How to Find a Book Reviewer

If you are unfortunate enough not able to afford to work as a full-time writer, you might have spent weeks, months, possibly a year working on your book in your spare time.  

While working on your story, you should have also built your author platform, and created a following. Building your author platform after your book is finished is too late to get started building a readership list of interested readers who kept up with your progress hungrily waiting to read the finished book.

Your author platform is a place to find readers who may be willing to reviewer your book and tell others about your book.

Having a following is part of your marketing and promotion plan for your book, which is what publishers will want to know. Agents will want to see what comes up when they Google you. Depending on what an agent finds may determine whether they leave and not choose to work with you, or take a chance on you and your book to a publisher.

How to Find a Book Reviewer

As of November 13, 2014, searching Google for “Book Reviewer” delivers 16,400,000 results. A list this large can be daunting at best. How do you choose from a list of 16.4 million reviewers and choose one or two to contact to review your book. How do you contact a reviewer? Once again, this is where you author platform is the answer. Create a post on your author platform that you are seeking reviewers and promote the post. Be positive in stating you are seeking honest unbiased reviews only, and state the genre, if you write “Romance” do you want a reviewer the reads Sci-Fi, or Westerns reviewing your book.

Figuring out which reviewer to choose:

·         Your followers – They’re already interested

·         Social Media – Your followers

·         Asking for reviewers on the internet can be dicey

·         Ask other authors who they used

·         Ask if a reviewer reads and reviews your specific genre

·         Ask to see a reviewers past work

·         Ask a reviewer where they post reviews

·         Some reviewers are not allowed to post on Amazon

·         Tell the reviewer where your book can be found and ask them to post there

·         Ask the reviewer if they send you a copy of the review before it is posted

·         Ask for a link to the posted review

Asking your family and friends for reviews is a horrible idea because you should wonder if they are truly unbiased and honest, or just telling you something being kind. Reviews that are all five star can actually hurt when readers other than family and agents read your book.

Find someone who reviews your genre. Not all reviewers read and review all genres. You should receive honest, unbiased, and professional reviews. The reviewer should send you a copy before posting it around the internet. Reviewers should help you get the word out about your book and intrigue readers to purchase your book.

This goes back to your author platform and visibility to potential readers, which every writer needs if they want to sell books. Yes, I keep harping about “author platform”, that is because writing is important to you, you wrote the book. Therefore, let people know about it before you start writing your book, and peaking interest while keeping potential readers up to date on the progress.

Author

Robert Medak

Freelance writer, Blogger, Editor, Proofreader, and Reviewer

http://rjmedak.wordpress.com

When did you last blog about your book?

Do you blog about your work in progress so potential readers can learn about your book; creating desire to purchase and read it.

It is easier to let readers know what to expect if you keep them informed about the progress, a hint about the subject, and a possible availability date.

Blogging about your work in progress is not about hype, but a journey with your followers, capturing new followers, and growing your list of potential readers organically, the only way to grow a real list of followers.

Building a growing list of legitimate followers over time is part of marking and promoting your book to people who read. You are trying to grow interest in what you do, write.

Unfortunately, social media is becoming a den of iniquity with people on almost every platform wanting to sell you followers.

When or if an agent searches you on Google, is he going to see real followers, or is he going to see fake followers, which will be a detriment to your reputation?

There are no short cuts to building a following; it requires work and time to establish a following organically.

Even working with traditional publishers, authors need to market and promote their work. What better way than building a following or people waiting for your book.

All authors need some type of platform for building a following of readers following along the journey from concept to publication.

The point is to build a large list of potential purchasers and readers for your book. One way to do this is by blogging. Another is with an author’s page, a website, or some other platform used for building a following for your books.

For any author to succeed in publishing books, authors need to publicize their books, find readers, promote the book, marketing the book, and schedule signings.

As an author, blogging about your book’s progress is a way to engage readers to follow you, while they learn more about your book, and when they will be able to purchase a copy.

Author
Robert Medak
Freelance Writer, Blogger, Editor, Proofreader, and Reviewer learning ethical Marketing
follow the author at http://xeeme.com/RobertMedak

If you need help making your copy better or have any questions, please use my contact form and we will work together.

Kindle Publishing vs.Traditional Publishing

First, accept the fact there are pros and cons to publishing your book via either method.

There is no reason to create a litany of the differences, in addition, how they are similar.

Either method requires an author’s platform, and a following. A literary agent will Google the author, the question is what will they find.

An author’s followers are potential purchasers and readers of the author’s book or books.

With a blog, an author’s followers can grow, and followers can track the progress of books, purchase books, and learn about upcoming products, learn about the author, and even about the writing journey of the author.

What will an agent find when he searches you?

Whether you publish on Kindle or Publishing House, authors need to have a presence, followers, marketing strategy, promotion strategy, and be willing to schedule book signings, and PR.

It is up to the author to sell the book, not the publisher. It is also up to the author to find honest book reviewers to obtain posted reviews to spread the word about the book. In addition, where readers of the review may purchase a copy of the author’s book.

Publishing via either method requires the author to edit their manuscript to create the best manuscript possible converted into a book for readers. Authors do not want to disappoint readers with a book containing grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, tense, or word choice errors.

If an author decides to publish on Kindle opposed to traditional, the author would have more creative control, and pricing of their book.

With Amazon being the 900 pound gorilla in the mix, can you publish on Kindle and POD simultaneously?

This would depend on any type or agreement the author enters into with Kindle publishing.

Authors need to read the fine print before any type of publishing or any type of agreement before committing their book to any publishing platform, of which there are many and new ones opening up to self-publishing almost daily. 

Author

Robert Medak

Freelance Writer, Blogger, Editor, Proofreader, and Reviewer learning ethical Marketing

Follow the author: http://xeeme.com/RobertMedak

If you need help making your writing better or have any questions about how to improve your writing, please use the contact form and work together to make your work better.

Internet Presence

You have completed your manuscript, and now you might be looking for and agent.

What will the agent see if they Google^TM  your name?

Do you have real followers on social media sites, do you have an author’s platform?

There are people on the Internet that sell Facebook^TM, Twitter^TM, and other sites. If an agent sees this, your reputation will suffer.

Building a list of subscribers to a blog, newsletter, followers on social media that you work for will tell agents that you have a list of potential readers and purchasers for your book.

If you choose to self-publish your book, having an Internet presence where you have kept your readers up to date on the progress of your book, and availability to purchase is what you need to sell your book to them.

There is no doubt that writing is a business, and more so for the self-published author, unless you have a reputation and following like James Patterson, who by the way, is on television hawking his books.

If you want to sell your books, you need and Internet presence and a platform from which people can purchase your book, or a link to a purchase site like Smashwords, Lulu, iUniversise, or whoever is publishing via POD, paperback, or eReader formats.

Having sold copies may also help you find an agent.

Today’s author needs to have a marketing plan, be willing to do book signings, promote, and schedule all of this on their own. Most self-publishing houses do not do this work for you, and many traditional publishing houses expect authors to do this work to sell their books.

What are you willing to do to create an Internet presence? 

Author

Robert Medak

Freelance Writer, Blogger, Editor, Proofreader, and Reviewer learning Marketing

Follow the author: http://xeeme.com/RobertMedak