The brilliance of book reviews

I love book reviews. I love to read them, write them and get them published. Why? Because they are quick, easy, generally short, easy to place and can have a catalytic effect.

Today, I heard that Rosie Reay, over at Catalunya Chronicles had posted a review of my book, A Career in Your Suitcase, see, that’s it over there on the left. I immediately thanked her, then I sent a tweet about it and now that review has become a blog. See what I mean about the catalytic effect of a book review? Then, a few minutes ago I got an alert that my author, Tina Quick’s book The Global Nomad’s Guide to University Transition had been reviewed at The Sentinella over in Spain by my student, Sian Witherden. If you are an author you need reviews too. Let me explain:

Authors need reviews

Authors need reviews of their books. Of course they do, that is why they send out advance copies, extracts and prepublication PDFs of the final draft as soon as they can and continue handing them out as soon as it is hot off the press. The more reviews you have  the more likely it is that people will take your book seriously. I don’t know about you but if I find a book for sale online and it has no reviews I am acutely suspicious of its quality. The more reviews you can get the better. But who wants them? Where can you place them? Here are some ideas . . .

where to place reviews

• websites
• blogs
• online bookstores
• magazines
• newspapers
• newsletters
• free papers

hand them out like smarties

Many brand new authors are reluctant to hand out free copies of their books willynilly to people claiming they will write a review. Some authors consider it to be a risk, or even a cost to them if that person is not writing for a major newspaper. Rubbish! A review is worth gold, wherever it appears, even if it only gets in front of a handful of people. Because the moment someone places a review, even if only one other person reads it and is tempted to buy the book, that makes one more sale and compensates for the cost of that one you ‘gave away’. These days many people are happy to review a PDF of a book, so I recommend you offer these to anyone who offers to do a review, yes, even if that review is ‘only on Amazon’. Emailing a PDF costs nothing but could pay dividends if that review ultimately converts into sales.

Of course you aren’t going to be silly and give away copies of your book to everyone and anyone, but if that person is prepared to place a review on Amazon, has a blog, knows someone with a blog, has a connection with a friendly website owner or is already a freelance journalist then do consider offering them a copy. Please.

Working with reviewers

If you find someone keen to do a review of your book, then I suggest you do the following:

1. Ask them where they will place it.
2. Ask them to let you know when it appears.
3. When the review is out use it for your own PR, blog about it, tweet about it and extend its value as far as you can.
4. If the review is good, and you can see that the reviewer is a good writer, suggest they take another step and write an article, interview or blog post on the same topic as the book, with you front and centre.
5. Keep a note of whom you gave your books to and follow up to check they have done the review. If not, offer them help or a sample review they could tailor.
6. If they are still stuck, send them a copy of my free report called How to Write a Book Review.
7. After the review is published thank them very much indeed.

You can guess what’s coming next, right?

If anyone would like to do a book review of one of my books just ASK!