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Send us the first chapter and we will tell you whether your book is for us.
Giovanni Casali, editorial coordinator, will reply to you.
DualPen Books reviews other authors' books. You choose when it goes live: four weeks, two, or one. We put that date in writing and we keep it.
Asking for a review usually means writing to a blog, getting a kind reply, and then waiting. Sometimes it arrives, sometimes it doesn't, and hardly ever when you need it. It is not bad faith: people who review out of love for books do it in whatever time is left over, and they cannot promise anything to anyone. They say so openly, and they are right to.
The trouble is that you do have a date. The release, the fair, the launch event, Christmas. A review that lands three months later is no longer a launch tool, it is a souvenir.
We put the date in writing. That is what you are paying for, and it is the only thing the price buys: time and work. Never the verdict.
It is not one more star on your book's page. It is a signed critical judgement, written by people who read the whole book and assess it the way a book is assessed: structure, pace, characters or argument, language, how the whole thing holds together. Praise where praise is due, criticism where it is needed.
It does two jobs. It gives you an authoritative sentence to put where it counts: the Editorial Reviews section of your Amazon page, your website, the cover, social media. And it gives a reader who has never heard of you a reason to trust the book that isn't your own word for it.
Not a blog run by keen readers. That is a different trade, a respectable one, and it is not ours.
We are an editorial studio: 290 editions in catalogue, 40 technical manuals, a series published in 14 languages, a historical saga in ten novels. When we read your book we recognise the work that went into it and the work that is missing, because that work is what we do every day. And we know what an author actually needs, because we have been on the other side of the table for years.
We have put our own books through the same judgement we ask you to accept: the saga «A Mari Usque Ad Mare» has been read and reviewed by independent English-language critics. Their reviews are public, on the home page of this site, with the scores they gave.
| Review published within | Price |
|---|---|
| 4 weeks | €79 |
| 2 weeks | €109 |
| 1 week | €149 |
Up to 500 pages, roughly 120,000 words. Beyond that, ask us for a quote. The price depends only on how fast you want it, never on the verdict you get.
No sum and no arrangement can change what we write. If a service promises you a positive review in exchange for money, change service: it is selling you something worthless and putting you at risk.
If the judgement is harsh we send it to you before publishing and you choose whether it goes out. The text is never altered: the only thing that changes is whether it is published or stays in the drawer.
At the foot of every review it says that the book was sent to us by the author or the publisher, and that the review was commissioned.
Our editions never appear here. We have them judged by other people, like everyone else.
Store rules forbid reviews from anyone with a financial interest in the book, and we have one, because you paid us. You are the one who puts the extract in the Editorial Reviews section, which is the place designed for it and breaks no rule. Anyone offering you reviews uploaded under their own name onto your product page is putting your book and your account at risk.
We read fiction and non-fiction in all five of our languages: English, Italian, French, German and Spanish. Self-published, traditionally published, hybrid. Advance copies too, provided they have already been edited.
We do not read erotica, texts that attack people or groups, or manuscripts that have not been edited yet. We do not review audiobooks.
We may also say no without explaining why. A no is not a verdict on your book: it means it isn't for us.
Reviews are signed DualPen Books, the editorial team. It is how our editorial team works. Each book goes to the pen best suited to its genre, and what comes out is the studio's best judgement.
Send us the first chapter and we will tell you whether your book is for us.
Giovanni Casali, editorial coordinator, will reply to you.