************ Read the whole review policy before jetting us off an email please. ************
Consider also reading:
5 Tips on Author Etiquette for Approaching Book Bloggers plus some other pet peeves and what not to do here: Review Update: Don’t Waste My Time or Yours
— On occasion and if we like your novel, we may do author interviews or giveaways. HOWEVER, we need at least one month in advance to be able to place the review within a specified date range (ie for blog tours etc) with three months in advance being preferable.
Our thoughts on what we want:
We review new adult or young adult novels. (New adult being novels with college age protagonists) — Wordcount needs to be at least 60,000+ words
We do accept novels by self-published and indie authors, as we love to support all authors and writers. However, your novel must have been professionally edited, and preferably an editor you paid for. If you are a self-published or indie author include in your request the name (and website) of your editor.
Genres we review: We LOVE — urban fantasy, fairy-tale retellings, paranormal, and supernatural romance.
We enjoy fantasy and science fiction as well. Occasionally maybe a historical fiction or mystery. It’d have to be a dang good book to lure us away from these genres. We find it hard to slog through extremely technical science fiction or very detailed high fantasy. Main couple must be Male-Female, but diversity is welcome and encouraged for the other characters. Be aware we don’t do well with bitter-sweet endings. We’re a happily-ever-after type of flock. We also want the novels we review to have some romance. We love to discover new scenes that make us go “Aww!” and curl up farther into the couch. The more romance the better, but if it’s got great suspense, action and plot too? That’s the icing on the cake.
Our thoughts on what we DON’T want:
Genres we don’t review: horror, literary, western, erotica. We just can’t do horror. For why this is see: Why Being an ‘Anne’ is Both Exciting and Horrifying. We will not read anything that has any explicit sex-scenes. We read clean books. See: Clean -‘Sweet’- Romances Are Definitely Not Dead If an intimate scene is part of the story line and about a PG feel that is ok (think Stephenie Meyer’s The Host). Scenes behind closed doors are also fine, but anything more and we won’t touch it. An abundance of sexual references is a huge deterrent and not tolerated. If sex is the main subject and your characters are constantly talking and thinking about it and there’s nothing else? We won’t like your novel. Heavy profanity isn’t appreciated. Keep in mind we’re pretty understanding, but a large amount of blatantly obvious typos tend to ruffle our feathers (most especially words that are missing). We don’t review non-fiction, memoirs, collections of stories, picture books or poetry.
Our Review Includes:
– Title, author, length
– heat level and appropriateness level (eg. G, PG, PG-13)
– a rating (1-5 scale)
– a summary of the book (usually from Goodreads)
– twelve sentences with our opinion and thoughts on the book (why 12? We don’t know. It’s a number we like.)
– link(s) to retailers, goodreads and author’s website if applicable
The body of the email must have these 6 things:
1. The following statement ‘I have read the Review Policy and know that this book does contain some romance and does not have anything the Peacock Flock does not want to review’. Please do not send us a request if your book does not fit into the above statement
— although paraphrasing the above statement does let us know you read the policy (good on you), the review request needs to have the statement as written above.
2. An intriguing and interesting blurb about your novel (think query letter like. See: QueryShark — what are the stakes? who are the main players — the romantic couple? avoid the hard sell)
3. The cover art for your novel in the body of the email. Just copy and paste it in. (If all else fails attach it, but we’d prefer it in the body)
4. Something about yourself and how you found our site
5. A .pdf (preferred) or .epub file of your novel (or just chapter 1) attached *See below
– Do not send a coupon for Smashwords (or any other site) or a link to a free download. We will not use them and will no longer consider your review. ONLY send requests with a .pdf file attached (or a kindle readable) ebook. If you prefer to not send your full novel send just chapter 1.
– Send requests for only one novel at a time.
– And (can’t believe we have to say it) start with book 1 in your series, don’t send requests for the second book if we haven’t read the first
– We respect your work and will not share it with anyone
Other thoughts:
Reviews are every Thursday. Although we hope it doesn’t happen, occasionally -despite us enjoying the initial blurb- we find we cannot finish a novel. We will read the first 50 pages of every novel we commit to review. If we do not wish to read past that we will endeavour to give the author as much information as we can at to why we were unable to finish the book. We also post reviews to Goodreads, and to Amazon, and other sites if the author wishes. This site DOES post negative reviews. We are pretty good at knowing what we’d like, but reasons why we don’t like something could be exactly why another reader would like it. Therefore we will always endeavour to be honest but kind in every review. Our reviews are solely our opinion and experience with the book. We’d love to be able to respond to all review requests personally but as the volume is now quite overwhelming we can only respond to requests we are interested in. If you haven’t received a response in two weeks, we were not intrigued enough by your request or we don’t have room in the review queue. (We’ll keep a list of reviews that intrigued us and may contact you later for a review) We can be a harsh party of birds but we’re usually fair, a note should be made to prospective authors and publishers, there will occasionally be some very small spoilers in order to give the best review.
DO NOT use any emails on this website to sign up for newsletters or publicity for novel genres. This includes any blog tour newsletters or publicity companies. If you sign up an email without permission you or the publicity company go on the black list.
The Flocks’ Review Code:
http://www.theindieview.com/indie-reviewers/
If we sound like a good fit send your Book Review Requests here:
dpederson12(at)yahoo(dot)ca
or fill out the form below
FTC Disclosure: According to guidelines, any review where the book was given for free in exchange for an honest review will be noted as such. At the top of the review it will say: “This novel was received for free from the author/publisher and this is our honest review”.