Fiction Review Guidelines

Fiction


First and foremost, we want nothing but complete honesty in your reviews. If you loved the story, that’s great! That’s what we are striving for at Thomas Nelson. We want to consistently produce quality fiction that inspires, entertains, and challenges readers. If you didn’t enjoy a certain novel, well that’s great as well! Of course we want every title to be a home run with readers, but when they aren’t we want to know why. The only way we can continue to bring our readers consistent and quality fiction is to receive honest and unbiased feedback from them. We’re not asking for positive reviews in return for free review materials. We’re simply asking for complete objectivity.

We ask that you keep your reviews under 200 words if at all possible. This word count allows you to be informative without being too informative. We want your reviews to be read and most people tend to shy away from long reviews. Here is our recommendation for the structure of each review:

Title: For the title of your post please include the title of the book and the author (e.g. House of Dark Shadows by Robert Liparulo)

Summary (50-100 words): Please make sure your summary is in the first few sentences of the review.

•What’s the story about? How would you describe this story to someone in 3 or 4 sentences?

•Be careful not to give away major plot points, twists, or surprise endings.

Your Reactions (100-150 words): Let us know what you liked and didn’t like about the novel.

•Was the story suspenseful, frightening, or romantic? How did it make you feel?

•Consider story elements such as plot, character development, dialogue, description, and scene. What worked and what didn’t?

•Was the overall message inspiring? Were you challenged in your faith? Were you entertained?

•Would you recommend this novel to others?

Please keep in mind that we prefer our fiction reviews to be spoiler free. We don’t want to take away from someone’s reading experience. If you think a line or a sentence from you review is too revealing it’s usually best to omit it or rewrite it.

You can see an example of both the structure and content of a quality fiction review here: http://myreadingfrenzy.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/the-unseen/

Please sign in to your account at http://booksneeze.com/ and post the link to your review. If at all possible, be sure to provide the specific link to the post where your review is found.

After you’ve posted the review on your blog and our website, post your review on at least one consumer site such as Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, or Christianbook.com. To comply with new regulations introduced by the Federal Trade Commission, please mention as part of every Web or retail site review that Thomas Nelson has provided you with a complimentary copy of this book or advanced reading copy.