Column: The Critical Eye – Getting Books Reviewed – Part 2

2.2.10: Getting Books Reviewed – Part Two

One of the downsides to being a book review editor is I get lots of email solicitations for books. Many of them are bulk mail from a publicist, pushing one book or another. Others are obviously single emails from an author who ran across our paper or our online posting of reviews on Amazon. I usually skim the PR and either reply or delete.

Does this mean spamming editors works? Probably not.

I’m probably one of the more polite editors and don’t just delete everything. What doesn’t work is when I get the same email more than once (and I have a pretty good memory for these things.) Certain publicists just spam out the same solicitation for a book multiple times, hoping for a hit.

Individual author emails get treated somewhat differently. I know how hard it is to get a book reviewed, so anyone that seems to have taken enough time to know the sorts of things we are interested in, and can give me a reason for why I should take a look at their book (“I have a book that is like X that you reviewed two months ago, and I’d like to see if you’d be interested in reviewing mine.”), will at least get a quick reply – “Here is our submission page,” or “We’re not looking for any more books in that category right now.”

So what works with emails? First, if I’ve done stuff with you, I’ll recognize your name. That always helps. Something that catches enough of my attention to get past the first line or two. Something personal from someone I know that isn’t obviously part of a bulk mail. I count on the publicists we work with to point out books to me that I didn’t pick on my first go-round through their catalogs, provide me with good lists of holiday/seasonal books, or odd books that are getting notice elsewhere.

What doesn’t work? Calling me. I’ve had more than a couple of authors do that, and it interrupts my day. And I can’t tell any more about your book via a phone call than I could by an email, and an email I can deal with in my own time.

We also get a lot of unsolicited books. Probably between one-third and one-half of all the books we get are unrequested—from self-published books where the author discovered us, to publicists who just have a budget of books to send out, and we’re a reliable enough source for the chance of getting a review. I have several publicists who just send us everything they publish and let me sort out which I’m interested in. Helpful in some ways, because I’ll often err on the side of caution and not request a book I’m not quite sure we’ll get reviewed. Unless a book is bad enough on its cover (and yes, often a book gets judged by its cover as its being received), the unrequested books make it into the “Available for Review” list we send to our reviewers a couple of times a month. One romance publicist that just sends me everything probably gets more books on average reviewed this way than if I had to try and pick from her catalog. However, sending me a book unsolicited and then hassling me about when it is going to get reviewed is a pretty good way for your book to get dropped.

A note on sending books unsolicited: if I do not know you or your publishing house, make sure you send contact info if you’d like to know if/when we’ve reviewed your book. Probably about 10% of all the random books coming in do not have any publicist/author contact info. And I/we don’t have enough time in our day to track you down.

–Ross Rojek

Email Ross at ross@1776productions.com

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