relevant magazine book reviews

No matter how much you love reading your way through one book after another, sometimes it’s good to mix up your regularly scheduled programming (er, reading) — and what better way to do so than with these magazines that book-lovers should subscribe to , especially if you’re looking to ramp up your reading game in the New Year. After all, the next best thing to reading a book is reading a magazine about books . Plus, the magazines on this list are a great way to make sure your TBR pile is up-to-date with all the newest titles and bestsellers, keep up with what’s fresh and exciting in the publishing industry, and discover some of your future favorite writers before their books have even hit store shelves yet. (And you’ll be one step ahead of all your bookish friends when it comes to knowing what’s coming out, when.) From killer reviews and anticipation-filled press releases, to book excerpts, short stories by some of literature’s newest voices, and more, these magazines are filled with must-read publishing tidbits that bookworms will love.

Check out (and subscribe to!) these 10 magazines that every book-lover will enjoy . I promise your books will still be there waiting for you when you’re finished.

Available via both a print subscription and online, Bookforum offers readers exactly what their name suggests: a forum for sharing intelligent and artful book reviews and essays, and discussing literature. They’ve got a slightly-offbeat, somewhat-subversive vibe, so the magazine is a great place to hear about all the books that might not hit your radar otherwise — and the book-related personal essays are great.

World Literature Today

I am OBSESSED with World Literature Today , and if one of your reading resolutions for 2017 is to read more diverse books, this bimonthly magazine definitely needs to be your first stop. The absolute best international literature and culture magazine out there (IMO), WLT publishes interviews, essays, poetry, fiction, and book reviews, and is a great way to get a sense of what is going on in literature all over the world, in a multitude of global languages.

Glimmer Train

Glimmer Train is a quarterly literary magazine of some of the best short fiction being published today — and you want to subscribe not only for their great content, but for their tendency to discover some of the freshest, newest voices in fiction. If the authors in Glimmer Train don't already have published novels, tons of them end up hitting bookstore shelves eventually, so you'll cultivate a list of names to keep an eye out for.

Publishers Weekly

Available in both print and digital subscriptions, Publishers Weekly is your one-stop-shop for all the must-know comings and goings of the international (but largely English-language) publishing industry. The magazine covers major and mainstream authors, publishers, and the books they put out into the world, and features book reviews, summaries, and all the forthcoming books you're not going to want to miss.

Poets & Writers

Though Poets & Writers magazine is definitely geared towards poets and writers (you could have probably guessed that) it’s also an awesome magazine for anyone who appreciates the craft of writing itself. P&W features author interviews, blurbs about great literary events, words of wisdom from those in the publishing community, and tons of excerpts from forthcoming or recently-published novels, memoirs, and poetry collections.

Bookmarks Magazine

Published six times a year, Bookmarks Magazine features nearly 50 book reviews in each issue. Some of their latest themes include: Japanese postwar fiction, novels of exile and assimilation, literature of modern Cuba, prehistoric novels, fairy tales in modern fiction, literature of the new India, contemporary Irish fiction, Jane Austen, modern takes on classic novels, Chinese novels in translation, literature of World War I, unusual narrators, and depictions of the circus in fiction — aka: everything you could ever think of, and more.

Available online and via your inbox, Guernica advertises itself as a magazine of art and politics — and it’s definitely not a book and publishing industry-focused magazine. But what I love about Guernica is that tons of the magazine’s featured writers have published nonfiction books, journalistic investigations, and poetry collections that I might not have otherwise found if I didn’t first discover their voices in Guernica . It’s definitely a magazine to check out — and with the option of being delivered straight to your inbox, it can’t get any easier to subscribe.

Creative Nonfiction

According to Creative Nonfiction magazine’s website, they are the voice of the genre — and anyone who has ever read Creative Nonfiction knows it’s true. Any reader who loves nonfiction won’t be able to resist this quarterly magazine, which features fresh, long-form essays and micro-essays that will wow you with their creative style as much as they will their content and substance. This is the best magazine for enjoying work from your favorite nonfiction writers, as well as discovering the newest authors of the genre.

The Writer's Chronicle

Published six times a year, the Writer’s Chronicle is another magazine for readers who are just as interested in the craft of writing as they are in reading books. Geared toward writers, editors, students, and teachers of writing the Writer’s Chronicle features essays on the craft of writing,investigations into literary trends and traditions, and interviews with some of literature’s most accomplished and experienced authors.

New York Review Of Books

Available in print, and supplemented with digital content, the reviews featured in the semi-monthly New York Review of Books are organized largely by genre, theme, and relevancy to current politics and/or events. In addition to some of the greatest literature coverage in the world, the NYRB also covers culture, economics, science and current affairs, and includes long-form essays and original poetry by (usually) well-known writers.

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A book review is an article that is published in a newspaper, magazine, or scholarly work that describes and evaluates a book. Keep in mind while searching for reviews of a book that many books are published each year, only a small fraction of them are reviewed. Reviews are written for different purposes and they will vary in terms of content and depth of evaluation. Since reviews are printed in many different kinds of publications, you may need to search several sources.

Reviews are produced after the publication of a book, so knowing the initial publication date will help refine your search (knowing the exact title and author's name is also necessary). Discovery Search will usually list the publication date of books in our collection. Use WorldCat from OCLC to find publication dates for books not found in Discovery Search. Finding reviews for older books may require using print indexes in addition to recommended databases.

Many sources (online or in print) will only give a citation for the review. Use that citation to track down the complete text of the review.

Reviews differ from literary critiques of books. Critiques explore the style and themes used by an author or genre.

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25 Great Writers and Thinkers Weigh In on Books That Matter

To celebrate the Book Review’s 125th anniversary, we’re dipping into the archives to revisit our most thrilling, memorable and thought-provoking coverage.

Damon Winter/The New York Times (Toni Morrison); Henry Clarke/Conde Nast, via Getty Images (Joan Didion); Ulf Andersen/Getty Images (Patricia Highsmith); Andre D. Wagner for The New York Times (Patti Smith); Oliver Morris/Getty Images (Kurt Vonnegut); Ulf Andersen/Getty Images (James Baldwin) Credit...

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By Tina Jordan ,  Noor Qasim and John Williams

• Published Jan. 25, 2021 Updated Oct. 26, 2021

On Oct. 10, 1896, after years of robust literary coverage at The New York Times, the paper published the first issue of the Book Review.

In the 125 years since, that coverage has broadened and deepened. The Book Review has become a lens through which to view not just literature but the world at large, with scholars and thinkers weighing in on all of the people and issues and subjects covered in books on philosophy, art, science, economics, history and more.

In many ways, the Book Review’s history is that of American letters, and we’ll be using our 125th anniversary this year to celebrate and examine that history over the coming months. In essays, photo stories, timelines and other formats, we’ll highlight the books and authors that made it all possible.

Because, really, writers are at the heart of everything we do. Pairing a book with the right reviewer is a challenge, one that we relish. And we’ve been fortunate to feature the writing of so many illustrious figures in our pages — novelists, musicians, presidents, Nobel winners, CEOs, poets, playwrights — all offering their insights with wit and flair. Here are 25 of them.

H.G. Wells | Vladimir Nabokov | Tennessee Williams | Patricia Highsmith | Shirley Jackson | Eudora Welty | Langston Hughes | Dorothy Parker | John F. Kennedy | Nora Ephron | Toni Morrison | John Kenneth Galbraith | Nikki Giovanni | James Baldwin | Kurt Vonnegut Jr. | Joan Didion | Derek Walcott | Margaret Atwood | Ursula K. Le Guin | Stephen King | Jhumpa Lahiri | Mario Vargas Llosa | Colson Whitehead | Patti Smith | Bill Gates

Tell us: Who are the writers who have inspired you?

On Morley Roberts’s “The Private Life of Henry Maitland”

H.G. Wells, the author of science fiction classics like “The Time Machine” and “The War of the Worlds,” admitted that he had a personal interest in this work about his fellow author George Gissing (who was oddly given the pseudonym Henry Maitland in a book that was clearly about him). “In so far that I have on several occasions encouraged Mr. Roberts to write it,” Wells wrote, “I feel myself a little involved in the responsibility for it.” He must have left Roberts feeling a bit less than grateful for the encouragement when he judged: “It is no use pretending that Mr. Roberts’s book is not downright bad, careless in statement, squalid in effect, poor as criticism, weakly planned and entirely without any literary distinction.”

Vladimir Nabokov

On jean-paul sartre’s “nausea”.

Nabokov was not yet a household name in the United States (that would come about a decade later, with the publication here of “Lolita”) when he reviewed Sartre’s philosophical novel about Antoine Roquentin, a French historian troubled by the very fact of existence. “Sartre’s name, I understand, is associated with a fashionable brand of cafe philosophy, and since for every so-called ‘existentialist’ one finds quite a few ‘suctorialists’ (if I may coin a polite term), this made-in-England translation of Sartre’s first novel, ‘La Nausée,’ should enjoy some success.”

Tennessee Williams

On paul bowles’s “the sheltering sky”.

Williams, who had won a Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for his play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” reviewed this debut novel by Bowles, which went on to be acclaimed as one of the best of the 20th century. The story mercilessly follows a young married couple from New York adrift in the North African desert. “I suspect that a good many people will read this book,” Williams wrote, “without once suspecting that it contains a mirror of what is most terrifying and cryptic within the Sahara of moral nihilism, into which the race of man now seems to be wandering blindly.”

Patricia Highsmith

On r. frison-roche’s “first on the rope”.

When she wrote this brief review, Patricia Highsmith was the author of one novel, “Strangers on a Train.” She would go on to worldwide fame for that and other thrillers, including the ones that feature Tom Ripley. The author she reviewed, the French mountaineer R. Frison-Roche, is now relatively obscure. “This is exactly the kind of novel one would expect a Chamonix guide to write — blunt in style and treatment, unevenly paced, about mountain climbing, of course, and authentic down to the last piton, the last breathtaking moment before the summit.” More tantalizingly, Highsmith added: “There is a delightful and unexpected chapter about a cow battle that is fully as dramatic as the mountain scaling.”

Shirley Jackson

On red smith’s “out of the red”.

One of the stranger matchups of big names in our archives is this review of the sports columnist Red Smith’s work by Shirley Jackson, the author of “The Lottery” and “The Haunting of Hill House.” Jackson wrote about her enjoyment of watching sports on TV. Though she had “limited knowledge” of sportswriters at the time, Smith’s book won her over. “There are some otherwise modest, sensitive females — I am among them — who are become brazen snatchers of the sports page from the morning paper, and only a book like Red Smith’s shows me what I have been missing by not getting into this field sooner. Reading ‘Out of the Red’ has been, actually, an educational experience unlike almost anything I have known since first looking into Chapman’s Homer.”

Eudora Welty

On e.b. white’s “charlotte’s web”.

Eudora Welty’s review of this timeless tale is a sheer delight, starting from its headline (“Life in the Barn Was Very Good”) and its first sentence (“E.B. White has written his book for children, which is nice for us older ones as it calls for big type”). Unlike contemporary reviews that get future classics “wrong,” Welty — who worked briefly as an editor at the Book Review during World War II — saw this accomplishment clear in the moment. “What the book is about is friendship on earth, affection and protection, adventure and miracle, life and death, trust and treachery, pleasure and pain, and the passing of time,” she wrote. “As a piece of work it is just about perfect, and just about magical in the way it is done.”

Langston Hughes

On james baldwin’s “notes of a native son”.

In this review, Langston Hughes, an eminent literary figure and chronicler of the Black experience in the United States, took the measure of this first collection of essays by Baldwin. He was impressed: “He uses words as the sea uses waves, to flow and beat, advance and retreat, rise and take a bow in disappearing.” He suggested that Baldwin still had room to grow, but that “America and the world might well have a major contemporary commentator.”

Dorothy Parker

On s.j. perelman’s “the road to miltown”.

To no one’s surprise, Dorothy Parker, a member of the Algonquin Round Table, was funny in this review of work by her fellow humor writer. She begins it: “It is a strange force that compels a writer to be a humorist. It is a strange force, if you care to go back farther, that compels anyone to be a writer at all, but this is neither the time nor the place to bring up that matter. The writer’s way is rough and lonely, and who would choose it while there are vacancies in more gracious professions, such as, say, cleaning out ferryboats?” But while Parker was part of a “vicious circle,” and known for her piercing barbs, she happily praised Perelman, who, she wrote, “stands alone” in his field.

John F. Kennedy

On arthur larson’s “what we are for”.

John F. Kennedy was the author of three books and still a Massachusetts senator when he reviewed this book, an attempt to define for the world what America believed in beyond simply opposition to the Soviet Union and Communism. Larson was a Republican who had worked with labor issues and had been a top speechwriter for President Dwight D. Eisenhower. “Though the book’s style is somewhat discursive and here and there perhaps a trifle condescending,” Kennedy wrote, “Mr. Larson does succeed very well in portraying the dangers of analyzing American society in terms of class distinctions or rigid economic interests. Though it is not a new theme, he is very successful in reminding us of the ‘kaleidoscope of apparently inexplicable mixtures of political coloration across the landscape.’”

Nora Ephron

On rex reed’s “do you sleep in the nude”.

In this review, the filmmaker, director and writer Nora Ephron marveled at how the young Reed got his show-business subjects to say the things they said to him. Those subjects included Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty and Lucille Ball. Ephron’s opening is a classic: “Rex Reed is a saucy, snoopy, bitchy man who sees with sharp eyes and writes with a mean pen and succeeds in making voyeurs of us all. If any of this sounds like I don’t like Rex Reed, let me correct that impression. I love Rex Reed.”

Toni Morrison

On toni cade bambara’s “tales and stories for black folks”.

Toni Morrison had just one novel under her belt when this review was published in 1971. One of the joys in our archives is to see — in retrospect — the understated descriptions of those who wrote for us. Morrison’s read: “Toni Morrison, an editor in a New York publishing house, is the author of ‘The Bluest Eye.’” “It is a most remarkable collection,” she wrote of Bambara’s work. “Joy aches and pain chuckles in these pages, and the entire book leaves you with the impression of silk — which is so nice because it was made by a living thing that had something on its mind, its survival no doubt.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

On chester bowles’s “my years in public life”.

“Truth, not unconvincing humility, is the grandest virtue and accordingly I may observe that I am better qualified than any man alive to review a book on the public life of Chester Bowles.” The iconoclastic economist and prolific author John Kenneth Galbraith began his review this way because he and Bowles had held some of the same positions of power and had worked together on presidential campaigns. In so doing, they had become friends, which, Galbraith wrote, “is a disadvantage only if the book in question is bad. Only then do you have to consider whether the author should get the truth from you or someone else. This, fortunately, is an extremely good book.”

Nikki Giovanni

On virginia hamilton’s “m.c. higgins, the great”.

The acclaimed poet Nikki Giovanni has written verse for children as well as adults, so she was the ideal reviewer for this novel, which was written for young readers but dealt with difficult, mature subjects. Hamilton’s novel, which won a Newbery Medal and a National Book Award, concerns a young boy hoping to save a local mountain from the ravages of strip mining. “‘M.C. Higgins, the Great’ is not an adorable book, not a lived‐happily‐ever‐after kind of story. It is warm, humane and hopeful and does what every book should do — creates characters with whom we can identify and for whom we care. … We’re glad Miss Hamilton is a writer. It makes the world just a little bit richer and our lives just a little bit warmer.”

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

On tom wicker’s “a time to die”.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. reviewed this account of the 1971 uprising at Attica prison written by Tom Wicker, who was a reporter, columnist and editor for The Times. The book mixed its reportage about the dramatic events at the prison with passages of autobiography. Leave it to Vonnegut to come up with a memorable comparison for what resulted: “The book is designed like a shish kebab, with novelistic scenes from ‘Wicker’s’ childhood and youth alternating with hard‐edged episodes from Attica, and with Tom Wicker himself as the skewer. The materials placed shoulder‐to‐shoulder on the skewer are as unlike as ripe peaches and hand grenades.”

James Baldwin

On alex haley’s “roots”.

The Book Review has always taken pride in finding the right reviewers for the right books, and that is only heightened when a book is a true event, like Alex Haley’s “Roots,” which spent months at No. 1 on The Times’s best-seller list. The great James Baldwin’s piece is something still worth reading and considering today. He wrote of “Roots”: “It suggests with great power, how each of us, however unconsciously, can’t but be the vehicle of the history which has produced us. Well, we can perish in this vehicle, children, or we can move on up the road.”

Joan Didion

On norman mailer’s “the executioner’s song”.

Talk about two heavyweights. On the cover of our Oct. 7, 1979, issue, Didion reviewed Mailer’s epic, genre-defying novel about the infamous Gary Gilmore, who murdered two people in Utah and later demanded that the state follow through with his execution for the crime. Much more than just the story of a crime and a very public death penalty debate, Mailer’s book captured the desperate side of life in the American West. “I think no one but Mailer could have dared this book,” Didion wrote. “The authentic Western voice, the voice heard in ‘The Executioner’s Song,’ is one heard often in life but only rarely in literature, the reason being that to truly know the West is to lack all will to write it down.”

Derek Walcott

On “the glorious flight: across the channel with louis blériot, july 25, 1909” by alice and martin provensen.

The poet Derek Walcott, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, reviewed this book about the French aviator Louis Blériot and his flight across the English Channel, 18 years before Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic. “Gaiety and true bravery are close in legend, and this spaciously crafted and modestly presented book is very much in the spirit of its subject,” Walcott wrote. “Fact is turned into magic, very quietly. The return to innocence requires gay and brave strides; the light on the way there is direct, the flight natural and simple, and ‘The Glorious Flight’ has made it.”

Margaret Atwood

On toni morrison’s “beloved”.

Sometimes a book that will become an undisputed classic is met at the moment of its publication with appropriate awe. Such was the case with Morrison’s “Beloved,” a remarkable ghost story set in the years after the Civil War. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and in 2006 was named the best novel of the previous 25 years by a group of prominent writers, critics and editors polled by the Book Review. In her original review of the book in 1987, Margaret Atwood — the author of her own classics, like “The Handmaid’s Tale” — wrote: “‘Beloved’ is Toni Morrison’s fifth novel, and another triumph. Indeed, Morrison’s versatility and technical and emotional range appear to know no bounds. If there were any doubts about her stature as a pre-eminent American novelist, of her own or any other generation, ‘Beloved’ will put them to rest. In three words or less, it’s a hair-raiser.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

On j.g. ballard’s “war fever”.

The critic Harold Bloom once said that Ursula K. Le Guin had “raised fantasy into high literature for our time.” In this review of another iconic writer of literary science fiction, Le Guin captured the scope and relevance of Ballard’s themes. “The brilliant, obsessive fictions of J.G. Ballard circle through a round of almost canonical topics of modernist literature and film: the Conradian jungle and its white folk, consumerist America and the ugly American, popular cult figures such as astronauts and film stars, T.S. Eliot’s ‘waste land’ and ‘unreal city.’ Through these and other landscapes of alienation, stock figures move in meticulous patterns toward a predictably shocking conclusion. The voltage is high, but it’s all in the mind.”

Stephen King

On thomas harris’s “hannibal”.

Dark imaginations collide in this review. (If Thomas Harris hadn’t invented Hannibal Lecter, perhaps eventually Stephen King would have?) This was Lecter’s first appearance in a novel in 11 years — and the first since the film adaptation of “The Silence of the Lambs” had made him a household name. “I don’t think many of the Danielle Steel crowd will be rushing out to buy a book in which one character is eaten from the inside out by a ravenous moray eel — but for those who like what Harris can do so brilliantly, no book report is required.”

Jhumpa Lahiri

On mohsin hamid’s “moth smoke”.

We like to keep our eyes peeled for the newest talents here at the Book Review, and here is a vintage example. About a month after this review was published, Jhumpa Lahiri would win a Pulitzer Prize for her debut collection of stories, “Interpreter of Maladies.” And here she was reviewing the debut novel by Mohsin Hamid, who was embarking on his own award-winning career. “Like Fitzgerald, Hamid writes about the slippery ties between the extremely wealthy and those who hover, and generally stumble, in money’s glare,” Lahiri wrote. “Hamid also sets the action over a single, degenerate summer, when passions run high and moral lassitude prevails. And like Fitzgerald, Hamid probes the vulgarity and violence that lurk beneath a surface of affluence and ease.”

Mario Vargas Llosa

On suzanne jill levine’s “manuel puig and the spider woman”.

The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, delivered a sweeping review of this biography of the Argentine writer Manuel Puig. In it, Vargas Llosa considered everything from the influence of the movies on Puig to what made his work so original to whether that work has the “revolutionary transcendence attributed to it by Levine and other critics.” He praised Levine’s own work: “This fascinating book is indispensable for anyone interested in Puig’s work (which Levine, the translator of several of his novels into English, knows to perfection) and in the close connection between film and literature, a defining characteristic of cultural life in the late 20th century; both are described with intelligence and an abundance of information. I found occasional errors, but these in no way diminish the virtues of a book in which rigor and readability walk arm in arm.”

Colson Whitehead

On richard powers’s “the echo maker”.

As we celebrate 125 years of the Book Review, we’ll spend time not just in the distant past but in the vibrant present. Few writers this century are as acclaimed as Colson Whitehead, the author of several novels and the winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for “The Underground Railroad” (2016). In 2019, Richard Powers joined the list of Pulitzer winners as well, for “The Overstory.” But back in 2006, when both were simply very acclaimed authors, Whitehead reviewed this novel about a man who suffers from a rare cognitive disorder after a near-fatal car accident. “Part of the joy of reading Powers over the years has been his capacity for revelation,” Whitehead wrote. “His scientific discourses point to how the world works, but the struggles of his characters … help us understand how we work.”

Patti Smith

On haruki murakami’s “colorless tsukuru tazaki and his years of pilgrimage”.

A longtime rock star and poet, Patti Smith became an award-winning memoirist with the publication of “Just Kids” in 2010. We also think she’s a fine reviewer. She brought her deep knowledge of the work of Haruki Murakami to this assessment of his 13th novel. “This is a book for both the new and experienced reader. It has a strange casualness, as if it unfolded as Murakami wrote it; at times, it seems like a prequel to a whole other narrative. The feel is uneven, the dialogue somewhat stilted, either by design or flawed in translation. Yet there are moments of epiphany gracefully expressed, especially in regard to how people affect one another.”

On Yuval Noah Harari’s “21 Lessons for the 21st Century”

Yes, we love to publish work by prominent novelists, essayists, poets, journalists, historians. But sometimes it’s a thrill to have someone weigh in who is (very, very well) known for something other than books. And who better to review a look at the 21st century than Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, who did so much to shape the world we live in? “Harari is such a stimulating writer that even when I disagreed, I wanted to keep reading and thinking. All three of his books wrestle with some version of the same question: What will give our lives meaning in the decades and centuries ahead? … It’s no criticism to say that Harari hasn’t produced a satisfying answer yet. Neither has anyone else. So I hope he turns more fully to this question in the future.”

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21 Magazines that Publish Book Reviews — Paying markets

Erica Verrillo

Curiosity Never Killed the Writer

T he best tip anyone can give a writer is to read. Much of the craft of writing is absorbed unconsciously by reading great authors. Don’t limit yourself to your own genre. Read fiction, nonfiction, poetry, personal essays, anything you can lay your hands on — especially authors whose style is wildly different from your own. Reading is the fuel that will light your creative fire.

The analytical process of reading is also important for writers. Pay attention to what the author is saying and how she or he is saying it. How is the plot structured? How are the characters developed? What are the themes and motifs? Is the use of language vivid and imaginative? Are you moved? And when you are done thinking and analyzing, consider writing about what you have read.

Here are 21 magazines that want to hear your thoughts about fiction, poetry, music, movies, art. They will even pay for your considered opinion. If you are in the process of publishing a book, or have recently been published, some of these publications also accept book recommendations for review by their editorial staff. You or your publisher can submit these recommendations. To that end, I have also included seven publications that don’t pay reviewers.

In addition to reviews and interviews, the majority of these journals also publish — and pay for — fiction, poetry, CNF, and essays.

NOTE: For hundreds of paying literary magazines in every genre see: Paying Markets .

Happy submitting!

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Polu Texni is a web magazine about mixed-media arts and speculative or weird fiction. “We’re interested in the intersection where different media, styles, crafts, and genres meet to create something more interesting than what they would be alone.” They would like reviews of books pertaining to speculative fiction books, art books, illustrated books or graphic novels. Pays 3 cents a word.

West Branch

West Branch reviews poetry books. Book reviews are typically arranged by assignment, but if you are interested in writing reviews, please query with a sample. They currently pay $200 per assigned review.

Strange Horizons

Strange Horizons publishes in-depth reviews of science fiction and fantasy, especially books, films, and television. “Reviews normally cover new works, although we do occasional features on older works, and will not reject a review because its subject has been available for a while. We’re especially interested in reviews of worthy material that might not otherwise get the exposure it deserves; similarly, we are interested in reviews of works that push traditional genre boundaries.” Pays $40 for reviews of at least 1000 words. They prefer reviews of 1500 to 2000 words.

Samovar is a quarterly magazine of and about speculative fiction in translation published by Strange Horizons . They are looking for in-depth critical review-essays of 2,000 to 3,000 words. These may cover: Works recently translated into English; Works that have not been translated but that will be of interest to an English-language audience; Critical works focusing on speculative fiction in translation; Some combination of the above. Pays US$40 regardless of final word count.

New Letters

New Letters is primarily interested in reviewing excellent books, movies, and visual art otherwise not receiving much attention in the national media (which means most literary titles). Book reviews should be concise, detailed, vivid, and free of theoretical and academic jargon. Length is 300–800 words for single and double book reviews. Essay-reviews of groups of books could be longer. Potential reviewers should query first. If you want to review a particular book that you already possess, feel free to suggest it. Payment for single-book reviews is $35.

The New Haven Review

The New Haven Review was founded to be a venue for writers associated with the Greater New Haven area and to resuscitate the art of the book review. They like to see submissions from writers who can claim some connection to Greater New Haven, no matter how spurious, though it’s not mandatory. They prefer book reviews that are better than the book reviews you usually see. They pay at least $500 for prose pieces, fiction or nonfiction.

The Rumpus is interested in thoughtful, engaging book reviews between 1200–2500 words. Please submit a finished draft of your review rather than a review pitch. Reviews should be single-spaced and paginated. Provide the following information in your cover letter and at the top of your review: Title of book, author’s name, name of press, publication date, and your name and email address. In your cover letter, please also include your contact information and a brief bio that we would use should your review be accepted. They prefer not to publish negative reviews, but it’s fine to discuss a specific weakness, lack, or question you have related to the book. Please disclose any relationship you have to the author of the book you’re reviewing if one exists. They do not accept reviews where a conflict of interest exists. All work must be previously unpublished — this includes personal blogs, websites, and social media. A monthly pool of $300 is split between writers whose work is published. See submission periods .

Barrelhouse

Barrelhouse is a print and online journal featuring fiction, poetry, interviews, and essays. They are currently open for online book reviews. “We prefer reviews that focus on recent(last two years) small press titles — especially debuts — or upcoming titles. We are especially keen on books that do not get reviewed in US outlets as often as others — translated works, international releases etc. … We’re interested in full-length or chapbook-length collections of poetry & prose. We’d be open to memoirs, story or essay collections, even academic works. We’re most tentative with academic titles — not because we’re not open to them — but because they would need to be accessible to the same readership as for any text.” Payment is $50 to contributors of both print and online issues.

Contemporary Poetry Review

Contemporary Poetry Review bills itself as the largest online archive of poetry criticism in the world. They invite interested critics to submit their work. Contributors are accepted on a permanent basis, and asked to contribute regularly. Contributors are never assigned any work to review; they choose their assignments and their deadlines. Reviews have no maximum word count or length restrictions. Reviewers are encouraged to write leisurely and quote amply. All editorial revisions are submitted to the contributor before a contribution is published, and all revisions are discussed. Review copies are made available to contributors free of charge, and need not be returned. Reviewers are paid for each contribution. Payment is not specified.

The Gettysburg Review

The Gettysburg Review publishes fiction, essays, essay reviews, poetry, and visual art. They don’t publish short reviews of recently published books. They are interested in “more extensive assessments of new publications, reviews that offer insights both broader and deeper than whether a given book is good, bad, or mediocre.” They welcome unsolicited reviews so long as they are essay-reviews (15–20 pages). Payment is $25/page. See submission periods . Charges for online submissions. No charge for snail mail.

Tough is a crime fiction journal publishing short stories and self-contained novel excerpts of between 1500 words and 7500 words, and occasional book reviews of 1500 words or fewer. Query the editor at [email protected] before submitting reviews. Payment is $25.

The Puritan

This Canadian literary magazine publishes fiction, interviews, essays, reviews and poetry from all over the world. For reviews they are looking for pitches for 1500 to 5000-word reviews of recently released writing in any genre, including nonfiction. They generally publish reviews of books from small Canadian publishers, but are open to other works, as well. They do not publish reviews of chapbooks. Payment is $100 CAD per interview or review.

The Georgia Review

Most of this journal’s reviews are solicited by the editors, but they welcome submissions from outside reviewers. They publish standard reviews (typically 3–5 double-spaced pages), which focus on only one book, and essay-reviews (typically 10–20 double-spaced pages), each of which develops a strong thesis through an engagement with multiple books in order to comment on literature and/or culture beyond the texts at hand. Essay-reviews and standard reviews earn honoraria of $50/printed page. In addition, all contributors receive a one-year subscription to The Georgia Review. No simultaneous submissions . See submission periods . Charges fee for online submissions. No fee for snail mail .

The Sunlight Press

The Sunlight Press is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, digital literary. They welcome creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, reviews, photography, and reflections by artists on their craft. “We want to hear the ways people turn toward light and hope, whether it is through the arts, culture, spirituality, or humor, and also how they respond to the darkness and navigate unknown spaces. Epiphanies are born from the ordinary and the extraordinary; whether it’s a reflection unfolding during a morning walk, after the loss of a loved one, or in the middle of unexpected laughter, we want to know about these moments.” The Sunlight Press considers reviews of books, short story collections, and essay collections. Length: 750–1,000 words. Payment is not specified.

This new online literary magazine publishes fiction, poetry, art, photography, spoken-word, interviews, reviews, and other creative media. Payment is $0.01 USD per word for each short story, installments of serial fiction, or book review.

The Fiddlehead

The Fiddlehead is a Canadian magazine open to writing in English or translations into English from all over the world and in a variety of styles, including experimental genres. “Our editors are always happy to see new unsolicited works in fiction, including excerpts from novels, creative nonfiction, and poetry. We also publish reviews, and occasionally other selected creative work such as excerpts from plays.” Payment is $60 CAD per published page, plus two complimentary copies of the issue with your work. No charge for snail mail submissions. See submission periods .

Kaleidoscope

Kaleidoscope is a journal that focuses on disability. (Writers do not have to be disabled to contribute, as long as their work is about disability.) They want “reviews that are substantive, timely, powerful works about publications in the field of disability and/or the arts. The writer’s opinion of the work being reviewed should be clear. The review should be literary work in its own right.” Length: 5,000 words maximum each; two reviews maximum. They also publish poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, articles, and visual art. Payment is $10–100.

Slightly Foxed

Slightly Foxed bills itself as “the independent-minded literary magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal. Good-humoured, unpretentious and a bit eccentric, it’s more like a well-read friend than a literary review.” Articles are 1,000–2,000 words. Payment is not specified.

The Copperfield Review

The Copperfield Review is a journal of historical fiction. They publish book reviews, poetry, short stories, interviews with historical novelists, and nonfiction about tips for writing historical fiction or essays about writing historical fiction. Payment is $15 for reviews and poems, $20 for fiction and interviews, and $25 for tips on writing historical fiction. Accepts submissions all year.

Newfound publishes work that explores how place shapes identity, imagination, and understanding. They publish reviews of books, film, television, music, art, and more. “We like reviews that are critical, complex, creative, and culturally-minded. Reviews should consider at least one object of culture that has been recently published (within the last year) or is forthcoming. Please send work that is double-spaced, 500–5000 words in length, and includes a short author bio. If you would like to review a work listed on our reviews page or something we’ve yet to discover, send a query along with a CV and writing sample.” There is no deadline given for reviews. They also publish fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, translation, and art. Contributors are paid $25.

Tor, a highly regarded science fiction and fantasy publisher, is an imprint of Macmillan. Their blog, Tor.com, accepts pitches for reviews, as well as essays, think pieces, list posts, and reaction pieces in the 1,000–2,000 word range. Suggested areas of interest are: author appreciations, essays on classic or overlooked works of SF/F, SF/Fantasy in translation (international SF/F), nostalgia-driven looks at older film/TV, Manga and Anime, Internet/Geek culture, and science and technology. If possible, please include 2–3 writing samples and links to your published work on other sites. Payment is not specified.

Non-Paying Magazines

Prairie Schooner

“We are particularly interested in reviews of books that can fairly be called diverse — we aim to publish a range of reviewers on a range of authors in each issue — and in reviews of authors’ first books or recent translations. Books should be no more than eighteen months old by the time of publication (note that with our publication cycle, we are often reading to fill issues for two-three seasons from the time of submission). Reviews may consider a single book or take up two or three books together.” Reviews should be no longer than 1,000 words, double-spaced, and formatted using a standard font. Payment is a complimentary copy. See submission periods .

Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review

Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review is a literary journal based in Austin, Texas that publishes poetry along with art series, reviews and essays. All reviews must be germane to poetry. Reviewers must include a cover letter with a brief bio. Reviews should be no longer than 1500 words, though longer reviews are acceptable when several books are under consideration. Please submit your review in Times or Times New Roman font. Include date of publication, price, and publisher for all works considered. Poets may send books for review consideration. Payment is a complimentary copy. See submission periods .

Mid-American Review

This journal seeks book reviews of around 400 words, following the MLA style sheet, of works of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction published within six months of their publication dates (April & November). Please query before sending a book review. They also accept works of fiction, poetry, translations, and nonfiction, including personal essays and essays on writing. Contributing authors will receive two complimentary copies of MAR as payment.

Rain Taxi publishes work by writers in all stages of their careers. “Our quarterly magazine provides a place for the spirited exchange of ideas about books, particularly those overlooked by mainstream review media. While Rain Taxi focuses on current releases, it also devotes space to the discussion of older works that continue to resonate. Interviews, essays, and “Widely Unavailable” (reviews of out-of-print books) are also regular features of the magazine.” Rain Taxi considers books in the categories of poetry, fiction, literary nonfiction, art, and graphic novels. Editorial reviews only.

Terrain.org

Terrrain “searches for the interface — the integration — among the built and natural environments that might be called the soul of place. It is not definitely about urban form, nor solely about natural landscapes. It is not precisely about human culture, nor necessarily about ecology. It is, rather, a celebration of the symbiosis between the built and natural environments where it exists, and an examination and discourse where it does not.” They accept poetry, essays, fiction, articles, artwork, videos, and other contributions — “material that reaches deep into the earth’s fiery core, or humanity’s incalculable core, and brings forth new insights and wisdom.” They publish reviews of published or forthcoming books, CDs, magazines, community planning resource kits, websites, movies, and other items, as well as “Recommended Reads”, in which authors provide a list and narrative description of the books that have most influenced their own work. No maximum word length.

Literary Mama

This is a monthly online magazine featuring creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, columns, essays about writing and/or reading as anyone who identifies as a mother, as well as book reviews, and profiles of mother writers and artists. “We seek reviews exploring literary work that reflects a wide-ranging understanding of motherhood as experienced through multiple lenses and bodies. We review both newly-released work and older books that we consider to be important to the genre.” They want “a reasoned, fair, well-balanced and supported critique of the work, offered in a positive tone. If you include a summary, please be sure it serves a purpose in illustrating a point or reinforcing a thesis rather than giving away the plot. Do not attack the author; please restrict your critique to the author’s craft, ideas, execution, arguments, etc. We publish reviews that help us understand how a book adds to the conversation about motherhood. If you cannot recommend a book, we prefer not to review it. We’d like to see reviews that consider craft as well as content.” Reviews are 800–1500 words. Genres accepted are fiction, nonfiction, poetry. Please send a query first.

The New York Review of Science Fiction

They want reviews of science fiction, fantasy, and horror books. “Our credo is that we publish reviews which reveal the strengths and weaknesses of good books. We tend not to publish negative reviews, though we do publish reviews that examine with precision the unsuccessful elements of worthwhile books. Contrawise, we do not publish reviews which are simply gushes of unexamined praise even of the best books; we want thoughtful reviews. We are not interested in reviewing every book published — nor even the majority of books published; please query us beforehand if you are interested in reviewing a specific title. We will consider well-written and substantial reviews of books by any author, from any publisher. Reviews need not be limited solely to one book; we encourage reviewers to compare books with similar themes and to place individual works in context within an author’s oeuvre and/or within the context of the field of speculative fiction as a whole.” They also seek popular articles, essays, parodies, studies, and thought-pieces on topics related to science fiction, fantasy, and horror literature. For a submission to be considered for any specific issue, they must receive the submission by the first Wednesday of the month before the issue is to be published. They publish monthly. Payment is in copies.

Like this article? For more articles about the publishing world, useful tips on how to get an agent, agents who are looking for clients, how to market and promote your work, building your online platform, how to get reviews, self-publishing, as well as publishers accepting manuscripts directly from writers (no agent required) visit Publishing and Other Forms of Insanity .

Written by Erica Verrillo

Helping writers get published and bolstering their flagging spirits at http://publishedtodeath.blogspot.com/

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26 of the Most Fascinating Books WIRED Read in 2020

One of the best things about working at WIRED is the number of topics we get to be interested in. That range really shows when you look at the book excerpts we’ve published this year. We are allowed to interrogate park benches and poker statistics, census machines and cosmic rays. The books that fascinate us might loop us thousands of years into the past, introducing us to the inventor of the wheel, or they might immerse us in the burned-out, Slack-addicted Millennial present. Whatever the topic, these are books that dive deep and tell stories in a smart, deeply researched, beautifully written way. We've dropped in some of our favorite quotes below as a kind of sneak peek; pick presents for your friends and family (the nice ones get two), and save a few for yourself to dig into in the new year. —The Editors

Year in Review : What WIRED learned from tech, science, culture, and more in 2020

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more . Please also consider subscribing to WIRED

by Michael Bond

People who have been truly lost never forget the experience. Suddenly disconnected from all that surrounds them, they are plunged into a relationship with an utterly alien world. They think they are going to die. Horror-struck, their behavior becomes so confounding that finding them is as much a psychological challenge as a geographical one. One ranger with 30 years’ experience told me, "You’ll never be able to figure out why lost people make their decisions."

Lost is a cognitive state. Your internal map has become detached from the external world, and nothing in your spatial memory matches what you see. But at its core, it is an emotional state. It delivers a psychic double whammy: Not only are you stricken with fear, you also lose your ability to reason. You suffer what neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux calls a "hostile takeover of consciousness by emotion." 90 percent of people make things a lot worse for themselves when they realize they are lost—by running, for instance. Because they are afraid, they can’t solve problems or figure out what to do. They fail to notice landmarks, or fail to remember them. They lose track of how far they’ve travelled. They feel claustrophobic, as if their surroundings are closing in on them. They can’t help it; it’s a quick-fire evolutionary response. Robert Koester, a search and rescue specialist with a background in neurobiology, describes it as a "full-flown fight-or-flight catecholamine dump. It’s essentially a panic attack. If you are lost out in the woods there is a chance you will die. That’s pretty real. You feel like you’re separating from reality. You feel like you’re going crazy."

Read the full excerpt.

by Andy Greenberg

Black chunks began to fly out of an access panel on the generator, which the researchers had left open to watch its internals. Inside, the black rubber grommet that linked the two halves of the generator’s shaft was tearing itself apart.

A few seconds later, the machine shook again as the protective relay code repeated its sabotage cycle, disconnecting the machine and reconnecting it out of sync. This time a cloud of gray smoke began to spill out of the generator, perhaps the result of the rubber debris burning inside it.

Assante, despite the months of effort and millions of dollars in federal funds he’d spent developing the attack they were witnessing, somehow felt a kind of sympathy for the machine as it was being torn apart from within. “You find yourself rooting for it, like the little engine that could,” Assante remembered. “I was thinking, ‘You can make it!’”

by Harold McGee   Some animal excrements have a distinctive makeup and smell that can be traced to a particular diet or metabolism. Horse excrement is less offensive than many, and was even described as “sweet” by the 18th-century physician and natural philosopher George Cheyne. The horse and its microbes digest its plant foods quickly and only partly, so much of its excrement is relatively odorless fiber. The volatiles are dominated by the carbon rings cresol and phenol, which we also encounter in asphalt and disinfectants, and which can therefore seem less specifically fecal. By contrast, cattle are endowed with several stomachs, including the microbe-packed rumen, and they have the habit of regurgitating the rumen contents for another chew to get the most out of their plant feed. The excrement of beef and dairy cattle is therefore rich in the full range of metabolic volatiles. Omnivorous pigs get some of their nourishment from high-protein animal materials, and they produce excrement especially rich in branched acids, sulfides, and carbon rings. For some reason the pig gut and its microbiome are notably prolific of fecal-smelling skatole, some of which is transported from the intestine and stored in fat tissues all over the body, where it can contribute to the special “pigginess” of pork.

by Benjamin R. Cohen

So it is that adulteration was a problem in the past, adulteration is a problem today, and adulteration will be a problem tomorrow. Pure food crusaders thought they had solved it for good; we probably think we’ll solve it now. They didn’t, and we won’t. Adulteration’s presumed antithesis, purity, is a dreary if not constant pursuit.

Lauren Goode

William Turton

Eric Ravenscraft

by Roman Mars and Kurt Kohslted

The object that Savić considers a particular masterpiece of unpleasant design is the Camden bench. Unlike spikes, which scream their hostile intent, the Camden bench is innocuous in its appearance, although it’s rather lumpy and not particularly inviting. Designed by Factory Furniture for the London borough of Camden, the bench is a strange, angular, sculpted, solid chunk of concrete with rounded edges and slopes in unexpected places.

The complex shape of this seating unit makes it virtually impossible to sleep on. It is also anti-dealer because it features no slots or crevices to stash drugs in; it is anti-skateboarder because the edges on the bench fluctuate in height to make grinding difficult; it is anti-litter because it lacks cracks that trash could slip into; it is anti-theft because recesses near the ground allow people to tuck bags behind their legs away from would-be criminals; and it is anti-graffiti because it has a special coating to repel paint. On top of all of this, the object is so large and heavy that it can also serve as a traffic barrier. One online critic called it the perfect “anti-object.”

by Emily Willingham

The way spiders use their pedipalps can illuminate the question of “what makes a penis.” The male has a pore where sperm emerges. He captures the sperm on silk he’s prepared for the purpose and draws it up like fluid into a turkey baster, pulling it into his palpal bulb at the end of his pedipalp and stuffs the bulb into the female, releasing the sperm. The two steps of insertion and ejaculation can take no more than a five-count in some species.

Is the pedipalp–palpal bulb combination a penis? It involves a tube, intromission, and ejaculation. It seems to fulfill all of the elements of “something that inserts into a partner’s genitalia during copulation and transmits gametes” and then some.

But the spider also uses its pedipalps to taste and smell, definitely not familiar uses of a penis to us. Some spiders even use part of the pedipalp, a bit just under the palpal bulb at the tip, to make music (stridulate) as part of a courtship ritual. That’s not very penislike from our perspective (I’ve yet to hear of a human penis making music), either, but perhaps we should start viewing these organs as what they are: penis capable, sure, but also able to do so much more in the world of sensory communication and courtship.

by Anne Helen Petersen

Part of the problem is that these digital technologies, from cell phones to Apple Watches, from Instagram to Slack, encourage our worst habits. They stymie our best-laid plans for self-preservation. They ransack our free time. They make it increasingly impossible to do the things that actually ground us. They turn a run in the woods into an opportunity for self-optimization. They are the neediest and most selfish entity in every interaction I have with others. They compel us to frame experiences, as we are experiencing them, with future captions, and to conceive of travel as worthwhile only when documented for public consumption. They steal joy and solitude and leave only exhaustion and regret. I hate them and resent them and find it increasingly difficult to live without them.   Read the full excerpt . 

by Terry Virts

The thought 'I hope this disintegration eventually stops' did cross my mind, but there was nothing I could do in either case. There were constant banging and ripping noises as I watched pieces of the blanket (and who knows what else) fly by my window. Then came the parachute. We had had a briefing by crewmates who had done this before, and they basically said, “You’re going to think you’re going to die, but don’t worry, you won’t.” And you know what? It felt like we were going to die. But, thanks to the briefing, Samantha Cristoforetti, my Italian crewmate, Anton Shkaplerov, my Russian crewmate and Soyuz commander, and I had a blast when the drogue chute came out. We were hooting and hollering and yelling in Russian, “Rooskiy gorkiy!” Which means “crazy roller coaster!” In the F-16 community, we would have called this phase of flight “Mr. Toad’s wild ride.” The tumbling lasted a few minutes until the main parachute finally deployed and we were stable and calm, back at one g.

Read full excerpt.

by Jo Marchant

What’s rarely mentioned today about Aschoff and Wever’s famous bunker, built just a few years later, is that it contained not just one underground apartment, but two. The parallel units were almost identical, with matching beds, kitchens, and record players. But there was a very important difference: One of them was completely enclosed within a hefty capsule of cork, coiled wire, glass wool, and steel, through which no electromagnetic radiation could pass; anyone living inside was completely cut off from the Earth’s magnetic field. The aim was to show that the shielding made no difference to the volunteers’ biological clocks, and prove, once and for all, that Brown was wrong.

Between 1964 and 1970, more than 80 volunteers stayed in the two units. As Aschoff predicted, their circadian rhythms did continue. But there was a problem; the results in the two groups were not the same. In the unshielded bunker, isolated from clocks and sunlight but still exposed to magnetic fields, people’s sleep and waking patterns departed from the solar day, reaching an average period of 24.8 hours.

But when magnetic fields were also blocked, the volunteers’ circadian cycles deteriorated further. Their day length slipped even longer. There was significantly more variation between individuals. And their different rhythms were much more likely to become uncoupled. As mentioned earlier, Aschoff championed desynchronization as one of his key discoveries. Yet over those six years, it only ever occurred in the shielded bunker, cut off from the Earth’s magnetic field. Wever found that if he exposed the volunteers to a similar artificial field, all of these effects were reversed.

Read full excerpt .

by Cody Cassidy

The full‑size wagon first appeared approximately 5,400 years ago, and it may be one of the first inventions in history to go viral. Archaeologists have discovered full‑size carts from southern Iraq to Germany within a few hundred years of each other at a time when cultural barriers were particularly impermeable. The wagon, it seems, was irresistibly useful.

When I asked David Anthony, an anthropologist and the author of The Horse, the Wheel, and Language, what explains this viral growth, he believes part of the reason may be the wagon’s sheer size: “These were probably the biggest wooden machines anyone had ever seen,” he says. They would have been loud; they would have been slow. And they were powered by teams of oxen, which were by themselves some of the largest animals in the steppe.

The invention of the wagon was the prehistoric equivalent of Sputnik; it did not go unnoticed. Because the two oldest wheels archaeologists have found vary significantly in design—one has an axle fixed to the wheel as it does on a modern train, the other spins freely on the axle like on a modern car—Anthony suggests that at least some wagon builders copied what they saw from afar without being able to inspect it closely.

by Rebecca Giggs

Cuteness, as the cultural theorist Sianne Ngai has best detailed , is not merely a matter of smallness, softness, the cartoonish and the infantile. All cute things invite fondling, but nothing is cuter than when it’s vulnerable, helpless, or pitiful. Sloths are dear, but sloth orphanages are dearer. Being hobbled or injured, engaged in pratfall or blunder: that’s cute. A baby dolphin is sweet. A baby dolphin that has stranded is sweeter. It needs us. It needs. The little dolphin has had a little accident. A diminutive object with an “imposed-upon aspect”—this is the sweetest thing of all. But such creaturely objects (for cute animals are objectified) can cause us to grind our teeth. Ngai writes that cuteness “might provoke ugly or aggressive feelings, as well as the expected tender or maternal ones,” inciting “desires for mastery and control as much as [a] desire to cuddle.” Cute things should be soft and twistable, because they need to be capable of withstanding the impulse to violence they arouse (think of the aggression young children sometimes display toward their toys). When cuteness, a quality of products and pictures, is turned back onto the natural world, then the impulse to squash animals—to touch, pinch, and squeal—is amplified.

Grebowicz attaches this feeling—cute aggression—to technology. The need to connect, she argues, extends in two directions: The desire to be closer to animals, and the desire to make meaningful contact with other people. A selfie with a darling animal might be one of the few remaining digital forms in which a demonstration of heightened pure emotion, and enthusiasm, is freed from irony. Miniature intensities, these pictures make a show of relinquishing power to the animal’s untroubled virtue, its goodness. The animal is artless: It can’t pose. It doesn’t know what a camera is for. That kind of authenticity is currency, online.

by Eugenia Cheng  

In the process I learned things about being a woman, and things about being a human, that I had steadfastly ignored before. Things about how we humans are holding ourselves back, individually, interpersonally, structurally, systemically, in the way we think about gender issues. And the question that always taxes me is: What can I, as a mathematician, contribute? What can I contribute, not just from my experience of life as a mathematician, but from mathematics itself?

Read the full excerpt.  

by George Zaidan

Suppose you think it takes you 20 minutes to burn without sunscreen. If you slather on SPF 100, you might think you can gallivant in the sun for 33 hours and not get burned. That’s some hot nonsense. Here’s why: First, you have no idea what the “time it normally takes me to burn” is. Second, that number is not fixed. It changes dramatically based on the time of day, time of year, where you are on Earth, what’s underneath you (sand? snow?), and what’s above you (clear sky? clouds?). And third, you almost never get the full protection of the SPF listed on the label. Why? Many reasons, the simplest of which is: Few of us, studies show, apply as much sunscreen as they use in the official test, 2 milligrams per square centimeter of skin.

That’s a lot of sunscreen. I tried putting that much on one summer and I felt like I had walked through an I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! carwash. For this reason, most people seem to apply half this amount or less. And this leads to another misconception: that people put on “too little” sunscreen. This is . . . meaningless.

Nobody tells you how much butter to put on yourself; you just go for however much feels right. Same with sunscreen. Just be aware that “what feels right” is probably about half what the FDA mandates. That’s actually one reason the bottle says to reapply: because it knows you didn’t put on “enough” the first time around.

by Rachel Lance

All the men were panting hard, pale and sweating. Bauer himself had a splitting headache and felt like he was about to be sick. Bauer knew these were the signs of carbon dioxide buildup, caused by the fact that they kept inhaling the oxygenated air they had brought down with them and exhaling noxious CO 2 . Their blood was becoming more acidic with every breath from the invisible but dangerous CO 2 , and he knew that they did not have much fresh air supply left. He was also concerned about the anchors and chains that were striking the submarine so loudly, because he thought her thin hull might rupture from their repeated hits. The submarine had an escape hatch, but the pressures of the ocean held it firmly shut. Bauer reached up a pallid, trembling hand and gripped a seacock valve tightly in his palm, twisting it open. Water poured in and started to flood the submarine.

Witt and Thomsen immediately pounced on Bauer, one slamming him down and sitting on his chest, the other scrambling to restrain his arms and close the valve. Wide-eyed, they yelled that he was trying to commit suicide and drown them too. But Bauer had opened the seacock because he was a man who wanted to live, and because he was also a man who understood physics.

by Maria Konnikova  

Poker does have an element of chance, to be sure—but what doesn’t? Are poker professionals “gamblers” any more than the man signing away his life on a professional football contract, who may or may not be injured the next week, or find himself summarily dropped from the team in a year because he failed to live up to his promise? We judge the poker player for gambling; we respect the stockbroker for doing the same thing with far less information. In some ways, poker players gamble less than most. After all, even if they lose an arm, they can still play.

by Sarah Scoles  

Arnold’s sighting, however he felt about it, began an epidemic. Soon, other people around the US started to see their saucers. The night sky opened up, kicking off a ufological period insiders refer to as a “flap”: a period of increased sightings. The term also has the contextual tinge of the word’s other definition, “an increased state of agitation.”

by Kenneth R. Rosen

We’ve been in isolation together for weeks. First, self-isolation because we had returned to our home in America after leaving Italy, thinking we’d put distance between us and the coronavirus, and then under state-mandated stay-at-home orders from Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker.

I’m with people I love and trust, but the distance, which helped our relationships stay strong in the past, is gone. I hear everything. House noises. Chewing. Ants in the walls, I could swear. When and what my dad is doing in the bathroom.

Senses are turned up when under lockdown. I feel under siege, and there’s little I can do to protect myself. No bulletproof vest, no surgical mask, can give me the distance I suddenly crave. The rest of humanity feels the same way: Slathered in hand sanitizer and socially distanced, they are blanketed in worry. People who normally move through the world with little fear of attack suddenly fear everyone, dreading a lethal enemy that’s everywhere and nowhere.

by Andrew Whitby

For Frederick H. Wines, a census employee who saw the machine in operation, this process of counting and sorting people by electricity approached a religious experience. “Under the mysterious influence of the electric current running through the machine, they organize themselves, as though possessed of volition … I can compare this current to nothing less intelligent and powerful than the voice of the archangel, which, it is said, will call the dead to life and summon every human soul to face his final doom.”

by Donna Jackson Nakazawa

I was not, of course, the only patient with inflammation in my body who also complained of a change in mental well-being. Such patient stories had even led some epidemiologists to begin to associate inflammatory diseases to brain-related symptoms. In 2008, researchers reported that patients with multiple sclerosis were several times more likely to suffer from depression and bipolar disorder. A 2010 analysis of 17 studies showed that 56 percent of patients with lupus—which manifests in inflammation in the organs of the body—reported cognitive or psychiatric symptoms.

Yet, as compelling as this research was, it just did not make scientific sense at that time that being sick in the body could be connected to, much less cause, illness in the brain.

by Gerald Posner

Perez sat in the front row. She had bought off eBay an OxyContin “window shade” pen that had been one of the many small gifts the detail team distributed to doctors by the tens of thousands. She had wanted that pen because it was an example of Purdue’s aggressive marketing tactics. The pen’s pullout tab contained a simplified reference chart that made it easy for physicians to switch their patients using painkillers to OxyContin, without weighing the risks of OxyContin’s higher abuse potential. (Purdue says it stopped distributing the pens after the FDA began requiring stronger warning labels on OxyContin.)

In Haddox’s presentation, he extolled Oxy’s pain relief benefits and glossed over its potential for addiction, according to attendees. Perez stared at him and played with the pull-out shade. She was incensed by his unorthodox attitude about the risks of addiction.

When the conference ended, Haddox walked through a makeshift aisle between dozens of rows of folding chairs. As they passed one another, Perez says she “did not hear the word ‘now’ but felt the word ‘now.’ ” The 100-pound Perez rammed Haddox with her shoulder and sent him crashing into the folding chairs.

by Matt Parker

But then, in an unbelievably unlucky twist of fate, the crew doing the fuel check in Ottawa made exactly the same kilogram/pound unit error, and the aircraft was allowed to take off again without nearly enough fuel.

The fuel then ran out mid-flight.

There should be several alarm bells going off as you read this story. It’s so unbelievable as to strain credulity. Surely a plane will have fuel gauges to indicate how much fuel is left. Cars have such a gauge, and if one runs out of fuel, it merely rolls to a stop and causes a mild inconvenience: You have to walk to the nearest gas station. If a plane runs out of fuel, it also rolls to a stop—but only after dropping thousands of meters (or many more thousands of feet) out of the sky. The pilots should have been able to glance at the fuel gauge and see that they were running low.

by Geoff White

It had taken me a year to get any kind of lead as to his whereabouts. There were rumors he was in Germany, that he worked for the United Nations in Austria, that he’d moved to the United States, or even that he’d been hired by Microsoft. And now I was stumbling through a market in Manila, showing his name in the hope someone would recognize it. If I could find him, maybe I could ask him about the virus and whether he understood its impact. And perhaps I could get him to tell me, after 20 years, whether he was really the one behind it.

by Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck

Mohammed understood that in a country without polling or elections, platforms like Twitter could reveal how the public felt about a policy or a leader—an important consideration for a family living in perpetual fear of a people’s uprising. On the other hand, negative sentiment on Twitter could undermine a would-be ruler. As the Arab Spring showed, discontented youth could pose a threat to Al Saud rule. Or they could be co-opted by a reform-minded ruler and become the base from which his power sprang. Read the full excerpt.  

by Jamie Holmes

The task, in short, was to shrink components as delicate as old radio parts to the size of a tennis ball, cram them inside a bullet, and engineer this new “proximity fuse” to be rugged enough to work as it flew in the air more than 2,000 feet every second while spinning over 250 times. For this to work, the new “smart” fuse would have to be both small and very sturdy—qualities that seemed to challenge the laws of physics. The task, American scientists were told, was practically impossible. Read the full excerpt.  

by David Sax

Pulling out phones for selfies, the women explain in giddy tones how they’d just finished their first year of college in Baton Rouge and drove here directly after packing up their dorm rooms to meet Dupart. To these women, DArealBBJUDY is more than a larger-than-life figure marketing hair products through hilarious social media skits with celebrities. She is a budding celebrity herself, whose influence extends far beyond New Orleans, the beauty industry, and hip hop culture. She is a successful Black female entrepreneur, telling other young Black women just like her that they too can be entrepreneurs.

by Barton Gellman

Mere creation of such a database, especially in secret, profoundly changed the balance of power between government and governed. This was the Dark Mirror embodied, one side of the glass transparent and the other blacked out. If the power implications do not seem convincing, try inverting the relationship in your mind: What if a small group of citizens had secret access to the telephone logs and social networks of government officials? How might that privileged knowledge affect their power to shape events? How might their interactions change if they possessed the means to humiliate and destroy the careers of the persons in power? Capability matters, always, regardless of whether it is used. An unfired gun is no less lethal before it is drawn.

Angela Watercutter

Jennifer M. Wood

Book Reviews

A book review addresses the subject matter of a literary work, and assesses effectiveness and value. Book reviews keep publishers and the public aware of what is being thought and written in a wide range of subjects. When a new book is issued, copies are sent to reviewers; subsequent reviews appear in literary magazines, academic journals, newspapers, and other periodicals. People everywhere depend on book reviews to direct them in their reading; many readers buy what commentators give particular attention. Competent reviewers are the best counselors for readers attempting to keep up with intellectual and aesthetic developments in the literary arts.

Scope: What a Book Review Is and Is Not

Book reviews vary widely. A review does not simply summarize book material, and should not be substituted for the original book. The purpose of a book review is to make known what a literary work purports to do and be, as a publication for both general and specialized readers. Essential components to be taken into account include concerns of subject matter and style. A review is a critical essay, a report and an analysis. Whether favorable or unfavorable in its assessment, it should seem authoritative. The reviewer's competence must be convincing and satisfying. As with any form of writing, the writer of a book review is convincing through thorough study and understanding of the material, and opinions supported by sound reasoning; the reviewer achieves reader satisfaction upon by giving justice to the subject, the book being reviewed, and connecting it with vital human concerns. A review may be limited in its scope due to length requirements, whether those are set by an instructor or an editor. How thoroughly and with respect to what aspects a book is reviewed also depends on instructor or editor preferences, or simply the attitudes and qualifications of the reviewer.

Essential Objectives

A book review should address three issues:

• Contents, or what is said in the book.
• Style, or how it is said.
• Assessment, or analysis of how true and significant the book is.

The most essential preparation for review writing is of course a complete, thoughtful reading of the book. After reading, the reviewer should have a sound, integrated idea of the book contents, and begin to develop attitudes toward style, purpose, and value. As the reviewer forms ideas for the review, certain influences and motives should be considered:

• The interests, general or special, of the readers: Are they looking to the review for an elementary, informational report? A more advanced, technical, scholarly address?
• The reviewer's own particular interests and purposes: Does the reviewer want to remain primarily a fact-finding reporter? Or are there more specialized ideas and principles of art and ideology the reviewer wants to advance?
• Contemporary social, economic, political, and aesthetic issues: Do one or more of these affect the aim or emphasis of the book review? How does the incorporation and interpretation of these issues in the book review further discussion of the book's contents and style?
• Required treatment and length requirements: What requirements for the review, emphasis and length, have been set by the instructor or editor?

Material for the Review

As the reviewer decides the scope and content of the review, there are various critical considerations to keep in mind. In addition to content and style, information about the publication and category of the book, and the author and author purpose, may be helpful with analysis. Not all material needs to be included in the final review, but the reviewer should be aware of any relevant issues.

Bibliographical Data

Bibliographical data includes the publisher, place and date of publication, and book price. This information is important for readers who want to buy the book. It may also raise questions: Is the book newly issued? Or is it being reissued? If reissued, is it only a new printing or has it been revised? If revised, what is the nature of the revision? Answers to these questions often can be found in a preface to the book by the author. Consult the front matter of the book, the title and copyright pages, for basic publication information. Often, price, publisher, and page count are listed separately at the beginning or end of a book review; this is the case with the example reviews accompanying this guide.

Classification

There are various categories, or genres, to which a book is assigned: fiction, poetry, travel and adventure, mystery, children's literature, biography, history, and contemporary thought, among others. A reviewer analyzes a book's conformity to a genre with attention to the author's approaches, methods, materials and coverage, and the outcomes of the book as to information, judgments, or interest value. For example, in her review of John D'Agata's Halls of Fame , Wendy Rawlings discusses how D'Agata experiments with the form of the essay: "If you're accustomed to reading essays organized around a clearly articulated theme and guided by a single narrative voice that signposts its intentions along the way, D'Agata's methods may frustrate. His essays are disjunctive agglomerations of excerpts from texts of all sorts (literary and otherwise), lists, transcripts from tape-recorded conversations, and, often, long passages of direct quotes from people he meets . . . Reading D'Agata's essays, I felt the strain of someone experimenting with the democratization of a form that, in America, has perhaps been colonized, or at least overpopulated by the ironic and the smug." Rawlings further compares and contrasts D'Agata's methods to those of David Foster Wallace, another contemporary writer of essays. When analyzing a writer's approach to form, some questions to consider are: How does the book differ from previous works in the same field? Has the author written previous books, in this genre or others? How has the author changed or developed? To what extent does the book being reviewed offer anything new its genre? How might it influence later works in the same genre?

Author and Author Purpose

Depending on the genre of the book, the background and purpose of the author may be relevant to the analysis of the book. Refer to the book jacket and biographical notes on the author. Further research may be helpful; read interviews, essays, and, if available, previously written biographies. In John Calderazzo's review of Ken Lamberton's Wilderness and Razor Wire , biographical data about Lamberton proves relevant: "Lamberton had an uncommon resume for someone doing serious jail time: no grinding poverty, no drugs or violence. He grew up in Arizona as an avid collector of wild things, a self-taught naturalist . . . He earned a bachelor's degree in biology, married Karen, a fellow lover of the wild, had kids, and decided to share his passions for science and nature in the public schools . . . He became infatuated with a student and, incredibly, ran off with her to Colorado. Soon someone from Mesa recognized them in Aspen and called the police." This background information provides the reason for Lamberton's incarceration as well as the basis for Calderazzo's discussion of the writer's "microscopically detailed prose" and "the single-mindedness of his gaze." The following is a list of possible biographical data about an author to reference in a review:

• Race, nationality, and origins-social, cultural, religious, economic, political, environmental.
• Training and affiliations-literary, scholastic, religious, political, etc.
• Schooling, travel, or other formative influences.
• Personal experiences-general or specific.
• Career and/or professional position.
• Other literary or scholastic works.
• Stimulus or occasion for writing.
• Special writing aids-illustrations, photographs, diagrams, etc.
• General attitude-objective/subjective, formal/informal, authoritative/speculative, etc.
• Purpose-as described in a preface or other formal statement, or in some key phrase.
• Audience-who the writer hopes will read the book.

Subject Matter

The subject of a book is what the book is about, an idea or ideas explored in the book's contents. In a nonfiction book, the subject should be fairly explicit, in the author's own words. With fiction, however, a reviewer must interpret the subject through analysis of character, setting, plot, and symbolism. A discussion of the subject of a book might begin with its title: From where did the author derive the title? What is the title's meaning or suggestiveness? Is the title an adequate heading for the contents of the book? Or is it ambiguous or false in some way? Other questions regarding the exploration of a book's subject by its author include: What areas of the subject are covered? (In fiction, areas of subject may be considered character concerns, setting, and plot.) What areas of the subject are left uncovered? Is this intentional, or the result of oversight or failure, on the author's part? To what degree is the author thorough or negligent in addressing the subject? In his review of Wilderness and Razor Wire , John Calderazzo comments that writer Ken Lamberton avoids discussion of personal motivation: "Perhaps to spare his wife further humiliation and pain, Lamberton has decided not to belabor his motive for his one act of insanity. He talks vaguely of immaturity, but that's about it . . . [T]he single-mindedness of his gaze [has] implications he either doesn't recognize or won't fully discuss . . . Fixating on the near at hand may be a necessary metaphor and an undeniable fact of prison life, a way to cope with an existence that certainly scares the hell out of me. Maybe, though, Lamberton's fierce gaze derives from something he'll always carry within him: this edgy and impulsive but obviously grateful husband who knows he's not free to teach again for a living . . ."

The contents of a book revolve around the subject, and develop one or more central ideas. For nonfiction, a reviewer analyzes how well the contents of a book address the central idea, the strength or weakness of supporting ideas, and the relevancy of collateral ideas or implications. In fiction, themes develop through character, setting, and plot; a reviewer evaluates the relative success or lack thereof of these fictional elements. Think about these questions: What is the setting, or place and time, of the story? Does the setting reflect or contrast with characters and plot? Are characters fully or minimally developed? Does character development increase or deteriorate as the action proceeds? Is the plot sequenced chronologically, or otherwise? Does tension build or deflate as the story progresses? Note how David Milofsky discusses the effectiveness of the contents of Reynolds Price's Noble Norfleet : "Although there are spots of lyricism-and for the first third of the book, Price's narrative has the drive and tension of some of his better work-overall, Noble Norfleet sags beneath its unlikely premise and even more unlikely hero . . . It seems likely that Price was trying to say something here about the relationship between sexuality and madness, about the necessity not only of nursing others but of caring for oneself, of showing Noble as some kind of paradigm, hence his name. But, sadly, the novel succeeds in none of these aims." Remember that details about the plot and characters in a book are revealed by the reviewer only to support the purpose of the review. Certainly, a review should not give away a book's ending, nor should it be a simple summary of events and characters. The reviewer's job is not only to report highlights but also to respond to the ideas and techniques evident in the book.

Style refers to how an author relates content through writing. This is an important aspect of a book to review. While initially reading the book, and in any subsequent reads, a reviewer should mark passages of particular resonance and reflection of the author's style. These passages help the reviewer form ideas as to whether or not the style is effective in conveying content, and pleasing to the reader. One or more of these passages may be cited within the review itself in order to both exemplify the author's style and provide basis for the reviewer's response. The following is excerpted from Wendy Rawlings' discussion of John D'Agata's poetic, associative essay-writing style in Halls of Fame: "Juxtaposing so many voices and kinds of language . . . can allow the reader to create exciting associative links between texts and ideas, but it can also, when overused, begin to feel somewhat arbitrary. In the book's title essay, for instance, single sentences and sentence fragments form choppy narratives composed of statements that seem, at times, cruelly separated from each other by the portentous silence of white space. This narrative strategy prevails throughout most of the twenty-four sections of the essay, and as a result, the sentences take on a stilted self-importance, like a poem written by someone as yet unschooled in enjambment." A passage from the essay follows this description. When responding to a literary work, consider these aspects of style:

• Logical and reasoned (objective), or imagined and emotional (subjective).
• Dramatic and gripping, or pedestrian and level.
• Epic and far-reaching, or lyrical and infused with personal poetic emotion.
• Solemn and serious, or comic and entertaining.
• Spiritual or vulgar or both.
• Formal, or familiar, informal.
• Simple, or complex.
• Broad, or specific.
• Abstract, or concrete.
• Direct, or implicational.
• Figurative, or literal.
• Use of detail, sense appeal-the look, sound, smell, taste, feel.
• Balance, parallelism, and contrast of exposition, scene, and dialogue.
• Allusions, quotations, aphorisms, etc.
• To the subject.
• To the purpose of the author.
• To the reader.

Form and Technique

An author carefully chooses the form and various writing techniques to use to develop ideas. A book reviewer decides whether or not these choices are appropriate and effective. Do certain techniques aid or impede the author's purpose? What passages from the book best exemplify these techniques?

Form and Technique in Nonfiction

• Use of source material and authority.
• Use of definition; illustrations and examples; comparison and contrast; cause and effect.
• Use of generalization and subsequent conclusions.
• Tone; authority; approach to subject and audience.
• Degree of convincingness.
• Worth of proposal; practicality; need.
• Comparison with other possible policies.
• Costs or difficulties involved.
• Ultimate promise, solution, or plan
• Methods of deduction or induction.
• Synthesis; formation of separate elements into a coherent whole.
• Syllogism; major premise, minor premise, and conclusion.
• Dialectics; arrival at truth through conversation involving question and answer.
• Casuistry; determination of right and wrong by applying generalized ethics principles.
• Fallacy; begging the question, ignoring the question, etc.

Form and Technique in Fiction

• Dominant impression; vividness of final impression.
• Selection of details to support a single effect.
• Appeal to sight, sound, smell, taste, and feel; imagery.
• Directness; implication and suggestion.
• Point of view; first, second, third; limited or omniscient.
• Establishment of setting.
• Smoothness of transitions in time sequence.
• Use of flashback.
• How presented or introduced.
• Motivations; sources for feeling and/or drives to action.
• How described; direct or implied; revealed through description or dialogue.
• Purposes; heroic or villainous; tragic inner flaws; revealing traits.
• How credible and consistent.
• Opening situation and/or conflict.
• Obstacles and complications.
• Tension and suspense.
• Turning point, or climax.
• Resolution.
• Degree of inventiveness and/or plausibility.
• Final philosophy or view of life derived from characters and action.

Depending on the author's purpose, a book's realism, or truth to life, may need assessment. If a book of fiction is meant to be realistic fiction-is it? Is it logical, natural, plausible? To what extent does the author rely on coincidence or accident to propel the plot? Is there adequate evidence of character motivation? Or a lack of sufficient urges and drives? Is the story infused with a quality of normalcy, or abnormality? Remember, if a book of fiction is to be successful according to a reviewer, it is not necessarily realistic fiction; a book's realism, or lack thereof, need be addressed by a reviewer only as it compares to the author's intention for the story. See here how David Milofsky addresses the realism of William Trevor's novel The Story of Lucy Gault : "It seems unlikely, to say the least, that longtime residents of a place (going back several generations, we're told) would cut off contact so completely as the Gaults do, but, of course, if this isn't the case there would be no novel. Similarly, it's hard to believe that the lawyer wouldn't be able to contrive a way to contact the absent parents . . . It's a tribute to Trevor's genius that these objections are largely overridden and storytelling takes over."

Form and Technique in Poetry

• Received (given) forms; sonnet, quatrain, villanelle, sestina, haiku, etc.
• Free verse forms.
• Lyric; narrative; dramatic; prose; ballad (folk, literary, popular).
• Point of view; persona or apparently personal.
• Dramatic monologue.
• Tone; irony, satire, etc.
• Intensity, atmosphere, mood.
• Concrete or abstract.
• Denotation, connotation, implication.
• Vulgar, colloquial/informal, formal.
• Syntax, or sentence structure.
• Amount and type of sensory detail.
• Metaphor; simile; personification; allusion.
• Synesthesia; describing a sense impression using words that normally describe another.
• Hyperbole or understatement.
• Metonymy; substituting one word/phrase for another, closely associated word/phrase.
• Synecdoche; using a part to refer to the whole, or the whole to refer to a part.
• Alliteration; repetition of an initial sound in two or more words of a phrase.
• Assonance (repetition of vowels) and/or consonance (repetition of consonants).
• Onomatopoeia; using a word that is defined through both its sound and meaning.
• Euphony (smooth, pleasant sound) vs. cacophony (rough, harsh sound).
• Rhythm (pattern of beats in a stream of sound)-appeals t
• The line; end-stopped (self-enclosed) or enjambed.
• Feet; iambs, trochees, anapests, dactylics, etc.
• Meter; mono-, di-, tri-, tetra-, penta-, hexa-, etc.
• Repetition.
• Rhyme (corresponding terminal sounds)-appeals t
• True; words sound nearly identical and rhyme on one stressed syllable.
• Slant (near/off); words do not exactly rhyme, but almost rhyme.
• End rhyme (at end of line) and/or internal rhyme (similar sounds within one line).
• Masculine (lines end w/ stressed syllable); feminine (lines end w/ unstressed syllable).

View of Life

It is common for an author to express a view of life through ideas and themes developed in a book. A reviewer identifies and comments on the author's stance. Does the book hold to and/or further develop views apparent in past works? Or make a new statement? Below is a list of popular attitudes, or schools of thought:

• Idealism-emphasis on enduring spirituality as opposed to transient values of materialism.
• Romanticism-focus on emotion and imagination as freedom from the strictly logical.
• Classicism-intellectuality; dominance of the whole over its parts, and form over impulse.
• Realism-adherence to actualities, the logistics of everyday life; objectivity.
• Impressionism-intuition; sense responses to aesthetic objects.
• Naturalism-humans as part of nature; adaption to external environment.

In response to Wilderness and Razor Wire , John Calderazzo discusses the importance of nature in Ken Lamberton's life and writing: "[I]n the prison of his days (to paraphrase W. H. Auden), Lamberton is helped . . . by nature, by the winds and dust and sweet-smelling raindrops that blow down from the nearby mountains, which he sees framed in barbed wire. This is nature unbound, not just out there beyond the walls but slipping in through the bars, swirling around his cell, penetrating even his skin . . . [Swallows] migrate, then return to raise new young in their mud-packed homes, lending solace-and spice-to the impossibly slow turning of the seasons . . . The swallows and many other break-ins from the natural world are also resources of rehabilitation, which Lamberton says is absent from all other aspects of prison life." If comparisons are to be made between a book being reviewed and its predecessors, a reviewer should be familiar with the basic forms and techniques prevalent in works expressing similar viewpoints. Further research and reading are necessary for the reviewer to form intelligent analysis of views of life expressed through writing.

Value and Significance

Often a book review comments on the significance of a new work. This value may be measured in relation to other books in the same genre, works addressing the same subject matter, past and contemporary authors with a similar style, and/or previous works by the same author. In his review of William Trevor's The Story of Lucy Gault , David Milofsky compares the novel to Trevor's past works, and comments on its place in literature in general: "[Trevor]'s been called the Irish Chekhov, but that's not really adequate, since Chekhov never really wrote novels. The truth is that Trevor is sui generis, in a class by himself. While his stories (collected a few years ago in an omnibus volume) are brilliant, novels like The Old Boys and Felicia's Journey are lasting contributions to our literature. He's a literary treasure and never less than interesting reading . . . The Story of Lucy Gault may not be the most accomplished novel of Trevor's distinguished career, but that still places it far beyond most of the fiction that will be written in English this year. It's highly recommended reading." Value is also determined by the universality of application-how and to whom the work applies. Are the book's contents of universal interest? Or does the subject matter limit the book's appeal to a narrow field of individuals? Determining the value and significance of a book depends largely on the knowledge and subjectivity of the reviewer; familiarity with comparable books and authors is required to draw conclusions of this nature.

A book's format, or physical make-up, reflects the ideas of both its author and its publisher. A book reviewer might mention characteristics of format, in relation to suitability and aesthetics. Is the book's size convenient? Is the binding durable? Is the print type legible? Do illustrations, diagrams, and maps, if any, aid the reader's understanding of the material? Is the index correct and complete? Are bibliographies and reference lists present? In response to artwork present in Ken Lamberton's Wilderness and Razor Wire , John Calderazzo comments on both the exactness of the drawings and the possible meaning of this detail-orientedness to Lamberton's life: "[J]ournal entries and small essays [are] complemented by drawings of tarantulas, conenose beetles, horned lizards, and other desert creatures in almost photo-realistic close-up. This is why I suggested that Lamberton may not find himself any closer to 'nature' when he's finally free. How can he get more intimate? . . . All of his drawings, in fact, are rendered in extreme close-up, like visual infatuations writ large. Nothing seems to exist in the distance, which makes me wonder if anything ever does for Lamberton, or ever will."

Planning and Writing

A book review should meet the requirements of any good composition. Clarity, correctness, readability, and interest are very important. A review should give its readers not only an understanding of the reviewer's intellectual response to a book but also an awareness of the basis for this response, through example and analysis. Specific passages from the book are used to exemplify the reviewer's points regarding elements of style, form, and technique. There is no strict pattern for writing book reviews. Guiding the book reviewer's writing process, however, are the three essential objectives of relating what is said in the book, how it is said, and how true and significant it is. As with the planning of a composition, make a list of possible material to use in the review-ideas, responses, information, examples. Study this material to decide what to include in the book review and what proves extraneous. Put the items to include in a suitable order-for instance, from greater to lesser importance. Once the material is organized, a controlling idea for the review emerges; this controlling idea may form the topic sentence of the review, and provides guidance for achieving coherence and focus throughout. Use the topic sentence, in varied forms, in the beginning and end of the review. Once the book reviewer has chosen the proper and adequate material, organized this material effectively, and decided on the main idea and focus to be developed, it is time to write the review.

Like writing the introduction of a composition, there several possible strategies to use for beginning a book review. One type of strategic beginning is prompt definition-assigning meaning to terms in the title of the book, for example, or giving the scope of the review as it relates to the subject and the reviewer's response to the book. Another effective approach is to highlight the origins and past history of the subject treated in the book; this technique may also be used to introduce ideas about genre, style, or view of life, depending on what the reviewer has chosen as the focus of the review. A statement of exclusion shows what will not be addressed in a review and focuses attention on what really will be discussed. At the beginning of his review of Reynold Price's Noble Norfleet , David Milofsky uses a comparison between Price's newest novel and his previous works: "It would be nice to report that Reynolds Price, the distinguished author of more than thirty books, including A Long and Happy Life and Surface of Earth , has added significantly to his oeuvre with his new novel, but such is not the case. Not by a long shot." A reviewer might also quickly catch reader attention by appealing to human interest-perhaps a personal reference or brief anecdote. The anecdote should connect to or exemplify the main focus of the book review. Note the anecdotal technique Wendy Rawlings uses in the introduction of her review of John D'Agata's Halls of Fame : "While on a recent trip to England, I witnessed a cultural exchange that struck me as emblematic of John D'Agata's book of essays, Halls of Fame . An American friend who has spent the past year tolerating a chilly flat in a London suburb for the sake of his British fiancée wanted me to guess the height of the World's Largest Pencil. 'I don't know-eight, nine feet tall?' I said. 'See? See? I knew it!' my friend shouted. He explained that when asked the same question, an English friend had guessed the height of the world's largest pencil to be 'perhaps a foot high, or two.' His modest expectations compared to my great ones (I could not but visualize the World's Largest Pencil as at least a foot taller than an NBA All-Star) represented to my friend something essential about the differences between British and American sensibilities."

Development

The primary focus of a book review is supplied in the beginning paragraph. After this main idea is established, it needs to be developed and justified. Using an organized list of material, the reviewer details the reasons behind the response to the book. References to past history, causes and effects, comparisons and contrasts, and specific passages from the book help illustrate and exemplify this main idea. Personal philosophy and moralization should be kept to a minimum, if included at all; the reader of a book review is interested in unbiased, thoughtful, reasonable, and well-developed ideas pertaining to the book in question. The bulk of a review consists of the development of the reviewer's main idea, the response to the book and the reasons for it. In each of the example reviews that accompany this guide, the reviewers develop their ideas through references to comparable past and contemporary works, analysis of aspects of form and technique, and inclusion of notable passages from the books being reviewed.

Conclusions

The conclusion reflects the focus of the rest of the review, and leaves the reader with a clearly articulated, well-justified final assessment. A restatement of the topic sentence is better than a cursory inspection of less important matters like book format and mechanical make-up. Main emphasis should remain primarily on the qualities and materials of the book being reviewed. At the end of Wendy Rawlings' review of John D'Agata's Halls of Fame , Rawlings summarizes previously stated ideas: "When D'Agata doesn't find the balance, the lyricism borrowed from poetry seems not quite, yet, to fit. I don't wish for D'Agata to join the legions of the smug and ironic, but at certain moments, I begin to wish for authorial presence that will assert itself less forcefully in terms of the arrangement of words on the page, which are often blasted into squadrons separated by asterisks, white space, or unhelpful section headings, and more forcefully on the level of the sentence, as D'Agata does in 'Notes toward the making of a whole human being . . . ,' a five-page essay composed of a single, breathtakingly constructed sentence." The conclusion statement cements the reviewer's recommendation, or lack thereof, of the book. Clearly, this is David Milofsky's aim in the conclusion of his review of Reynold Price's Noble Norfleet : "Even with a failure, it is interesting to read as accomplished a writer as Price, but his new novel cannot be recommended on any other grounds." The final sentence of a review should be both memorable and thought-provoking to the reader. As at the end of John Calderazzo's review of Ken Lamberton's Wilderness and Razor Wire , this final thought might be put in the form of a question: "[R]eading about Lamberton's flawed but exhilarating life makes me wonder about temptation and impetuousness. In light of losing everything, how many of us are still tempted to pursue, just once, some nearby object of desire? And will this constant risk be the prison of all of our days, our lives a landscape of wilderness and razor wire?"

Reviewing Specific Types of Books

The type of book being reviewed raises special considerations as to how to approach the review. Information specific to the categories of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry can be found under the "Form and Technique" heading of this guide. Below are further questions to consider, based on a book's category:

• Does the book give a full-length picture of the subject? Focus on only a portion of life?
• What phases of the subject's life receive greatest space? Is there justification for this?
• What is the point of view of the author?
• Are idiosyncrasies and weaknesses omitted? Treated adequately? Overplayed?
• Does the author endeavor to get at hidden motives?
• What important new facts about the subject's life are revealed in the book?
• Is the subject of the biography still living?
• What source materials were used in the preparation of the book?
• What training has the author had for this kind of work?
• What particular historical period does the book address?
• Is the accound given in broad outline, or in detail?
• Is the style that of reportorial writing, or is there an effort at interpretation?
• Is emphasis on traditional matter, like wars, kings, etc.? Or is it a social history?
• Are dates used extensively and/or intelligently?
• Is the book likely to be out of date soon? Or is it intended to stand the test of time?
• Are maps, illustrations, charts, etc., helpful to the reader?
• o Who is the author, and what right does he/she have to be writing on the subject? o What contributions to knowledge and understanding are made by the book?
• Is the author credible? What is the author's purpose for writing the book?
• Does the book contribute to knowledge of geography, government, folklore, etc.?
• Does the book have news value?
• How effective are plot, pace, style, and characterization? Strengths? Weaknesses?
• Is the ending worthwhile? Predictable?
• o Children's Literature
• o What is the age/interest group for which the book is intended?
• o What is the overall experience/feeling of reading the book?
• o Is the book illustrated? How? By whom?

Publication

There is a good market for the newcomer in book reviewing. Many editors, including those of big-name magazines, do not like to use the same reviewer too often, and this means unknown, unpublished reviewers have good opportunities to break into the field. Send query letters to editors to find out what their publication needs are. Try smaller, special-interest publications first (ethnic, feminist, religious, etc.); if the reviewer has knowledge or affiliation relevant to the publication, it may increase the chances of a positive response from the editor. Stay current with new books, and read other book reviews. Once an assignment for a review is given, produce timely, quality work, specific to requirements set by the editor. Build publication credits with a variety of periodicals; pursue possibilities of starting a regular column for a single newspaper or magazine. Book reviewing is not generally a highly profitable venture, but money can be made, depending on a reviewer's qualifications, reputation, and dedication to the field.

Cress, Janell. (2003). Book Reviews. Writing@CSU . Colorado State University. https://writing.colostate.edu/guides/guide.cfm?guideid=49

Relevant (magazine)

Relevant (often styled as RELEVANT ) is a bi-monthly Christian lifestyle magazine published by Relevant Media Group, since 2003. It is now fully-digital, but the print magazine once claimed an average circulation of 70,000. [1]

RelevantMagazine.com

Relevant podcast, external links.

In June 2001, Cameron Strang, son of Charisma Magazine publisher, and Strang Communications CEO Stephen Strang , founded the media company Relevant Media Group. [1] The company began publishing Relevant in March 2003. One critic has called the publication "the mass media equivalent of outreach in the skate park." [2] As of 2006, it was distributed nationally at Barnes & Noble and other retailers, including the Family Christian bookstore chain. [2]

In its early years, contributors to the print magazine included John Fischer, Dan Haseltine ( Jars of Clay ), Don Chaffer ( Waterdeep ), and Dan Buck. Relevant ran articles about faith, life in your 20s and 30s, social justice, and interviews with musicians and authors such as Donald Miller , Bob Goff, The Avett Brothers , Rob Bell , and The Civil Wars .

In 2005, Relevant Media Group created a women's magazine, Radiant , which published 12 issues from 2005–2007.

In 2008, Relevant Media Group launched a magazine for church leaders, Neue.

In 2011, Relevant launched a free semi-annual social justice magazine, Reject Apathy . It was included with Relevant subscriptions.

Relevant launched its interactive iPad edition in September 2011.

According to a demographic study in 2012, 86% of Relevant 's subscribers were between the ages of 18 and 39 (the average subscriber's age was 27). [ citation needed ]

In September 2020, Relevant announced the suspension of its print edition, shifting to an all-digital format and maintaining its bi-monthly release schedule. [3]

The magazine's companion web presence, relevantmagazine.com, launched in 2002 with the email newsletter, "850 Words of Relevant" (now called "Relevant This Week").

The website is updated daily and is a counterpart to the magazine. It includes daily features, news ("slices"), columns, reviews, and features such as "The Drop" [4] and "RELEVANT.tv". [5]

Relevant releases a new podcast every Monday and Thursday. The podcast won the 2015 Academy of Podcasters Awards in the Spirituality & Religion category. [6]

Related Research Articles

W is an American fashion magazine that features stories about style through the lens of culture, fashion, art, celebrity, and film.

Slate is an online magazine that covers current affairs, politics, and culture in the United States. It was created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. In 2004, it was purchased by The Washington Post Company, and since 2008 has been managed by The Slate Group, an online publishing entity created by Graham Holdings. Slate is based in New York City, with an additional office in Washington, D.C.

Entertainment Weekly is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular culture. The magazine debuted on February 16, 1990, in New York City, and ceased print publication in 2022.

The Advocate is an American LGBT magazine, printed bi-monthly and available by subscription. The Advocate brand also includes a website. Both magazine and website have an editorial focus on news, politics, opinion, and arts and entertainment of interest to lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender (LGBT) people. The magazine, established in 1967, is the oldest and largest LGBT publication in the United States and the only surviving one of its kind that was founded before the 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan, an uprising that was a major milestone in the LGBT rights movement. On June 9, 2022, Pride Media was acquired by Equal Entertainment LLC.

Popular Science is a U.S. popular science website, covering science and technology topics geared toward general readers. Popular Science has won over 58 awards, including the American Society of Magazine Editors awards for its journalistic excellence in 2003, 2004, and 2019. Its print magazine, which ran from 1872 to 2020, was translated into over 30 languages and distributed to at least 45 countries. In 2021, Popular Science switched to an all-digital format and abandoned the magazine format in 2023. A Verge article published November 27, 2023, referred to a statement from the communications director of PopSci ' s owner, Recurrent Ventures, Cathy Hebert, indicating that Popular Science "will no longer be available to purchase as a magazine".

The Australian Financial Review ( AFR ) is an Australian business-focused, compact daily newspaper covering the current business and economic affairs of Australia and the world. The newspaper is based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; owned by Nine Entertainment and has been published continuously since its founding in 1951. The AFR , along with the rest of Fairfax Media, was sold to Nine Entertainment for more than A$2.3 billion. The AFR is published in tabloid format six times a week, whilst providing 24/7 online coverage through its website. In November 2019, the AFR reached 2.647 million Australians through both print and digital mediums (Mumbrella).

Wisden Cricket Monthly ( WCM ) is a UK-based print and digital cricket magazine available to buy worldwide.

XLR8R is a website that covers music, culture, style, and technology. It was originally also a print magazine.

The New Hampshire is the student-run news of the University of New Hampshire (UNH) since 1911. TNH operates from its headquarters in the Memorial Union Building, covering student life and doings for the college town of Durham, as well as nearby cities like Dover and Newmarket.

This is an overview of media in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Podcasts , previously known as "audioblogs", have roots dating back to the 1980s. With the advent of broadband Internet access and portable digital audio playback devices such as the iPod, podcasting began to catch hold in late 2004. Today there are more than 115,000 English-language podcasts available on the Internet, and dozens of websites available for distribution at little or no cost to the producer or listener.

Sound on Sound is a monthly music technology magazine. The magazine includes product tests of electronic musical performance and recording devices, and interviews with industry professionals. Due to its technical focus, it is predominantly aimed at the professional recording studio market as well as artist project studios and home recording enthusiasts.

V is an American fashion magazine published since 1999. The magazine is printed seasonally and highlights trends in fashion, film, music and art. A men's fashion quarterly entitled VMan started as an offshoot in 2003.

Complex Networks is an American media and entertainment company for youth culture, based in New York City. It was founded as a bi-monthly magazine, Complex , by fashion designer Marc (Ecko) Milecofsky. Complex Networks reports on popular and emerging trends in style, sneakers, food, music, sports and pop culture. Complex Networks reached over 90 million unique users per month in 2013 across its owned and operated and partner sites, socials and YouTube channels. The print magazine ceased publication with the December 2016/January 2017 issue. Complex currently has 6.02 million subscribers and 1.8 billion total views on YouTube. As of 2019, the company's yearly revenue was estimated to be US$200 million, 15% of which came from commerce.

City A.M. is a free business-focused newspaper distributed in and around London, England, with an accompanying website. In 2023, it had a monthly online readership between 1.8m and 2m and print circulation of 67,714.

Nation's Restaurant News ( NRN ) is an American trade publication, founded in 1967. NRN covers the foodservice industry, including restaurants, restaurant chains, operations, marketing, and events. It is owned by Penton Media, who purchased it from founding company Lebhar-Friedman in December 2010. Nation's Restaurant News 's sister publications are Restaurant Hospitality , Food Management , Supermarket News , and MUFSO .

Pocket Gamer is a video game website and former print magazine that focuses on mobile, portable and handheld games. It was launched in 2005 by Steel Media Limited.

Premier Guitar is a media company devoted to guitarists. It is based in Marion, Iowa, and its staff is focused on creating the best website, videos, podcasts, and print/digital magazine for gearheads around the world. Interviews have included guitarists such as Pete Townshend of The Who, Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, Joe Perry of Aerosmith, Guthrie Govan, Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher of Mastodon, and Dave Mustaine and Chris Broderick of Megadeth. The magazine is published online for free, and includes multimedia such as instructional videos and podcasts Premier Guitar was originally published under the name Musicians Hotline through 2006.

Google Play Newsstand was a news aggregator and digital newsstand service by Google. On May 8, 2018, Google announced at Google I/O that Google Play Newsstand was being amalgamated with Google News. Launched in November 2013 through the merger of Google Play Magazines and Google Currents, the service let users subscribe to magazines and topical news feeds, receiving new issues and updates automatically. Content was offered for reading on a dedicated Newsstand section of the Google Play website or through the mobile apps for Android and iOS. Offline download and reading is supported on the mobile apps.

Byline Times is a British newspaper and website founded in March 2019 by Peter Jukes and Stephen Colegrave, who are also its executive editors. It is a development of Byline, a crowdfunding and media outlet platform founded in April 2015 by Seung-yoon Lee and Daniel Tudor.

• 1 2 Sandler, Lauren (2006). Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement . New York: Penguin Group. pp.   116–121. ISBN   0-670-03791-5 .
• ↑ Strang, Cameron (September 2, 2020). "Welcome to the New Era of RELEVANT" . RELEVANT . Retrieved December 17, 2020 .
• ↑ "RELEVANT Media Group" . RELEVANT Media Group .
• ↑ "RELEVANT MAGAZINE   :: Covering God, Life and Progressive Culture" .
• ↑ "Academy of Podcasters: Past Winners" . Academy of Podcasters . Archived from the original on October 3, 2017.
• Official website
• USA Today article from 2004
• Transcript of a CNN interview with Cameron Strang
• Relevant Media Group website
• It's young, it's hip and it's Christian. The Orlando Sentinel, March 25, 2003

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Blog • Book Marketing

Last updated on Feb 07, 2023

How to Get Book Reviews in 5 Steps (2024 Update)

Imagine the day of your book launch. You’re sitting in front of your computer, blissfully imagining all the five-star book reviews that will soon be yours. Yet the days pass... and the reviews don't come.

Needless to say, you'll want people to buy and read your book ASAP so they can leave you some good reviews. But you may see the Catch-22 here: in order to make your first sales, you’ll need to display positive book reviews. So how do you get the chicken before you’ve got the egg (or vice versa)?

Enter book bloggers , who are your new best friends! For this post, we asked our top Reedsy publicists to share their best tips on how to get book reviews from book bloggers — and we've condensed their advice into these five essential steps, plus a few bonus tips at the end.

You can also check out this Reedsy Live on how to get your first book reviews, with advice from author and book marketer Debbie Drum.

Those who prefer their tips in written form, let's dive right in with the very first step of the review acquisition process!

1. Identify your audience

A quick preliminary note: you want to start the review-gathering as early as possible. If you can, plan your book review campaign 4-6 months in advance of your publication date. Because if you want your reviews to be in place by then, you’ll need to give people time to actually write them!

Now, using the "5 W’s of Storytelling," let's talk about the first thing you should be asking yourself: who? Who will be reading your book, and who is best positioned to promote it to that audience? The following tips will help you answer these questions.

Build a questionnaire

Here are a few more specific queries to help you clarify your "who":

• Who reads in my genre?
• What magazines, websites, forums, or blogs do they frequent?
• Where might they find reviews of my book that will entice them to buy it?

Indeed, publicist Jessica Glenn recommends building a full-length questionnaire to identify your audience and where you might find them on the Web (or in real life!).

“Most, if not all, publicists and publishers send authors a very long questionnaire to fill out when they start their marketing plan ,” she says. “That's so we can dig into any useful piece of bio, community, or regional info to figure out who and why people will be interested in your book.”

Your questionnaire will direct you to your target audience and help you create a  proto-persona.  This is the "ideal reader" of your book, so to speak — a perfect blend of the traits you'd expect them to have. (For example, if you've written a YA paranormal romance novel, your proto-persona might be a 14-year-old girl who's obsessed with Twilight .) And whoever they are, you'll keep them in mind every time you make a marketing decision.

Think about comp titles

Another great way to get a handle on your target audience is to figure out your comparative titles — books that are a) similar to yours and b) share the same general readership. When pitching to book reviewers, these are the titles you'll use to sell your own  book . For instance, "My book is  Normal People meets The Incendiaries ."

According to Jessica, you should have at least 15 potential comp titles for your book, ideally a mix of bestsellers and well-reviewed indie titles. “Many first-time authors balk at this," says Jessica, "as they believe there is no true comp for their book — but dig deep and you'll find them!”

Comp titles are critical because they act as a compass, pointing you towards a ready-made audience that enjoys works in the same mold as yours. This is a huge help in determining your target readers, as well as which reviewers will cater to them. Speaking of which...

2. Find relevant book blogs

Now that you’ve got a strong sense of your audience, you're ready to find blogs that will provide the best exposure to that audience. We recommend starting with our directory of 200+ book review blogs , but feel free to do your own research as well!

As you dig into book review blogs, check on these two things first:

• Is the site active? Has the blogger published a post within the last month or so?
• Are they currently accepting queries? If they're closed at the moment, it could be months before your book gets a review — if at all.

And if you want to confirm your book marketing strategy when it comes to book review blogs, we recommend first taking this quick quiz below!

Which book review site is right for you?

Find out here! Takes one minute.

Once you've confirmed that a book review blog is both active and open to queries, think about whether it's right for your  book. Here are some important factors to consider:

• Genre . Don't waste your time on blogs that don't review books in your genre. "Be very mindful of a publication’s particular audience and target market when pitching for review. If their readership is science-fiction, do not pitch a commercial crime novel!” says publicist Hannah Cooper .
• Traffic . High-traffic book blogs might seem like your highest priorities, but this isn’t necessarily true. “Don't shy away from the smaller blogs,” says publicist Beverly Bambury . “They can sometimes foster a real sense of community and starting off small is just fine."
• Posting frequency.  Another consideration is how often the blogger in question actually publishes reviews. Too often, and your book will get lost in the shuffle; too seldom, and they're likely to lose readers. Try to strike a balance with about 1-2 reviews per week — no decent reviewer can turn them out faster than that, anyway!

Track down your comp titles' reviewers

Remember those comp titles you came up with earlier? You can use them not only to pitch your book, but also to find potential reviewers , as they will correspond perfectly with your genre and target audience.

“Once you have your 15-or-so comps, you can research where each book has been reviewed,” says Jessica. “With luck, you will find at least a couple of book reviews per title, which will give you many more outlets to investigate further.”

Now, as an author, you might be wondering: “How can I begin to find all the places where a given book was reviewed?” Don’t forget the power of Google! Try searching the following terms to find reviews for a given title:

• [Title] + book review
• [Title] + review
• [Title] + Q&A

And here's one last tip to give you a boost — sign up for a "Mention" account and/or set up Google alerts to get a notification every time these titles appear online.

Once you’re armed with a bundle of suitable book review blogs, you've arrived at the third (and perhaps most crucial) step in this process. This is, of course, creating the pitches you'll send to reviewers.

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3. Write pitches for them

Pitching a reviewer is pretty straightforward. All you have to do is a) keep it short, and and b) personalize it as much as possible. However, before we get to our publicists’ actionable tips on pitching, there’s one more thing that you absolutely HAVE to do. And that thing is...

Read the review policy!

Before you pitch any blog, make sure you read the blogger’s review policy. Some blogs will have a form to fill out; others might ask you to email them directly. Still others might not welcome any queries from self-published authors . Whatever they say, make sure that you follow it to a T.

“There are two main benefits to reading and following the review policies closely,” says Beverly. “First, you show the reviewer that you respect and appreciate them when you follow their instructions. This is important when asking someone to do you a favor.

"Second, you may find that even if the site is closed for review queries, it's open to publicity queries — where you might be able to place an excerpt or do a Q&A or occasional blog post. You'll never know if you don't take the time to read the review policy first.”

More tips for pitching reviewers

Now that you’re clear on what the blogger wants, you can start pitching them with confidence. Here are three more key tips for pitching book reviewers:

1. Never send out bulk pitches. "When you pitch each outlet individually, specifically write that you read their positive book review of your comp and what that comp title was,” says Jessica Glenn. Or if you didn't find them through a comp title, mention other  aspects of their blog and why you think they would be great to review your book!

2. Be concise and direct. “Include your title, publisher, date of release, and genre in the first paragraph,” notes Beverly Bambury. “Then you might want to include the cover copy or a brief description of the book. Finally, be direct and ask for what you want. If you want a review, ask for it! If you want an excerpt placed, ask for that.”

3. Appeal to their commercial side. “All reviewers want the opportunity to discover the next 'big thing’ — particularly with fiction — so make them feel as though they have the opportunity to get the word out first," says Hannah Cooper. Indeed, if you can convince a reviewer that you are doing them  a favor, you're practically guaranteed to get a review.

Basically, try to get reviewers to think, “Oh, if I enjoyed [comp title], I’ll enjoy this person's book too,” or “They've done the research to know that I’m a good fit for their book.” If you can do that, you’re already much closer than everyone else to obtaining high-quality book reviews !

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4. Send out your book

This is the step before the moment of truth (the review itself), so it's extremely important to get everything right. To ensure you're complying with each reviewer's guidelines, review their policy again before you send them your book. Some bloggers might prefer digital copies of manuscripts, while others might want a physical ARC — be prepared to accommodate.

Also, as you begin sending your book to various outlets, you should track your progress in a spreadsheet. Record which blogs you’ve submitted to so far, which blogs have responded, and which blogs you plan to submit to, so you don't accidentally double-submit or skip over anyone.

Formatting your book

Other than double-checking the review policy, the most important thing to do here is to format your book in a professional manner . After all, you want the presentation of your content to match the quality! Even though it shouldn't technically matter, reviewers will definitely judge your book by how it looks, inside and out.

The good news for self-formatters that you probably won't need to send physical proofs, and ebooks are much easier to format than hard copies. Digital copies also cost next-to-nothing to produce, so you can easily send multiple copies of your book out to different reviewers. You may want to check out apps like Instafreebie and Bookfunnel , which make it easy to generate individual ARC download links that you can send to the reviewers.

Pro tip : If you’re searching for a good book production tool, the Reedsy Book Editor can format and convert your manuscript into professional EPUB and print-ready files in a matter of seconds!

5. Follow up after a week

A week or more has passed since you queried a book blog, and so far… crickets. What do you do now? Why, follow up,  of course!

When it comes to this stage, keep calm and follow Hannah Hargrave’s advice: “Don't bother reviewers for an answer daily. I will usually chase again after a week has passed.

"If you receive a decline response, or no one responds to your third chase-up, assume this means they are not interested. Any further follow-ups, or aggressive requests as to why your work's not being reviewed, will not be viewed kindly. Above all, be polite and friendly at all times.”

That said, someone rejecting your book for review is a worst-case scenario. Best-case scenario, the blogger responds favorably and you’ve bagged yourself a review!

What comes next, you ask?

The reviewer will post their review of your book on their blog — and on Amazon, Goodreads, and any other platforms that they’ll name in their review policy. This is yet another reason why it's vital to read that policy carefully, so you know exactly where  the review will be seen.

If all goes well, the reviewer will publish a positive review that you can use to further promote your book. Maybe you'll even get a decent pull-quote for your book description ! Not to mention that if you ever write a sequel, you can almost certainly count on them for a follow-up review.

Pro-tip: Want to write a book description that sells? Download this free book description template to get a headstart. 

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But what if you don't get any bites from book bloggers, or — horror of horrors — one of them gives you a negative review? Fortunately, the next two sections should help you deal with each of these possible dilemmas.

Bonus ways to get book reviews

Though book bloggers are the most reliable and professional source of reviews for independent authors, you may want to try other avenues to maximize your chances! Here are three more ways to get book reviews  for your work, so you can bolster your Amazon profile and start making some serious sales.

1. Tell your followers about your book

Though Amazon prohibits reviews from close friends and family , you're free to tell your random social media followers about your book and hope they leave good reviews. It obviously helps if you have a large following on Twitter or Instagram, even more so if some of those followers are fellow authors who appreciate the significance of reviews.

That said, NEVER offer "review swaps" or any kind of promotional enticement for customers to leave reviews, as this would also be against Amazon's terms. Simply let your followers know you've got a book out and that you'd love for them to read it; the rest is in their hands. However, when it comes to reviews, any amount of awareness is better than none.

2. Submit to Reedsy Discovery

Finally, for a professional review option that's a bit less time-and-effort-consuming on your part, you can submit your book right here on Reedsy Discovery! The platform allows authors to share their books with readers who are right up their alley, plus get the chance to be reviewed by one of our Discovery writers. If they leave a good review, you'll be featured in our newsletter, which goes out to thousands of subscribers every week.

Sounds pretty sweet, right? And it only takes a few minutes to submit .

Is your book ready for Discovery?

Take our quiz to find out! Takes only 1 minute.

How to deal with negative reviews

Once your work is out there in the world, you can’t control other people’s reactions to it. “Remember, by submitting your book for review, you're accepting that some people might not enjoy it,” says Hannah Hargrave. “It can be very tough after you’ve spent months or years crafting your novel, only for some reviewer to tear it apart. But you need to be prepared."

In that vein, here are some final tips on how to deal with bad reviews:

1. Have someone else read them first . This might be your agent, your friend, or your mom — anyone you trust to pre-screen your reviews. They can inform you whether each negative review is a worthwhile (if humbling) read, or just too nasty to stomach.

2. Ignore unreasonably hateful reviews . Easier said than done, yes, but really try to tune out these people! For example, if they're clearly not your target audience, but insist on pretending like they are. Or people who pick apart your sentences word-by-word, just for the "fun" of it. There's no sense in agonizing over readers who are determined to hate you, so block them on every platform and refuse to read anything else they write.

3. Address valid criticisms . You're only human, and your book won't be perfect. If someone points this out in a constructive way , acknowledge it and do what you can to fix it. This may be as simple as editing a misleading blurb, or as complex as restructuring your entire series. But if you're the author we know you are, you'll be up to the task.

Every author's book is different, but the process for getting book reviews is reassuringly universal. To recap: identify your audience, find relevant blogs, pitch them, send out your book, and don't forget to follow up! On top of that, feel free to try alternative strategies, and remember not to take the bad reviews too personally.

Yes, marketing a book may be madness, but the process of getting reviews lends method to that madness. So go forth and get your reviews — you deserve them! 🙌

Special thanks to book publicists Jessica Glenn , Hannah Hargrave , Hannah Cooper , and Beverly Bambury for their input and suggestions throughout this article. If you have any more questions about how to get book reviews, let us know in the comments!

2 responses

Elena Smith says:

25/09/2018 – 22:33

Excellent Write up. I have thoroughly gone through the article and according to my personal observations you have done a great job writing this Article.Being associated with writing profession, I must mention that AcademicWritingPro are quite helpful nowadays.Furthermore, quality is also an important aspect.

Team Golfwell says:

11/12/2018 – 05:38

We do free book reviews if your book interests us. We are a group of retired people in New Zealand who play golf, read books, write books, and do free book reviews if we like your book. We write books too, so we like to see what other authors are currently doing and it is amazing to see what writers are creating. We try to post our reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble and our social media. See our book review page for more info > > https://www.teamgolfwell.com/free-book-reviews.html #bookreviews #kindlebookreviews #amazonbookreviews #indiebookreviews https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4ad92dde2f70456000bf5c44af3489ee638dae511be91f7b8cb1545acb388cdb.jpg

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