Getting book reviews as a beginner writer can be tough – but it is also really useful. Not only does it give you feedback about how well you’re doing as a writer but also it makes people notice your book. Especially when you’re just starting out, a good review can make your book a huge success because of the snowballing effect. Here is how to get your book reviewed. This will help you to gets plenty of reviews early on for your books.
How To Get Your Book Reviewed | Get Plenty of Reviews For Your Books:
Send a free copy to well established reviewers
The most obvious way to get books reviewed is to look for good reviewers. Most of these can be found on blogs. But there are tons and tons of book review blogs – so how do you choose? Firstly, you need to know your target genre. You cannot ask a fantasy book reviewer for a review of your non fiction book. Secondly, you need to see if their Blog is active, if they are currently accepting requests and the amount of traction their site gets. It is also a good idea to check their frequency of posting because too much will mean your book gets lost in the info dump and to little means they will lose their readership. Reedsy believes that a frequency of 1 – 2 reviews per week is ideal.
Ask your family and friends
There is no better place to look for reviews than family and friends. They know you personally and are intimately acquainted with your strengths and weaknesses. Thus they will best be able to point out areas of improvement and areas where you have outdone yourself. However, one must keep in mind to choose family and friends who will offer honest, authentic opinions instead of sugarcoating anything.
Upload your e-books for free
Uploading an e-book version of your book or a sample of it on Amazon Direct publishing or Google Play books can attract reviews. Here you can get reviews for your book that come from the readers themselves, rather than experienced reviewers. Thus, this enables you to establish direct contact with your reader base. And keeping the monetary aspect aside for a bit and making books free can generate even more reviews.
Use a call to action at the back of your book
In general, calls to action are a prompt on any product for the customer or consumer to do something. With respect to books, they are passive marketing tools which increase traction for the publication and the author. For instance, the publisher or authorial website link, or a list of other books by the same author or in the same genre (if you liked x, try y) are CTAs. For example, most Paulo Coelho and John Green books have these!
Connect with a local library
In a symbiotic process, beginner authors and local libraries can thrive off each other. Sending book manuscripts to local libraries can get you in touch with both literary circles and readers. Librarians may have access to a bunch of authors, or may be authors themselves. Also in a library you are likely to find genuine readers who read voraciously, which is exactly what you need in a book review. Either way, you will get authentic reviews.
Create an advance readers team
An advance reader team is your army of sorts, especially if you’ve already published a book or two. This is your community of readers (such as alpha and beta readers) who read your manuscript from start to finish and give their opinions on it. This team could consist of friends and family, people on your mailing list, professors, or anyone you trust with it. Alpha readers read the rough first draft while beta readers read the corrected final draft.
Upload excerpts on social media
Social media has been a gamechanger for any and all kinds of marketing – so is it for the literary world. Now, you can get reviews at your fingertips! However, you must be careful about uploading only excerpts because these posts will be accessible to anyone and everyone. So there is a higher risk of plagiarism which anonymity increases further. However, this is a great place to get hands’ on readership reviews.
Create and curate a mailing list
Mailing lists are essentially your literary tribe. Having a website and asking for viewers’ email addresses to sign them up for a newsletter or something else means you create a list with a group of email addresses interested in your platform. This is your mailing list. Now these people can grow and accumulate over time. You can send out excerpts of your novel or eventually even all of it for reviews.
Send it to major publications
Major publications like NYT and Publishers weekly may review only a fraction of books that come their way but it’s still worth a shot. This is because the kind of advertising as well as authentic feedback you will get from professional reviewers is tremendous. Some ways to increase chances of review are to refrain from advertising it as self-published, calling them beforehand and keeping the pitch brief and potent.
Reach out to Amazon Top Reviewers
Amazon Top Reviewers is essentially a community of readers on Amazon who craft the best and most potent reviews. Carefully sifting through this list to see which ones are most appropriate for you, in your niche genre of writing and useful can give you a list of genuine and credible reviewers. Then reaching out to them and sending them a copy will be the next step. Once they publish their review online on Amazon, it will be commercial as well as professional marketing for you.
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