Jen at Crazy for Books restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another, but then couldn't continue, so she handed the hosting responsibilities off to Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them.
This week Billy asks: Do you read and review books mainly for publishers or authors?
I mostly read and review books for myself. I do have a shelf full of review copies, but that is pretty much dwarfed by the rest of my book collection. Even though my to-be-read pile is somewhat smaller than my overall book collection, it still dwarfs my assortment of review copies. My original goal for reviews on this blog was to explore the history of genre fiction through the major works of the field, primarily those that had been nominated for or won various awards. Having authors and publishers notice my work and send me review copies has been a happy accident, but it is still not the main impetus behind why I read and review books.
Of the review copies that I have, a fair number I obtained through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program, while others have come to me directly from publishers or authors. I am usually fairly selective in what I choose to accept in this manner, as I feel obligated to follow through and actually read and review works that come to me in this manner. If I were to say yes to every solicitation that shows up in my e-mail inbox, I would never be able to actually fulfill that obligation even if I gave up sleep and did nothing with my time but read and review the books handed to me by publishers and authors. As good a problem as that would seem to be, I do like to sleep, have a number of other responsibilities, and have other books I'd like to read as well, so handing all my time over to reading review copies of books would be a suboptimal choice as far as I am concerned.
As far as whether those relative handful of review copies I do agree to read and review come from publishers or authors, a quick count of the most recent group of books I accepted shows that six came from publishers and five came directly from authors. Based on that, it seems that I receive about half of my review copies from publishers, and the other half directly from authors. I can't say that's accurate over all time - going through my records and figuring out where every review copy I have gotten in the last five years would take considerable time, but it is probably a reasonably close estimate.
Previous Book Blogger Hop: The IQ 151 Was a Personal Computer Made in Czechoslovakia Back When There Was a Czechoslovakia
Subsequent Book Blogger Hop: 153 Is the 17th Triangular Number
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Um, hello there, but could I please ask you one question? Is Babylon 5 STILL your favorite television show of all time?
ReplyDelete@Matthew70371: Yes.
DeleteDo you think the DVD releases of the show are satisfactory?
Delete@Matthew70371: I have had no complaints.
DeleteDo you mean they are perfect? Exactly they way you want them?
Delete@Matthew70371: They are the episodes of the show on DVD. That's what I wanted. Do you think they should be something else?
DeleteQuite frankly, your line of questioning on this subject seems kind of strange. I still like Babylon 5. I have the DVD sets for each season. I have watched them and enjoyed them in that format. What is it that you are trying to get at?
I apologize if I was bothering you. It's great to hear that you still enjoy Babylon 5 on the DVD. It's just that I saw other people writing lukewarm reviews about the discs.
Delete@Matthew70371: Why didn't you just lead with that? I've seen some people complain about the DVDs. I've never shared those complaints.
DeleteMost of my books I get from publishers or publicists, but occasionally I get a review request from an author directly, especially an indie author. Those can be fun, and I love helping indie authors when I can.
ReplyDelete@Tevya Mil: I have a fair number of books that I have accepted from small press publishers or, once in a while, self-published authors. One does have to be careful when accepting books from such sources, or one can end up reading some really terrible writing, and life is too short for that. I have some things I look for in correspondence, book descriptions, and author bios that I have found to be indications that a particular book is one that I should avoid. I probably miss a good book here and there as a result, but given how much bad reading that such habits seems to have saved me, I can live with that.
Delete