Submit or verify submission to Choice

Choice Reviews is published by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association, and it exists to help academic librarians decide what to buy for undergraduate and college collections. Its reviews are editorial consideration: publishers send books, subject editors choose which to assign, and reviewers are academic librarians and faculty. Most titles received are not reviewed.

Unlike the big prepublication trade outlets, Choice works around publication rather than months ahead, and its format rules (print versus digital, which subjects, which levels) change. The instruction is therefore to send promptly around publication and to read the current publisher page first.

The publisher submits. If you are with a university press or a scholarly publisher, Choice is almost certainly on their list; verify the date anyway. If you are with a general trade publisher and your book has an academic audience, ask whether Choice was included, since trade publicity lists do not always think of it. Hybrid presses vary; ask. Self-published academic titles are rarely a fit for Choice's scope, but the guidelines are the final word.

A selection librarian, describing how their own collection team works, named Choice alongside Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist as the journals selection librarians routinely use, and said that Choice is the one that belongs on the list for a book that could read as academic. A starred review in any of the four, the marker a journal puts on the titles it rates most highly, is much coveted. That is one librarian's account of their own work rather than a rule, and Choice's own guidelines are still the final word on what it will consider.

This item applies only to books with a genuine academic or professional audience. A general-interest title is not improved by sending it to Choice.