New Submission Guidelines
For Authors & Publishers
Review Submission Process
Publishers and authors submitting titles for review should first email a brief description of each title offered, including its genre, intended audience, and what the book is about. Heartland values do play a role in our selection process.
We prefer to not review the following types of books:
* Victim and Recovery Books
* Religious books
* Meta-physical, New Age, and Occultic books
* Books which contain too graphic sexual scenes, regardless of gender
* Books that are too limited in their regionality.
* EBooks--our primary target audiences are libraries and independent bookstores. Neither are interested in ebooks, so we don't review them.
We cannot review or edit POETRY because we have no one trained in that area--especially free verse. The only exception to this is with rhyming children's books.
We will ask to see those books we feel might work for us; however, there is no guarantee they will be reviewed. That decision depends on the quality of the book and the need to keep our newsletter well-rounded.
To query us with your book description, please send an email to:
Send review titles to:
Heartland Reviews
410 Delaware Street
Leavenworth, KS 66048
(913) 772-8253
Our Review Procedure
Once we have accepted a book for submission, please send your book and a check ($47 for a children's picture book and $247 for all others) to Heartland Reviews. Once it arrives, if it does not make it through our selection process, we will return your check but not the book.
We highly recommend you use the post office's new tracking feature. It is well worth the investment of a few extra cents since about 2% of the books sent to us never make it.
For your information, this is what happens to the books we receive:
1. Book arrives and is logged in; I personally glance over the book and place it in a box of like genre.
2. I go through genre boxes for books I personally review, keeping in mind a balance for our newsletter.
3. I commence to read a book. If it is written poorly with many problems (see our editorial services page at our website www.heartlandreviews.com for a listing of common problems), we regretfully notify the author/publisher that we won't be reviewing the book (writing those letters is a painful chore). If a book doesn't get reviewed, it probably won't sell in a bookstore either. Poorly edited books are especially vulnerable to this fate. Your check for a review will be returned to you, but the book will be donated to a domestic violence shelter or to our troops overseas.
5. As I read, I note any problems. Upon finishing, I use our rubrics as guidelines for scoring the book in a wide variety of areas. A numerical score is assigned, which becomes a percentage, which becomes a heart score.
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6. I write the review, including what the book is about and what the author did well. Those books attaining three hearts or higher go into our newsletter. For those books my wife or I personally review, the review is sent to Dan Cullen of BookSense as an Indy Bound Recommended Read because we own an independent bookstore.
7. We send the review to the author/publisher via email for their use as they see fit. The real value of a review is as a book cover blurb or for use in marketing.
8. If authors/publishers want to see a detailed critique of their book (including the rubric scores), they may have that for a fee of $297.
