Sending Review Material By The Editor Nov 1, 2006 - 11:48:25 AM

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The Comic Book Bin accepts review material from vendors at any time. We receive a lot of review material so your submission has to compete with a lot of other products. Here are a few hints to make sure that we do review material you send us.

1- What do you accept?

We accept DVDs, printed comic books, books, and video games for Xbox 360, Playstation 2, and Wii.

2- Do you review everything you receive?

We try to review everything we receive, whether you are a large media group or a small publisher operationg out of your basement. As of this writing, we have not refused to review material from any vendor. As long as it's legal, we'll review it!

3- How fast do you review review material?

This depends on whom reviews your material. For example, publisher Hervé St-Louis gets more than his share of review material with piles increasing all the time. He will often have over 60 pieces of material sitting on his desk, waiting to be reviewed. He may not be the fastest reviewer, has he has a lot of other duties related to managing the Web site. However, he can be trusted to eventually review everything he receives.

Don't expect reviews to match launch dates. Send them way in advance to be safe.

4- Any tricks to make sure I get a speedy review?

Use strategy. For example, a lot of people like to have editor Leroy Douresseau review their books. But that puts a lot of pressure on him.

Diversify. Send your review material to writers whose name you see often on the site and have posted material recently. They are more likely to be able review your material quickly.

If you don't know whom to send your material to, contact publisher Hervé St-Louis, and ask him to assign you a writer. He'll know who you should send your review copies to and expect a quick review.

5- Do you return items once they are reviewed?

We do not return items as it would be cost prohibitive to do so. If you send us something, expect us to keep it. Please be aware that our team is spread all over the world. We have writers in Canada, the United States, Asia and Europe.

6- Can we pay for a review?

No you can't. You are welcome to purchase advertising from us at all time, but reviews are totally independent of advertising at The Comic Book Bin.

7- I have created a fan film. Who can review it best for me?

Try Christopher Moshier. He's our resident expert on fan films. He doesn't review them, but will post them in the Fan Film Theatre section of The Comic Book Bin.

8- I have a video game to review. Where do I send it?

It is best to contact our video games editor Eli Green and send material to him in Toronto.

9- I have an action figure to review. Where do I send it?

Publisher Hervé St-Louis is your best bet.

10- Can I post a copy of the review you guys wrote on my Web site or elsewhere?

Unfortunately, you can't and we never authorize anyone to reprint our articles. Just because you have sent us review material does not give you the right to publish in whole a review we have written about your products. If you have seen some our reviews copied entirely, know that this was not authorized and that once we find out about it, we will take measures to have the plagarized article taken down immediately. We do it all the time, and we are not nice about it.

11- How do I let my audience know about your reviews?

You may quote a few lines  - we suggest no more than three sentences from our reviews. If these three sentences are an entire paragraph to themselves or a substential amount of a short article, we strongly suggest that you quote less.

It's called fair usage, in the industry. You quote just a few lines to let your audience get an idea of our opinion. However, you must always give the the source of your quotes. Add the name of the writer, followed by the name of the site, The Comic Book Bin when quoting one of our articles or alternatively, you quote the source as being The Comic Book Bin.

If you want to add a link to our full article, next to the quote, you may.

12- Can I send you digital review material?

This one is difficult for us and not pleasant to deal with.

Begining of Rant:

Many comic book publishers have figured out that they could cut down on their promotion costs if they send us PDFs of their comic book that we can download at our leasure.

Other creators, publish their comic books as digital comic books directly on a Web site and never print them.

Publisher Hervé St-Louis HATES when people send him digital reviews. DO NOT SEND DIGITAL REVIEWS TO THE COMIC BOOK BIN and expect them to be reviewed or commented on.

The money you as a vendor think you are saving is actually being spent by us to review your book. While you facilitate your life, you make ours more complicated. Never make a reviewer's life more complicated. It's your book, your career, your creation. Don't ask others to pay for your success.

Here's why digital reviews are so taxing:

a) They are usually links sent through emails. We get many emails every day from all over the industry. Emails are easily loss in the shuffle.

b) Downloading a digital comic book means, that we have to save it on our hard drive, open it, try to read it on a computer screen (which is not pleasant), print it as a hard copy and deal with possible security issues such as viruses and spyware. Some vendors have spyware on their Web sites (check your forums). Why should we jeopardize our security for a review?

c) Sending review material through the mail is the best way of grabbing our attention and also sets you apart from the digital comic book crowd. It means that you are more committed to your project and understand that the media doesn't have to pay for your promotion efforts. Also, while a review of a physical comic book can be delayed, the actual copy of the book cannot be lost.  It's about courtesy as opposed to saving a few bucks. If you can't afford to send physical copies of your comic books, then, don't send anything to anyone, or review your promotion strategy and your business plan.

d) Remember when we wrote above that publisher Hervé St-Louis has about 60 pieces of review material sitting on his desk at all times? Do you really think that someone with a big pile on his desk will favour reviewing something as inconvenient as a digital comic book, while he has more than enough material waiting in line? If you believe this, I have land in Florida that I want to sell you....

e) Digital copies of a book are not portable. We can't read them while commuting to work or on a lazy Sunday sitting on a bench in a local park. Unless we print them, we'll have to read them in front of a computer where we work.

Rant over

If you publish a Web comic book, send us a printed ashcan copy. There's nothing wrong with a black and white comic book on cheap printer paper. You can fold the pages to make them fit in a small enveloppe. But at least, we'll have something physical to work with.

13- What contact information should I include?

Always include full contact information in anything you send to us. That includes your email address.

14- Where do I send my stuff to? Any Physical Address?

Please send an email to Hervé St-Louis to know where to send review material.

© Copyright 2002-2008, Coolstreak Cartoons Inc. - All rights Reserved. All other texts, images, characters and trademarks are copyright their respective owners. Use of material in this document(including reproduction, modification, distribution, electronic transmission or republication) without prior written permission is strictly prohibited.

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