How I Choose Books to Review on My Blog

It’s nerve wracking to let anyone read your book. It’s almost unbearable when you’re looking for those readers to provide a public opinion about your book. I always sweat while submitting my books to reviewers or to anyone willing to rate and review it online. You don’t know how merciless they will be or whether they’ll get around to reading it at all.

Starting my own book blog allowed me to create the kind of platform for authors that I was always looking for from reviewers. I wanted to be positive, reliable, thorough, and extra promotional. And I wanted to put the spotlight on books in the genres that I’ve always loved reading, particularly indie books in genres outside of the popular romance, fantasy, and sci-fi genres.

But reviewing has taught me about how difficult it is to achieve these blogging goals. I find myself becoming more particular and having to turn down a lot of authors when, as an author myself, I want to help everyone get their book recognized.

And these days, I find myself in the same boat as a publisher or agent who has more submissions than time, space, and interest to read and review. So, I’ve had to tighten down on my guidelines and my criteria for reviewing books. Below is my process for choosing books to review on my blog.

How I started reviewing books

I first started reviewing books for other websites, such as LitPick and Horrorscreams Videovault. These sites would send me books to read, and I would offer my honest opinions about them. Unfortunately, I didn’t always like the books that I reviewed, and I would find even reading them to be a chore.

In response to this, I decided to start reviewing books for my own blog. The requests trickled in at first with calls for reviews on social media, and I basically reviewed everything that came my way. Then, as my Google rankings improved and my site was added to two indie reviewer lists, the requests began to increase to seven to 10 book review requests per week.

Interviews and guest posts

Eventually, I had to get choosy about the books I agreed to review, and that meant sending back more rejection emails than approvals. I would originally offer an author interview as a consolation prize.

More often than not, these authors would agree to an interview, and it brought a steady stream of content to my blog. But I would send them a generic list of questions to choose from and answer, and I feel like the content got stale. Stand alone interviews from unknown authors weren’t bringing in views and were not helping them to get the exposure they wanted, even if they included a book giveaway with the interview.

So, I changed my policy to only offer interviews to authors whose books I agreed to read. That way, I could tailor my questions to the book itself and help to get readers of the review more excited about reading the book by offering a behind-the-scenes look at the author, the writing process, and the books’ main themes.

Now, I offer to let rejected authors write a guest post for my blog, offering writing tips, sharing personal essays, or writing more about one of the topics of themes of their book. I find that promotions work best when you’re not being overly promotional. It’s like listening to a guest on a podcast and then deciding to buy their book because you liked hearing them speak about something else.

The guest post offer is not nearly as possible because it takes more effort than answering questions and submitting a headshot, book cover, and links. But I do feel like the guest posts are more helpful, effective, and interesting in the long run.

My calls for submissions

My review guidelines are located on my Contact Me page on my blog. It includes my preferred genres (picture books, middle grade, YA, horror, and memoirs) as well as the genres I tend to shy away from (sci-fi, fantasy, adult romance). But I still welcome requests in all genres because once in a while, I do make exceptions and am glad that I did.

I’ve also begun to use a star rating system. Since I already submit a star rating on Amazon, Goodreads, LibraryThing, and BookBub, it only seemed right to include that rating on my blog as well. I only review books that I can rate three stars or higher. If I start a book and don’t like it, I will email the author and let them know that I could not finish. And I never request a hard copy of a book unless I’m absolutely sure that I’m going to like it.

I also stay away from long books. If a book is over 400 pages, I’ll usually say no. Agreeing to read a book is already going to take hours of my time. Even a picture book, which only takes a few minutes to read, can still take hours to review, come up with interview questions, format, create a photo banner and Pinterest pins, schedule, and promote. So, I have to have a limit on the time it takes to read. You can read more about my thoughts on long books here: Why I Avoid Reading Long Books.

The pitches

That brings me to the pitching part of the review process. Query letters are big part of the traditional publishing submissions process, and a lot of publishers have commented on how few query letters are well written or adhere to their specific guidelines. I’m finding this to be true as well.

Some authors will send me a two-sentence pitch that basically asks, “Do you want to read my book or not?” If I’m lucky, they’ll throw in a link to the book’s listing on Amazon as well. But otherwise, it’s just a short blurb that they seem to have copied and pasted to every book reviewer they could find and hope that something sticks.

Others are overly promotional, listing their credentials, adding quotes from other positive reviews, and basically overselling their book, promising me that it’s the best thing I’ll ever read. They can be a bit much and even obnoxious with this approach.

Some are under confident, trying the angle that, I maybe, sorta, kinda will like it. It almost feels like a guilt or sympathy tactic, especially when they’re pitching a book that is not in one of my preferred genres.

Sample pages

The element of a pitch that will essentially help me to determine whether or not I’m going to review the book are the sample pages. The author’s writing style is ultimately what will hold a reader’s attention. It can elevate a dry plot or make an overly complicated plot more manageable.

In the past, I would assume that the synopsis alone would be enough to help me determine how the book would play out for me. And that led to more books that I had to DNF.

Those sample pages are like the first impression when meeting someone. They will help to gauge whether or not you’re going to like the book. If I don’t get sample pages with the pitch and the Amazon link doesn’t include them, I’ll reach out to the author myself for them before I officially agree to review.

It used to puzzle me when I was pitching to publishers as to how they could tell that they liked a book in the first five pages. Now, I get it. I only get a fraction of the submissions that even a small publisher receives. And yet, I can now tell within the first few paragraphs whether or not I want to continue. That’s how essential a strong open and solid writing style can be to the success of a book and why I highly recommend sending every potential reviewer sample pages.

The unfairness of rejections

I’ll admit, my reasons for rejecting a book can fluctuate with my mood, what I’ve been reading lately, and even an author’s lack of ability to properly pitch me their work. If I’ve just gotten three books to review in one day, those three books have inadvertently put themselves into competition with each other.

I already have my own personal TBR pile along with my professional one. And if that pile gets too long, it can overwhelm me. So, I don’t like to have more than three or four books in line to read at a time.

If I already feel overwhelmed with my review schedule, I’m likely going to be more particular about which books I choose to take on. Or if the book has a similar plot to one that I’ve just read, I may have to reject it for that very reason. Sometimes it’s just about bad timing.

Subject matter is a big deal to me these days as well. I’m drawn to dark subjects, but if a book is going to be all about a character or the author experiencing a slew of dark experiences, such as drug abuse, suicide, rape, and/or domestic violence, I’m out.

I love funny books, but I say no to a lot of them as well. Humor is super subjective, and it’s very hard to make a book funny, unless you’re a famous comedian whose voice we all know and whose comedy style is very familiar. These authors tend to try to be funny in their pitch email, but it can usually come off as corny, obnoxious, or just plain unfunny, and it quickly makes me want to say no. Let your humor speak for itself in your sample pages.

An author’s platform

I like to get authors with some sort of social media presence, and I will always check out their website if they send a link. If that website seems like it’s not well-maintained and there are no links to social media sites, I might be hesitant to read and review.

As a small blogger, I need help promoting the review, and more often than not, I get minimal support from authors on this. So, if I know up front that I’m on my own in promoting their book, I’ll probably hold out for another author who might actually help me out.

Even authors who are represented by an agent don’t usually help out in this area. Agents tend to go silent after they send me the book to read. Even when I send them a link to the post and ask them to share it, I usually don’t hear back or receive a short email back stating that they will. But I don’t usually see that reflected in the post’s views.

Final thoughts on book reviews

Ultimately, what draws me into a book is the premise, the writing style, and a professionally polished product with a decent cover, a nice review request email, and one that meets my basic guidelines. That’s all there is to it.

This process tends to work for me, and it has given me the opportunity to discover great books, great authors, and help support the writing community. The books I’ve read have taught me what makes a great book, a great writer, and has confirmed that just because a writer isn’t signed with an agent or publisher, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t good enough to be represented or that their story is too quirky or not mainstream enough for the publishing industry.

It’s just that there are so few publication spots open that a ton of good writers fall through the cracks. And lucky for me, I get to root through those cracks and occasionally pull out some diamonds. They just have to help me find them.

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