During my days as the Literary Arts editor for my school newspaper, The Link, I was initiated into the exciting world of book reviews. As a book geek, the idea of reading free books was a big deal to me, and once I discovered that pretty much all of the publishers throughout the U.S. and Canada would send me stuff from their current catalogues for free, just because I told them I wanted to review their new book for the paper, I was hooked. Paying for books became almost a thing of the past, overnight, as I was able to get my hands on most of the hot new titles I’d been anticipating for years.

This is but one of the perks of working in the publishing industry.

Now, on the flip side of this equation, you have independent publishers and print-on-demand publishing, where the budget for sending out review copies is limited or non-existent. With POD publishing, the author typically has to pay for each copy he or she chooses to send out, and I’ve read many articles from small and independent publishers who say it’s not worth their time and money to send books out for review at all. Fair enough. I would think the same might apply to the big houses as well, who are sending out books to bloggers who may or may not ever get around to writing about those books, and whose reviews don’t make much difference in terms of jacket blurbs (i.e. those glowing words of praise from big-shot writers like Margaret Atwood and whatnot) anyway.

All of that aside, there are still rules to requesting review copies of books, as well as etiquette involved in actually completing the reviews so that the publisher doesn’t write you off as a twit, a thief, or worse. For instance, you should always ask for books you actually intend to review, and preferably the types of books that fit in with your publication’s mandates. At Black Heart, we review mostly books by indie publishers or authors who have chosen to self-publish, along with anything we feel has a theme of rebellion or being an outsider. Although I might really want to request a review copy of a new book that falls outside those parameters, it would be dishonest for me to misrepresent these intentions and get a free book that I never intend to review, even if I will actually read it. Ya dig?

Secondly, if you don’t ever write the review, the publisher probably won’t want to send you any more books, so write the damn review! It doesn’t have to be nice, but it does have to be your honest opinion. I, personally, also prefer to abide by the Quill & Quire standard of book reviewing, which holds that while “bad books happen,” this isn’t something you should take to a personal level. Go ahead and say you didn’t like it, but don’t make it into a vendetta against the author, and certainly don’t review books by authors you have personal relationships with (positive or negative), as this will bias your review.

Finally, most publishers like to see “tear-sheets,” or copies of the review once it’s published. If you publish a blog, all you have to do is send them an email with the link to the permanent URL and voila! Done. It’s just a common courtesy to follow up, particularly if you really enjoyed the book and wrote a nice review. This will show that you’ve done your job, and if you’d like to request more books at that time, it’s a good way to reconnect with the editors and publicists in charge.

Now, on the flip side of things, if you’re an author sending your book to a publication with the intention of getting some glowing words of praise to use on your book jacket, there are also rules. The first and most important of these is this: Book reviews are not necessarily going to be positive.

Yes, I would LOVE to write positive, happy reviews of every book I’ve ever read. But I can’t, because not every book I’ve ever read has been worth reading. (For instance, I would really like to get my time and money back for having read all of those terrible books by Heidegger when I was a Philosophy student, but I suspect ol’ Nazi-lovin’ Heidegger and his estate aren’t going to be coughing up any time soon.) That’s just the way the cookie crumbles, and even if some people think your work is brilliant, there will always be someone out there who reads it and thinks it’s crap. People are weird that way, so don’t take it personally, but do understand that it’s all a roll of the dice.

Secondly, and equally important to remember is this: Books sent to publications for review will never be returned.

Why? Let’s put it this way: your book is going to be beat up by the time it’s been read through, because most reviewers like to take notes, stuff them into bags when they go to work in the morning, fling them across the room when they’re mad at their significant others, and occasionally have to use them to prop up wobbly table legs.  (The books, not their significant others.) And, frankly, once you send the book in for review, it’s no longer yours. You will never get that copy back because that’s life. You can’t go around giving people stuff and then asking for it back; this is not a borrowed copy that you lent to a friend, it’s a work copy you gave, with no strings attached, to a professional reviewer to use for his or her work. That work involves reading and commenting on your work, and therefore the material in question now becomes the property of the reviewer.

So basically, don’t ever ask me to send your book back to you. Not only will I be irritated and delete your email, but I’ll also never look kindly on any of your work again. It’s just not done, and it’s actually quite rude to insist that the reviewer do you this kind of favor when it was assumed that you understood the rules of play from the beginning.

And now that you do, there’s no reason to ask, is there?