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

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.