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Contest: Reviewers Wanted

Posted by Steve the Bookstore Guy On Friday, May 14, 2010

So, you want to be an Elitist Reviewer too? Well, you are in luck.

Contrary to popular belief, we do have lives. We work full-time, attend college, have families, aspire to be authors ourselves, and require sleep (sometimes). In short, we want to recruit a few peoples to be reviewers for us.

Here is what would be required of you:

1) Be a US resident. UPDATE: We changed our minds. So there. You can be from anywhere, but the book reviews will adhere to the US release schedule.
2) Read and review at least one to two books a month--if you read and review more, that's fine too. At times, we may very well direct you on what books to read--we have Billy Corgan-like issues. Other times we will leave it up to you, as long as you tell us what you are going to review.
3) We will read and edit your review before hand.
4) If you are located in Provo or Salt Lake City, Utah, we may give you an ARC to read. If not, become friends with your local library and/or B&N. We don't make money off this blog, so paying money to ship you ARCs just isn't feasible.
5)Your reviews will follow our Hive-mind format, and you will avoid profanity in the review itself.

Make sense? Good.

This is a serious offer for those who want to make a serious effort. We have pride in our work, and we are also control freaks. We want your work to be high-quality, and we want it to be reliable. If you don't think you can be reliable, don't bother entering our "contest."

This is a competition. We will pick a book, and you will read and review it. Here is how it will go down:

1) We pick a book or two.
2) You read it and review it.
3) You email us the review along with your "I'm a US resident" details.
4) We read your review. We will judge it on originality, quality of writing (it doesn't have to be perfect, we WILL edit you reviews after all), clarity of writing, and whether or not your review was in line with what we thought. We want you to have similar tastes as us. Shocker right?
5) The one or two reviewers we felt were best, we will choose to be permanent reviewers on EBR.

Again, EBR is a big deal to us. We are beginning to show up on the covers of books. We want to maintain the confidence that publishers, agents, editors, publicists, and readers have in us. We are special, and we want to keep it that way.

The book of choice for the contest?

DUST OF DREAMS by Steven Erikson
or
THE FOLDING KNIFE by KJ Parker
or
JULIAN COMSTOCK by Robert Charles Wilson

This contest will go until the 4th of June.

Q-- Can I review both books for the contest?
A-- Sure, if they both are solid reviews, it will give us confidence in you. However, if one sucks, it will screw you.

Q-- How long should the reviews be?
A-- Look at our reviews (there are dozens of them). While the lengths may vary in some cases, they are almost all around the same length.

Q-- Is it OK to put spoilers in the review?
A-- No. If you do, we will send ninja-zombies after you. Then we will delete your submission.

Q-- Where will I be on the EBR totem-pole?
A-- We (Nick and Steve) are the main dudes (and handsome ones at that). The site is ours. You will be an active participant, which puts you between us, and the guest reviewers who only participate occasionally.

Please email us with any other question.

,

15 comments

  1. koshr Said,

    1) Be a US resident

    i failed ;(

    Posted on May 14, 2010 at 12:12 PM

     
  2. Anonymous Said,

    I would love to review Dust of Dreams, but I am only currently on Memories of Ice in the Malazan series. I'm not sure that's the book I would have chosen for your contest because your average applicant who hasn't read the series or isn't current on it will not be able to blast through all the books in order to give a quality review. Of course, that might have been intentional in that you are trying to weed out anyone who isn't an Erikson fan.

    That being said, I'll just have to look into The Folding Knife by KJ Parker and shelve Memories of Ice in the meantime.

    Posted on May 14, 2010 at 1:56 PM

     
  3. Anonymous Said,

    I wish I were a US resident :)

    Been to San Francisco and NYC last week, the USA is just a whole different playground compared to little ol' Belgium ;)

    Will continue to devote my spare time, reading books AND your reviews though... I've grown to appreciate the witty banter hidden throughout every review lol

    Posted on May 14, 2010 at 6:58 PM

     
  4. Unknown Said,

    Wishing you the best in your search! I'm a HUGE fan of your blog/reviews. So, totally scrutinize the new wannabes!! Nothing but the best here at EBR! :D

    Thanks for all your time & hard work!! It's greatly appreciated & respected.

    Posted on May 15, 2010 at 6:04 AM

     
  5. koshr Said,

    by the way on which book cover were u quoted?

    Posted on May 15, 2010 at 7:19 AM

     
  6. Ms. Laura Said,

    You won't even accept Canadian?! How come? Its discouraging that the majority of blogs are American-centric. I feel left out of the fun.

    Posted on May 15, 2010 at 9:29 AM

     
  7. Steve the Bookstore Guy Said,

    Mostly the reason at this point for the "US thing" is to make sure we are on the same publishing schedule--we mostly stick to the US release dates of novels. I'm not quite sure which publishing schedule Canada is on--I assumed they were the same as the UK. If not, feel free to join in the contest.

    As for others, I never said you absolutely couldn't join the fun. It will just be harder for you. That's why I purposely said send me a "resume that contains a full detail of your awesomeness".

    Posted on May 15, 2010 at 10:24 AM

     
  8. koshr Said,

    amazon.de for example has the books as soon as they are published, doesnt matter if its uk or us release first. dont know if its the same for the other countrys.

    Posted on May 15, 2010 at 11:54 AM

     
  9. Raethe Said,

    Steve--actually, which publishing schedule Canada is on depends on where the book was sold first, since both the UK and North American publishers tend to bundle their rights (North American rights versus Commonwealth rights). If the book sold first to an American publisher, we'll match the American schedule; if the book sold to a UK publisher, we'll match the UK publishing schedule.

    Good luck finding a new reviewer! Of course, you'll need good luck much more now since I, being Canadian, can't try out. ;)

    Raethe/Silk

    Posted on May 15, 2010 at 4:23 PM

     
  10. Steve the Bookstore Guy Said,

    I was thinking about it over the weekend, and I decided I really wanted people to have the option of an SF (kinda) novel also. So I have added a third book to the options:

    JULIAN COMSTOCK by Robert Charles Wilson.

    And I'm mulling over letting all you lovely Canadians enter the contest.

    Should I?

    Posted on May 17, 2010 at 8:48 AM

     
  11. -Slamel- Said,

    Yes you should. I meant to change that, before the post went live, to include everyone (including those outside of Canada and the US) with the caveat of adhering to the US release schedule.

    But then I got distracted... Hang on, are those birds I hear....

    Posted on May 17, 2010 at 10:01 PM

     
  12. Steve the Bookstore Guy Said,

    Hurray for everyone! I updated the post.

    Now everyone needs to get crackin'.

    Posted on May 18, 2010 at 8:38 AM

     
  13. Nathan Said,

    Man, I love you guys, AND I live in Provo! BONUS!
    Now I just have to find copies of these books and read them. Since I review books for my blog already, this *technically* shouldn't be too hard...

    Well, minus finding the books. :P

    Posted on May 22, 2010 at 3:56 PM

     
  14. Anonymous Said,

    I love the irony. My local bookstore didn't have a copy of The Folding Knife so I had to order it online... two weeks ago... and it's still not here. I'm not sure I'll have time to enter.

    Posted on May 27, 2010 at 1:32 PM

     
  15. Will Raboin Said,

    The next chance I'll have to get to the bookstore is Tuesday. Which gives me about four days, which I have to work on all but one, to read and review a book...

    Posted on May 29, 2010 at 3:03 PM

     

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