This is a discussion post I’ve been wanting to do for a while and this may be viewed as bloggers requesting to review a book that isn’t what I’m looking at today, what I am looking at is authors requesting reviews from us when we don’t want them.
I could easily do another post on handling review requests when you get the book and actually read it but like I said today’s discussion is all about those unwanted review requests. If that sounds like something that might interest you, let me know in the comments too!
I’m definitely curious to see what your thoughts are on this!
Do You Accept Review Requests From Authors/Publishers?
I personally do not most of the time and usually my Review Policy page states I am not accepting any at all. Why? Because I find that when I do receive requests they aren’t anything I’d be interested in. (which I will get to in my next point…) Am I grateful? Of course! But my reading time is precious to me and I just don’t like wasting time with books I won’t enjoy.
I find it a lot easier to just request books I want to review myself.
Do Authors/Publishers Even Read Review Policy Pages?
***First off before I get too far into this one, of course there are people out there that do but in my experience it seems that generally people do not! I’m not trying to say everyone ignores the review policy pages! ***
While it isn’t essential to have a review policy page on your book blog it probably is a good idea when it comes to receiving and or accepting review requests. It lets authors or publishers know if you are even accepting review requests at the moment and if you are what kinds of books you will accept and in what format. Just makes sense right? This way your time is not wasted and neither is theirs! However, this only works when PEOPLE ACTUALLY READ THE REVIEW POLICY PAGE!
*Cue Rant*
This right here is the reason I quit accepting review requests: because generally people do not read what books I accept or if I’m even accepting any at the time. Then they proceed to send me requests in genres I have absolutely no interest in and send them when I specifically stated I am not accepting ANY at the time.
I’m sorry but I find it pretty annoying when I get sent requests for Adult Fiction when I mostly read and blog about YA Fiction. I wrote down exactly what genres I accept and it seems I get sent nothing but the opposite of those. That really makes me lose hope in accepting review requests.
What is even worse than that is when I get emailed the full book in a PDF format along with the request!
“Hey I was wondering if you’d read my book! Here it is, read it!”
Um, excuse me? I’m sorry but that, to me, is downright rude. I get that you want to promote your book but sending a review copy when it was not approved is not okay. It’s one thing to send me a review request when I’m not accepting any and it’s a completely different thing to just send me a copy and expect me to read it.
How Do You Handle Unwanted Review Requests?
Honestly? I just ignore them. At first I’d email back and politely tell the requester:
“I’m sorry but as you can see on my review policy page I am not currently accepting any review requests at this time.”
That went fine as most people apologize and were polite back but THEN I started getting some people that would tell me they “didn’t see that on my page”. Um yeah sorry but….it’s at the top in bold and red type so if you didn’t read that you didn’t read my policy at all. So if you didn’t read what I accept then why bother sending me a request?
So my conclusion was that most people requesting reviews from me didn’t bother to read my review policy page and just plain ‘ol didn’t care. So if you don’t care why should I care to email you back at all? Which lead me to just ignoring unwanted requests.
Of course as I said not everyone was like this but my experiences so far have just lead me to not accept requests at all, I get tired of telling people no. Maybe one day I’ll go back but not for a while.
Overall I hope this didn’t sound too incredibly negative! I wasn’t trying to go into full on bitch mode but this is something I get pretty frustrated with as a book blogger and hopefully some of you can relate!
Do you ever accept review requests?
What are some of your experiences with unwanted review requests?
How do you deal with unwanted review requests?
Do you ever get sent unapproved review copies?
Do you get requests for books that aren’t on your review policy?
Do you ever get frustrated with unwanted review requests?
Come join in on the discussion!
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