Submission Guidelines
(as of January 23, 2024) -
1. To be considered for a book review, a book description (think Amazon.com or the back of the book), copy of book cover image (if available), AND excerpt of your book must be sent via email to books@urban-reviews.com. Please put the book description in the body of the email. You must submit at least a first chapter excerpt, but feel free to send the first 2 or 3 chapters if available. The excerpt must be a whole chapter, not a paragraph, and not one page. If a full chapter isn't received, then your submission will be rejected. An entire chapter is required so that we can get an accurate feel of the author's writing. If your book is accepted for review, we will email you of our interest and forward our mailing address. We will not send emails asking if the book has been sent or if you have received our initial email asking you to send the book. You will need to be responsible for any follow-ups with us in regards to the status of your book being mailed off and received by us. When submitting your excerpt for review consideration, please do not add books@urban-reviews.com email address to your own promotional mailing list and do not use this email address to send correspondence. This email address is for review submissions only. You may add radiah@urban-reviews.com or info@urban-reviews.com to your mailing lists or to send correspondence.
2. Once accepted, you must submit a review copy of your work, a PDF file, or gift a Kindle e-book copy for review (see E-BOOK GUIDELINES in bullet #9 below). A review copy can be an advanced reader copy or a final retail copy of your novel. If the book has editing issues, it will be reflected in the review as well as the rating for your book. Since we are now accepting PDF files for ebook reviews, we will no longer accept printed manuscripts for review purposes.
3. Any African-American Fiction is acceptable (this includes Contemporary, Christian/Inspirational, Street Lit, Sci-Fi/Speculative, Romance, Young Adult/Teen, Erotica, Mystery/Suspense, etc). ***NEW: We are now accepting submissions for non-fiction as well.***We also do not review poetry on our site. However, we do feature a Poetry section on the main page of the website each month at no cost. The section will feature the book cover of the poetry book, a brief description of the book or poet, and a link to the poet's website. If interested, simply send a short email to poetry@urban-reviews.com and we will let you know if we have chosen to spotlight you.
4. The Urban Reviews rating scale for book reviews are from 1 to 5 . Please be advised that ALL reviews will be posted on our site and on Amazon.com regardless of their rating.
5. ***New***Only books that have a page count of 50 pages or more will be considered for book reviews. We also do not accept requests to review an entire series all at one time. If you want sequels reviewed, you will have to wait until the first book has been reviewed and posted before we consider doing any follow-up books...no exceptions. There must be a direct link to a website/order page for someone to purchase a copy of your book. This includes (but is not limited to) Amazon.com, BN.com, or your own personal site.
6. There may be up to a SIX MONTH WAITING PERIOD for reviews, so inquire accordingly. Also, if your book is slated to be released in the future and you want to have a review the same month your book is released, the possibility of the waiting period being four months STILL applies.
7. Please be patient when it comes to reviewing your work. If it has been four months and we have not posted a review yet, feel free to send us an email to info@urban-reviews.com asking for status at that time.
8. All of the above is not meant to scare anyone off. Please feel free to contact us through email at info@urban-reviews.com (do not send book review requests to this address - refer to the above information for properly submitting book review requests. If chosen for review, we must have a JPEG, PNG or GIF copy of the book cover. We can resize it and host the picture on our site to accompany the review.
9. E-BOOK SUBMISSIONS: You can request to have your ebook reviewed, but it must be in PDF format (although we can convert Word documents to PDF if needed) or gifted as a Kindle e-book to info@urban-reviews.com. E-books follow the same submission process mentioned above and are subject to the same possibility of a 6-month waiting period. Since the E-book reviewers may pass on reading your e-book, you must let us know at the time of your original submission request if you want to be considered for review by our reviewers who can only read physical copies. Upon acceptance, we will let you know if a printed version or an e-book version will be needed. Do not send the entire e-book until it has been accepted.
To recap, please send the following to books@urban-reviews.com no earlier than 4 months prior to the release date of your book:
-Book Description (think Amazon.com or description on back of book - please put in body of email)
-A minimum of first chapter excerpt (but feel free to send up to 3 chapters)
-Book Cover image (if available)
-Note if book is available on Amazon.com (if not available on Amazon.com, then include a link where it can be ordered or pre-ordered)
-Whether you are able to send a printed retail copy of the book or a PDF e-book version for consideration by our E-book reviewers. (If you want both considered, please mention in your email)
Any Questions? Email us at info@Urban-Reviews.com. We try to answer ALL emails in a timely fashion. If more than three weeks has passed with no response, please feel free to email us again.
