As anyone who visits us knows, Monster Librarian is all volunteer-run. While we are an Amazon affiliate, Amazon hasn’t paid out anything since 2014. A few months ago we also became an affliate of Bookshop.org, which looks like it might eventually pay something out, but still not enough to cover our expenses. Covering our hosting fees and postage costs about $200 a year. If we wanted to do more than we already do, we would have to raise more.

It has been our policy since the site began in 2006 that Monster Librarian does not accept paid advertising (with the exception of our relationships with Amazon and Bookshop.org)  in order to eliminate any doubt about bias in our reviews, which we work to keep honest and objective in order to best serve our audience of librarians and readers interested in learning more about and reading in the horror genre.

So I ask that if you can, that you help us out by contributing financially. Monster Librarian is an LLC, so your contribution is not a tax deductible donation, it’s simply a way to support the work we are doing.  We are now more than halfway through the year, and we are well below where we need to be just to keep going at the bare minimum. If  you think what we are doing is important enough to contribute and you’re already directly reading the blog,  click on the bright red “contribute” button in the sidebar on the right. If you are reading this on our Facebook page, you can just click on the “Shop Now” button, which will bring you to the Monster Librarian blog, and if you scroll down a bit, you will see the red “contribute” button.  Just click on the button and that will take you to Paypal.

If you’d like to see Monster Librarian continue, or even stretch further, we really need your support. Thank you.

Kirsten Kowalewski, Editor.

Well, Monster Librarian has been in business now for 14 years. My husband Dylan started it up just about three months after our first child was born– he was an ambitious guy, starting a review site with a three-month-old in the house.

We have never been a huge money-maker, and while we are an Amazon affiliate, Amazon has not paid out to us since he died in April of 2014. Since then Monster Librarian has been running on the money that was in our business bank account and contributions from a very few individuals. This year I asked for help with funding for our hosting and mailing fees, and several people came forward to make that happen.

Thank you so much to Colleen Wanglund, Laurel Hightower, Warehouse Cafe, Darryl Brown, Caroline Cooney, and Michele Lee. I hope we will be able to count on the support of our readers and followers this year, as well.

So we are moving onward into another year! It will be interesting to see what that brings. I have a couple of predictions, based on trends I’ve been seeing and recent events: a return to the classics of the genre (and of course, continued critiques); more horror on audio, both as audiobooks and podcasts; and more #ownvoices titles. I also expect to see some debate over defining horror romance, although maybe I’m wrong about that one.

Many thanks to my fantastic reviewers: Lizzy Walker, David Simms, Murray Samuelson, Aaron Fletcher, Benjamin Franz, and Robert D. Yee, and to the hardworking and talented Michele Lee, who not only reviews for Monster Librarian but edits our companion blog on YA horror, Reading Bites.

I’m looking forward to seeing what interesting things come out of the horror genre in 2020, so stick with us and we’ll do that together!