There’s been a lot of discussion on Twitter lately on a lot of different things re. ARCs, positive reviews, book bloggers, and their intentions when picking up books to review so I thought I would add my tuppence to it.

I, like most of the bloggers I chat with and follow, buy most of the books I review, the vast majority of them in fact. We don’t blog or review books for the free books, in fact we seem to do it as a bit of a compulsion and our sheer love of books.

I do love getting ARCs though and I only ever request (as do the majority of bloggers I’ve talked to) books I’m determined to read and review before the book is released and to fulfil all the requirements of the author/publisher in that respect. So far this year I have read all the ARCs before their release date.

My review policy though sometimes means I won’t review the book as I only give positive reviews when I do write one. If I’ve DNFed the book, or given it a low rating at Goodreads I won’t review it. Though every book I read does get a rating at Goodreads I really don’t promote that side too much as books are a very personal thing and books I didn’t like others may love and vice versa.

So if you don’t see a review of the ARC you sent me before the book is published it has probably fallen foul of me not actually liking the book and rather than write a negative review, I rate it and move on. This lets others who have loved it to fill the space and shout about it.

I would rather be shouting to the rooftops about the books I have loved though and will get those reviews out to anywhere that will take them to help give those books the publicity I believe they deserve.

I do realise that physical ARCs are an expensive product, so maybe easier access to eARCs (I only recently discovered NetGalley) would help bloggers to review wider.

It just seemed as though bloggers had been targeted once more as the villains of the piece where all the bloggers I know blog for the love of books and love of the writers and want to support the industry in any way they can.

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