We live in an age of referrals and recommendations – Trip Adviser, Trusted Trader, you name it – and books are no exception. Mainstream publishers know this and have the reviewing business pretty much sown up. They have established media links and well-used channels for getting their authors reviewed and written-up in newspapers, magazines, radio and TV. We indies don’t have those, so we must work harder.
So how do you get reviews?
Well, family and friends are obvious, and it’s silly not to use them. I find some of my most enthusiastic supporters are among this group! However, it’s important to be careful; they’ll be biased. Of course they will, they wouldn’t be your friends if they weren’t! Amazon carefully polices reviews, and if it suspects a reviewer has a family connection to the author they may block their account.
Fellow authors are a good bet. We’re all in the same boat and sympathetic to fellow strugglers, but ‘I’ll give you a nice review if you give me one’ doesn’t work. There’s a good chance people will see through it, it damages the validity of genuine reviews, and worst of all nobody learns anything from it. Because isn’t the point of a review not only to encourage sales but to get an objective opinion on the merits of your writing, what works and what doesn’t? In my last blog I mentioned the BooksGoSocial Book Review Club on Facebook. Members submit their books for review, other members review them, and in turn they offer their own books for review. This is a cracking concept, because it means you get reviews from people who know what they’re talking about and the reviews are impartial.
It’s important to have some reviews in place before publication, both to use in publicity and to get some snappy quotes for the cover. There are several sources for what is sometimes called an ‘editorial review’. This is a report (usually 250 to 500 words) by someone active and experienced in the world of books – an academic, journalist, editor, teacher, top selling author. Kirkus is one of the best known and is well respected but there are others. You’ll get intelligent, illuminating feedback, but the downside is that it will cost you (Kirkus is $450 plus!) and it takes a long time (usually at least 2 months, although you can pay even more and get it quicker). Now I don’t know about you, but I would have to sell a cartload of copies to cover such a cost.
Which leaves NetGalley. You lodge with NetGally either the finished work or, if its not been published yet, a pre-production copy (usually known as an ARC or ‘advance reading copy’). NetGalley will announce it and It’s then up to members to download it and post a review. Some certainly will, and the reviews will be honest (sometimes brutally so!) because that’s what NetGalley reviewers are committed to. You pay for the time your book is on NetGalley, so the whole exercise is time limited. I tend to use it myself for new writing, and in short bursts, and I strongly recommend it. To get a 33% discount on any of the NetGalley+ services provided by BooksGoSocial you can use coupon code: pf33 at the checkout point on this page.
Phill Featherstone is an indie author published by Opitus Books. His first two novels, Paradise Girl (mybook.to/ParadiseGirl) and Aftershocks (mybook.to/Aftershocks) have won several awards, and his new novel, The God Jar will be published in September. You can reach Phill through his Goodreads Author Page (https://tinyurl.com/y7frtrtp) or his own website (www.phillfeatherstone.net).
