Photo by Ruth Douillette
Guidelines for Reviewers
We accept unsolicited submissions of nonfiction book reviews 700-900 words long. Such reviews should be on forthcoming books or current books published no more than four months before we receive your review. Include a third-person biography of no more than fifty words along with a head shot photo of yourself in jpeg format—check current reviews to see what we use. Email your submission as an attachment to Associate Editor Ruth Douillette.
While the IRB’s focus is primarily non-fiction, we also publish reviews of mainstream or literary fiction, YA, and poetry books under the same rules. Please send reviews of novels or proposals for essays about fiction to our Fiction Editor, Julie McGuire.
In addition, we publish nonfiction and fiction Brief Reviews, which are 300-350 word reviews of current nonfiction and fiction. Send Brief Reviews to Julie McGuire.
Reviews for our Lasting Impressions series should not be about a current book, but rather one from your past that has remained in your memory for years. Tell about the book and the ways it affected you. This is an area open for reviews of any of the genres we cover.
In addition to reviews, we like to include featured a review or essay of 1,500-2,000 words. Essays will address issues of interest to the world of reading, writing, and publishing. We welcome proposals for such a review or essay.
If you’d like to be on our list of regular essayists or regular reviewers in any of these areas, contact Associate Editor Ruth Douillette. She’ll get in touch with you about the next step.
Please read past issues for examples of the sorts of reviews and essays we publish.
At present we don’t pay for reviews, though we hope to be able to in the reasonably near future.
Carter Jefferson, Editor
The Internet Review of Books
