Reviews
- Most of our reviews are done by our staff and we prefer books be provided, but will sometimes review from PDFs. Ask first.
- We only review books published during the current or previous calendar year.
- Not interested in negative reviews, however, discussion of a manuscript's strengths and weaknesses might include negative aspects.
- Title information must be included with submission along with the following: author name, publisher, publication date, ISBN, price, page count.
- Must have an ISBN to be considered for review.
- Review writer's name and PHYSICAL address must appear on submitted work. We will not read a submission without both.
Our focus is on publishers and authors who don't get much attention from mainstream media. Since there are many of those and we like to (at least) mention as many as possible, review lengths are important and specific to genre:
- Poetry Chapbooks (52 pages or less): up to 350 words.
- Full-length Poetry or Short Fiction Collections: up to 600 words
- Novels, Nonfiction : up to 800 words
The goal of reviews featured in The Main Street Rag:
Connecting author to audience. If you can't think of an audience that would enjoy reading a particular book, then we would not be interested in publishing your review. We also don't run promo material disguised as review. If you have a relationship with the author or press, we want to know what that relationship is prior to considering the review and will scrutinize the review carefully for objectivity.
