How to get reviews for your books.

How to get reviews for your books – honestly!

For many of us writers, getting reviews is becoming very difficult. Some statistics say that very few people actually go to the trouble of reviewing the books they read.

For those of us who have completed and published books, this makes it hard to sell them on Amazon and other outlets.

Without reviews, it can all get a bit chicken and egg.

By the way, if you are still at the writing stage or at the early stage of your writing career you will find help for beginner writers here.

If you have already published and are trying to get reviews – read on.

Jane Friedman has a wonderful website packed full of helpful information about publishing. She has written a very interesting post about getting reviews.

Jane talks about reviews as being symbolic capital and if it’s any consolation she mentions that even traditional publishers must solicit reviews in a crowded market.

When my first novel Piggy Monk Square was published by the UK Publisher, Tindal Street Press they had a list of people who had shown interest in reviewing and they sent my book to them.

This resulted in my book gaining some great reviews in the very early stages of publication.

Since I am now self-publishing I must build my own resources.

I know some writers ask family and friends to review but this can have limited success – do your friends like what you write?

As readers, we tend to have specific tastes in books. If we are horror or thriller readers we may not want to read a three hundred page historical romance.

You may be stretching friendship too much if you expect friends to read a book outside of their usual choices.

SOCIAL MEDIA

One way is to identify those who have enjoyed your writing and who have commented as such on social media.

I did this with some success – offering a free new book to those who commented positively about one of my past books in the hope that they would respond with a fair and honest review.

BOOK BLOGGERS

Book bloggers are another great resource. They offer to review books in exchange for a free copy. Some want eBooks, other people prefer hard copies.

Sending hard copies can get expensive and there is always the risk that the recipient may not review – so be careful with this one.

Whether these reviews are positive or not is up to them – in keeping with Amazon terms and conditions.

Many of them will provide detailed lists of the books they read and their preferred genre so it’s important to keep this in mind.

My advice is to read their blog very carefully and make sure you are sending the right book to the right person.

If you send out the same spammy email to hundreds of blogs asking for reviews without bothering to check their reading list it can backfire very badly!

So be choosy and polite with your requests and don’t be offended if they decline.

Dave Chessun has written a great post about this over on his site, Kindlepreneur. He includes a list of book bloggers categorized by genre. This is a great resource and one I have bookmarked for reference.

You will find Dave’s article and list of book bloggers here. 

Another way is to use book giveaways. I have not tried this until very recently when I used Prolific Works to promote my short novel – When The Sun Shines.

BOOK GIVEAWAYS

Book Giveaways involve a group of writers adding a free copy of their book to a group giveaway with each author sending a link to the free books via email.

Many authors describe how building and increasing their mailing lists has helped them to market their books to readers.

This is in process at the moment so I am not sure how successful this will be but I will let you know.

You can see the book giveaway and download When The Sun Shines here.

If you are interested in reviewing When The Sun Shines and would like a free copy direct from me just let me know and I will be happy to send you one.

Whether you are at the early stages of your writing or if you have a finished a novel and are now marketing I wish you all the very best of luck.

Best wishes

Grace

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