How not to solicit a review.

Just recently I received this email. I'm not going to include the book title or the sender, since I refuse to give them the benefit of even bad publicity to aid their work, but this is a classic case of something you SHOULD NOT DO!

Hi there, <--- (clearly couldn't be bothered to look up my name, my blog title - or simply hit a load of random email addresses. I wouldn't have minded if they gave me some indication of knowing who the heck I was! Or actually giving a damn.)

We were wondering if you could review -----------. This is a book that has been very popular on the
internet. It is a very powerful book , we would really appreciate it if you could review the book.
I have attached the ebook , photo cover , and book description. You will need the Sony reader to view the book.

Now, I state quite clearly on my blog that I don't take review requests direct. It says so in my Review Policy. If they'd bothered to look me up they would know that. I could forgive them on that point, but they continue to insult me. The email is very extremely badly written in a way that makes me grind my teeth and would convince me that the book would be equally poor. If you can't manage reasonable grammar in the request, what the heck is a book's worth going to be like?! Typos and the like - well, we've all done that. 

They tell me how it's a 'powerful' book but don't actually tell me what it is. They've sent me the book without waiting to know if I'm prepared to review it, and clearly without even bothering to look at the genre of books I tend to review. They then 'tell' me that I will have to use a Sony reader to read the book. Um, I don't have one of those. I have a Kindle. Not that I actually say I'll accept Kindle compatible books to review any more than I accept requests at all. But even if it had been a Kindle compatible version, I still wouldn't read it. Because, on scanning down the email, I discover this is a DIET book. Um, hello? *waves* Reviewer of speculative fiction here! Not only do I not read or review diet books (or any kind of self-help books), but I don't believe in dieting full stop. Now, I know a lot of people DO believe in dieting, but not me. And it seems to me that the only way to really review a diet book is to do the diet? Nuh-uh, missy!

Basically this comes back to one of my 'rules' in the whole publishing industry. Research. If they'd taken the time to research prospective reviewers, they wouldn't have wasted my time and theirs with this request. They wouldn't have irritated me enough to do one of my few rants on the blog. Not only do I not want to read the book but I'm tempted to post a review condemning their book, their tactics and their grammar. Having done a quick scan of Twitter and Facebook, and after speaking to a fellow author, it would seem that pretty much anyone remotely connected to books is being spammed with requests to review this book. The sad fact is they may well get reviews from it, but the majority are more likely to ignore the requests, or possibly report/block them as spammers. Will that stop them? Probably not.

On the plus side, I got a blog post out of it. And now I've purged my system by unleashing my thoughts upon the world, what are your thoughts? What would you have done if this request appeared in your inbox? (BTW, what I actually did was tell them that I don't accept review requests, that it wasn't my genre, and suggested that they take a look at my Book Reviewers List. Something else that is probably too much bother for them.)