Paid Book Reviewers Wanted for a Trusted Literary Magazine

I am asked often by library workers about how they can write reviews of books, for money. Well, at the request of a trusted literary magazine, The Common, I was asked to reach out to all of you an recruit you to help them ramp up their book review coverage for solid pay. 

Before I get to that, you need to know what The Common is. From their "About" page:

The Common is an award-winning print and digital literary journal published biannually, in the fall and spring. Issues of The Common include short stories, essays, poems, and images that embody a strong sense of place. The Common Online publishes original content four times per week, including book reviews, interviews, personal essays, short dispatches, poetry, contributor podcasts and recordings, and multimedia features.

Based in Amherst, Massachusetts, the magazine is supported in part by Amherst College and The Common Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The Common also runs the Literary Publishing Internship Program at Amherst College, mentoring students in all aspects of literary publishing, and hosts public programming regularly.

See a list of Awards, or check up on News & Events.

Hear more about The Common‘s founding and background in these Interviews with the Editor in Chief.

Full disclosure, I went to Amherst College. I know Editor in Chief Jennifer Acker, also am Amherst graduate, and my kid was their 5th Literary Editorial Fellow and their first Applefield Fellow.

Iw as asked by Acker to help get the work out. From The Common:

In February, The Washington Post announced that they were ending Book World, their dedicated section for book reviews. Until that point, Book World was one of the final remaining bulwarks against a larger trend of dwindling criticism and the collapse of book reviews in major publications. Reviews have always been an essential part of the literary world, opening a window into thoughtful, nuanced discussions, encouraging readers to think deeply about the value of what they read, and building community around new releases. With an increase in book bans, the influx of generative AI, and a sharp decline in both literacy rates and reading as a pastime, the kind of conversations and community that form around book reviews are more important than ever before.

What can a literary magazine like The Common do to push back against these dispiriting trends? We're revamping—and greatly expanding—our book reviews section! With a focus on new releases from independent presses, and of course on titles with a strong sense of place, our hope is to bring attention to the best books you haven't yet heard about. We aim to serve readers, publishers, and authors. 

Beginning in September, we will be publishing four reviews a month. We will pay competitive rates. If you are interested in writing a review or proposing a book to be reviewed, please visit this page for more information about our submission guidelines. Additionally, we will be sending out a quarterly newsletter (starting next week) featuring forthcoming titles we hope to have reviewed and answering any questions you may have about our process. If interested, you can add your name to that mailing list here.

Thank you for supporting The Common and our mission of deepening our modern sense of place and building community around literature. 

Onward!

When you visit that page above, you will see in clear language what they will pay.

Reviews should either be around 800 words (for a $250 honorarium) or 1500 words (for a $450 honorarium). We will not review self-published books.

I clarified with Acker, they want newer books, but they do NOT need to be pre-pub (as we library workers are used to. Use the book reviews page for more information and how to pitch your book reviews.

The Common is specifically reaching out to librarians. You may have seen this cross posted on ALA Connect sights as well. If you have even been thinking about writing book reviews, you should take a look at their site.

Get (or Give) a Note From a Favorite Author and Raise Money for A Great Literary Magazine in the Process

We are running full speed into the gift giving season, but we are also approaching the time of year when many people also make their annual donations. I have an idea that is a great option for all book lovers and covers both categories and it is run by an award winning literary magazine here:

The Common's Author Postcard Auction

Bid to win a postcard from your favorite author!

Bidding closes at noon EST on December 1, 2025

This unique online auction gives literary fans the opportunity to bid on handwritten, personalized postcards from their favorite writers. Postcards will be handwritten for you or a person of your choice. A wonderful keepsake, author postcards make great gifts! In years past, authors have gone above and beyond when writing their postcards, including impromptu doodles, poems, and personalized stories. Winning bids are tax-deductible donations. 

All proceeds go to The Common Foundation, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to publishing and promoting art and literature from global, diverse voices. Read more at www.thecommononline.org. 

Not interested in bidding? You can still support The Common Foundation by donating here.

Each year the Common gathers some of the biggest names in the writing world and asks them to offer 1 handwritten post card to one bidder. And they donate all of the proceeds to the magazine. Now this magazine is more than a place to launch new voices, they are part of a vibrant college community and fund internships and post-graduate jobs for students interested in writing and publishing. More about this is on their "Support Us" page.

Full disclosure, I am a subscriber and a donor to The Common. They also employed by oldest as a Literary Editorial Fellow last year. This allowed them to have a meaningful, career starting job for a full year after graduation and the experience led directly to their current job as the Assistant News Editor at Publishers Weekly. 

The Common is doing the vital work to help to keep the literary community moving forward in what are very difficult times. 

And that is why you should look at this page and consider bidding on a post card.

But let's get practical here as well. Uber fans of authors like George Saunders, Percival Everett, Ann Patchett, Stephen Graham Jones, Julia Alvarez, Elin Hilderbrand, Hanif Abdurraqib, Lauren Goff and more, these people probably already own every book their favorite writers have published. There is also a good chance they have signed copies. But I bet they do not have a personal note from these people.

Take a look at the auction and make a bid for yourself or a loved one. What a great way to show your thanks to the writers who have filled our world with joy-- by giving back to an organization they are supporting.

Bids are open until 12/1 at noon EST.

Using Awards Lists As A RA Tool: Whiting Literary Magazine Prize

This is part of my ongoing series on using Awards Lists as a RA tool. Click here for all posts in the series in reverse chronological order. Click here for the first post which outlines the details how to use awards lists as a RA tool. 

Back in May, I wrote this post about how we should consider collecting literary magazines and shelving them with fiction so that more readers, who would enjoy them if only they knew of their existence, could discover them more easily. It was picked up by a few other library places and seemed to find a receptive audience. 

And then earlier this month, I saw this announcement of the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize Winners in PW. So, it seems like a good time to bring back this lit mag conversation.

If you want ideas on what literary magazines to start collecting go directly to the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize page. On one page they have all of the winners, with the magazine's "about" statement and the judges citation comments. Everything you need for the current and backlist winners on a single page. Very useful.

The collection development is waiting there for you to use it. You can easily go through the last few years of winners and decide which ones are best for your collection. Also check out my post for a few others that I recommend.

But you don't want to invest in buying/subscribing to these lit mags and simply let them languish on the shelf. As Robin Bradford likes to say, we need to buy to try, not buy to die. Too often we buy something great and then just hope people find it. And then, when people don't find it on their own, in our messy, overstuffed, and hard to browse collections, we say, oh no one wants these; we need to stop buying this.

NO. This is so wrong and counter to everything we should be doing, every day. When you buy something, especially a new format type, you need to give it a chance. Remember your RA Basics-- we promote the items that people will not find on their own. Click here for an entire post on that topic.

So, after you order a few literary magazines you need to do some merchandizing to let people know that you have added them. That you have this new format and it will be shelved with the fiction for leaguer readers to find it more easily in the place where they are browsing for leisure reading.

Of course this includes, displaying them prominently in the building and featuring the collection online, website and social media, newsletter (online and print), old fashioned signage, whatever you can. 

Write up a press release style blurb about the new collection. Talk about why you have purchased them, where you shelve them, and how you identified the ones to add (link to the Whiting award page). Use the write ups on the award home page to "book talk" the magazines. Feel free to use any of my language from this post as well.

Include this statement in all library communication for a month. Schedule social media posts, contact the local paper, add it to email newsletters, make it a news story on website. Use whatever you have in your marketing toolbox and give them a chance. And display them on their own.

Do not buy these lit mags for them to die. Make it clear that you want your patrons to give them a try. Often, all our patrons need is a small push to try something. Put it in front of them, make the argument as to why you, the professional, think they are worthy of the patrons leisure time, and then watch them circulate. If only 20% of the people who give them a try return to them, that is a HUGE success.

This is the perfect example of the spirit of this series of posts-- Using Awards Lists As A RA Tool. We can use it to suggest to readers, for collection development, and also to showcase what we have and get people excited to try something they never would have found without us.

Consider Collecting Print Literary Magazines

I have been in libraries long enough to remember our large print magazine collections. I remember having them in a "reading room" type ares. And, I remember patrons coming specifically to read the latest issues of the most popular magazines, or waiting for the day the issues went from in library only use to check out. Titles like The New Yorker and The Atlantic were among the most popular with our fiction readers as well, and I had patrons who knew exactly when an issue was made available for checkout. 

As our magazine collections have moved online (OverDrive has finally made them accessible in the easiest way), there are still readers who enjoy reading short fiction in print. 

Today, I would like to argue for those of you who work with leisure readers to consider looking into adding some print literary magazine to you fiction collections--  not magazine collections. There are still some great literary journals out there, introducing new voices, printing stories by well known writers, and continuing to make the format relevant to a larger swath of leisure readers.

Now, I realize this is outside the norm of how we shelve our collections. Normally you would not have a literary magazine interfiled with fiction, but I would argue that if we have any of the "Best American" anthologies in our fiction collection, shelved by title of the series-- and we all do-- then we can also add literary magazines.

You will get push back just because this is not how regularly do things. This can be combatted with the argument above (comparing these two this "best of" anthologies) and by explaining that since we do not have a centralized place where magazines are kept anymore, we are no longer serving these readers adequately.  

But another argument  you may come up against is the physical product's incompatibility with our fiction shelving. This is fair. My advice to that criticism is to carve out a smaller section within your collections for literary magazine, much like we did with our larger magazine collections. It could even be a small area of shelving in the middle of your fiction collection so that readers can stumble upon it when browsing. Or, if you have enough money and space, you can buy some specific shelving and give literary magazine a corner to themselves. But if none of this will work, you can also limit yourself to literary magazines like The Common, an award winning literary magazine, which comes in a bound paperback format that can fit easily on your existing shelves.

Okay, Becky, you convinced me to give this a try. Where should I start? 

Great question. I personally subscribe to The Common and Southwest Review. In the past I have subscribed to Granta and Ploughshares. These are a good general, literary fiction focused places to start. But I would also explore genre options for the more popular genres in your collections. A great way to identify those journals is to look in the credits of your genre based, "Best Fiction of the Year" anthologies. Where are those stories being published? Are there print magazine options that pop up over and over again? Add one and give it a try.

Or you can take a look at this Lit Hub article from January entitled: Some guy ranked all of the lit journals you've ever heard of (and the other ones, too). This one is helpful to a point and a little tongue in cheek, but worth a look. More useful is Lit Hub's tag for anytime they have talked about Literary Journals.

Start small and add one or two. Promote them. Put them on display, add them to staff picks, post them in your online spaces. Give them a chance to connect with potential readers, ask for feedback, and see how it goes. I would even go so far as to put a book mark in every lit magazine issue asking for feedback. Write something at the top about how this is a new addition to the collection and we'd love to hear your feedback when you return it. Leave space for them to write a response. 

Again, I suggest straying with The Common-- it is published at my alma matter, I am a subscriber, it's focus is on fiction and nonfiction, the writers come from a wide range of identities and perspectives, it is the size of a paperback, and, in the interest of full disclosure, my daughter has recently joined the staff.

If you give this a try, reach out and let me know how it went.