Review Policies

Note: We are currently not taking any books on for reviews.  Sorry!

Everything You Need to Know About Reviews and Guest Posts

 We certainly realize by now that you’ve bounced around from blog to blog trying to see if reviewers are accepting books for review.  Now you’ve landed here. Well, we have good news and bad news and I’ll get to that in a moment.  Firstly, we are going to ask that the first thing you do is to please take the time to read all of the information our page will impart before contacting us with questions or submitting books for review. Our hope is that we will provide you with all the information you need to know as quickly as possible within these pages alone. If they don’t, by all means, feel free to contact away via email.

How does this process work?

As with most reviewers, we are inundated with requests for reviews just like yours.  However, it just isn’t humanly possible to take them all as much as we would like to – especially since we are a small staff over here save those times when we can garner the help of some guest reviewers (Yes! That means you!  We’re always looking for talented writers!!).  Having said that, we will say this doesn’t mean that there is no possible way you can have a review done.  So, let me tell you how things work at the present time…

As a team, we’ve decided that with the tremendous amount of books awaiting reviews in our queue that the best way to proceed is to select books based on the date the initial review request was made by the author.  This ensures that even those authors who have books in genres not entirely popular by readers of our blog have a fair chance at having reviews done as well.  Please excuse any confusion this may cause for those of you who requested reviews based on the previous way of doing things.  If you’d like to withdraw your book from the queue, please don’t hesitate to email.

If you’re to this point and are still interested in requesting a review (AND our queue is currently open), please follow the processes herein to initiate the process and inform us that you are interested in our reviewing your book. This includes giving us access to the book – with a few exceptions I will mention in a bit. (Please note: Neglecting to follow any of the policies stated herein in any way will only delay your review request and/or review from being completed.)  IF you are reading this information in an effort to learn about submitting a guest post, keep going.

The following is specifically for authors interested in a review; if you are interested in submitting a guest post, please keep reading. Please follow all the guidelines that follow in order to have your request reviewed quickly. NOT FOLLOWING THESE POLICIES WILL ONLY DELAY YOUR REQUEST GETTING SEEN BY ONE OF US. 

What We Accept
At Truth About Books, we’d love to TRY and review every genre that we receive a request to review.  However, this just isn’t possible.  After being active for quite some time, we’ve been able to figure out what genres work best for us.  Therefore, we’ll be accepting the following genres for review ONLY: contemporary fiction, chick lit, women’s fiction, general fiction, cozy mysteries, mysteries, thrillers, paranormal romances, paranormal/supernatural, LGBTQ, science fiction (very limited), horror, urban fantasy (limited), fantasy (limited), dystopian fiction, post-apocalyptic/apocalyptic, crime/detective novels, historical fiction (limited), fan-fiction (provided it falls in line with one of the other accepted genres), humor, suspense, satire, YA fiction, psychological thrillers, and some others we may have forgotten to mention. If your book doesn’t fit neatly into one of these genre boxes, please feel free to email us a blurb and we will let you know if we can accept it.

If there is any reason related to genre why we can’t review your book, you will be notified.  As we’re sure you noticed, some genres are limited.  It is cases like those that make the book blurb you include in your review request so important.  This goes for all authors.

Automatic Rejections

There are two genres we absolutely WILL NOT accept; nonfiction and erotic fiction.  The latter of the two is a regulation that has had to be put in place due to our blog being accessible for all ages. Adult content is still allowed, just not erotic and we will mention it in our reviews if there is any reason a reader might want to be cautious of the book due to such content.

Book Submissions

For books, we accept mobi files only. In order to review your book, it must be: gifted through Amazon; sent directly to us in mobi format; or available for free or through Kindle Unlimited. WE DO NOT PURCHASE BOOKS! We don’t charge for our book reviews, so we won’t buy books.  Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you. 

AS AN IMPORTANT REQUEST: please do not send a book or cover art until you have received word that your review request has been accepted.  AGAIN, PLEASE NOTE, if you are gifting your book through Amazon please wait until your request has been approved before gifting it since not all requests are approved for a variety of reasons.

 What Happens Now
Once your request is received with proper details, it will be considered for review. We handle reviews on a first-come-first-serve policy. PLEASE NOTE, if we have too many books in line we will most likely decline your request until a later date. Please don’t think of a declined review request as something that is permanent.  The best advice would be to watch the bottom of this page where we often list if we are accepting books for review so please check back.  Also, there are now a plethora of other options available while you wait.  Regardless, once we’ve reviewed your request we will reply to your email with the outcome of your request, and further instructions on how to proceed. Right now based on the current inbox, you should receive an acceptance or decline within a week but other factors could cause it to be longer.

Looking at our current queue of those requests that have been accepted, you can probably expect confirmation that your review has been completed within 8 -24 months.  We wish we could be more specific, but we just can’t. PLEASE NOTE it may take less time to review your book, so please don’t be discouraged as we know many of you need reviews desperately to promote your books. 

The Queue
We pull books from the queue based on the time the request was submitted. Please know that the genres will vary and we will try and ensure that the same one isn’t repeated.  It is imperative that everyone be aware that our queue is quite long.  If you already have a place in the queue, please do not contact us about when your turn is up.  We promise that we’ll get to you as soon as we can.

A Note About Book Reviews-The Pass
We feel it only fair to warn authors and their representatives that just because we accept a book for review does not mean a review will actually be done. Previously we would attempt to read everything we were requested to read no matter how difficult or time-consuming it may be.  However, we simply can’t waste the time doing this while there are so many other authors and books awaiting reviews.

Therefore, we’re implementing THE PASS.  With THE PASS, an author will receive a vague, template-type email that will be sent out to them advising that we can not/will not complete the book for one reason or another. If you happen to be the recipient of THE PASS, you are welcome to question VIA EMAIL ONLY why the decision was made.  We try to take notes on each book we look at so we can attempt to give you some reasons why we couldn’t/wouldn’t complete your book.

 Please know that we won’t be posting the books we pass on to our blog nor will we be discussing them in any matter with anyone but our staff and the author via email. While this may seem unfair to an individual author, we have to consider the impact of such excessive review time on our overall queue.  Keep in mind that THE PASS is not a rating and is different from someone receiving a very low rating on a review.  The books we pass on are, in our opinion, not worth the excessive effort needed to do a review of them.  They’re just different and you’ll have to take our word on it!

Review Scale
Reviews are ranked on a 5-butterfly scale.  Although the 5-butterfly scale can vary for each book, it pretty much works as follows:
We are looking at editing, storyline, character development, true to the genre, not a ton of fluff just to fill pages and such.  Did your storyline take us there?  Could we feel your characters?  Did we feel like we could actually pull away from the book?  Were there so many dang issues that we had to stop reading because it was making our head hurt?  Those are some, but not all, of the things we look for when reading a book.  As with most else on this site, if you’d like more specifics, please feel free to ask. We will not answer questions about how or why your book was rated within the comment section of the blog. This should be handled via email only.  Thank you for your cooperation with this.

Please note: We will post every review despite the mark on the scale – meaning we will post 1-fly and 2-fly ratings.  Again, if the review doesn’t advise you why your book was rated the way it was, please contact us via email.  It is not fair to other authors if your review is not posted, so please don’t ask.  ALL reviews will be posted unless they have been PASSed on.  Thanks.

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What Happens Next
Once your book has been reviewed you will receive an email to advise you that the review has been posted on our blog as well as the other sites we try to post on such as Amazon, goodreads, Twitter, Facebook, Kobo (brand new!!), and a variety of others.

Because we are getting busier and busier with the popularity of indie authors and our blog, we need to stress for you to please not contact us to ask where your current place is in the queue.  

By your requesting a review from Truth About Books, you acknowledge that you realize no exact time frame is being given on how long it will be before your book is reviewed.  We receive a ton of email, so please just be patient and realize that we will get to you as soon as we can – we promise!  Just know that every email we have to stop and respond to about when we’ll be getting around to their review is minutes our head isn’t in a book or getting around to yours.

Unfortunately, we are unable to access anything that is on Amazon UK, although we have no problem reviewing international authors. We will accept the reviews but as aforementioned, we will only be posting reviews to the US Amazon.

Blog Tours, Book Blitzes, and Cover Reveals

In the past we have not participated in blog tours, book blitzes, and cover reveals.  However, we are now participating in a limited amount of each.  Typically we go through promotional companies to pick the books we’ll be promoting on our new Events page. For further information or to schedule one or more of these, please contact A. Fae directly as she will be the contact person for this portion of the site.

News and Notes

We now have a section within our site where we post News and Notes that typically pertain to anything reading/writing/and such.  We encourage authors who’d like to submit articles to be reviewed for possible publishing under this section to email them to us.  As you wait for your book to be reviewed you may have something to share with our reading audience in the form of an article.  Please do take the time to post something if you can.

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DISCLAIMER

Truth About Books (TAB) is intended to be a place where independent authors are given the spotlight they so readily deserve.  We encourage the sharing of ideas, information, knowledge, opinions – good, bad or indifferent – experience, expertise, successes, and even failures.  We are a community for readers, reviewers, authors, publishers, editors, and the rest of the independent publishing community to become exposed to what amazing things exist in the indie world.  Our hope is that no matter how you fit, or don’t fit, in to our picture that you come and experience the amazing things we all have to offer.

All content found within the pages of TAB is subject to copyright laws.  Use or reproduction of any of the content herein is explicitly forbidden unless specific consent is obtained from the holder of the copyright.  This includes, but is not limited to: reviews, graphics, pictures, articles, or any other posts.  Please contact us directly if you would like to use any of our content.  If use of content is permitted, it can only be used for the specific purpose requested.

TAB reserves the right to remove any material posted by anyone at any time, and to ban anyone at any time. This includes comments left by visitors.  From time-to-time we have guest reviewers, and or authors post on our site. Their views, opinions, and positions expressed within these or other posts are those of the author alone and do not represent those of TAB.  TAB does not guarantee in any way the accuracy, completeness, and validity of any statements made herein. TAB accepts no liability for any errors, omissions, or representations. TAB makes no claim on the rights of any materials submitted in the form of guest posts or other materials provided to and posted herein. The authors of such material are responsible for assuring the material provided by them is free of any copyright infringements, contractual or other legal obligation, and that the author has, maintains, and exercises full and unrestricted rights to the material submitted.