Secure Reviews and Set Yourself Up As a Reviewer IN A DAY

By Darin Jewell and Conrad Jones

In the current digital and social media age, it is essential to seek and secure reviews and endorsements to raise awareness of your book – not just any reviews from anybody, but positive reviews from literary experts in the field and high profile endorsements. There are many pitfalls to avoid in this regard, like responding badly to negative reviews and leaving adverse reviews of other authors’ books. In this ebook, we explain how best to obtain the sort of reviews that are going to work for you and generate more sales for your book.

We discuss who to seek reviews from and who to avoid, as there are plenty of book trolls on the Internet looking to criticize you if you over-engage in self-promotion or word your approach in an overtly self-centred way. We explain how best to approach those likely to provide positive reviews and endorsements by making it easy for them to review your book and spelling out the benefits to them in doing so, and we debate whether you should endorse your own book.

Often, it helps to set yourself up as an expert book reviewer first to lend credibility both to your writing and your reviews. We explain how to achieve this by joining Goodreads and Shelfari, writing good reviews, hosting or being a guest on a talk radio programme and always responding to critics in a respectful manner. A good review travels fast, but a poor review or a bad response to a negative review travels faster.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Union Bridge Books
• Release date: Jun 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9780857280879

Book preview

Secure Reviews and Set Yourself Up as a Reviewer IN A DAY

CONTENTS

Where to Start

The Nature of Book Reviews

Whom and How to Ask for Reviews

Checklist of Details to Include in Your Review Request

Sample Review Request Letter

10 Best Practices for Seeking Book Reviews

Getting the Most from Your Book Reviews

Have Your Book Reviewed on Goodreads

Have Your Book Reviewed on Shelfari

Other Book Review Sites

Set Yourself Up as a Reviewer

Moving Up the Review Ladder

Book Endorsements

Blog Reviews

About the Authors

Other Works by the Authors

Secure Reviews and Set Yourself Up as a Reviewer IN A DAY

THAMES RIVER PRESS

An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company Limited (WPC)

Another imprint of WPC is Anthem Press (www.anthempress.com)

First published in the United Kingdom in 2013 by

THAMES RIVER PRESS

75–76 Blackfriars Road

London SE1 8HA

www.thamesriverpress.com

© Darin Jewell and Conrad Jones 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted in accordance

with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All the characters and events described in this novel are imaginary

and any similarity with real people or events is purely coincidental.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-85728-087-9

Cover design by Sylwia Palka

This book was produced using PressBooks.com.

Secure Reviews and Set Yourself Up as a Reviewer IN A DAY

There are many ways to raise your profile away from the online retailers but remember that the online stores and review sites, namely Amazon, Kobo, Tesco, Waterstones, Goodreads and Kindleboards, are where your customers are looking for good books. Facebook and Twitter are key to your promotional platform, but your readers are in the retailers and online bookshops (or e-tailers) and therefore raising your profile in those stores is vital to your book’s commercial success.

The key question is how can you do it without spamming the forums with posts and links that scream "buy my book’ and turn readers off? The answer is placing strategic positive, intelligent reviews on books in your genre. You also need to encourage your readers in the right way to leave reviews on your book. Positive five-star reviews move your books up the search engines, but one-star reviews will knock your book down the rankings equally fast.

Where to Start

Firstly, you need to have your book or ebook reviewed by as many friends and family members as you can and ask them to post an honest review. Books with published reviews and genuine testimonials from various ebook stores or your readers tend to get more attention and interest and thus sell more. It’s self-perpetuating. The more positive reviews you can secure for your book the higher up the ranking it goes; the higher up the ranking it goes the more your book will sell.

Try and reply to every review, good or bad. If it is good then you can build a rapport with the reviewer, which tends to generate more positive reviews from them in the future. If they are scathing, either ignore it or be polite and thank them for the time they spent reading and reviewing your book. We have all