It's time for bloggiesta! If you don't know what that is, head on over
here to learn more and
here to see what other challenges are out there!
Today I'm challenging you to work on your
policies!
Policies are a very important part of book blogging, and I'll admit that my policies right now are not very rigorous/don't exist. So I'll be doing this challenge right along with you. The bottom of this post describes the details of the challenge, including a giveaway! But first let's talk about two different types of policies:
Review Policies
This is the big kahuna. As a book blogger you need to make it very clear what authors/publishers/anyone should expect from your reviews. I've been doing some research, and I've found some questions (both essential and non-essential) that should be answered in a review policy:
Essential Questions to Answer:
- What kind of books do you review? Are you purely YA? Adult? Audiobooks?
- What kind of books do you explicitly NOT review? Self-published? E-books? Paranormal romance?
- How quickly do you promise to read the book? Sometimes we have a backlog, and you don't want to get requests that say REVIEW MY BOOK NOW!! Because you just won't be able to keep up.
- Do you guarantee a review for every book you read? Sometimes you really don't like a book, are you still going to review it? Sometimes you just don't feel like reviewing a book. That needs to be made clear.
- How should people contact you? Be sure to make your e-mail address/physical address VERY CLEARLY VISIBLE. I hate digging for e-mails. I also personally dislike it when people do [at] and [dot]. I use the actual @ and . on my policy currently, and I haven't noticed any increase in spam.
And here are a few questions that you
can answer, but I don't feel are a must.
Optional Questions to Answer:
- Will you participate in tours/extra activities without reading the book? I won't. Because what happens if you participate in the tour and then when you eventually do read the book you hate it?
- What are your statistics? Usually if a publisher is reading your policy then they already care enough about you to send you a message, but this could help! I suggest using Google Analytics
- Where do you post reviews? Just on your blog? Or are you on GoodReads? Amazon? B&N?
- Who will you take requests from? Authors? Agents? Publishers? Dealing with each is a very different experience. Which do you prefer?
Contest Policies
Contest policies are a way to cover yourself. If you make yourself very clear, then chances are you'll be able to back yourself up if anyone ever has a complaint about your contests. Always good to have support in your back-pocket. Here are some questions that you could possibly answer in a contest policy:
- Do you have age restrictions? It can be dangerous to let those under 13 (or even 18) win something on your blog because you can’t guarantee parent permission.
- What about location restrictions? I think sometimes it’s best to say “All contests open to US residents only unless otherwise stated”
- What do you claim the right to do as blogger? Eliminate entries/entrants? End contest early? End contest all together?
- Do you collect addresses or e-mails? Consider adding in a privacy policy
- How will you contact the winners? Sometimes I'm bugged when I realize that I was supposed to go check the winners post and contact the blog author. I thought they were going to contact me!
- How long do they have to respond with an address? And what happens if they don’t meet the deadline?
So there you go! Some coolio guidelines (not rules. I'm no expert) on how to create a privacy and contest policy. So what's my challenge to you? I bet you can guess:
My challenge to you:
Write a Review Policy for your Blog
or
Review your current Review Policy
(pun intended)
I also offer you a secondary challenge to write a contest policy. They can really be helpful! And to motivate you, I'm having a giveaway!
To those who complete my challenge you will earn entries toward winning a SIGNED hardcover of The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan, a book which I ADORE! Or if you're international, you can get a copy through TBD! You can enter using the rafflecopter, but not quite yet! Remember, Bloggiesta runs March 30th through April 1st (no joke! You just have the weekend!). It's three days of non-stop blog-awesomeness-ing!
So your challenge for the rest of today is to mull over the questions I posed, and then tomorrow get to writing your policies! I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with. Come back tomorrow to see my bloggiesta to-do list and link to yours! This is so exciting!
