Submission Guidelines

Thank you for your kind interest in BookNom.net, and your daring and courageous spirit: obviously, you are a risk-taker for wanting to join this merry collective, particularly at this early stage. Here are the general guidelines for contributors to the site:

• We Work for Tips. I don’t pay for reviews, and likely never will be able to. In fact, I have a day job (40 hours a week in a bookstore) to support this and other hobbies; there is no budget. At the end of each article you write, however, I not only allow but encourage you to put in your ‘plug’ – whether that is a link to your own website or online store, or direct links to other retailers using established affiliate programs.

• Reviews Only, Please. Yes, there is a ‘commentary’ category. And you may be an expert, a recently laid off EiC and Publisher from one of the Big Six and ready and more than willing to write exposé after exposé about publishing, personalities, and the future of the-book-as-format. Fine. Admirable, even. But this isn’t the site for it.

• Recommend Books That You Enjoy. There are many, many (many) places on the internet to pan a bad book. The commentary function on Amazon seems tailor-made for such. BookNom is about recommending books to friends: yes, feel free to point out any weak points, but also be sure to mention why it’s a good book despite that. Guilty pleasures are still pleasures — and anything that makes us stop and think is also good, no matter how crummy the wrapper.

• Don’t steal. Plagiarism isn’t tolerated, and when pointed out to me (as it will be, eventually; the internet is good like that) you’ll find yourself locked out and all your posts deleted.

• But Please Recycle: even if you posted it somewhere else, so long as you wrote it and you own it and it’s still your copyright — sure, post it again here. A best practice would be to summarise your earlier post and link back to the full text — not only permitted but nigh required for re-posts to BookNom, so long as the original site still exists — but I personally encourage all of you to recycle. Check the style guidelines for recommendations on how to format and link the excerpts of previously posted reviews.

If none of this deters you (or any of it encouraged you) then please, get some writing samples together (or preferred, links to your writing on other blogs) and send an email to matt [at] booknom [dot] net – I’d love to hear from you.