The changing world of reviews

Given the limited interest in poetry and short story books, the reviews/adverts need to be targeted. Small press magazines may have a limited readership, but at least it contains a significant percentage of book buyers. So in the olden days review copies were sent to many magazines. It was costly to send copies out with no guarantee of a review. Publishers tend to send out queries and PDFs nowadays.

I've heard publishers say that reviews don't sell books, and reviews sometimes took a year to be published. Sales are not the only purpose of reviews. All the same, it does no harm explore other options. There are mass audience sites for reviews nowadays, and "influencers". These methods work for novels. I don't know how useful they are for poetry and short story books -

• In a Twitter announcement by Dahlia Books about a book release they said - "Please get in touch with us via DMs if you'd like to receive an ARC. Don't forget to include a link to your blog or review site." On Goodreads and blogs I see many reviews that begin by thanking the publisher for a free copy of the book.
• I heard on a podcast how Jen V Campbell (story writer and Bloodaxe poet) reviews. She's a booktuber with 50k followers. She uses Patreon to attract donations. Here's part of her "REVIEW POLICY" - "If you would like to contact me with a review request, please ask your publicist to email me with an AI sheet. As I receive over 40 requests a week, I can only take on a couple"
• Elizabeth Baines pointed out that "that many book reviewing bloggers are now tied up with the market campaigns of big publishing houses. The big publishing houses have - they can afford - long pre-publication marketing periods, and as a result those bloggers are too committed for the future with advance copies from those publishers to be able to consider the necessarily more short-term review request of a small publisher."

An alternative targeted approach is to do a blog tour.