May 26, 2014

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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Comments (2)

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This looks like a really interesting exercise. I'd try doing it myself... except I really really don't want to go through 2.5 years worth of spreadsheets (100+ books a year on average) and put in all the publishers. (Maybe I can just start from this year...) I think mine would be most heavily weighted towards Angry Robot because I've read (or have in my queue) almost every Strange Chemistry (YA imprint) book they've put out, as well as a few of the default imprint SFF. Interesting to note that for me Hachette would be a much smaller percentage because I don't do paper RCs and they don't do digital RC (although they are starting to, to be fair). I'm surprised Voyager/HC don't feature more prominently for you.
1 reply · active 563 weeks ago
Yeah it did take me a couple of hours. And I might need to look at those big publishers again just realized that Kate Forsyth's work is Vintage/RH when I had them as Hachette

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