A Matter of Policy

I am a horrible person. Let’s get that out of the way first. I am lazy, self-indulgent and vain. I have a foul temper and am capable of horrid acts of a passive-aggressive nature. I am irritable and can be irritating. As more than one person who has crossed my path can attest, I have a deep and thorough contempt for humanity.

I say all that to say this: you book bloggers out there need to shape up.

I have been looking at a lot of book blogs in my spare time lately. This is not because I have an overwhelming passion for book blogs. This ties in with “being a horrible person,” noted earlier. It is for selfish and avaricious reasons. I am trying to promote my book, and one good way to do that is to–again, for selfish reasons, and because I am a horrible person–to give free copies of the e-book to book bloggers. The idea is that the book blogger will read the book, and write (it goes without saying) a fair and unbiased review, and post it on their blog and maybe on Amazon or Goodreads, and this will help me sell more books, which will earn me more money, which I can spend on (given the amount of money I actually make) peanut M&Ms or other similar debaucheries.

Here’s the thing. There are a lot of these book blogs out there. There are a ton. And people start them and stop them all the time. There’s no one good list of them–there can’t be, obviously. And each of them is run by some person somewhere, and people are famous for all being different in lots of unique ways.

When I visit your book blog, I am looking for three basic pieces of information right up front. Two of them are usually fairly obvious; it’s the third one that can be tricky. The first two are:

* What kind of books does this person like? (This should be readily apparent, or it’s not a book blog, not really.)

* When was the last book review posted? If the date on the last book review was in the last week or two, that’s good news. If it was March 2011, then I can close the tab and go to the next one without a problem.

The third one is:

* What is the review policy?

In a well-designed book blog, there should be a link to the review policy right in the header. Sometimes you’ll find a “contact” page and that has a review policy there, and that’s OK. I can live with that. But a lot of them don’t have a policy, or don’t post it.

I am writing this to tell you this one thing, please, for the love of God, if you run a book blog, please put a link to your review policy where I can find it without having to guess.

I say “please” because this is a free country. You absolutely do not have to do one thing ever to make my life easier. You don’t have to have a policy or link it or whatever. You are free to write your review policy in your own urine and hide it under Johnny Carson’s back porch. But if, you know, you want free books, it might be a good idea to let me know how to send you a free book somewhere on your site, and it wouldn’t hurt to make that link obvious. Okay? With me so far? Good.

Here’s the next part. If you are not accepting new books for review, say so at the very top of your review policy. I understand. I do. I write book reviews too. I have a to-be-read shelf that won’t take another title. If you’re not taking books for review, I fully support your decision. Just tell me that, so I can move on to the next person. There is very little in this world more annoying than reading someone’s sixteen-paragraph review policy and then finding out that they’re not taking new books. Tell me up front, please.

Further, if you do not accept self-published books, let me know that, too. I understand that, too. I write for an outlet that doesn’t accept them, either. (Hell, they didn’t accept my book, and I’ve written for them for free for ten years.) Just say that, and I’ll go my sweaty way.

It also helps if you tell me what kind of books you like, but I can usually tell that from your blog. (It also helps if you say, hey, I don’t like Southern Gothic novels about dead tennis players, but that’s kind of being personal when you think about it.)

I love book bloggers. You are all wonderful people, and I (as I have explained) am a horrible wretch. It would be wonderful if I had all the time in the world to read book blogs, and it would be wonderful if book bloggers had all the time in the world to read every book they wanted to. But we live in an imperfect world, and I don’t want to waste your time any more than you want to waste my time. If you tell me what your policy is in a way that I can find it and follow it, that’ll help us both.