I want to start the week with a reminder that reviews are not only for those of you who make purchasing decisions.
Reviews are a recourse to help you identify titles that your patrons may enjoy as well. In some libraries, you might find a great suggestion for a patron and then you can pass it on to be bought by the collections people. But some cannot. I am just making it known that I understand that before moving on.
Okay, back to using reviews as a resource.
We are all aware of using Booklist, LJ, and PW reviews as a resource, especially those of us who use NoveList because they appear in the records for a book in that database. We read them to get plot info, appeal, and readalike options. It is quick and reliable way to have human provided information.
But, do you remember to also check Forward Reviews?
Foreword Reviews has been out there since 1998 providing trade book reviews of the best titles from independent presses, in print and online.
What its Forward Reviews? Here is information (edited by me) from their About page:
Since our inception in 1998, Foreword Reviews has never strayed from its mission to help booksellers and librarians discover great books from indie presses. At a time when the trade media devoted nearly all its attention on the larger corporate publishers like Random House and Simon & Schuster, the debut of Foreword Reviews introduced a new stream of quality reviews of independently published books to the wholesalers and distributors where booksellers and librarians order their books. The United States has always recognized the importance of a fiercely independent press—one that embraces freedom of thought, multiculturalism, religious diversity, and an understanding that profit motive shouldn’t be the only criteria used when deciding whether to publish a book. The fact that Foreword’s business model was built around indie presses caused many heads to turn in the book industry.
Foreword Reviews is dedicated to the “art” of book reviewing. With a review team of talented writers who are experts in their fields, our book-industry journal is designed for a discerning readership—in recognition of the fact that quality paper, generous use of white space, and creative design encourages a time investment by readers.
Foreword’s reviews are not annotated summaries of books. Instead, they are insightful critiques, robust in length and thoughtful. That is why our readership loves us so much. And why our reviews are licensed to wholesalers like Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Bowker, Cengage, Ebsco, and others. Librarians use databases of reviews provided by these wholesalers or distributors to choose books for their stacks. It is unusual for them to shop outside of these vendors, and having a review attached to a book is almost always a minimum requirement for a sale, especially at public libraries.
Thanks to the loyal support of scores of indie presses—from established publishers smaller than “the big five,” to university presses, and even some self-published authors—Foreword Reviews is primarily supported by advertising revenues, not expensive annual subscriptions or newsstand sales. The endorsement of these publishers has kept our message vital to a loyal and growing group of booksellers and librarians, distributors and wholesalers, who don’t just want to offer a media-driven list of bestsellers to their customers and patrons. Foreword’s foundation was built on reviewing literary fiction, poetry, children’s picture books, translations, and topics like climate change, diversity, and multiculturalism. Most importantly, we strive to promote voices that are unheard, overlooked, or even silenced.
In the late 1990s, when Foreword launched, indie presses were rarely covered by Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus, Booklist,and School Library Journal. In fact, during publishing conferences like the Independent Book Publishing Association and PubWest, review personnel from these magazines often openly discouraged audience members from sending their books in for review! Soon after our debut, some of the most prestigious literary presses started to get coverage in PW and the other magazines. Some of these presses included Milkweed, Grove Atlantic, Algonquin for fiction and Sourcebooks, Workman, Amacom and some university presses for nonfiction. Not surprisingly, after budgets at the big five publishers started drying up, and after years of seeing Foreword supported by the very presses they were ignoring, the industry review journals started to cover indies with more flourish.
In the past, “indie” mostly meant self-published authors. Now indie means anyone not published by HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, Macmillan, and Hachette. Larger indie presses include Bloomsbury, Sourcebooks, WW Norton, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Oxford University, and a dozen or so others.
Indies are not for everyone. Foreword is not for everyone. There are many booksellers who are only able to stay alive because they dedicate themselves to trying to keep up with the chains and stocking bestsellers. Same holds true for smaller libraries. But Foreword is essential for the librarians and indie booksellers who are working to establish themselves as a special place in their communities. They value what indie presses are doing in literature: quality assured by editorial teams who are all about keeping the art of publishing alive.
And it is all free. Quality reviews of many books you cannot find in the trade journals. From any page you can sort by:
- And "Genre" means many fiction, and even more nonfiction genres to choose from, a section on Comics and Graphic Novels, and all youth categories.
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