Pssst.

Does anybody actually expect any paper-of-record book review to admit they're more likely to review books by publishers who have the dough to spend on their ridiculously expensive ad space? That they send presses the ad specs and price sheets along with the review copy submission guidelines, sometimes in the same envelope/fax/email? That they tell you never to call, email or otherwise follow up on the 100s of books you send annually into their giant gaping maws? Or that they and the large-circulation mags are often owned by the same megalomedia parent companies as the publishers whose books they review?

No? Good. Because they probably won't.

And the chain bookstores will keep telling you they don't charge for endcap & waterfall display space either.

I'm not saying not to send them. You gotta send them. Send as many as you can afford to send. I'm just saying when they get reviewed it's normal to be stunned. Editors do occasionally champion an underdog--either out of genuine interest or for cultural cachet reasons and the appearance of fairness. There are also reviewers out there who will fight to cover a book their editor doubts is worth the space.

You could focus the rest of your attention, whatever's left over, on building a new an alternative model that goes around the businesses that are keeping the art you practice from being fulfilling in whatever ways you want it to be.

I wonder what that model would look like? Maybe poets publishing, distributing, reviewing themselves & each other, via the low-cost alternative technologies of the internet and POD? Hmm, there's an idea [addendum:] that lots of people have already had & are persuing. [end] But you'd first have to stop worrying about stupid shit like legitimacy & vanity.