Review Sites
In your marketing materials (blog, press release, Amazon title page, etc.) you’ll want to include a handful of excerpts from reviews so potential readers can get a sense of whether your book is for them.
Reviews fall into three general categories:
-
Editorial reviews come from publications dedicated to reading and reviewing books. The include Kirkus Reviews, Clarion, Publishers Weekly, and a number of others.
-
Reader reviews come from people from all walks of life who have read your book.
-
Author reviews come from fellow authors who your target readers may already know and respect.
How do you get reviews?
You usually have to pay for editorial reviews. See the resource list for Review Sites for a list of options.
Reader reviews should come organically, over time. However, when launching a new title, it’s extremely helpful to have at least a few reviews on your Amazon page to let propective readers know that your book is interesting and worth reading. Services that help deliver reader reviews are listed in the Reader Reviews resource list.
The only ways to get author reviews are:
- Make friends with other authors and ask them to review your work. This requires old-fashioned networking.
- Hire a publicist who has access to other authors in your genre. Publicists are expensive, but a good one will do a lot more than get you reviews.