Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Away from the realm of the novel for a moment

This is topic Away from the realm of the novel for a moment in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by JP Carney (Member # 894) on :

I know many here are (or at least seem to be) focused on writing a novel. And as the regular readers here might remember from other posts, I'm more on the line of short stories and flash fiction. Anyway, what this has to do with the real reason of my post I have no idea, other than to serve as introduction to my asking a non-novel related question.

I am really working the bellows at my creative spark lately. Trying to find avenues to release my energy. One avenue I want to pursue is writing a book review of American Gods for a local paper, and anywhere else that might want one. I've never written a 'professional' review, and wondered if anyone has any resources for me (on-line is best, but anything is appreciated).

Okay, that's it. That's the question (I have more, but I'll wait until the review is written as they're about soliciting it and getting it published -- well, about about freelance in general, and e-zines...)

Ciao~

Posted by SiliGurl (Member # 922) on :

I'm not sure if they even do this, but in my daily work creating marketing correspondence (aka spam) for an online bookstore, I often visit pubisher's websites to check out their reviews/synopsis for their books. Someone has to write these.... Perhaps you should look at their job postings? Similarly, look at freelance writing for online magazines. Someone has to write their book reviews.

Gosh, I guess that wasn't very helpful, but...

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

If you are going to place a review in more than one publication, you have to consider a couple of things.

The first publication to print it will get first rights, but all the others will only get reprint rights, and they may prefer first rights to someone else's review.

So you need to think about "slant" if you want more than one publication to print a review by you on the same book.

Say you write a review of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE for a psychology magazine and talk about how the book explores the way people misunderstand each other, and then you write a review of the same book for a Fishing magazine and talk about the fishing that Elizabeth Bennet's uncle likes to do.

Each review for each publication will have to talk about the things that that publication is most interested in and how they are treated in the book.

The idea of a review is to give readers enough information about the book to help them decide that they want to read ir (or, of course, if it is a negative review, why they don't want to read it). And you can do that for any kind of reader the book might appeal to.