FAQ
Q: What is your review policy?
A: I am not compensated for my reviews in any way. I will accept books from publishers or authors in exchange for an honest review of the material. A great majority of the books I review are children’s or YA books, or books that would appeal to YA’s, though I often read adult non-fiction. I primarily read and review dystopian and realistic fiction, but I often read outside of those genres to broaden my horizons as a professional. Reading my 2010 50 Book Challenge and 2011 52 Book Challenge lists will give a good idea of what I typically read and review.
Q: How can I contact you?
You can shoot me an email or contact me on Twitter (@andtara). You can also leave a comment on an entry. I love comments!
Q: How do you get away with using the copyrighted images of book covers on your blog?
A: This is a tricky question that I get a lot from my fellow librarians, so I did some research. Book bloggers all across the book blogosphere use book covers for reviews without permission from the publishers all the time, so I knew there had to be more to this issue that originally meets the eye.
Copyright law is very complicated, but the research was pretty clear: it’s okay to use book covers with book reviews without permission from publishers. The Library Law Blog points out some parts of the copyright law that pertain to using images with commentary that fall under the “useful article” criteria. The images from Wikipedia have the following note: “The copy is of sufficient resolution for commentary and identification but lower resolution than the original book cover. Copies made from it will be of inferior quality, unsuitable as artwork on pirate versions or other uses that would compete with the commercial purpose of the original artwork.” If possible, I chose images that are around 300 megapixels.
In addition, Library Thing has over a million book covers available for use with no link-backs required, and justifies their ability to do so. I stand by my use of book covers under fair use, but I will also agree to immediately take down any cover upon request from the author or publisher.
Q: Where do you get your images?
A: Many of the photos are my own or come from Creative Commons share-alike licensed photos on flickr.com. The book covers often come from Librarything or Goodreads. I make many of my images myself using Picnik or Adobe Photoshop.
I make all of my Quotetastic Friday photos. The background images usually come from my personal collection or government archives (I love me some retro photos!). Occasionally I will used Creative Commons Attribution licensed phots — in those cases, I always list the photographer and image title in the photo description.
Q: Where do you get your books?
A: I get all of my audio books from the public library and e-books from the Nook store at Barnes and Noble. Many of my books come from my own library, where I read what my students recommend. My library mostly orders from Follett, Perma-Bound, Capstone, and we get monthly selections from Junior Library Guild.
Just to add my two cents as an author, I’m thrilled whenever someone posts an image of my book cover. People are visual, often, and the cover draws them in. Even without a link, a reader may be exposed to it later and check it out of a library, add it to a wishlist, or even buy a copy.
That’s why I LOVE when people post book covers. I might not remember the title later, but if it’s a unique cover I’ll remember it and pick it up when I see it.
I adore your reviews!!!!!!
Difficult to imagine why any author would not want an image of their book posted on a site such as this! Glad that you’ve done the homework, are sensitive to the issue and are willing to remove upon request. Can’t be fairer than that!