Showing posts with label Euro Crime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Euro Crime. Show all posts

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Euro Crime Review Policy - Updated

Here is an update to the review policy at Euro Crime. The main change is to how we receive and request review books (see background info*).

Euro Crime is dedicated to the promotion of British and European crime writers, be it terms of bibliographies and upcoming releases or the weekly review selection.

I do receive emails about books that fall outside the remit of Euro Crime from time to time so I thought I'd try and lay out what is and isn't likely to be reviewed.

Qualifies

1) If the author is British/European (irrespective or where the book is set) eg Lee Child, Ann Cleeves, Martin Edwards, Matt Hilton.

2) If the setting is British/European (irrespective of where the author was born) eg Elizabeth George, Donna Leon

3) If the book is translated (irrespective of whether it's European or not - this category is of particular interest to me as I'm currently one of the judges for the CWA International Dagger.) eg Deon Meyer.

Unabridged talking books and e-books in the above categories can be considered on a case by case basis as not all reviewers have or want the relevant technology.

Doesn't Qualify

1) If both the author and setting is not British/European and is not a translation eg. Daniel Depp, Tess Gerritson

2) True-Crime.

Wiggle Room

Books from the smaller book markets eg Australia, Africa will be considered on a case by case basis. eg Peter Temple, Michael Stanley. Please email me before sending the book: karen at eurocrime dot co dot uk.
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Background Info

I would prefer to direct review copies from publishers straight to the review team. However where books come to me first I send out an email, roughly weekly, listing books received and then send on the books requested to the reviewers. This is a bit costly and time-consuming and delays the books getting to the hands of the reviewer, however perhaps with the rise in popularity of e-readers, the availability of e-galleys will increase.

*For the past year I have not been sending out review copies to the review team. I wrote to the publishers and asked them not to send me any books with the exception of translated titles as that gives me a head start in my International Dagger reading. What I do now is this: as publishers' catalogues become available for publications due Jan-June and July-Dec I go through them, list the relevant titles and send this list to the review team. The review team then choose which titles they'd like to review, I allocate them equitably and email the publisher with a list of books and addresses. This approach is working quite well with some publishers and not so well with others which is why some publishers are getting their books reviewed and others are not.

The bottom line is: please do not send me unsolicited books (with the exception of translated titles) as these will not get reviewed however if you drop me an email, it is very likely I can find a reviewer who will be pleased to review it.

Euro Crime tries to review as many books as possible, nine new reviews are uploaded most weekends. Please note that the reviewers are crime fiction enthusiasts offering their honest opinions and that a review cannot be guaranteed. No payment is received for reviews.

I never sell arcs or review copies, any spare finished copies are added to my library's collection or given to charity shops.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Euro Crime - Mystery Month

It's mystery month over at Booklist Online and they've been running series of interviews with fans of the genre and today they've put up an interview with me about Euro Crime, the blog, the website and cats...

Read the article here and check out the whole month's worth and see how many familiar faces you spot and how many more you should be reading!

Monday, February 21, 2011

Euro Crime Review Policy

Euro Crime is dedicated to the promotion of British and European crime writers, be it terms of bibliographies and upcoming releases or the weekly review selection.

I do receive books that fall outside the remit of Euro Crime from time to time so I thought I'd try and lay out what is and isn't likely to be reviewed.

Qualifies

1) If the author is British/European (irrespective or where the book is set) eg Lee Child, Ann Cleeves, Martin Edwards, Matt Hilton.

2) If the setting is British/European (irrespective of where the author was born) eg Elizabeth George, Donna Leon

3) If the book is translated (irrespective of whether it's European or not - this category is of particular interest to me as I'm currently one of the judges for the CWA International Dagger.) eg Deon Meyer.

Unabridged talking books and e-books in the above categories can be considered on a case by case basis as not all reviewers have or want the relevant technology.

Doesn't Qualify

1) If both the author and setting is not British/European and is not a translation eg. Daniel Depp, Tess Gerritson

2) True-Crime.

Wiggle Room

Books from the smaller book markets eg Australia, Africa will be considered on a case by case basis. eg Peter Temple, Michael Stanley. Please email me before sending the book: karen at eurocrime dot co dot uk.
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Background Info

I would prefer to direct review copies from publishers straight to the review team. However where books come to me first I send out an email, roughly weekly, listing books received and then send on the books requested to the reviewers. This is a bit costly* and time-consuming and delays the books getting to the hands of the reviewer, however perhaps with the rise in popularity of e-readers, the availability of e-galleys will increase.

*I am a library assistant so am not terribly confident of having a job in a year's time, in which case this policy will have to be reviewed.

We try and review as many books as possible, six new reviews are uploaded most weekends. Please note that the reviewers are crime fiction enthusiasts offering their honest opinions and that a review cannot be guaranteed.

I never sell arcs or review copies, any spare finished copies are added to my library's collection or given to charity shops.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Ideas wanted for reorganising Euro Crime website

When I started Euro Crime, the core information I wanted to relay was authors plus their titles in order - a UK version of the lamented bookbrowser site and the award-winning Stop You're Killing Me Site - with a British and European focus and which listed all books that had been published by an author irrespective of where they had been published. For example, with the advent of the bookdepository website with free postage (to anywhere), fans outside of the UK no longer have to wait for UK books to be published in their country of residence.

Bookbrowser used to link to reviews, which I thought a good idea and when I started Euro Crime I only had myself as a reviewer so I approached Barbara F who owns the reviewingtheevidence (RTE) review site and was granted permission to link to their reviews as well. (There's now a stable of reviewers for EC but we continue to link to RTE's reviews.)

On Euro Crime, the Books link takes you to authors and their bibliographies. On an author's bibliography page, there is a link to the author's website (if available) plus links to any reviews written by Euro Crime or RTE.

The Reviews page is a summary of all the reviews written by Euro Crime reviewers. This is updated weekly with the new ones at the top of the page, this year's below that and then the rest are listed further down the page under 'review archive'.

The Authors page is a straight list of all the author's websites that I've come across.

Another useful by-product of the database is the New Releases page which lists what's coming out in the next year or so.

The other pages, I update when I get time: awards, news, events, shops, discussions and links.

What I'm looking for is advice and tips on how site visitors can find the information they require more easily. I think I need to rename and reorder the list on the sidebar but does something more fundamental need to be done?

Monday, September 11, 2006

Euro Crime Website - quickie post

Well, the launch of the new version hasn't gone too badly. One problem I've got is with the web forwarding system I've been using. The frames have been removed from the website but with the web hosting sevrice I've been using you couldn't tell! Every page was called www.weatherwax.co.uk. To get round this I've changed the setting, but this means that when you type in www.weatherwax.co.uk it now displays the actual underlying address of www.weatherwax.eclipse.co.uk/crime/ but at least when you click on the other pages the correct path is displayed eg www.weatherwax.eclipse.co.uk/crime/news.html. Not quite what I had in mind however the forthcoming v2.1 will address this :-). I've splashed out on the eurocrime.co.uk domain!! Once a few minor changes have been made I'll be launching that and putting up a redirection from weatherwax.co.uk.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

What's in a Name?

Eagle eyed viewers may have noticed, I've slipped in an 'Other' in the subtitle of this blog. As Petrona's blog rightly pointed out Britain is part of Europe. When I first started the Euro Crime website, it began with translated crime from Europe and British authors. However when I referred to it as Euro Crime for the European Crime Scene - I wanted a snappy tagline (best I could come up with!) - the fact that it covered Britain too, became a bit lost. So I then said it was for the British and European Crime Scene - a belt and braces approach, if slightly teeth grinding for those of us who see Britain as part of Europe. I haven't come up with a more elegant snappy summary yet. British and other European Countries Crime Scene doesn't quite scan so maybe I need to come up with something completely different. Ideas welcomed...

Monday, August 07, 2006

What's this blog for?

The Euro Crime blog will be for highlighting what's new on the Euro Crime website but also I want to include bits of news that don't fit on the website and pick out those books which are less mainstream (crime naturally) but have had a good review in the press. I'll be including what I'm reading at various times and hopefully accompanied by a choice quote. Cats in Crime may also figure....