Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Exploring the Kingdom (1): Blogging For Books

This is a new feature I'm wanting to start up on Typing Tiara where I explore other bookish pursuits, cool websites that I've discovered, or geeky things that don't otherwise fit in with my "normal" posts.

Today I'm excited to share a website that I recently came across called Blogging For Books.


 "Blogging for Books is brought to you by the friendly folks at The Crown Publishing Group. This program was designed for one purpose: Give out free books to bloggers in exchange for an honest review. It’s a win/win really. Bloggers get free books (who doesn’t love a free book!) and The Crown Publishing Group gets bloggers talking about our books (we love it when people buzz about our books!)." - Blogging For Books
I'm sure for those of you who are more on top of things (which we should all know by now is a category I seldom find myself in)  this is old news but I discovered it by chance really and think it's a pretty nifty website.

All that they require really is that you have an active blog (they won't accept any other form of social media whether you post reviews on it or not). You simply sign up on the website, tell them your address and what kinds of books you're interested in as well as what you blog about, then click the book that you're interested in and wait. When your book comes in all you have to do is read and review it, same as you would any other book sent to you by a publisher; the only difference is, you post the review on their website too. Simple!

For me I chose a book called Video Game Storytelling: What Every Developer Needs to Know About Narrative Techniques by Evan Skolnick because as a gamer AND a reader I'm super fascinated by how stories are told. As the site itself says, win-win. But if you're not interested in video games, don't worry, because they have tons of interesting titles in a variety of genres. Even cookbooks!

For someone like me, who is incredibly shy and terrible about e-mailing publishers when I want to request a book, it's a pretty close to perfect. (I wish more publishing groups made things this easy!)

Have you used this site? What did you think? Or, if you haven't used it before or come across it previously, do you think you're going to test it out now? Let me know below!

2 comments:

  1. I honestly have so many conflicting feelings about this site. Some of it comes from when it first came out and had some troubling things in the fine print, but that has mostly gotten fixed and I just have the bad taste left ya know? I think my main thing is that I get why being limited to one book out until you review it is good for everyone, but it's just not something that works for me. I get so moody and stressed when I have to finish and review something that I'd rather buy the book instead just to get off the pressure, haha! I'm really glad that it is a good way for you to get review books though!

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    1. I can always count on you to fill me in on something I'm utterly clueless about, Anya. (Whether it's something bookish, graduate school, or about blogging.) I had no idea that there were any 'troubling things' about this website's past. I'll definitely have to look in to that.

      As for the being limited to one book until it's reviewed, I'm kind of struggling with that myself. I missed out on a book that I would have loved the opportunity to review (AND its one that I had already put on a list as needed for my studies) but because I haven't had the time to finish the book I've already got out from them I missed out on requesting it. Major bummer.

      I do think that the way you can request, which doesn't involve me sending a nervous e-mail to a publicist in which I'll forget at least half of the rules for requesting, is nice but I'm not entirely sure it's going to balance out the other aspects. I have a feeling I'll keep them in mind but not use them consistently, you know?

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