“Hear Our Voices’ mission is to provide a space for marginalized voices to be seen and heard. Books by authors of color, LGBTQIA+, neurodiverse, and disabled authors deserve the same spotlight as their white neurotypical counterparts. Our blog tours aim to connect diverse reviewers with the authors who represent them, throughout all international and domestic social media channels. ”
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During the tour sign up process, readers are asked to identify and share the links of no more than two social media channels where reviews will be shared. The social media channels must be public and post must be posted in permanent locations. Please no review posts only in stories or highlights.
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We encourage reviewer communication. If you’re reading an ARC and not enjoying it, please let us know so that we can keep an eye on whether or not this book is being well-received by our reviewers. If we find that the book makes the majority of our reviewers uncomfortable, then we will contact the publisher to address the issues.
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We encourage reviewers to speak their minds, whether positive or negative. However, we ask that tour stops (the creative content that we link to on our website) are used to uplift the author’s work. If you believe that you cannot write a positive review, then please reach out to us. If your review is negative, please wait to post until the end of the tour and notify us so we can provide you with alternative material. If you do not feel comfortable continuing to support the book in any way, we can remove you from the tour. If you are unsure what qualifies as a negative review, please refer to our FAQ page.
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We have a zero-tolerance policy for personal attacks on authors. If your content is found to have attacked an author or community, the post will be removed from our website and you will be banned from all future tours.
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Please use discretion while tagging authors in your reviews. The goal of our tours is to hype up a book and its author. If you would like to tag an author in your review, please only do so if it’s a positive one. If you are found tagging authors in negative reviews, you will be banned from future tours.
The Rule of Threes
To streamline our tours and ensure that they are filled with original and creative content, we have implemented a rule of 3’s to determine when it is possible that a reviewer will be removed from a tour.
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We understand that sometimes life’s challenges might prevent you from meeting your scheduled tour post date. Please let us know [by when], if this is the case so that we may reassign a date that works best for you. However, if we find that you have not met your commitments with us 3 times, your participation in our tours can be revoked. We do this because we have a responsibility to the publishers to fulfill our agreements as promised.
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We will remove any accounts on tours that have been inactive for 3 months as of the day that their creative content is scheduled. If you need to take a break, or are having difficulties with personal health, we understand. However, our tours are designed for active reviewers. Removal from a tour sign-up is not a ban and you are welcome to join tours in the future with an active account.