Reviews are essential as they are the measure of the readability and success of an author’s work, just like promoting and marketing of the books are crucial to reach the audience. Similarly, book reviews help in engaging more and more people and thus helps in expanding the web of the audience for the author. Book Reviews can be paid or unpaid. Like reviews from the professional book bloggers are paid ones as they are part of the promotional strategy too if studied closely. Unpaid review mostly comes from the audience in the form of comments and suggestions on social media mainly.
For getting book reviews some important points to remember are:
a. Finding the correct genre of audience of your book.
Audience or the reader is the main target as they are the one who read and give their review on different mediums. Even sometimes reviewers are biased towards their favorite author or genre. For any book to make its mark, its reader is of prime importance. Readers have their own preferences like which can be known through blogs they read, websites they visit, which author or writer they follow on social media, etc. These footprints on electronic media always help in reaching out the correct target audience for an author or blogger.
b. Finding book blogs and bloggers.
It is always not possible for an author to look out for reviews by himself. So in such a scenario the best way out is to lookout for book bloggers. They are now the backbone of the proportional and marketing campaign in association with either the author or the publishing houses or both in some cases. They help in creating a pool from their previous book blogs and book reviews. They also differentiate the readers according to their choices and preferences too. Therefore it helps both the author and the audience to connect to each other.
c. Follow up of the reviews.
Getting a review is not enough. Infact maintaining the number of reviews and answering the doubts of the audience is also important to maintain the contact between the author/ blogger and the reader. The frequency of reviews is also essential. But sometimes reviews can create a negative impact also. Like readers putting comments which are degrading the work or the author, not impressed with usage of words or vocabulary, they may find the work too predictable or boring, characterization is not upto the mark etc. Such negative reviews are tough to handle. But most of the social platforms or electronic platforms always have filters which automatically keeps the negative reviews in bottom or not showing as relevant comments. This is done with the help of bloggers, marketing team, etc.
d. Strategies to get book reviews like quizzes, promotional activities, freebies etc.
Not only reviews from book bloggers or social media platforms are enough to get more and new reviews. In order to lure new audiences and maintain the older ones we need innovative ideas which promote people to talk about the work and the author. Such proportional activities are good to catch the attention by offering some freebie in form of personalized autograph copy of the book, free coupons redeemable at different outlets, reading points in case of ebooks, conducting surveys and quizzes, etc. such activities help in maintaining a fun factor and personalized touch too.
How to get reviews for your book
Well for an author, there are two ways to get book reviews, one is the old classic way, which is to wait and watch, to get reviews for your book or the second method is to get the book blogger who is an expert of this field. The process of reviewing starts much earlier than imagined, publishers and publisticts have a detailed questionnaire for the authors as it will help in creating a pool of the similar authors and also the target audience. This way the audience can be filtered and directed towards a particular book genre. The nature and character of the review can be understood with the previous feedback given by the audience on different platforms.
Some other cardinal things to remember is the title of the book, its competitive books in the same genre and format of the book. All these things help in creating a niche and a long lasting effect on the memory of the readers too.
How to get book reviews from book bloggers
Book bloggers work in a systematic way to put across the reviews so that they can reach its target audience. Even book bloggers may have specific genres to promote at times. The first and foremost thing a book blogger does is to find the correct audience for the book. This is based on the genre of the book. The blogger will help in getting the reviews more quickly thus increasing the speed of the loop of BOOK SALE – REVIEW – BOOK SALE.
The book bloggers help in multiple aspects to get the best possible book review. It includes searching relevant book blogs which are active and answering your questions so that the reviews get maximum traffic. This is mainly dependent on the posting frequency of the blogger. One important point to learn is not to post too many reviews at a time because it may look like fake reviews and writing too few reviews are also harmful. So a balance in the frequency of posting reviews is also essential.
Not only that, bloggers are very crucial in case a book has a sequel coming up or an author planning something new out of the box. The book bloggers keep updated their audience about the author and its work to maintain the curiosity and excitement for the upcoming work.
How to get book reviews on social media
Book bloggers are not the only way to get reviews for your book. Promoting your book on different social media platforms also generates a good amount of reviews too. Be it a website, Amazon, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc all these platforms have huge audiences especially among youngsters and co-authors too. The reach of social media is humongous and plays a vital role especially for digital books/ebooks. The most common example is Kindle by Amazon. There are different ways to help in getting the audience attracted on such media platforms like posting some of the best lines from a book or posting behind the scenes during the writing of the book or tagging their co-authors and publishers etc. All such things help in increasing the views of the work.
Also Read – Cost Of Publishing A Book
How to get book reviews on Amazon
Amazon is one of the biggest leaders in book sales, marketing and audience reach. Kindle is used by 3/4th digital readers across the US. So the reviews on amazon are important. Amazon also directs you to the top reviewers from their pool of comments and feedback. These are verified reviewers and they are interconnected on different social media platforms too. Thus such reviewers always help in taking forward the positive feedback. So it’s the job of the author and the book blogger to hang on such reviewers.
Well, there are no two ways that book reviews are very important for book sales and the in-brand development of the author. But at times the negative feedback in review does the maximum harm. So using social media platforms are two way swords and that much risk has to be taken by the author, publicists and bloggers.
