We welcome contact from authors, publishers and marketers seeking reviews for their books.
But before you contact us, please read our Reviewers Guidelines so you have a better idea of the type of material we review. In general, we only review novels or short story collections with Catholic themes, or from a distinctly Catholic point of view. We also review non-fiction that in some way relates to Catholic Fiction, such as biographies or literary criticism dealing with Catholic authors or literature.
Here’s how the Review Process works at CatholicFiction.net:
Authors, publishers and book marketers wanting their book reviewed should contact us using the form at the bottom of the page. In your subject heading, please include the title of the book. (This helps Your Humble Editor keep track of your request in her sometimes overstuffed email Inbox.) In the body of the email, please include a short description of the book, the publisher, number of pages, ISBN, etc., and why (if it’s not obvious) a site devoted to “Catholic fiction” should review it. Also, if a review copy of the book will only be available as an e-book, please specify that, as some of our reviewers may not be willing to read a whole novel that way.
Then, if we see that the book is up our alley, the Editor will e-mail you requesting a .jpg picture of the cover and the first three pages of the book as a Rich Text file, a Word doc or an OpenOffice document. We will then include your book/description/sample in an email list of available review books which we sends out every so often to our group list of reviewers. Interested reviewers put in their dibs for a given book on a first-come basis, and the Editor notifies them when they’ve got first dibs.
I’m sorry, but we cannot guarantee that we will find a reviewer for your book. We always seem to have more review requests than we do reader/reviewers.
However, if/when we do find a reviewer for your book, we will email you back with the name and address of the assigned reviewer. You should then snail mail a hard copy of the book directly to the reviewer, or, if the reviewer has agreed to accept an e-book version, email it to the reviewer. So far both our authors/publishers and reviewers have been fairly prompt about getting books in the mail or reading/reviewing them, but please allow a month or two, as sometimes our reviewers end up with a nice pile.
The Editor will alert you when the book review has gone up.
A caveat: While CatholicFiction.net is eager to do its part in the much-desired Catholic literary revival, we do not believe that this worthy cause is well served by giving every newly published Catholic novel a glowing report. Just because a novel seeks to promote Catholic faith and values, for instance, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it is a) well written, b) tells a captivating story, or c) is an entertaining read. Sometimes even a book’s design and typesetting are bothersome enough to warrant comment. Occasionally a book (usually of the self-published variety) needs so much work that the reviewer will decide to contact the author/publisher with his/her decision not to review it, after all.
However, even critical reviews are written in a spirit of charity, and try to point out a book’s strengths as well as its weaknesses. (I recommend you read some of our “new fiction” reviews to get an idea of how our reviewers approach things.)
To contact us about reviewing your book, Email CatholicFiction.net. And don’t forget to put the title of the book in the subject line!
Thanks for your interest in CatholicFiction.net.
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