FAQ

Why only nonpro? Do you have a hate on for the pros?
Of course not. We have great respect for pro markets, which most writers aspire to, and for pro writers. RR reviews non-pro publications because non-pros are the ones who have greater trouble getting reviewed. A lot of review sites review professional publications exclusively or near-exclusively… they do this because there’s no way to review everything, and that’s how they chose to narrow the scope down to something they can handle. RR has done something similar, but in the opposite direction – reviewing quality work that might otherwise have trouble getting reviews and exposure. That is the real purpose behind RR’s existence.

Hey! You have a review of something from a pro! What the hell?
As mentioned above, RR’s purpose is to help draw attention to writers or publishers who otherwise might have trouble getting exposure. Occasionally, this can mean reviewing a publication for which the writer was paid pro rates because the work in question was published by a small/independent market. RR isn’t interested in sticking strictly to a set of rules if it goes against the main purpose of RR’s existence. The vast majority of the reviews we do WILL be of non-pro writers published by non-pro markets. But there will be the occasional exception to that rule. This is purely a subjective judgment call, which is why we don’t accept review requests for these situations.

So why don’t you review self-published books or markets that only pay in copies? Aren’t they small and independent enough?
We do, very rarely. We made the decision to not review self-published/unpaid publications because, like other review sites, we can only review so much. A payment of some kind, even a token payment, usually indicates a step up in effort and quality (Yes, we know it’s not always true). Having said that – just like the other end of the spectrum, there will be rare exceptions to this rule, if we decide that a self-published or unpaid publication is of a quality that we want to review it. We also don’t accept review requests for these publications. They are a rare and subjective case.

But you’re the co-publisher of a small press. Isn’t that a conflict of interest?
It would be, if RR reviewed anything published by that small press. We don’t. We have other policies about who can review whose work to avoid such conflicts of interest.