From the Booking Desk:

I am often asked how I decide what to review. This is far too complicated a process for me to distill into one blog post, but in 2014 I started to post an analysis of how I obtained the books I ended up reviewing. Here is the data for 2016.

Total Number of Books Reviews = 72

Digital Galleys = 5

(It is worth noting here that some of the books that were reviewed in their physical ARC format below were also received as digital ARCs. I’ve only listed them once, in the format representing how I ultimately ended up reading them for review.)

• Edelweiss = 1
• NetGalley = 4

Purchased = 7

• Myself = 7 (all physical books)

Conferences = 6

• Bouchercon = 6

Direct from Publisher/Publicist/Author = 53

• Physical ARC = 48
• Physical ARC (short story collections) = 5
• E-ARC = 0

Audiobook (purchased) = 1

Total Number of Other Reviews = 4

• Short Stories = 1
• Comics = 1
• Television/Film/Theater = 2 (Most of my reviews of this type have migrated over to my Facebook profile and are not counted here)

From The Booking Desk:

I am basically on track with similar total reviews as last year. I think it’s safe to say that I can comfortably manage about 75 reviews a year. That explains why competition is so tight and some review pitches have to be turned down.

This of course only reflects stats for books that resulted in a review. Total books read in the year is somewhere in the neighborhood of 150, with another 35 or so what I call “Did Not Finish.”  I also read a fair number of excellent non-crime fiction books this year, which are not covered by this blog, but are reflected in this total count of books read.

What can we learn from this year’s stats? There continue to be many ways that books get into the hands of bloggers. Most bloggers will use any and all methods available.

For me this year, physical copies direct from the publisher/publicist/author made an even larger jump. This reflects the realization that while I love the convenience of digital reading/storage, I still prefer to read a physical book. All things equal, if given the choice, I am going to choose the print book (as evidenced by the fact that I had many of these books in both formats and yet chose to read the physical book). Books obtained at conferences became less vital to me because I continue to get more shipped to me directly.

My comics and short story reviews were lower this year; but I reviewed more entire short story collections, so that accounts for part of this change.