Review Policy

Interested in having Layers of Thought do a review for a book or more?

Review requests are welcome and greatly appreciated. We also do book tours, author posts, select interviews, book excerpts, and love giveaways which are included in blog hops when appropriate. (We also occasionally review music, movies, and other stuff too.)

To be considered please email Shellie at - layersofthought(at)gmail(dot)com with your request. Thank you!

We like to consider our blog a recommendation site and therefore only accept books that one of us is likely to enjoy. Because we post only our positive thoughts we do not guarantee reviews for every book. Each book, when accepted, will be included in our Incoming Books feature, and when reviewed will be given our constructive opinions within its post.

Important note on ebooks, self published, and vanity presses:

Our apologies, at this time we are NOT accepting ebooks for review, due to many incompatibilities with my first generation nook, and are also NOT accepting self published and or vanity press books for review due to an overwhelming response.  Please check back at a later date since this may change.

I also want to note that I cannot respond to all requests for review, and I apologize. Please remember that this blog is for fun and we both have lives beyond it.

Types of books that we review:

Shellie: My tastes are eclectic. With a favorite genre of Speculative Fiction, I enjoy reading Horror,  Science Fiction, Magical Realism, Historical Fantasy, Steam Punk, and select Fantasy - especially those including Myth, Legend, Fairy Tales, Folklore and recently Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy. I however tend to stay away from Complex Epic Fantasy (as does John.)

I also enjoy Literary Fiction, love Translations, Historical Fiction, GLBT, Mysteries and Thrillers, and like some Nonfiction; where my tastes vary from Memoirs, to Comedy, Science and more. I will also read select Young Adult or Children's books included within the genres listed here. I also listen to a lot of Audio Books.

We do not read or enjoy Christian Literature, many genres of Romance, most Chic Lit or books about politics which have a specific partisan association.

John: He enjoys Speculative Fiction too, specifically science based or Hard Sci Fi. Also Historical Fiction and survival oriented Memoirs and Biographies are his preferences. His dislikes are like mine, tending toward more intellectual and Literary style books rather than action based plots. Being a Music buff, anything related to this art form is greatly appreciated.

John will NOT read on an ereader so if you would like a review from him we will need a "real copy".

(For further personal and professional information our profiles are linked on each of our names in the above sections or link to the about Layers of Thought page.)


Blog statistics as of December 6, 2012:

Many of these are taken from Google Analytics:  We currently have 1182 Google Friend Connect followers, 747 Goodreads friends, 500 friends on Face Book - where the blog feed is also updated, as well as 1090 aggregate feed readers. In addition 1164 twitter followers, and several other social media accounts with a growing numbers of followers where I update links - Pinterest and Google+.

We have had 192,658 total page views, had 10,664 page views last month from 40 differing countries, but mostly from the US, UK, and Canada. Commenting varies from post to post and can range from zero to 20.  If you have any other specific data which you are interested in please let me know.

How we rate books:

Although we would prefer to not rate books - for the sake of clarity we use the "Five Star System".

Five Star System ~ Key
Five Stars: This book was perhaps life changing or transformational and is a rare book indeed!
Four Stars: Loved it!
Three Stars: Liked it.
Two Stars: It was okay.
One Star: Did not like it and did not finish it.
Thank you for taking the time to read our policy. We look forward to your requests and correspondence.

Partially Updated - February 18, 2013