Here are my thoughts on them:

Names

Names are easy to find, believe me.

Argument: “Names are hard to find!”

Us bloggers (or maybe it’s just me) are kind of vain.  Even if we don’t have our full names on our blogs, we usually have either our first names or pseudonyms on an ‘About’ page.  This is usually located in an easy-to-find tab next to the Home tab.  By not even bothering to use a blogger’s name in the greeting, authors are sending the message that we’re not worth their time.

Do you see the hypocrisy here?  Authors are expecting book bloggers to take hours out of their days to read their books but can’t even be bothered to spend a minute maximum finding the blogger’s name.  That’s not lazy, that’s rude. Continue reading →

Book Reviewing Criteria

[UPDATE 29/01/13: It breaks my heart to say this, but The Mad Reviewer is no longer accepting submissions for review.  If you’ve contacted me as of 2:04pm CT, I’ll still process your request.  However, I am not accepting any new submissions.  Check back in 1-2 months and we’ll see if I’m open for business.]

Since I started accepting book review requests from authors, I’ve had a surprisingly large response.  As much as I would like to, there aren’t nearly enough hours in a day to read all of them.  Therefore, in order to get a review, you must follow the instructions and guidelines below or I will reject your request.

What I Review

  • Teen-targeted self-help
  • All of the major YA genres: romance, fantasy, sci-fi, historical, realistic, etc.
  • Nonfiction teens would be interested in.
  • Self-published fiction that fits the above guidelines.

What I WILL NOT Review

  • Erotica.  Not interested, people.
  • Spiritual fiction.  I will not touch religion on this blog.
  • Poetry.  Unless you’re Dante, Homer or Virgil.
  • Short stories (unless they’re in an anthology).
  • Any unpublished work.

So your book fits the criteria, great!  What do you do next?

1.  You must contact me via the Contact page here on my blog.

2.  I check my email three times per day, so I expect you to at check it at least once.  I don’t like waiting around for an author’s reply for days.

3.  You must have a blog and/or official website as well as membership to 2 or more social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, Fark, Reddit, etc.  If I have to take time out of my day to read and review your book, you had better take the time to publicize my review, but only if it’s good.  I certainly don’t expect you to publicize a bad review.

4.  When you contact me, you must be able to provide me a free copy either in PDF or paperback.  I personally prefer physical copies of books, but I know shipping to Canada can be costly.

5.  When you give me a free copy of your book, it does not guarantee you a good review.  I give full disclosure in a review when an author has contacted me to prevent any conflicts of interest.  I review all of the books I read honestly and if you don’t like it, don’t bother wasting my time.

6.  You may mention if you want to do a giveaway or interview, but you must wait until I publish your review before we actually go through with it.  I’m not going to do a giveaway for a book I didn’t like.  You must also have a sizable enough social network to promote it through so I can actually get more than 5 entries.  Otherwise, it’s just a waste of my time and your money.

I reserve the right to accept or refuse your request on a case-by-case basis.  I also reserve the right to call you out publicly on my blog if I feel you have mistreated me (as in name-calling, excessive snarkiness or anything that could be called ‘cyber bullying’).  When you submit your novel to me, you are acknowledging that if you are rude to me that you may become the subject of one of my articles and/or that your words may be included at the bottom of my review of your book for all to see.  These guidelines are in effect as of November 27, 2012 and are not retroactive.