How to Find Reviewers for Your Book

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How to Find Reviewers for Your Book

16 Dec

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Reader / Writer Forums and Social Media seem to be the best places to solicit book reviews. Why, you might ask? Well, as a member you are known and appreciated and you have “personal” contact with these folks. So they are way more inclined to do something for you, the writer. Joining Twitter, Wattpad, Google+, Goodreads, Shelfari etc. and network on these sites is the only option to make a name for a self-publishing writer anyway.

Another possibility is to contact magazines and newspapers who regularly review books – or use the fee-based professionally reviewers, such as Kirkus Reviews. Authors can also contact these forums and book reviewers / bloggers. They are randomly taken from my upcoming book “111 Tips to Get Book Reviews”:

Here are some tips when soliciting reviews by Theresa Braun, taken from her guest blog where she explained possibilities to find reviewers:

“Most bloggers are willing to not only post a review of your book on their blog, but also will post it on Amazon and Goodreads. You really need to find out from their web sites where they will post.”

“Check out reviewers’ websites and find out what genres they are willing to read and what their guide lines are.”

“Each reviewer probably has a long list of books they are already reading, and may not respond to your email right away—or ever. It will sometimes take weeks or even months before you will see a review. So get in touch with reviewers even before your book is available. As earlier you have reviews as better.”

“Don’t forget to thank all your reviewers personally. Keep in mind that these wonderful people are taking the time to read and write up a review. Many of them are donating their precious leisure time, and sometimes money, to you and your book.”

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Almost every book reviewer has a blog. Why not offer a well-written guest blog? Show off your writing skills and get a back link to your own website / blog. Reviewers are for sure more willing to review your book when you started the relationship in this beneficial way. Reviewers are always time-strapped and receiving a blog post gives them more time – to read your book and write the much needed review.

Some good additional advice, for sample “What is good etiquette in interacting with reviewers?” is answered by Rel Mollet in Jody Hedlands blog on literary reviews.
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And now the most important question:
“How many books of fellow writers have YOU reviewed?”

It is all a give and take. Reviews don’t have to be very elaborate. Amazon requires that they are at least two sentences long. Give back to the community! And don’t worry to give or to receive less than five stars in a book review. More important is to have lots of reviews. Many famous bestseller authors received even one-star reviews, some up to 150!!! Read who is in this list. You will be very surprised…

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If you enjoyed this blog post, please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are almost 1,150 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.

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And don’t forget to spread the word on other social networking sites of your choice for other writers who might also enjoy this blog and find it useful. Thanks, Doris

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10 Comments

Posted by ebooksinternational on December 16, 2012 in Book Reviews, googling social, Marketing, Self-Publishing, Social Media Book Marketing, Social Networks

Tags: book reviewers, good etiquette in interacting with reviewers, Groom and Doom, Jody Hedlands blog, Rolando Garcia, solicit book reviews, The Sun Zebra, Theresa Braun

10 responses to “How to Find Reviewers for Your Book”

stephaniehurt

December 17, 2012 at 8:53 am

Thanks for this post. Getting someone to review your work can sometimes be a daunting task. I will check out the sites you mentioned.

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Karen

January 13, 2013 at 7:31 am

Great post – I was just pondering this very topic!

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TheBloomsburyReview (@BloomsReviews)

February 7, 2013 at 9:13 am

Sorry you missed the “National Treasure” that is The Bloomsbury Review, a Book Magazine that has been doing reviews for over 30 years–and which focuses on books that fly below the main-stream review media–and reviews on merit, not on payment from authors or publishers.

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- ebooksinternational
  
  March 25, 2013 at 10:29 pm
  
  Thanks for this tip, appreciate! Will be added. This blog shows only a small part of all the links we compiled, we might actually have it already. Will check.
  Cheers, Doris
  
  Reply
Paula Cappa

February 7, 2013 at 11:33 am

I’ve seen these lists before and sent in requests to many of them, but I get either no response or there’s posts up that they are overwhelmed with review requests and not accepting any new ones. I’ve spent countless hours going through the list and come up with nothing. Does anybody check these sites to see if they are really interested in reviewing?

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- ebooksinternational
  
  March 25, 2013 at 10:26 pm
  
  Paula,
  I emailed you and re-furbished an earlier blog post how to make contact to reviewers. They are all overwhelmed with requests. Most important is to first build a relationship. Would you work for free for a stranger, knocking on your door? Join them on Twitter or FB, most of them have icons on their blogs, or friend them on Goodreads. I wrote another blog about this in detail.
  https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/million-dollar-question-how-to-get-book-reviews/
  Good luck, Doris
  
  Reply
mercury205

February 8, 2013 at 1:58 am

I’m very interested to know how I ended up as a link on this site. But thank you for the traffic, I suppose.

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Deborah A Schwartz (@lemondotrule)

February 10, 2013 at 7:58 pm

Thanks this helps.

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Crystal Collier

February 12, 2013 at 5:41 pm

Awesome! Bookmarking now…

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Rebecca Vance

March 3, 2013 at 12:57 am

This is a great post and I appreciate you referring to my review blog! Sorry I haven’t followed before now, but I am following now and will also follow you on Twitter. 🙂

Reply