Home > Feature > Book Blogging 101: ARCs & Erotica

Welcome to Book Blogging 101, a weekly feature on Parajunkee’s View that answers your questions and strives to share great book blogging tips and some helpful hints to help you on your way.

Is there somewhere that has a listing of all of the publisher email addresses? I try looking for them on the sites but just keep coming across fax numbers. I would love to ask for review copies but I’m just not sure who to contact. – Dani

From what I know there isn’t a comprehensive listing of publisher contacts. I’m sure if anyone did that they wouldn’t be sharing it. All I can say is look. They are on the websites. I only know of one major publisher that just has a fax number for review requests. You find out who the publisher of the book you want to review — you go to their web site and you find the contact email…. it might take a few minutes of digging, but the information is not hidden. Here is some visual stimulation…

How do I request ARCs?

How can I get ARC’s? – Patrick Castro

The best way to get ARCs is to go to a convention that a publisher will be exhibiting at, or another similar marketing event. ARCs are used for marketing purposes so they give them out like you would give out pens at other conventions. If you can’t make it to a convention you should request them through the publisher. Some would say go through the authors, but they have limited amounts, so your best bet is to go through the publishers. Rough estimate is 4 – 6 months before the release date send them an email. See prior question.

How do you create a border frame around a post in blogger,like your’s in a book’s sypnosis? Do I need an HTML code? – Patrick Castro

It’s a CSS code, most use the blockquote function which is the ” icon in your blogger interface. You need to style your blockquote in the CSS of your template.

Let’s look in this testing site that I did for Maria’s Musings…as you can see she has a very stylized blockquote.

Go into template designer (in the design area of your blogger interface) and then click on ADVANCED > ADD CSS

Example of a blockquoteEach indented input modifies your blockquote, everything from font size, to rounding the corners, to the space between the lines of the text. I’ve even added a text shadow. Good Luck!

You might have already answered this question in a previous post, but I just now recently had this happen to me. I consider my book review blog to be an eclectic mix of different genres for review. My reading taste changes daily. Some days I will read nothing but young adult, then other days it is nothing but adult romance or paranormal, etc.

I recently reviewed and erotica on my blog. I even added a button at the top of the post stating that it was an 18 and over review. Then a few hours later I received a horrible email from an anonymous reader of my blog snapping at me for reviewing an adult themed book on my blog. I never made my blog just young adult themed. I am a reader who enjoys all genres of books and I started my blog as an outlet to express that.

My question is how would you handle this situation? Should I just ignore it and continue on with running my blog how I want — reading and reviewing what I choose? Or should I cave and just stick to one genre for reviews? – Amy

People love to criticize don’t they? You run your blog how you want, if people don’t like it they don’t have to read it, right? I get crappy emails sometimes, I even have people telling me how to run things. I usually just ignore them. Bug off {that is a nice way of saying it}. If you are really concerned about reader perception of erotica, do a reader poll. Most readers, even teen readers read cross genre and cross age range. Unless your blog caters to teens and tweens specifically, I would say don’t worry about it. You’ve never stated that you are a young adult book blog, basically this particular reader has their panties all in a twist. Maybe they should read more erotica, might give them a bit of release.

I have this book. It’s a baaad book. I mean really bad. I couldn’t even make it past the first couple of pages it was so baaaad. Published and everything too. Don’t get it, don’t want to get it. Requested review through a publicist too, who by the way, keeps on wanting to know where the review is. I’m at a loss, because what I really want to tell the publicist is — “this book is the worst thing I’ve come across in a looooong time.” What to do? – Anon

This had me in stitches. I’ve told them, the truth, if they email me about the review. Now – here is where I differ. If I managed to read enough to give it a review ( 2/3rds ), I will write the review and casually send them the link. You asked for it right? If it is so bad of a DNF I didn’t even get in enough to write a review, I tell them. “Sorry, I wasn’t able to finish the book, there will be no review. If you want I can post the synopsis, but I will state that the book was a DNF.” They usually reply with a “don’t bother”. But, I do get your reticence. I have a children’s book, well I thought it was a children’s picture book that I got for the baby blog that I post on every now and again. The book is just bizarre. It’s written like an adult book, but supposedly geared for the age 5 -7 range. When I’m saying written like an adult book, the little girl talks about mortgages and book agents and adult things like that. Odd. Or I guess they were trying to be different. I tried reading it aloud to my daughter and she kept stopping me every other sentence saying, “what is that?” Try explaining a mortgage to a 4 year old, or an editor (explaining the editor, not explaining an mortgage to an editor). In all honesty I want to tell the publicist, “what were they thinking?” but I guess that would be rude. What it is really making me actually do, is power through, finish the book and lay it out in a review. 😉

XO – Happy Thursday, Talk Less, Read More.

I can’t get to all the questions, but please ask your BB101 Questions here…bring it on.