Column: The Critical Eye…Getting Books Reviewed – A Lesson in Multiple Parts
1.26.10 – Getting Books Reviewed – A Lesson in Multiple Parts
One question that comes up often in my job is “How do I get my book reviewed?” These initial columns are to give an overview of what I do to select the 400 (or so) books a month that we review at the Sacramento and San Francisco Book Reviews. I’m assuming my experiences are typical to other book editors at other publications, though because we only do book reviews, and a lot of them, that the filters elsewhere are much tighter.
Initially I go through publisher catalogs. I look for a wide selection of titles in the themes and genres we cover. Many books are no-brainers; a new Anne Rice book – check. Others are because we have a need in a particular section — Historical Fiction is often pretty light for us. I try to get a mix of major publishers, the small press, and everything in between. Sometimes I’ll see a book that I know one of my reviewers will want, and request it for them.
We review books in about 40 different categories. Twenty of them every month (Children’s Books, Modern Lit, Science Fiction & Fantasy); the other twenty switch off from month to month (Poetry & Short Stories, Home & Garden). I try to have as broad a selection within those categories as well. I’ll have a major poetry collection from Knopf, along side a university press book and maybe something from a local publisher. I’m hopeful each time that someone who only sees the books stacked on the tables at a B&N or Borders will read a review of something they’d never heard of, and go looking for it.
So the early requests to publishers gives me a base of titles to work with. We let our reviewers pick through those books as they come in, and through a sort-of Darwinian process, the books get picked up and sent off for review. You can always tell when a book or subject is hot, because you get multiple requests for it. Those, I flag as potential highlighted reviews (for us that’s a review of about 400 words instead of our normal 200-word target.) I also see books that I think are important or interesting and might flag those for a highlighted review as well, letting the reviewers know as they’re picking books we’ll want something longer than normal.
Of those books, we probably get about 80%. Some titles are too hot to go to a small publisher like ourselves; others, we might be too regional for their target audience. (Though I always do find it funny when I get a book I requested two months after its release. Obviously a publicist still had plenty to give away, and finally got to my name on the list. Realizing it takes on average two months to turn a review around, that book won’t usually be on the shelf or getting promotional support by the time we get our review published.)
After that, we get books in several ways. Unsolicited copies from publicists, email solicitations from publicists or authors, shelf-shopping at a book store, best seller lists, and reviewer suggestions. I’ll cover those next time. Eventually, we’ll get to how do you, an author/publicist, get your book review published.
–Ross Rojek
Email Ross at ross@1776productions.com
