Taking stock – Examining reviews by publisher

Regular readers will be familiar with my gender audits and so this time I thought I would examine reviews by publisher to get a handle on how my reviews are weighted.

Now the following list only goes back over the last 2.5 years.  It lists publishers and self publishers and should give you a broad picture of the work I have reviewed.  In makes no differentiation between review copies and books that I selected/bought myself, indeed it’s missing a number of books bought from TPP and Ticonderoga that languish on my TBR pile.

Publisher	2014	2013	2012	Total
Hachette/Orbit/Etc	5	9	16	30
Wizard’s Tower	1	1	0	2
Solaris	4	1	3	8
Interactive Press	1	0	0	1
Picaro	2	1	0	3
ARF	1	0	0	1
A&U	2	3	4	9
SALT	2	0	0	2
Shambala	1	0	0	1
Peggy Bright	1	1	2	4
Shane Kozycan	1	0	0	1
UQP	1	0	0	1
FableCroft	0	2	0	2
Twelfth Planet	0	2	6	8
Ticonderoga	0	2	0	2
Satalyte	0	1	0	1
Momentum	0	2	4	6
Endeavour	0	1	0	1
Cloudburst	0	1	0	1
Flipreads	0	2	0	2
FutureFire	0	1	0	1
Harper Collins	0	3	0	3
Bloomsbury	0	2	1	3
CSFG	0	1	0	1
Emergent	0	2	0	2
Patty Jansen	0	2	0	2
XOUM	0	0	2	2
Rabia Gale	0	0	2	2
Tor Rox.	0	0	1	1
Patrick Duffy	0	0	1	1
Gilgamesh	0	0	1	1
Angry Robot	0	0	1	1
RBB	0	0	1	1
Glenda Larke	0	0	1	1
Math P.P.	0	0	1	1
CDL	0	0	1	1
Clan Destine	0	0	1	1

Comments

I can’t say there’s much that is surprising here, I thought that the reviewing would be heavily weighted toward Hachette etc. because the send me quite a lot books and aren’t shy about doing so. 

I thought I had reviewed more Twelfth Planet Press but then I sometimes forget that I have purchased most of their catalogue and not necessarily read it all. I note too that the Twelfth Planet Press and to a lesser extent Ticonderoga’s reviews are influenced by the fact that I have been participating in the Australian Women Writers project for some time and those two presses are focussed supporters of Australian women writers.  Twelfth Planet Press’ Twelve Planets Collection is a nice way to make your challenge target.

The Solaris figures are a little surprising but then I'’m a huge Rowena Cory Daniells fan and they have recently picked up Jonathan Strahan as well so maybe I shouldn’t be.

Top 5 reviewed publishers over the last 2.5 years

1. Hachette etc    30
2. Allen & Unwin  9
3. Solaris/TPP     8
4. Momentum      6
5. Peggy Bright   4

If I break the table into Traditional/Medium and Small Presses(incl Self pubbed)

Large	45
Medium	17
Small	49

Note I have ranked Solaris and Momentum as medium presses.

I think there’s an even spread between small and large presses and to be honest Hachette gives me access to a number of subsidiary publishers so I am not concerned about the weight they seem to have here.  Indeed they also publish a few Aussie authors in our scene.

Likewise I am not too concerned with the weighting among some of the more prolific small presses.  I have a Peggy Bright title in my reading queue at the moment and I have only one more Twelfth Planet book I am reading.  But I will use this as an excuse to read Angela Slatter’s and Lisa L Hannett’s collections from Ticonderoga. 

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