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
