For book 2 of The Merging Worlds Series, I’m doing things a bit different. For The Sciell, I used free promotions to get reviews. I avoided sending blogger review requests because I was rejected the first time I did it and it’s a lot of work. Gotten over that. How can you get more reviews?
Digital Pubbing: 7 Strategies and 110 Tools to Help Indie Authors Find Readers and Reviewers
This is a great article. It led me to The Book Blogger List, a database of book bloggers. Most of these resources are for self-published authors. They’re also useful if you’re with a small press publisher. These bloggers are friendly to the little guy.
I also found The Indie View’s: Reviewer List. I prefer this one to The Book Blogger Lists because it also tells you where the blogger will post the review. I’m looking for someone who will post on Goodreads, Amazon and on social media, not just their blog. Posting on LibraryThing would be great as well, but not my top priority. Chains of the Sciell is not on Amazon but it will be once BookBaby finishes with it.
When I’m looking at reviewers, I’m hoping to find something like this:
“We only post 4 and 5 star reviews. If an author receives a poor review, we provide private constructive criticism to the author instead. We are in the business of helping authors, not hurting them.”
It’s not one of my requirements, but seeing it puts the reviewer at the top of my list.
I was going to try a service- BookBuzz.net. After I signed up, I got an email telling me they could send Chains of the Sciell to 2 reviewers. $99 for only 2 reviewers. I don’t think so. Dodged a bullet there.
Writer’s Beware: Bookmarketing.net: Beware of Spam Services
There’s also Library Journal. This got real expensive. They don’t accept electronic copies. The paperback version of Chains of the Sciell isn’t ready yet. I needed to print and bind my manuscript. Cost me about $200. A good review from here could help you get into libraries.
NetGalley. A lot of big publishers and reviewers use this site, but it cost about $400 to put one book up. You put your book up on their site for reviewers to request it. That might be worth it. $400 and your book will be seen by hundreds of potential reviewers. On the other hand, you can pay this and not get any reviews. I would use NetGalley if it didn’t cost $400.
I talked about StoryCartel. I’ve gotten most of my reviews through them. It’s like NetGalley only smaller. It’s $30 per book. Not bad. I’m not using it this time because I’d like to try a different approach. My experience with StoryCartel wasn’t bad. It also wasn’t earth shattering. The reviews I got didn’t help sales.
If you’re publishing through BookBaby, you can get a free review from Readers’ Favorite. They post on social media, their website, Goodreads and Amazon. The free reviews can take 10-12 weeks, I paid $59 to get mine in 2 weeks since I want it before Chains of the Sciell is released. They finished the book in 4 days. The reviewer noticed some formatting problems and grammatical errors in my book. Instead of including that in the review, they sent me a note. I really appreciated that.
The Creativity Penn: How To Get Book Reviews Without Spending (Too Much) Money
Alliance of Independent Publishers: How To Get Book Reviews
The Mad Reviewer: How to Write a Review Request
Alley’s Desk: How to request a review from a book blogger
Stephanie Loree: 4-Step How to Request a Book Review & Template
Finished Chains of the Sciell’s jacket. Took me 3 hrs, but it’s done!
