Posted on February 8th, 2016 by Adam-Troy Castro
Originally published on Facebook 8 February 2015.
Asked of me in my book reviewer function:
“How much lead time do you need for a reading copy, for books to review in your column?”
Okay. Here’s the math.
I review four books per bi-monthly column. Sometimes I stretch to five, more rarely six, if books come out that are so special I cannot bear to leave them unmentioned, but four is a good rule of thumb. Almost always four.
Of those four reviews, one is the lead, 400-1000 words; the others are capsules, which may be as short as 250 and may be as long as 500.
Generally, I must hand in my column two months before the magazine hits the shelves.
I generally start writing the column, a process that includes reading likely books, two months before that.
So, yes, I am always working on a column, am never more than two months from a deadline, am always collecting books for future columns (and always getting rid of them, another story).
Any books already on hand after I send off the latest column, that are still set for publication in subsequent months, have an advantage over those brand new books that trickle in over the next six weeks or so.
Indeed, by that point I usually have a game plan, for which books on my reviewing stack seem promising candidates for coverage.
So, yeah, if you have a book in my hands by the time I start writing the column, not my deadline for the column but the time I start writing, you have a significant advantage.
By that point, some of the publishers have already provided me with several ARCs.
Subterranean Press comes to mind – I usually have *several* of theirs on hand at that point – but because they are a press publishing many special editions with limited print runs, I have an informal policy of limiting their coverage to no more than one book per column. Still, I like what they publish, so much of the time that one slot is already accounted for. Not always. But yes, much of the time. In fact, more often than not. To be fair, I resist reviewing more than one book per publisher per column, even if I have several interesting ones on hand from that source — a rule I am free to break under *significant* quality duress. It happens. Don’t hold your breath.
(The rules are somewhat different for graphic novels, for which I produce a sidebar of similar scope, each issue; at this point only three publishers keep me supplied, and we are still working on fixing that. But put this aside.)
Tor and Del Rey also get me their books nice and early, so I usually have appropriate books by them on hand as the review cycle begins. 47North has started doing this as well. Their selections don’t always catch my eye, but often they do.
So let us say, hypothetically, that with Subterranean contributing one, that of the half dozen or so books I get with a respectable lead time between these three other publishers, and others, it is still a particularly unhelpful slate this time out and I only able to pick one to review, out of a possible three; and that is not a bad assumption. So TWO slots are accounted for. That leaves two more reviews to write.
That leaves me with two slots to fill, and let us assume that no publisher, out of those sending me books much closer to, or even after, publication date, has a good one in my hands by the time I begin reading for the column.
Well, as it happens, by the time I have read those first two books as well as those unrelated to the column that interest me (my *personal* reading, which I doggedly make some time for), I am up against it. Only one month left to go. At this point I am willing to take a look at books that come out DURING my two months of composition. By the time the magazine sees print the reviews will have been based on older material than I like to cover, but that’s okay; this gives me a better selection from those that come in, as well as the option of soliciting or otherwise obtaining books that have just come out that sound extraordinary, that no one has bothered to send me.
Note, though, that of the ones I am not sent I still have to go through the trouble of *getting* them, and *reading them*, and *writing about them*, and that means that I do not have the full remaining month to do this; I have, at most, two weeks. So that’s a very narrow window for books nobody bothers to send me; they involve playing a game of catch-up, and that makes them a rarefied lottery as far as coverage is concerned. Still, that has gotten me *leads* — and this is where you will find most of the books published as mainstream that I find sufficiently fantastic to offer coverage. (Books that many other genre reviewers can’t be bothered to notice, like the chimp/human hybrid novel LUCY, or Jason Mott’s THE RETURNED).
Other vital factors:
I don’t finish and therefore don’t review books I don’t like. You get into my column, you are guaranteed, at bare minimum, a C+ (and I go that low only if you’ve failed in an interesting way). Most reviews I write are B+ are above. I therefore *begin* and *put aside* any number of books; any inclination I might have to pursue a less than satisfying narrative for hundreds of pages falls to the pressure to get four coverable ones finished.
I review long books, even epics, but my time is still limited, so you will not see a column where I review four epics. Reviewing any epic will put extra pressure on me to select a shorter book next, so I can play catch up. When I reviewed the 900 page ABOMINABLE, which I loved, I then proceeded directly to a novella. Stand-alone novellas are the friend to the reviewer on tight deadline. They really are.
Short story collections, or anthologies, usually get a slot, sometimes two. Always something to say about a good collection or anthology. If I like three stories enough to write about them, that’s a capsule right there. (No, I don’t stop reading after three – but if it’s a more massive cinderblock of an anthology, I may not read *every* single story before deciding that I’ve confirmed that the book is worth your investigation, and can say so.)
Picking four books is my TOP priority. Writers I love, and have reviewed before, are golden. I know that I will likely NOT get a hundred pages and get bogged down in a morass that will leave me pressing the deadline. If I know your work and have not reviewed you in the last year or so, you are virtually guaranteed a slot because you help me make my deadline. This is good news for Joe R. Lansdale and Robert R. McCammon and Mira Grant and Rob Sawyer. It’s, again, a matter of math. (And I make up for this with lots of attention to interesting works by writers I *don’t* know – or slipstream works that, again, genre reviewers don’t notice.)
I *try*, as hard as I can, to review at least one book by a woman in every column. There have been columns where I ended up with none because none that fit my preferences were sent to me; there were other columns where women ended up with 3 out of 4 slots. I’m happy to get just one. Some folks may say that this is reverse discrimination. It might well be. It is a policy that pushes me out of my comfort zone, always a good thing for a reviewer to do. I have discovered some terrific writers that way. I was able to write a review of a mainstream novel with a wispy-thin fantasy element, and — much as it drives the fans crazy — if it’s a good novel, I will cover it not giving a crap.
I like horror. I will review horror books without shame. I will make them my leads without shame. I *look* for them. I am aware that I cannot fill my column with horror books, or indeed with too many examples of one kind of book. So if I review a book of a given subgenre I tend to fill out the column with other books from a different subgenre.
I will generally not, NOT, review books in the following subgenres, simply because they too frequently make my eyes cross: women in leather pants with prominent cleavage stalking and seducing vampires, books with medieval armies clashing with broadswords, books that are described as the twentieth volume in such-and-such a universe. You may be able to say that this is short-sighted of me and that you know transcendent writers in all these subgenres. I know you can. I *have made exceptions*. (Hell, GAME OF THRONES is an exception.) But odds prevail. I have limited time, and I am aware that in that limited time I HAVE TO FIND FOUR BOOKS THAT DELIGHT ME.
Other ways I save time: I do not read the second or third books in series unless I have read the previous. (I am constantly sent Book #3 in trilogies.)
I do not begin print-on-demand books with amateurishly photo-shopped covers. (They’re usually not masterpieces. I make occasional, unexpected grand discoveries with ultra-small presses — see Fred Venturini — but these are outliers; I generally cannot, cannot, spare the time to read fifty of these to find the two good ones.)
I do not begin self-published books if the back cover blurb is horribly written. I do not read them if the interior typesetting is blurry or if the books show no reasonable familiarity with page design including the proper use of page breaks.
I will not read your book if I was unable to make space for your last book or praised it in a manner you found insufficient, and you threw such an aggrieved snit about it that I would rather not have any traffic with your work at all. (Even if I will later read it for pleasure.) That has happened.
These are all factors.
But of all the factors you have any control over: the single biggest remains giving me the greatest possible period of time to put your book on my list, and that means making sure I have it WELL IN ADVANCE of the publication date, so I can *plan* to review it and not review it only because I’m playing catch up. If I have the book or an ARC of the book four months before publication, then it is my hands the full two months that I’m writing the column, and that gives you the greatest possible chance of coverage, in my column.
I hope this answers your question.
Tags: Joe R. Lansdale, Mira Grant, Robert R. McCammon, Robert Sawyer, writing | Category Blog Business, Books, Frequently Asked Questions, Writing
