Gaining book reviews for any author is important toward the promotion of their work. Most publishing companies make sure there are reviews for their books far in advance, weather solicited, purchased, or from an in-house team of reviewers, ready to get out the good word.
For a self-published author, it’s a little different.
Most of us can’t afford to pay for reviews, and I don’t believe in that practice anyway. How could you get an honest opinion when you’re shelling out cash? And I don’t know about any other self-published author, but I don’t have a team of people ready to promote my book for me.
So what’s left for us?
For many of us the first step is to solicited companies or blogs that do reviews, and then hope they not only want to review your book, but they have the free time to review your book, and finally, yet most important, that they liked your book. After soliciting so many companies and blogs, you start to feel like a beggar in the streets. “Change…”
What’s Worse? No Review or a Bad Review?
When you hit the jackpot and someone wants to review your book, your next concern is, will they like it? You hope they will, but there’s always the chance that they give you a bad review.
It’s the risk every author takes.
But whether the review is good or bad, it’s still publicity. I myself have purchased a book because of a bad review. What the reviewer hated about the book was exactly what I was looking for.
Writing Reviews? Easy Peasy.
There’s no wrong way to write a review, but some people just don’t know what to say, even if they loved the book. If you have problems getting your point across you could ask yourself a few questions and just use the answers, like:
• How did the book make you react?
• Did the book live up to your expectations, or did it fall flat?
• Were the characters and the storyline well developed?
• Would you recommend it to others?
Sorting Through the Rubble, and Finding Gold!
I don’t purchase a book until I’ve sorted through all the reviews for it. In a later post I will cover my favorite places to find and possibly leave reviews. Until then, tell me about your favorite places to search for or post reviews.