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As most of you guys know I maintain a military history blog. In the effort to make my blog unique I have combined my two passions, history and reading and try to post a review of almost every book I read on the site. This is true for both the history books I read and the Sci-Fi. Since I generally read 2-3 books at a time, this can get expensive. One of the cool things that has started to happen over the past several months as I gain a loyal readership is that Authors and publishers have started soliciting me for reviews of their works. I have now gotten about 10 books for free both hardcopy and ebook in return for writing reviews on the site. I think this is awesome because books are expensive and I cannot complain about getting something when all I have to do is write a review, which I would probably do anyway.Most of the books I have gotten are OK and many are in subjects or areas of history I would probably not have read. The only downside is I have gotten a few really horrible books. I just got two more in the mail this morning.
Congrats on getting a reputation in your area that allows you to receive books for free. That means people respect you in what you're doing.Have you thought of doing book reviews for some journals in your field? I have only done one book review that was published, but it was something that I can now add to my cv. Since you do book reviews all the time anyway, you might as well get something published (and they also give you the book for free). The only downside is that it can take a while to see it in print. I think I submitted my review in the summer of 2009 and it was not published until the fall of 2011 or spring of 2012.
I am thinking about asking the Journal of Military History about doing a book review for them. I have only gotten one peer reviewed thing published so far and that is a bibliography for Oxford University Press on Frederick the Great.
