This post follows on from the Blowing My Own Trumpet post that went live during the party we had for our first year,
When the blog was launched a year ago, we had no idea it was going to be as successful as it has been. What I mean is, we thought we would be looking at the odd review here and there and that it would be just an extended arm of the Facebook page. The Review has now become an ever-evolving enterprise, forever learning, changing and forever challenging ourselves to become more innovative. You can see this in how the quality of our reviews have improved over time. The look of our posts have changed; every book we review is now 'showcased' and in this we hope that we will have left an indelible mark in people's minds. We want our authors to benefit in some way from our reviews - we may not greatly increase their sales, but if one person in moved enough by our presentation to buy or download a copy, then for us that is something wonderful. For me, the best part about doing this is the joy of helping an author - especially Indie authors who don't have the marketing resources available to them.
One of our principles in working on the blog is that we never ever give bad reviews. That's not our aim. That's not to say that we are economical about our feelings for the book, or that we will give a glowing review to a book that is really substandard, badly written and full of grammatical errors. As time passed, we realised that we needed to find a process that meant that every book we review meets our standard. We decided that to safeguard the reputation of The Review as being an excellent resource for finding good quality books, we would change our reviewing process. We employed the principle that we will only review books that pass a strict previewing process as we describe on our Submission page. When someone submits their email to us, we preview the book first, usually by downloading a sample so there is no cost to the author or the previewer, and the reader will decide whether or not it meets our criteria for a review. If it doesn't, we will email the author with a brief explanation and if they so desire, advice on how to change what needs to be changed to meet the standard our readers demand. We know that authors would rather not have a bad review so this is how we work. We still hold to the principle that a review is primarily to help readers find a good read. We do not wish to present a book as good if it is not, thus cheating the reader. Nobody gains by this.
