Books :: Thinking Home Business | Practical Tips For People Who Work From Home

Why I don’t instantly say yes please when offered books to review

books

I love books.

I love talking about books I enjoy.

I don’t really love reviewing books, although I’m pretty sure that in doing so I learn more about the subject than on a more casual, less accountable reading.

But lately I seem to be getting quite a few requests to accept advance copies of books, both on subjects to do with the main focus of this blog, working from home, and also on social media, about which I blog more frequently on my Des Walsh dot Com site.

And I’m not keeping up. The books are starting to become something of a burden, not a pleasure.

Part of the challenge I have with the whole exercise of reviewing is that I have this sense – old-fashioned, quaint even, as it may be – that I should actually have read a book before posting about it. And related to that is the fact that I want to feel that I’ve done justice to the book.

At the same time, I realize that the authors and their publicists might prefer I did not take that line and if I was not going to read the whole book, couldn’t I at least skim it and write a brief post about it, with a link?

Not an unreasonable expectation. Just not an easy one for me to deal with.

There is also the fact that some PR/marketing companies offering books for review don’t realize I’m in Australia and then have trouble getting the publisher to ship the book here.

Time for some clarification

So for a recent pitch I received from someone I did not know, I wrote what I thought was an honest and hopefully helpful response, and in which I included a “let you off the hook” clause for the possibility that they hadn’t realized they would need to ship the book to Australia :

The concept certainly looks interesting and I am sure there is a demand. I’m frankly being rather cautious about accepting books for review as it’s not my primary focus, they tend to pile up and I feel guilty and even more so when the people who have sent them follow up, quite understandably, with prompts.

Also, if I accept a book for review I will only do so on the basis that I can review it honestly, not just write a puff piece. I would add that I do not seek to gain any notoriety by being unfair or unkind and I do try to “accentuate the positive”.

Then there is the expense for you as I am in Australia and do not any more agree to review books from electronic versions. Some publishers refuse to ship review copies to Australia.

Sorry to be less than enthusiastic, but I wanted to be open with you. If you still want to chance my getting around to reviewing the book, please let me know and I’ll send you a shipping address. If you decide otherwise I will understand completely.

Guess what? Date sent Feb 1, as of Feb 28 no reply.

Not holding my breath.

Anyone care to share their thoughts on this, perhaps showing me a better way to handle it?

Image credit: “Books behind the bed”, zimpenfish, via Flickr, Creative Commons

In my post yesterday about Blog Action Day, I promised more information about a project we are supporting, with a focus on children.

It’s called simply The Library Project and it is about providing books for children in developing countries. Quite simply, books help their education and education empowers individuals and communities to rise out of poverty. Simplistic? Maybe, but I believe it works.

It’s easy, in developed countries, to take for granted the availability of books for children. By way of illustration, one of the biggest challenges Suzie and I had to deal with on our recent trip to the US for BlogWorld Expo was how to get out of a bookstore in Las Vegas without buying so many childrens’ books that our luggage would be overweight.

It’s not that in Australia we don’t have a range of childrens’ books – just that we don’t seem to have the range they have in the US and like all books they are more expensive here. Also, as in other developed countries, we do have public libraries with childrens’ books in abundance. And then there are school libraries.

In China, Vietnam and in other developing countries there are schools with few books, or no books at all.

The Library Project seeks to play a role in remedying that, book by book, school by school, and generally to support education in Asia, through the generosity of people around the world.

There are three programs:

Elementary School Program in China and Vietnam
Orphanage Program in China and Vietnam
Earthquake Program (Sichuan and Shaanxi Provinces, China)

If you are thinking, as I did at first, “A library? I don’t have the sort of money needed to build or stock a library!”, then I encourage you to check out the options for helping with The Library Project. If you are like me I suspect you’ll be surprised by what can be achieved with amounts of money that for comparable projects in the developed world would be regarded as negligible.

For example:

For $250 – $500 we are able to provide 500 to 3,000 Chinese language children’s books, plus tables, chairs, and books shelves where appropriate.

You can do a group project or contribute individually. To make it really easy, they will take PayPal donations. For US readers “The Library Project is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization, and all donations are tax deductible.”

If you do decide to contribute, or perhaps have a project to get a group of family, friends and colleagues to, say, sponsor a whole library, be sure to blog about it, then let us know in the comments and make sure you include the link back to where you have blogged about your project or your thoughts on Blog Action Day 2008.