Welcome to Dear Author. We review romances and books in other genres and talk about and post about topics surrounding romance.
If you are a first-time visitor or even a long-time one, you might not know about all the content available at Dear Author. This page is here to help highlight some of our features. To make it easier, we’ve designed this page in a question-and-answer format. If there is a question we haven’t answered, contact us and we’ll do our best to respond.
About Dear Author
Jane started the blog in April 2006 with her friend, Jayne. These two provide most of the content. We also have a staff of reviewers including the following who provide weekly or monthly content. Clicking on the links will lead you to an archive of their reviews.
- Jayne writes reviews mainly for romances, women’s fiction, non-fiction, science, SciFi, children’s books, mysteries, and some movies.
- Janine edits our conversation posts and reviews books in a variety of genres including fantasy, romance, YA and UF/PNR, often with queer elements.
- Jennie reviews domestic noir thrillers, classics, general fiction and nonfiction, along with the occasional paranormal romance, YA fantasy, dystopian, or historical romance.
- Kaetrin reviews a variety of books with a strong focus on contemporary romance.
- Sirius posts reviews of m/m novels mainly in romance, PNR/UF, SFF and mystery.
- Layla contributes reviews of historical romance, fantasy, YA fantasy, and occasionally a movie or television show.
Other contributors also wrote for us in the past and we appreciate their contributions to the site.
Q: How do you explain your review grades?
Our review grades are our own opinions, obviously, and therefore fraught with subjectivity. You may or may not agree with our opinions, our grades, or anything else. We’d love for you to comment on the reviews and tell us where we you think went wrong or what we got right. If you are wondering if there is any objectivity in a review, we can only provide you with the definitions below:
- A: I loved it and would cry if someone took it from my library. I would need lots of chocolate to get over its loss.
- B: It’s good and I would buy it again, given the chance.
- C: Eh. Not bad but I probably would never read it again.
- D: I want my money back.
- F: I want my money back and repayment for the time wasted reading it.
- DNF: Does this really need an explanation?
Q: Why do you write your reviews in the form of a letter?
When Jayne and Jane first started the blog, they were going to write the letters to readers, like the ones in the front of some books, but then saw that dearreader.com was taken. When we checked, dearauthor.com was not. So that is how we came to write reviews in the form of letters to authors. The reviews, though, are really for readers. We don’t presume that an author would find our reviews helpful or useful because by the time the book gets to us, the book is done, published. The reviews are meant to be conversation starters and are not intended to be read as literal letters written to the author.
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The contents of Dear Author
Q: What does Dear Author offer?
Besides our reviews, some features of interest are:
- Our reading list posts contain mini-reviews of the books we’ve read (and occasionally movies we’ve watched) recently.
- Every month we have an open thread for readers where you can ask for recommendations, tell us what you’ve been reading, or vent about things that annoy you.
- We are an opinionated group and every so often we have conversations about genre-related topics. We’ve also posted letters of opinion about romance, the romance genre, publishing, and anything related to one of those subjects.
- From the inception of this blog we have been avid ebook fans. We have a whole category devoted to all things ebooks. Further, at the end of every review post we provide links to the stores where you can buy the book in digital format. Using them is a great way to support the blog, if you want to do that.
- We also interview some of our favorite authors.
The above are some of our most common post categories but our navigation bar has drop-down menus that include links to some of the other categories of posts we have here as well.
Q: How many reviews do you post and how often?
We post approximately six reviews per week. We try to post a review of a book every weekday.
Q: I need a recommendation for a book!
You can find our A and A- reviews here. The If You Like series features readers recommending books to other readers that fit a particular theme. If you like a theme that we haven’t covered and want to write a post about it, contact us.
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Find your way around Dear Author
Q: How do I navigate around the site?
We have a search box and an Advanced Search page. We also try to provide tags and categories to make navigation easier. Don’t forget the navigation bar with its category links.
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Make contributions to Dear Author
Q: How can I contribute to Dear Author?
Please feel welcome to voice your opinion in the comments or contact us.
Comments are your, and other readers of the blog, contributions to a topic. We want to hear from you and generally have few rules about commenting. We ask you to be polite and considerate.
Q: I’ve got something I would like to see profiled on Dear Author. How can I make that happen?
Send us an email. You can make a suggestion, offer up interview ideas or even write your own guest opinion. Of course, we may not be able to post every idea you have, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to contact us.
Q: Do I need to register or open an account?
No, you simply need to enter a name and an email account. The email account tells our website that you are a real person and not a spam bot.
Q: How do I subscribe to a comment thread?
At the bottom of the thread is a comment box and underneath is a checkbox to follow a particular comment thread. You do not need to leave a comment to subscribe.
Q: Will you delete a comment?
If asked, we will delete a comment of yours so long as it does not impair or impede the flow of conversation. In other words, if you leave a comment you are not happy about but several others have incorporated it into their responses, we are not likely to delete it.
Q: Do you edit comments?
If the comment contains links to pirated work or if the comment would invade someone’s privacy, we will edit or delete the inappropriate information (in the latter case at our discretion). Our commenting policy is described in more detail here.
Q: Can I get banned from commenting?
From time to time, commenters will abuse the privilege of commenting and if we feel that it impairs others from enjoying the blog, we will place your comments in moderation. We may also ask that you refrain from commenting in the future.
Contact us
Q: How do I contact you?
Please email Jayne directly at DA-ReviewQuery @ outlook.com. She will try to answer within three days, but understand that we don’t respond to all submissions. If you are an author and would like to send us a review query, submit it at the same email address.
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