When will we be accepting new book review requests?

We haven't publicly accepted new book review requests since last summer. It was around that time that Diantha became the Review Crew Manager, and her first suggestion/order was to cut off new book review requests. At the time we had about 150 books waiting to be picked up.

We've cut into that list a lot since then. We've added reviewers to our crew, and we are always looking for new reviewers. For as many authors and new books that are written each year, there just aren't enough reviewers. The world needs more.

When will you be accepting new requests?

I get that question a lot. My usual answer is non-committal, such as "soon." Part of me would love to accept any book that comes our way, but that's not practical. In fact, I don't think we'll ever be able to open the request line like we had it back in the first half of 2012.

If I were to open up that same type of request line today given the number of people who follow this blog, follow us on Twitter, or stumble upon us based upon someone's tweet, my guess is that more than a hundred books would be requested in less than a week.

We'd be back where we were last summer, and frankly I don't want to have to mess with that. I don't think Diantha does either. But that doesn't mean our Request Department won't ever have Office Hours. They will just be limited and you may have to get an appointment.

Office Hours and Appointments

One policy change we're moving forward with is that no book will be on the waiting list (visible to reviewers in other words) until we physically have it, meaning it's sitting wherever Diantha's going to store them, my guess is on the server of the email account she uses to manage the review crew. That will do a couple of things for us:

1. Increase our response time
   • When someone requests a book, we (mostly Diantha) will be able to get it to the reviewer much quicker than today—maybe even the same day if not the next.
2. Limit new requests a little
   • Not all authors will want to give us their book without a guaranteed review. Such is life.

That last part is worth repeating: just because we have your book doesn't mean you will get a review out of us. It's simply a means to make the process easier for us and maybe even for you since you won't need to wait to hear if we have picked up your book for review. Basically, once your book is approved to be added to the waiting list, there's one transaction, one office appointment.

But that isn't the only thing we're doing to limit the waiting list. If it were, we'd still get too many requests. I'll discuss another change in another post. In the meantime, my answer stays the same. We'll be accepting new requests soon.

Stay tuned.