JERR FAQs

We do not remove reviews from the newsletter or our website

2010-09-21T15:24:00.000-07:00

It has never been JERRs policy to remove reviews from the website. Removing reviews from the newsletter is not an option either, as once the newsletter is mailed, that's it, there is no going back.

Under extraordinary circumstances we agreed not to upload certain reviews to the website. However, those situations didn't involve the "I do not like the reviews you did of my books, remove them or ". Trying to bully us, threats, insults, and name calling are not going to work either. As a matter of fact, even if you came to us as the meekest thing in the universe, we would be forced to tell you "sorry, no can do".

Our reviews are individual reviews, this means each review expresses a single individual's opinion. Some people will like your books, others will not. I happen to hate Nora Roberts writing style and yet, she's a multimillionaire. Know what I mean?

Again, sorry, but you have to make an extraordinarily strong case for us to agree to remove a review. Coming to us using a derogatory "I am the Queen, Obey Me!" or "how dare you review my books without my permission" attitude, insults, saying that the reviewer basically doesn't know how to read, and threats do not constitute a strong, logical and reasonable case, hence, that type of strategy will not work.

JERR newsletter does not accept automatic mailings of new releases from publishers

2010-08-28T06:59:00.001-07:00

Though during the first few years of operations JERR was able to review about 90% of all new book submissions for review it received, the increase in the number of erotic romance releases started affecting the output. In addition, when JERR decided to switch to a monthly publication schedule, the output was further substantially reduced. As a result, JERR has decided to go list only. This means that JERR is no longer accepting automatic submissions of books for review from publishers.

Any publisher of erotic romance that has been in business for at least 18 months and that may be interested in the JERR newsletter reviewing their books, is welcome to send a listings of their new releases to our jerrqueries at gmail dot com or queries at justeroticromancereviews dot com.

M.

Links to reviews

2010-07-20T15:22:00.000-07:00

As you all know, JERR IS NOT A REVIEWS WEBSITE. JERR IS A MONTHLY, SUBSCRIPTION FEE-FREE, PUBLICATION.

JERR is not a professional reviewing publication either, this means that our funds come solely from the few ads we sell to authors. We are able to cover the cost of keeping our website up and cover mailing costs of contest prizes and print copies of ARCs (which are not a lot but we do have reviewers overseas). However, that is the extent of it.

JERR never promises and has never promised to send links to any publishers. The reason for this is that everyone at our subscription free publication works for it on a voluntary only basis. Not a single person at JERR earns a single dime out of working for JERR and each and every single person involved with JERR has a full time day job and/or goes to school.

The decision to open a sister website to the publication was made as a courtesy to authors and publishers and also to use it as a marketing tool. In the short term it has worked fine, in the long term it has come to bite us in the ass as it now seems people do not get the simple fact that JERR IS NOT A REVIEWS WEBSITE, BUT RATHER A PUBLICATION.

JERR and plagiarism

2010-04-21T16:52:00.000-07:00

All of the reviewers at JERR are REQUIRED to write 100% original reviews. We've had situations in which a reviewer's summary paragraph sounded too much like the book's blurb. In those situations, if we catch the similarities, we expressly ask the reviewer to please paraphrase as much as possible. Yes, we did have a reviewer who got into the habit of using the book blurbs as published, almost verbatim. The reviewer was duly warned and we kept a very close eye on her from that point forward. Taking whole chunks from a book blurb is, at least for us, the equivalent of cheating.

Furthermore, if a reviewer decides to review the same book but for two different sites (ours and wherever else she may be reviewing for), we require that the reviewer write COMPLETELY different reviews. Suffice it to say, we have yet to have one instance in which a reviewer even tried to review the same book for multiple sites.

Some reviews have an ISBN, others don't. Why is that?

2010-03-31T06:33:00.000-07:00

When JERR started, we always included an ISBN number as part of the general information of the books we reviewed. We didn't have problems back then, but as new publishers opened their doors to business, issues involving ISBN numbers started to pop up . Let's just say that some publishers were rather sloppy and the ISBNs they were providing with their book blurbs were not matching the ISBNs within the book. In some instances the ISBN included with the blurb, the ISBN in their website, and the ISBN within the book did not match. And yes, we went through the hassle of crossreferencing. We also found out about at least one publisher that was using FAKE ISBNs (of course, that publisher is not in business any longer). It became such a drag to deal with ISBNs -- the output of reviews was about 100 reviews a month so you can imagine the sort of nightmare crossreferencing became -- that in the end, the owners decided to outright get rid of the ISBNs.

And there you have it. This is why JERR does not use include ISBNs. We may or may not start including them again in future. For the time being, however, things will remain as they are.

I submitted my book for review, why hasn't it been reviewed...

2010-03-21T07:40:00.000-07:00

Though we do aim at providing reviews of all the books we accept for review, provided that they actually meet our guidelines as described in our website, fact is that we can't provide an automatic guarantee as to if the book will be reviewed.

There are several reasons for this. For example, our team works on a voluntary basis as we can't pay them salaries. We also receive a large amount of books every month. Since I can't read everything we get to determine if a book is an erotic romance or not or if the book meets our graphic language content requirement, sometimes we don't find out that a book does not meet all of our requirements until after it has been requested for review.

Bottomline, we will continue doing our best to have your book reviewed as long as it meets all of our requirements.

I was told that JERR reviewed my book... but where is my review?!?!?

2010-03-20T13:43:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while I get one of these: "I received notice (or I was told) that JERR reviewed my book... but I can't find the review! "
The first thing that everyone should keep in mind is that JERR is a reviews NEWSLETTER not a reviews website. This means that we operate somewhat differently from a reviews site. Though we do have a website, truth is that we simply use it as a repository. The reviews, under normal circumstances, are uploaded 3-4 weeks after the original publication date of the review.

To anyone wanting to link asap to a review that is not yet available in the website, we recommend that you link to the Yahoo group that we use to mail the newsletter. However, do not try to read the newsletter from the forums. Yahoo has a word limit on posts, and all messages get a [truncated] note where the message is automatically cut off. If you need to check a full copy of the newsletter, simply log on to the Yahoo group, and on the left hand side you'll see a menu. Choose Files from that menu. There you will find full copies of all our newsletters, organized by date. It's not as easy as actually just linking to the website, but it provides a solution for those that really want to link to their review asap.

Last but not least, if after you checked in the newsletter's group Files you still can't find your review, drop me a note. I'll look into it.

Just so everyone is aware, about two years to a year and a half ago we did have issues with the uploading of reviews to the website. Since everyone involved at JERR works full time jobs, we had to put a stop to the sending out of links or hard copies of reviews. We are up to speed now, but we've had to adapt to some new things i.e a monthly publication schedule instead of twice a month, a new website that enabled us to modernize our procedures a bit, etc. Now we are currently working having everything set up properly and we have started sending out links to our reviews in the website on a monthly basis. We are still hitting the occasional snag, but we don't foresee any issues.

JERR only reviews erotic romance ... worth repeating a few million times...

2010-03-20T13:36:00.000-07:00

This is another post that belongs in the FAQ category.

Since JERR was first published it has exclusively reviewed erotic romance. The original founders "baptized" the newsletter Just EROTIC ROMANCE Reviews for a reason. Initially the only requirements were that all books had to be erotic romance, with extremely and bluntly graphic scenes. A couple of years ago we added the minimum length requirement (11,000 words) due to the extremely high number of super short short stories that barely had enough room for a quickie scene.

Now, what do we mean by erotic romance. At JERR we only consider erotic romance a story in which the romantic plot takes center stage, irrespective of how many main characters are involved, their gender, race, species, or whatever. Additionally, the story has to end on a positive note if not an outright HEA (happily ever after) in the classic sense.

JERR DOES NOT review any other category of romance NOR any other type of erotic fiction (i.e. erotica, erotic chick lit, etc.)

Our guidelines are specific and more importantly, are well defined and interpreted, so that our reviewers are able to do their job properly. We acknowledge that what may feel romantic to one reader may not necessarily feel romantic to another, hence, our reviewers are instructed to inform us when they read something for review that does not seem to match our guidelines, before they write their review. Fran, our head editor, and myself, take a closer look, and decide if the book should just be "shelved" for not meeting our guidelines, or if it should be made available to someone else. We do try to be as fair as possible, and not discard books without further evaluation when we get such reports.

On a final note, the guidelines are non negotiable.

What's with the graphic language content?

2010-03-20T13:33:00.001-07:00

The issue of the graphic language content in an erotic romance has been discussed many times online. Some authors don't like to use blunt graphic language and consider that an erotic romance does not need the use of such language to be "erotic". As a matter of fact, some authors call bluntly graphic language "vulgar" and avoid it like the plague. I am not going to argue that point. I have read some romances that I definitely found arousing which didn't use any blunt language or limited it to the use of the word c*ck (which as many as you know, has been in use for centuries) a couple of times. On the same vein I've read some books classified as "erotic romance" jammed packed with bluntly graphic sex scenes which did absolutely nothing for me on the arousal department. This is all very subjective... which is why I am not going to be presenting any sort of argument in favor of it or against it.

When JERR was born the original founders had to establish some sort of uniform rules that would help the reviewers do their work. They deemed that language was an important part of what an erotic romance should be and that using mainstream accepted language did not cut it. In other words, the language chosen had to be bold and blunt, otherwise there would be no difference between a standard romance and an erotic romance. As you all know, romance nowadays tends to be very sensual in many instances, even when most romance out there is classified under other categories like historical or paranormal. This made sense five years ago and it makes even more sense now, as spicier romance is more prevalent.

For us, the blunt graphic language content requirement has worked, along with the length requirement and establishing our own "definition" of what erotic romance is. Although it is not a perfect solution, it has provided uniformity, and anyone submitting a book to us for review knows what to expect.

The Basics: what do we review and don't review

2010-03-20T12:51:00.000-07:00

1. Any books submitted to JERR have to meet our definition of erotic romance. What does this mean? It means that the main plot has to center on the love story between the main characters irrespective of how many main characters are involved in the relationship, their gender, species, etc. A HEA (happily ever after) is optional. However, any book submitted has to end on a positive note or a "happy for now" type of ending.

"Horror" or "dark" themes are not favored by our reviewers, so this usually means those books, if accepted or requested at all, usually end up not being picked up for review and if they to do, more often than not, the reviewers tend to return them or give them lower ratings.

2. The language in the love scenes has to be bluntly graphic meaning the language leaves nothing to the imagination (aka sex with open doors), irrespective of how many love scenes are in the book.

No, we don't count number of sex scenes. However, if a book is low on the sex scenes (i.e. it has 2 or less sex scenes), chances are it will be mentioned in the review, though we do take into consideration how the sex scenes are written more than how many sex scenes are there. For us it is more about quality rather than quantity.

3. The book has to be 11,000 words or more. If an anthology, all the stories in the anthology have to meet this length requirement.

Though we initially reviewed all stories irrespective of length, we don't do so any longer.

WE DO NOT REVIEW:

** Horror (even if it has romantic elements)
** Urban Fantasy (unless it is a romance cross-genre type heavy on the romance element)
** Erotica
** Erotic chick lit
**Cozy mysteries
**Mystery and Suspense

In short: WE ONLY REVIEW EROTIC ROMANCE AS WE DEFINE EROTIC ROMANCE (see above). WE DO NOT REVIEW ANY OTHER GENRE OF FICTION.

ADDITIONALLY, WE DON'T REVIEW THE FOLLOWING:
** Books that we have already reviewed, even if they are re-edited for publication in another publishing house.
** Compilations or "omnibus" versions of collections including stories previously reviewed by JERR as single titles.

All you ever wanted to know about JERR...

2010-03-20T12:12:00.001-07:00

well ... not really ... however there have always been questions that have nagged those that deal with us and this blog will simply serve the purpose of "filling" in those gaps, nothing more and nothing less. Our interactive blog is JERR Blogs too! so go there if what you are looking for in actual "interactivity" of some sort. The comments section in this blog will be shut for that reason. If you need to ask questions, simply email me.

M.