News! Abyss&Apex Now Does Book Reviews.
Here’s what you need to know.
by Wendy S. Delmater, Editor
Why Abyss & Apex Is Doing Small Press Book Reviews
Small presses, start your engines! We are soliciting science fiction and fantasy books for reviews, and will start carrying a reviews page in our next edition. Why is Abyss & Apex doing small press book reviews?
- Abyss & Apex has a loyal, steady readership of thirty to forty thousand unique readers a month; sometimes more when a story goes viral on the web. These are all genre fans and our science fiction and fantasy readers are interested in the sorts of books they can sometimes only find at a small press: break-out authors, quality fiction, quirky and unusual things.
- Review hot spots like Locus and the book review sections of Asimov’s, Analog, Realms of Fantasy, and other print magazines often do not have enough space to look at small press offerings.
- Not every reviewer will “get” what you are trying to do with your book. If it’s science fiction or fantasy, we (and our readers) just might be your target audience.
- Abyss & Apex has a good reputation for quality publishing which will lend credibility to our reviews. We’ve been in continuous publication for nearly eight years—quite a feat in and of itself— and had stories printed in/regularly get honorable mentions in Year’s Best anthologies. We’ve been on Locus and SFWA recommended reading lists. If we say we like something our reputation and judgment stand behind it.
A few ground rules are in order.
- We will NOT look at self-published works.
- In the interest of keeping small press publishers’ costs down, we will accept pdf files in lieu of a hardcopy of books for review. Hard copies are nice –we like them–but we understand if you need to send a file instead.
- Allow two to four months for the stories to be read and reviewed. In other words, No Last Minute Reviews, okay?
- If we really love a book we might post a sample chapter, but publishers will have to send it already coded into HTML. We have an all-volunteer staff with lives outside of Abyss & Apex and there’s only so much we can do.
I cannot guarantee we will like anything or review everything that you send our way, but we want to highlight from three to five books per edition, possibly more when the ball gets rolling.
And readers? Get set for a special treat or two. When you, our regular reader, get book recommendations from Abyss & Apex you know that you already trust our taste in fiction.
–Wendy S. Delmater
Editor, Abyss & Apex Magazine of Speculative Fiction
Editorial © 2010 Wendy S. Delmater. All other content copyright © 2010 Abyss & Apex Publishing.
Copyrighted by the author unless otherwise noted.
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