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Reviews at Monster Librarian

Monster Librarian reviews horror, paranormal, and supernatural fiction for all ages, and scary stories for kids. I am getting a lot of requests for reviews of police procedurals, mystery novels, and political thrillers. I mean, it is becoming overwhelming. I had a reviewer ask me what had been sent to me lately and it includes a big stack of these. I’m willing to stretch the boundaries of genre a bit; as a children’s librarian, I know they are fluid. But our mission is to promote horror fiction and its close relations for librarians and readers, and through that, to engage people in reading.

Send us  horror, please!

 

 

 

Musings: 14 Years of Monster Librarian

Well, Monster Librarian has been in business now for 14 years. My husband Dylan started it up just about three months after our first child was born– he was an ambitious guy, starting a review site with a three-month-old in the house.

We have never been a huge money-maker, and while we are an Amazon affiliate, Amazon has not paid out to us since he died in April of 2014. Since then Monster Librarian has been running on the money that was in our business bank account and contributions from a very few individuals. This year I asked for help with funding for our hosting and mailing fees, and several people came forward to make that happen.

Thank you so much to Colleen Wanglund, Laurel Hightower, Warehouse Cafe, Darryl Brown, Caroline Cooney, and Michele Lee. I hope we will be able to count on the support of our readers and followers this year, as well.

So we are moving onward into another year! It will be interesting to see what that brings. I have a couple of predictions, based on trends I’ve been seeing and recent events: a return to the classics of the genre (and of course, continued critiques); more horror on audio, both as audiobooks and podcasts; and more #ownvoices titles. I also expect to see some debate over defining horror romance, although maybe I’m wrong about that one.

Many thanks to my fantastic reviewers: Lizzy Walker, David Simms, Murray Samuelson, Aaron Fletcher, Benjamin Franz, and Robert D. Yee, and to the hardworking and talented Michele Lee, who not only reviews for Monster Librarian but edits our companion blog on YA horror, Reading Bites.

I’m looking forward to seeing what interesting things come out of the horror genre in 2020, so stick with us and we’ll do that together!

 

 

Clarification of Our Review Policy

I’ve recently received a number of emails from authors offering to pay a fee for Monster Librarian to review their book.

I know I’ve said that Monster Librarian struggles financially, but it is an important part of our mission that our reviews, positive or negative, are honest. We do receive many requests for review, and sometimes advance copies of books for review, but we do not profit financially from the reviews we publish, unless Amazon miraculously decides to credit us for a reader’s purchase of one of the books, something which hasn’t happened since 2014. You, our readers, deserve an honest appraisal before purchasing a book for your library or personal collection.  That is what we aim to do.

We do not accept payment for reviews or for advertising.

I’ve also received requests from people offering to write guest posts for the blog. We will sometimes publish those if they are on topic, but understand that all writers and reviewers for Monster Librarian are volunteers.

For further information on submitting reviews, blog posts, and advertising, please visit our Author FAQ.