Submissions

Interested in getting your book reviewed on Catholic Reads? For a small fee, we accept unsolicited submissions for review. The book must either be written by a Catholic author or explore themes in common with Catholicism.

We Find Readers for Your Book:

 We are a book-discovery service to help Catholic readers find new books and authors to love and champion.

Requirements:

1. Once your book is accepted for inclusion you will be charged a $30 fee. We do not see a penny of this money. It is only used to pay for overhead costs. Many services like ours charge at least triple that amount. (In addition, if we can get enough support on Patreon we will end even this fee!)
2. You or your publisher agrees to put your book up for a flash sale with these parameters:
   • The book is priced at 50% off or less.
   • The sale will be on the ebook, paper/hardback, audiobook or some combination of these formats.
   • The sale period will be for a minimum of 24 hours and a maximum of 2 weeks.
   •  It can be on any online store, on your publisher’s website, or on your own site.

The sale can be tailored to different marketing needs for your book. Since we modeled ourselves off of Bookbub we recomend authors and publishers to read this article when deciding what sort of promotion they want to run with us.

We then send a link to that sale to our 700+ subscribers, with whom Catholic Reads has built a rapport for recommending quality Catholic books, and who are actively interested in Catholic literature.

Our email list has an open rate double that of BookBub (a larger company we used as a model).

If your publisher is concerned about losing money, one option is to put only the ebook on sale, which takes nothing from production costs, and/ or using a Promo Code which limits the sale to only those people you share the code with, such as our subscriber list.

• The best deal available. We won’t consider a book if it has been offered for a better price in the last 90 days, or if it will be offered for less in the near future.
• Error free. We look for content that is well-formatted and free of typos and grammatical errors.
• A limited-time offer. While we do consider permanently free books, we otherwise don’t feature low-price offers that are always available.
• Catholic & Catholic Friendly. Your book does not need to be written by an author who is Catholic. We respect the privacy and ingenuity of authors. If you are an author and wish to make it known that you are a Catholic, we will inform our readers. If you wish the book to be its own voice we will respect that as well. We will point out to our readers where a book’s worldview seems to explore, agree with, or differ from a Catholic one and leave it up to the reader to decide if such a book is for them. This point also serves as insurance in case we misinterpret the message of the book. Your book need not explore Catholicism solely. However, we will be asking ourselves if a Catholic audience would benefit from the story in question. Characters from other faiths and symbolism incorporating diverse perspectives are appreciated. In fact, some of us have specific religions and cultures, aside from Catholic ones, that we are personally interested in seeing more of. (See more on that on our About page.) Disagreement and Dialogue through literature are cherished. Misrepresentation is not. The quickest way to ensure your book will not be reviewed is if you represent Catholicism as believing, saying or doing things that the Church does not believe, say or do. If however you have different Catholic characters with different attitudes towards things within the faith that is fine. Basically our goal is to vet out misinformation that breeds prejudice and misunderstanding.
• Not A Catholic? Your book may qualify for our Bridge Books selection. See our post What is a Bridge Book for clarification.
• Multiple Submissions. You may submit more than one book at a time. If you wish us to review a series start by requesting we review the first book and note in the body of the message if the book is part of a series.
• No re-submissions. If we do not agree to review your book on the first try we are not likely to agree the second time. However, you may submit a different book by the same author.

Tips

• Find your Ideal Reviewer. Go to our “About” page and read about our reviewers to find out what we are looking for in the next book. If you can find a reviewer who might like your book this will increase the chances that you will get a review.
• Our Credibility rests on Honesty. Our goal is to provide our readers with quality stories. Thus we will not post a review of your book if we cannot post a good review. That said, a good review does not mean that it will be without criticism. Also if we have not yet reviewed your book it does not necessarily mean that we do not like it. We may just be busy. Keep in mind that we are a small team, providing this service for free. It is not a personal criticism if we happen not to like your book. Our credibility with our readers rests upon our sincerity. If we cannot provide a sincere and positive review of your book then you will find better success elsewhere anyways.

How to Submit

Email us a readcatholic@gmail.com with the subject line, “Submission: Book-Title.”

DO NOT ATTACH YOUR BOOK TO THE EMAIL. This will only slow our system down and make it that much longer before we can reply to you.

In the body of the email include these:

• Book Blurb
• Why you think it would be a good fit for the Catholic Reads audience
• A list of the themes explored in your book.
• If you think this book would be particularly fit for a specific reviewer on our team let us know.
• If it is part of a series mention that as well.
• We will contact you with a request for the book once your submission has reached the top of our submission pile. If you would like to know what number your book is in the qeue just email us and ask.

If your book passes the vetting process we will then contact you to schedule the sale and subsequent promotions. Promotion details will be decided AFTER the vetting process.