Information For Reviewers
I've been a book blogger for over a decade, but in 2013 I swapped hats to publish my first
novella. I've seen plenty of review policies on book blogs, but I want to make my
reviewee policy
clear for anyone considering covering my writing.
Negative reviews
I've watched various online meltdowns, when an author takes badly to a review and attempts to argue it
down or bully the reviewer into submission, with a degree of horror. No reader should feel intimidated
about sharing their thoughts on a book.
I'm fine with people not liking my writing. No-one can please everyone, after all, and negative reviews
can also sell books. So my policy with regard to negative reviews is that I won't debate the reviewer's
response to my writing. That way lies madness. I won't say I'll never comment, because "thanks for
taking the time to write a review, even though the story wasn't to your taste," is still a comment. So
is "I'll fix that in the next edition."
Having said that, if your "review" consists of bomb-making instructions and the directions to my house,
I will have something to say about it.
Positive reviews, linking and blurbs
I'm keen to help people who help me, so I'll be linking out to positive and interesting reviews that I'm
made aware of. So feel free to contact me to let me know about reviews, whether or not you're on my
eARC list. I don't know how busy I will be in future, so I can't promise to link to every single one, but I
will do my best.
Any particularly juicy quotes from reviewers and other authors are likely to appear within the book if I get
them in good time before publication.
I will respect your copyright
Bloggers are writers too, with copyright in their own work. So no matter how happy I am with a particular
review, I won't be copy-pasting the whole thing all over the internet without permission. Instead I'll be
quoting the best bits of each review, and linking back to the source where possible.
Embargoes
It's nice to get a bit of buzz around the date of publication, but I won't be upset by early reviews. There
are no embargoes.
Review copies
I may provide a number of review copies to bloggers and media outlets during the promotional
period around a book's launch. This period stretches for a couple of months leading up to the
release date, and maybe a few weeks after.
With the exception of sites like Netgalley and Edelweiss, the way it usually works is that the
author or publicist asks reviewers to if they will take a book, and not the other way around. Most of the
book bloggers I have spoken to are inundated with requests, and in my experience the number of
these requests has a direct relationship to a website's readership.
If you post on a popular review outlet that I may not have heard of yet, feel free
to let me know about it. But I am looking for active blogs with a regular audience, so I reserve the
right to be discriminating about where I send copies.