The Self Publishing Review Project

As we all know, obtaining reviews for your self-published book is an important part of the marketing equation. The problem is finding out who will review your book (I'm going to reserve this article for independent, non-paid reviews only. I'll talk about the paid platforms in the future.)

(Before going further, let me just quickly state that I will, when time permits, write book reviews. One of my reviews, a look at Space Games , is up on this site and another for a new book, The Elixir  is on the way.  The submission guidelines are on the blog main page. )

 But who will review your book and who won't? I'm currently submitting Rule-Set to several reviewer lists. I'll be capturing the replies/results and creating a spreadsheet that tracks who is actually doing reviews of self-published works and who isn't. I'll be posting this spreadsheet for free download  as I build up the database. If you wish to contribute to the project, contact me at rickchapman@softletter.com

To kick off the projects, we can recommend not submitting to SF Signal (www.sfsignal.com). The site positions itself as a online "Fanzine." Also, don't bother with a print version, either. The website states that "Please note that due to immense backlog, we no longer review self-published and vanity press works." A review query letter elicited the following response:

"Thanks for considering SF Signal.  Sadly, we are not accepting new books at this time -- we already have way more than we can read.

Regards,
John DeNardo
SF Signal"