Review policy

Contact

Email theakersquarterlyfiction@gmail.com. Feel free to send ebooks without asking first. We're happy to receive pretty much anything you want to send us for review, though of course we can't promise to review everything.

What we review

Novels, novellas, single-author collections, multi-author anthologies, chapbooks, magazines, comics and graphic novels, audiobooks, audio plays, films, music, television programmes, videogames, and, basically, anything else with a fantastical element.

Genres covered

Science fiction, fantasy, science fantasy, fantastical horror, and related genres.

Preferred formats

We only review ebooks now (epub and mobi are both fine), except for comics and art books (best as pdfs). Fine to email book files or the download links to us without query.

If you want to gift a review copy via Kindle, Comixology, Audible, etc the email address to use is stephen.theaker@gmail.com.

Self-published books

We don't mind being sent self-published books, but if they're more than a few hundred pages long, and by an author we haven't read before, we're unlikely to get around to reviewing them. A few other pointers.

Warning

It's only fair to mention that a handful of writers and publishers have been terribly unhappy with our reviews of their work. We can be quite blunt.

Other advice

Black Static's book reviewer Peter Tennant has offered some excellent advice on submitting work for review. In particular check out points eight, nine and ten.

Reviewers

Our in-house reviewer is Stephen Theaker, with Douglas Ogurek and Rafe McGregor being our most regular contributors, though they tend to focus on film, television and books they've bought themselves. Other writers to have contributed to the magazine's review section include Howard Watts, Steve Redwood and John Greenwood.

Books received

There should be a Google Sheets widget below showing books we have recently received for review. If there's one you'd fancy reviewing for us, and a review hasn't appeared on the blog yet, get in touch via theakersquarterlyfiction@gmail.com to ask about it.








Statistics

We would love to receive more books for review from female authors and editors:



Here's a chart showing the m/f balance of what we've reviewed since June 2015.



Most of what we're sent doesn't get reviewed (which is one reason we discourage sending print copies):


Plus, we tend to review more things we've bought than things sent in for review. Here's a chart showing the sources of our review copies: