As discussions continue on the new blog tour for cash site that is soliciting business from YA and children's book authors, one recurring theme seems to be about bloggers writing reviews for cash or review copies. This is something that has been discussed a little bit before but I thought was worthy of its own entry. There are two issues here, really: how to get review copies from publishers and how to develop a reputation as a credible reviewer. I think the pay for blog tour seems like a harmless short cut to achieve those goals for a lot of fairly new bloggers, but it will likely come back to bite them later. I went about this whole reviewing thing a different way, and while it has taken several years I think it now places me in a fairly strong (and respected) position.

First, I did not build a personal site until a couple of years after I was reviewing for Bookslut and Eclectica Magazine. The first review copies I requested myself were for Eclectica, a few months after I started reviewing there. At Bookslut Jessa receives a ton of books and compiles a list of those available to reviewers - for the first year I chose a few books from that list every three or four months and she would send me one or two depending on what everyone else wanted. In my first year writing for both sites I received about fifty review copies that I specifically requested. As I reviewed I was always careful to contact the PR rep who sent me the book as well as the author and let them know about the review. This is how I built relationships and publishers saw the work I was doing. It became easier for me to request review copies over time and I also began receiving a lot of books I did not request. Last year I received over 700 books - I requested about 200 of them. (Yes that number is real - 700 books.) Some of the unrequested titles I did end up reviewing and in the case of some smaller publishers I am just on their automatic mailing lists so I get several books from them year round and often do review them. The reviews pretty much always run at Bookslut or Eclectica - with a few a year that are very New Orleans specific at Voices of NOLA. I also review about 20-30 books for Booklist. (Those are chosen for me by my editor there, sent to me by her and I do get paid to review them.)

After two years of reviewing at Bookslut and Eclectica I started my own blog. I have never solicited a review copy for Chasing Ray so I don't honestly know anything about how publishers choose blogs. I review for one of the oldest literary magazines on the web (12 years) that averages 50,000 unique visitors per issue (each quarter). They read us at Eclectica from around the world and we have a fairly solid reputation as a good site for fiction submissions. Bookslut is simply one of the biggest lit sites on the web - as everybody knows. It is a force unto itself and my column gets literally tens of thousands of hits each month. So when publishers send me books, they are sending them to that person - that reviewer at those two sites. If I talk about an unsolicited book at Chasing Ray I'm sure they appreciate it (better than not mentioning the book at all) but what they want is the big sites. What I write about around here is generally books I've bought myself because they are not books I feel comfortable reviewing or books that are not up for review (older books) or I will mention in a more casual manner how I feel about a book that I'm formally reviewing elsewhere.

In other words, my reputation is all about the other places where I review. Chasing Ray is just gravy on top of that - just extra. Those 700 books are not going to come to someone with a readership of a few hundred (or less) a day. If you want to get your foot in the door and build a reputation as a reviewer then doing it at your own site might not be the best place - not if receiving free books and reviewing is what you want to do. Now if the site is an outlet for many other things (like building relationships with other readers/writers, becoming part of the lit blogosphere, etc.) then it's all good. Just don't expect the publishers to beat down your door simply because you have a site. It might look like that is how other bloggers have done it, but really, under closer inspection, it's not.

The other thing is credibility. There have been discussions about whether or not bloggers are credible reviewers for years. (They are all over the blogosphere and not hard to find.) Credibility is a big sticking point right now and that is unlikely to change in the near future. So while I certainly think that bloggers deserve to be paid for work as much as the next person, keep in mind that I did not walk into a paying job at Booklist. It took years of reviewing online before I was "discovered". As it is now I review for an editor who looks at every single thing I write for them and has questioned my thoughts and asked for changes more than once. It's not a mindless gig. But having editors who are mindful of the ALA's mission are part of what makes Booklist a significant review publication - readers know the editors can be trusted and while I certainly do not have to positively review a book I do not like, I do have to have a valid reason (other than "not for me") as to why I do not like a book. I have not - at all - loved every book I've reviewed for them but I have seen the value of those books for other readers. And when I have dug my heels in and felt a book was flat out unreadable and thus unreviewable, I've made a solid case to my editor and we've moved forward from there. This is all important because when you are writing for your own site you are not challenged in any of these important ways. That makes you more vulnerable to criticism that you are an amateur and means you have to be that much more careful - and thorough - when it comes to your reviewing.

I guess the big answer I'm trying to provide here is that reviewing is like anything else - it has to be done carefully in order to succeed in the long run. Chasing Ray is the smallest and last part of how I developed my reputation in this field. It is a significant site to me (more so than any other actually) but strictly for personal reasons - because it allows me to write on and on about books I love and to communicate with other booklovers and also to comment on the difficulties I encounter with my own writing. But this site is not where things began; it is Bookslut, Eclectica and Booklist that actually brought me here. If you're trying to go in the reverse order - from your own personal site first - then you need to be mindful of the kind of obstacles you face, and how carefully your choices will have to be made.

And that is all I'm going to say on the matter. Back tomorrow with much love for Theodora Goss!