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.