Thursday, April 24, 2008

Submission guidelines

Occasionally I get a message from someone who would like me to review their book. I welcome those inquiries and submissions for review. If you'd like to offer your work up for review, drop me an e-mail with a little info, and if I'm interested, I'll let you know where to send your submission. That said, I do have a few ground rules that I want to let people know up front.

I accept very few books for review here. The reason is just a lack of time to read and review all of them. I currently get about 8 or 10 books a week for review through other outlets, and I can only get to a fraction of those. On the other hand, I'm always looking for new and exciting stories, so if you think you've got something I'd like, I encourage you to let me know about it. I do welcome small press and self-published works. However, I do not accept books that have been published through PublishAmerica, Author House or one of those other companies that accept everything they get. It's not a judgment on your individual work. It's that I have had tons of absolutely awful books from those "publishers" foisted upon me, and I simply won't bother with them anymore. I will also accept ebooks in the epub format, which I can read on my Nook.

While I enjoy exceptionally well-written books, technical skills matter less to me than a good story. An adequately-written work with an incredible story will beat a beautifully written piece with a lousy story for me every time. That said, a book littered with grammatical and punctuation errors is not a good idea. I work as an editor, and they do tend to annoy me. My primary interests are fantasy and horror, and I like just about all varieties of those genres. I do review some science fiction, but it usually needs to have some sort of interesting twist to catch my attention. I also like good humor. I will consider other genres, but it will likely be a tough sell.

If this all sounds a little picky, well, it probably is, and I apologize for that. My pickiness protects us both. I don't need a house full of stuff that I'm not going to review, and you don't need to waste the materials and postage to get it to me if I can't review it or am not interested. If you're unsure whether your book is right for this site, it never hurts to drop me an e-mail and find out.

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