Authors and Publishers

If your book is self-published you'll find all that you need to know by clicking here.

Here at Bookbag Towers we love to receive books from you and we'll make the ones we like the best available to our reviewers on our virtual shelves. We don't guarantee to review them but we do cover an excellent proportion of what we are sent. The trick is to send books that will appeal to at least one of our panel of fifty reviewers! Our reviewers are able to make their own choices from our "virtual shelves". We've found that better - and usually more positive - reviews are forthcoming this way. If nobody from our panel has asked to review your book after four weeks, we withdraw it from the shelves and it won't be covered. If we do cover your book please remember that if we don't like it, we'll say so.

We try to review as many of the books we receive as we can, but we cannot cover everything. Books are sent at your own risk. Once sent the book becomes the property of The Bookbag.

If this arrangement suits you, could we ask you to think about a few things before you actually send us any books?

Please make certain that there is stock of your book available at Amazon. We will incur expense in producing and uploading a review of your book and we need to see a possibility of covering those expenses through affiliate sales.

Our reviewers choose their books via a link to the book on Amazon. Please make certain that there is an image of the book available along with a clear synopsis as we've found that this encourages our reviewers to request the books. Also – if the book doesn’t appeal to a reviewer who is being sent the book it's probably going to be harder to persuade a reader to spend money on the title. Most of the money which keeps Bookbag running comes from the sale of books through Amazon, so it's in your interest and ours that the books look as inviting as possible. If a book does not yet have a listing on Amazon please delay sending until the listing is live.

We prefer to have books at the very least a month in advance of publication. Because of the number of books we receive we have to be selective about which books go on the shelves if they arrive after publication. We'd also appreciate if you could check with us if you're planing to send the manuscript on A4 paper. This is expensive to post to reviewers and difficult to handle. Also - we don't accept proofs after the date of publication.

We're reluctant to cover subsequent books in a series if we haven't covered (and loved) the first. It's unfair on the author if we review a book when we don't know what's happened before - and it's not that much fun for the reviewer, either.

Most of the books which we receive are sent out to our reviewers so it really does help if you send us a press sheet along with the book. We don’t need anything fancy (and we don't need covering letters or want copies of other reviews) but you might be surprised at how often we’ve found ourselves lacking a clear statement of the title of the book, the correct name of the author and how many pages there are when we come to upload a review. Surfers are more likely to find reviews of your book if we have all the correct details – and please don’t forget the ISBN!

If the authors are available for interview or to write a feature, do please consider including this on the press sheet.

If you are self-publishing (this includes any situation where an author has made any contribution towards the costs of publication), we will cover your book with a full and honest review in the same way as any other book. However, we are a small outfit and we select books very carefully; reviewer time is precious and postage costs are high. For this reason, we make a small charge to cover time and costs when we take on a self-published book for review. We know that publishing a book is special and we'd like to help you to enjoy it as much as possible. You'll find all the details here.

If you’re happy to take your chances on the shelves please drop us a line and tell us that you've read and understood the basis on which we accept books. We'll then give you details of how the book should be sent. Please don't send unsolicited digital copies.

You might also be interested in Starting a Blog to Promote Your Books.