The Great Novel Review Exchange

To everyone who has replied or will reply in the future,

We have moderate interest in this activity - not enough to create a scheduled or diligently monitored event, but enough to develop this forum into a formal meeting place for novelists to meet and review one another with minimal oversight from the activity organizers.

Watch for updates to the forum body above, but here's the rough plan:

This forum will be open on an ongoing basis. Novelists who are looking for reviews for purchase or exchange and novel reviewers who are looking for opportunities to review for compensation will be invited to introduce themselves in the forum messages. The activity organizers will provide a questionnaire template to help you provide the relevant info needed with your introduction. For novelists, this will include a query letter / narrative synopsis / some kind of description of your project so prospective reviewers know what they're committing to.

You are then welcome to scroll through posted introductions from other interested parties and find projects that interest you. You can invite any of those interested parties to exchange reviews, purchase reviews, or review for any agreed-upon compensation. If any two parties express interest in an exchange of any kind, the two parties will reach a formal agreement that is satisfactory to both of them. Please use to forum to arrange the details of your agreement so the activity organizers have a record of what was agreed upon for enforcement / encouragement purposes, and so that we can clarify any ambiguous language in your agreement and avoid any potential future disputes.

The activity organizers will not be able to strictly enforce compliance with your agreed-upon terms, because we're not the mafia. However, we will take strides to encourage compliance through two strategies:

(1) bribery. I'm thinking of commissioning a merit badge or awardicon or both, depending on donations, which we will award to a reviewer once we have evidence that the agreed-upon review(s) took place (either because the reviewee reported it complete, or the review is publicly available on the WDC reviews page.) Reviewees are also invited to award their reviewers in addition to any other formally agreed-upon exchanges/compensation (awardicons are expensive, but every WDC member gets one free MB to award per month, so it's possible to award your reviewer for free.)

and

(2) eviction. Any reviewer who fails to meet their reviewing commitment within a reasonable timeframe (3 months, unless a different specifically-agreed-upon timeframe is arranged between the parties in the formal agreement - e.g., one chapter per week, etc.) will be permanently banned from this forum. NOTE: If both parties fail to meet their original commitment and agree to formally cancel the agreement, neither will be banned so long as the agreed-upon cancellation is posted publicly in the forum.

Questions? Comments? Ideas?

Meanwhile, "The Great Novel Review Exchange Group"  [13+] is taking donations.

Cheers,
Michelle

Storm Machine
Aiva Raine
Annette
Bruce.
Starling
LightinMind
GaelicQueen