Veracity is a collaboration between Lori Tucker and Mark Graham Communications.
“Read any good books lately?”
You’ve probably both asked and answered this question. It’s human nature to garner the opinions of those we respect—whether asking about prospects in your chosen career path, if a particular stock looks promising, or even whether your instincts about that new special someone in your life are spot-on (or not).
For readers, choosing their next great read is no different. For this reason, it’s vital that authors ensure people are recommending their book. But if you’re a new author and/or have a new book out, how do you get these recommendations?
The key is book reviews. There are two types of book reviews, both of which can be instrumental to a book’s success:
- Trade reviews from members of the media and/or professional organizations that review books
- Consumer reviews from everyday readers
It’s a good idea to start with trade reviews, because the media and trade publications usually require several months to review a book. These groups accept a pre-publication version of your book for review. This is usually a PDF, epub (i.e., ebook) file, or a printed advance review copy (ARC). Once your book receives a glowing trade review, it can be posted to your website, your book’s Amazon page, and other areas, giving the book credibility and generating excitement before the book is available to the public.
If you’re traditionally published, the publicist at your publishing house will often work to get trade reviews for your book. If you’re self-published or your publishing house has no in-house publicist, you can:
- Reach out directly to any media contacts you have
- Pay for trade reviews from review sites such as Kirkus, Booklife, and Midwest Book Review
- Hire an outside publicist to solicit trade reviews on your behalf
The above options are listed from the most economical to (in general) the most expensive. The options you choose will depend on your budget and time constraints, the connections you currently have, and how wide you want your publicity to go.
Consumer reviews are posted by “regular folks” giving their opinion about the book. Like trade reviews, consumer reviews can increase your book’s credibility and hype. Consumer review sites include (among others):
Book purchasing sites such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble also allow consumers to leave reviews. Some sites (such as Amazon) don’t allow consumer reviews until the book’s publication date. Others allow pre-publication consumer reviews.
It may seem logical to start by asking family and friends to post consumer reviews. However, this can backfire if your loved ones don’t usually read in your genre. Review sites’ algorithms consider what other books a consumer has reviewed. If a consumer posts a review that’s outside their normal reading habits, it can cause your book to show up in the wrong searches. Therefore, if you do ask family and friends, ensure you only ask those who read in your genre.
So how do you find consumer reviewers, outside of your own circle, who read in your genre? A well-established resource is NetGalley, where you can post a pre-publication epub file and make it available for review to anyone who uses the NetGalley site. NetGalley provides you with data about a requesting reviewer, such as other books they’ve read and their review rate, allowing you to determine if the reviewer is a good match for your book. Using this data, you can accept or decline any request for your book. Similar sites to NetGalley are Booksirens and Booksprout.
As discussed in the blog during the past few months, getting the word out about your finished book is a large task, with multiple components. The first step, however, is writing a compelling book that audiences want to read. If you need ghostwriting or editing assistance, please get in touch. We’d love to help you start your journey toward authoring a book that garners rave reviews!
