While we have a full terms of service and privacy policy available, we want to highlight a few principles about which we feel strongly or that are not noted elsewhere.
Fair and Impartial Reviewers: We ask all of our book reviewers to affirm that they do not have any personal or financial relationship with the author of the book they are reviewing, which would affect their ability to write a candid review. We do not try to influence or dictate our reviewers’ assessments of the books under review.
Writers Should Be Paid for Their Work: All of our writers are paid for their work, upon publication of their review, and we hope to increase our rates as Drafting the Past grows.
Accuracy: We endeavor to keep our content free of factual errors. Because we and our reviewers are human, however, we may occasionally get things wrong. When that happens, we will correct the information as quickly as possible and note the error and how it has been corrected.
Advertising and Editorial Independence: Sales of website, newsletter, and podcast advertising are separate from our editorial decisions. None of our reviews or features are “pay to play,” and we do not promise coverage–favorable or otherwise–for individuals or companies who advertise on our website. All paid advertising is clearly indicated; we will not present advertisements as editorial content.
Free Products and Affiliate Marketing: Other than the industry-standard practice of accepting free review copies of books from publishers, we do not accept free products or gifts from companies, even if they do not ask for coverage. We want readers to trust our recommendations. The only affiliate links we use are for bookshop.org (we always think you should buy books, so we are okay with these). If you purchase books through these links, Drafting the Past receives a small percentage of the total, which helps to support the writers and editors of newsletter/website/podcast content.
Artificial Intelligence: We do not use generative artificial intelligence (gen-AI) to produce our content, including text and images, and we ask all of our contributors to make the same commitment in the work they produce for us. We do use an AI-assisted transcription software to make our creation of podcast and Q&A transcripts more efficient, but all transcripts are reviewed and corrected by a human.
Community Standards: Harassment and other forms of intimidation in the comments sections of reviews and features will not be tolerated. Any commenter who engages in such behavior will be blocked from the site and removed from our subscription lists.
Diversity Statement: Drafting the Past will strive to publish reviews written by reviewers at all stages of their careers, living in places across the world, and representing a wide range of demographic groups and communities. Likewise, we will strive to publish reviews of books representing a wide range of subject matter, time periods, geographies, individuals, and communities, written by diverse authors.