Review Policy

Our Reviews

We are committed to writing clear, honest reviews. We are both good Midwestern women, so expect the brutal honesty to be tinged with required nice-ness. We’ll always try and find something positive to say about every book we review. Our duty is to our readers first, however, and we will give them an honest review of the book at hand according to our own personal evaluation. At the end of the day, we are librarians and we will try to abide by Ranganathan’s Laws of Library Science: “Every reader his/her book” and “Every book its reader.”

So, too, as librarians, most of the books we review will be borrowed from our local library. We also review books we have purchased or borrowed from friends. We will always include a note if we are reviewing a book/ARC that we have received from a publisher or an author.

For Authors and Publishers

We are currently accepting e- and print-ARCs, -galleys, and -books for review consideration from authors, publicists, etc. We will not review requests submitted via comments nor Goodreads. We do not commit to review every submission we receive, nor do we commit to respond to every request, especially if there are many. As mentioned above, we do not commit to posting only positive reviews. We do not review books in the order we receive them. We are both reading for the love of reading and certain books will appeal at different times. With that in mind, we each have certain genres from which we are more likely to select.

Kate: horror, thrillers, and graphic novels

Serena: fantasy/science fiction, historical, mysteries

We both enjoy reading YA books as well as adult.

Mailing address:

The Library Ladies
16705 33rd Ave N.
Plymouth, MN 55447

Email address: thelibraryladiesmn@gmail.com

Please include the following information as applicable:

  • Title and author of the book
  • Cover image to use in the review
  • A short blurb/teaser about your book. Spoilers reduce your chance of being reviewed to about zero!
  • An excerpt, no longer than a chapter.
  • Let us know if you would be open to a giveaway. This will not affect whether or not we choose to review your book.

Privacy

All emails collected for our Reader’s Advisory segment will be used only in relevant communication between ourselves and the submitter. All information will be kept privately and will never be sold or shared with a third party.

For giveaways we sometimes will collect additional information from our readers, but only what is required in order to contact winners and send their prizes. All information gathered this way will also be kept privately and never sold or shared with a third party (unless the giveaway item is being provided by the author/publisher, in which case relevant information will be shared).

Guest Posting

We will always identify guest  posters on our blog. Guest posters receive no material or monetary compensation. For this reason, their work is entirely their own, and any guest post reflects its author’s views, and not necessarily those of the Library Ladies (thelibraryladies.com). They do not speak for us and we do not speak for them. We do not alter our guest posts without permission. It is our policy to always review guest posts before we approve them for publishing on our site.

Commenting Policies

We love comments on our blog and hope to encourage great conversations about books, reading, libraries, and all of the fun things we talk about on this blog. However, we want comments to be useful and respectful to all readers. Debate and conversation is encouraged, but we reserve the right to remove any comments from the site that we deem as harassing or trolling in nature. Please be kind to each other and remember Ranganathan’s Law: every book its reader.

We will also delete all comments that we view as spam or promotional in nature. We’re not advertising space, folks!

FTC Disclaimer

The Library Ladies purchase books for review on this site, review copies borrowed from the public library, but also receive free review copies from authors, publishers, and other third parties.

Full Disclaimer