Saturday, August 3, 2013

Good Book Reviewers - A Scarce Commodity!


As a self-published author, getting your book up in print is only part of the game. There is also promoting the book, so that you actually get some sales. The part of promoting your book that I am going to address today is one part of the process, and that is getting people to review your books. It is not as easy as it looks.

The first thing that you want to do is check the Internet and see who is reviewing in your genre, and who seems to be doing a reasonable job of it. I don’t care if all of my reviews are lovely and positive … I want a breadth of reviews that are honest and show differing viewpoints. This gives my target audience something to help them make an informed decision on whether they want to buy my book or not. Some places to find potential reviewers are:


You can also query for potential reviewers on the social media sites – Twitter, Google+, and Facebook. You can also check out the Good Reads site - http://www.goodreads.com/. Things to look for are the reviewers name, their contact information, and where they post their reviews.

You also want to think about whether you want to start getting reviews before your book is out, or whether you want to wait until after it is out. If you do both, you have a chance to put short blurbs either in your book, or on the back cover. Query potential reviews about whether they are willing to do pre-publication reviews, and whether they will do a digital review (which is cheaper than sending them a print book). If you are submitting to a site, read their review guidelines. Also, ask potential reviewers their timeline on getting reviews up.

One tactic that I have tried, with minimal success, is putting a Kindle book up free for a set number of days, indicating that you would like them to review the book if the choose to download it.  

© 2000 – 2013 Bonnie Cehovet

Reproduction prohibited in any venue without the written permissionof theauthor.


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