As for reviewer entitlement, I’d like to remind everybody that review Websites do a favour to publishers, and not the other way around. Publishers are merchants trying to access the press. To grab the press’ attention, one should make it easy for the press as opposed to assuming review Websites are supposed to make it easy for you. I know this is a novel idea, but in every other industry outside of the comic industry, that is how the game is played.

As for the money argument, many publishers who print physical comic books think they are saving money by sending review links. They do, but the time and effort required to review their books, and the security issues related are not worth the efforts. I’ve been to many download sites of comic book publishers where worms rules their message boards and where there were several security concerns and phishing attempts, often without their knowledge. Is it asking too much to just send a cheap ashcan copy that won’t get lost in the shuffle?
Thank you.

If they’re like me, they just hate reading onscreen and have to print out copies to read, which — depending on your operation — can be a time consuming and expensive process.

And even then you’re never guaranteed a high res file to read from, so the text is sometimes blurry. Not often, but sometimes. You just never know what you’re getting.

So, yeah, I agree with most everyone who’s commented so far. Comic Book Bin is entitled to review only the formats they want, but that’s an unnecessarily angry screed they wrote to declare it.

I don’t get the “making a reviewer’s life more complicated” part though. Do they only have dialup or something?

Even if so, I’d think setting up a seperate e-mail for people to contact me professionally would be a wise thing to do no matter what. One I could check via the website so you could delete any unwanted e-mail without dowloading/reading it.

That being said, digital versions are perfectly acceptable to me, and as Nat says, often the printed form doesn’t exist yet when you are solicited for an early review. As Marc points out, digital files are much easier to store than physical copies, too. Digital files also allow small independent companies to get their books out for review cheaply, and I support anything that makes it easier for someone to produce their own book. Honestly, it’s the digital age, and resistance to that seems a bit Luddite in thinking.

The review site has a right to do as they wish, but I expect they are missing out on the opportunity to see a number of interesting new books as a result.

Nat, they can decide whatever they want — but the way to express that, I would expect, would be “we don’t review digital copies”. Writing a page ranting about how publishers shouldn’t even ask suggests that they’re crossing the line from “here’s what we do” to “here’s what others should do”.

Marc, yeah, it is a blessing not having to deal with the physical storage problem.

Generally, I don’t like getting PDF copies of books for download because my monitor sucks. Other than that, it’s fine by me. Saves my dwindling shelf space. Sure, hard copies will always be better (and print of any form will never die as long as humans need the toilet), but I realize that publishers don’t want to blow their entire budget on postage (or possibly just don’t have the ability to do so).

But no, it’s no odd entitlement involved in dictating to publishers, as what they’re dictating is what -they- will do: review physical copies, not review digital copies. Surely, they are entitled to decide what they will review?

I get a mental image that, for the most part, the reviewers are unpaid writers who have been enticed to volunteer their time in exchange for all the cool freebies they’ll (supposedly) get from publishers. Meanwhile, whomever is organizing the site rakes in the money from advertisers.

Why not simply state, “We do not accept digital submissions for review,” instead of counting the many (unconvincing) ways those files aggrieve the site’s reviewers?