Hi guys.

I wanted to post a note to update everyone on what’s been going on lately, and clarify a couple of things.

ReviewersWithoutBorders was not my project to begin with – I was asked to help out in any capacity I could, which meant acting as a ‘front’ of sorts for the owner – who, in turn, has mislead me on several points.

To clarify a couple of things though.

The accusations mentioned in April.

In April, a woman that another of our team has had runins with in the past submitted her book for review.  What none of us knew at the time was that she was a bit…odd.  The book(s) came to us as badly prepared pdfs, so we requested she fix them, and then, she was assigned to her primary reader.

The way reviewerswithoutborders is supposed to work is if the first reader reads the book and feels it could do with a broader review, it’s chucked back in the queue – getting the author more reviews, for the same electron transfer.  The problem we had with that, in this case was as soon as it went back into the queue, with a note saying the story seemed oddly familiar, it was passed into open pool, which means our team member found out she’d subbed.  At around the same time, we posted the review, and gave it a ’standard to poor’ overall rating.  Not bad if you’ve got nothing else to read, but seriously, don’t rush out and get it.  Our ’standard to poors’ don’t get featured on the main page and instead quietly slip into the archives.  We post them on other review sites, where applicable, but in most cases that’s the last we hear of it.

This book was flagged for broader review because of the email conversation in the middle of it – one of our reviewers was mentioned by name.  So fair enough, it could be a concidence.  Turns out it wasn’t.

Three other authors were involved in that same file, but when we approached the ‘author’ she claimed that those four people had stolen her work in the review group they were in and divvied it up equally.  It took a bit of emailing backwards and forwards but we’ve since discovered she was banned and continues to be banned from other groups for plagurising work in obvious ways.
It’s taken between April and now to get all of this squared away and the ‘full story’ from and to all sides, which is why we paused the site for a while.  We stopped accepting books ‘etc’, for which I can only apologise.

So now, we’re back right?
Well, no.

The old owner of this site decided, for some reason, that she couldn’t review any books with no information logged in the tickets.  She cancelled those reviews, including the nine I’d queued to post.  So, I had to scrabble with a couple of authors and fix that.  She did however, wipe out all of the books logged as requested reviews before handing the site to me and quitting.

So, now I’m really in charge and things will change (for the better I hope).

I can only apologise for what looks like no updates to the site.  Jake is finishing up these last reviews with me and we’re going to then relaunch, rebundle ‘etc’.  Reviewerswithoutborders is not going away, but we’re looking at how to make it better.  In the meantime, I’m replacing some reviews, and dealing with some other mantinence tasks, including fixing the site, because we’re seeing odd issues with the ticket desk.

TO ALL PREVIOUS SUBMISSIONS.

If you have not recieved a confirmation from us that we’ve still got your works, and you would STILL like a review, please email me with your files and I’ll log them personally.  You can email me at kaiberie at gmail.com.  If your book(s) appear in the review list to the right, after tonight, your books HAVE been reviewed and are future dated to post.

We’ve chosen to take a month off to clear up the fallout from the aforementioned incident and prepare a statement.  Our closed period for book reviews starts June 1st, but in the closed period, we are posting reviews and merging reviewerswithoutborders with a couple of our other ’sattelite’ projects.

We are also lining up some author interviews and more.

Due to reasons involving  accusations by an ebook author who claimed that one of our review staff ’stole’ thier novel and rewrote it,which, when investigating deeper, looks like a tactic to legitimise the fact they have plagurised several books, Reviewerswithoutborders has been asked to breifly cease working with authors until we get this all sorted out.  We are working with the four parties involved to resolve this situation.

We are committed to completing the reviews in our queue and this notice will dissapear again as soon as the issue is resolved – we apologise for any problems this may cause to our awaiting books.

Nice and eyecatching that. We’ll be providing these updates once a week – alongside this other one.

Our review status box is quite simply because our reviewers don’t get to post to the site directly and are currenly in my editing master in box. The last thing we want is for our reviewers to be commenting on spelling if thiers sucks .

I’d also like to take this opportunity to introduce a new member of staff.

So…welcome to the crew Jase! You should see some posts from Jake Q Eyeball (it’s his pen name – and not my fault) in the next few days and weeks, but he’s an excellent reviewer and writer, so welcome aboard.

There’s two important things in this post:
One  – the state of play with reviews and two, probably more importantly, how you get one.

RWB was set up with the intention of reviewing as many books as we could, but, unfortunatly, the majority of us are students and we just hit buzy season.  Three of my five are on diss watch (and hand in is…err…soon) and the other two, and myself are second years so need to focus on that, so all I can do is apologise.

That and….well, as embarrasing as this is to admit, but I broke the queue.
So I’m working on getting that all fixed up and posting the stuff we have to keep us going, and preserving order.  It should be sorted out in the next few days.

How to get reviewed.

This is going on a page all it’s own, but the long and short of it is click on the link that says ‘Submit books for reviews’ (http://requests.reviewerswithoutborders.com/) and then create a user account.  We promise not to spam you (we’ve got an optional mailing list too, which we also promise not to spam you from ) .  Once you have an account, feel free to upload your ebook/ebooks to our system.  We’ll get back to you with an estimated review date, or refusal, or, if you’ve already got two books in the queue, we’ll put your remaining books on hold till those two clear and there’s space in the queue again.  It works on an ‘almost’ first come first served basis.

Near future, it is almost a fusion of 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Children of Men and other dark, dystopic, prophetic ‘doom’ novels whilst putting a ‘reality Tv/Internet/voyeuristic’ spin on things, whilst still suppressing the ‘dark age’ feel of the community.
Books are banned that talk about anything remotely scientific – and the UK as been catastrophically flooded, as revenge from ‘the Love”, a god like figure that watches all.

Through ‘testification’, and constant display, with houses becoming chat rooms, and more, people have become more voyeuristic, meaner, and live in conditions that either encourage or do nothing to stop the spread of childhood diseases – which in the course of the book wipes out an estate.

The ‘anti-hero’ and his wife are placed in the position of becoming parents for the first time, and the hero, Trafford, takes matters into his own hands to protect his daughter, opening his eyes along the way, yet, becoming ‘blinded’.

The book itself isn’t without problems.  As satirical as it’s take on the erosion or privacy and the parallels to 1984 were, it’s hard not to ignore the fact that it is full on, blatant and in some places incredibly dumbed down.  Like the TV culture it’s talking about perhaps, but did feel very heavy going.  The twists were obvious, but again, most reality TV based outings *are*.
The obvious allegories and parallels between books made me uneasy – in both that the vision of the future may change, but it’s going to be bad anyway, but at the same time, I couldn’t help but question whether I really cared enough about the protagonist’s wife.  I thought that the satire was a bit too cutting at points and fell into stereotypical ‘yea-but-no-but’ chav far too easily.  Again, atavistically representing, perhaps, our voyeuristic need to constantly consume the world of ‘facespace’.

Dark, bleak, and extremely well written, I felt the ending (and some of the ham-fisted twists) was a bit of a letdown, but was nevertheless a great read.

4 out of five.

Just after Christmas 2008, I was invited to take part in a small review project – I was given 20 ebooks to review, and in return, I also (eventually) paid for my sony eBook reader.  That led me into this – why not continue, reviewing ebooks on my sony eReader and get others involved along the way, so here we are.

I’m Kai, one of the support staff – I’ve been online so long now that it’s a fairly good bet that you’ll encounter a writer that knows of me – I run several handfuls of websites, but wanted to give myself a fresh start this year.  I am training to be a forensic linguist and already write short stories, poetry and novels.

Reviewers without borders was formed, in part, to give the eBook industry a place to send books for review so they can check several things – compatability with hardware (readers), quality and feedback on the book itself, and exposure to a wider community.  Where applicable, our reviewers will add books to goodreads and other sites that allow listings, and post reviews, allowing publishers the luxury of enjoying the additional exposure that brings.  And we’re asking nothing in return other than getting the ebooks themselves

It’s win win.

If you’re a publisher and you are interested in submitting your book(s) to us, just open a ticket with ‘contact us’ as the department and I’ll get you added to the categories/tags listings, and support you through creating an account.  I’ll also provide you with a document explaining what we do.

If you’d like to sign up and review, you can contact us in the same place and let us know.
If you’re an author of more than four titles that you’d like reviewed, let us know – it’s easier to set up facilities for you to sumit and keep track of your reviews for increased exposure if we categorise you appropriately.