Peter Laurent's Blog - Posts Tagged "reviewers"
The Battle for Reviews
After a stunning few days following the free promotion, The Covert Academy soared up the Amazon charts to #5 in SciFi Adventure as a paid title, and #2 in the UK.
Incredible, especially considering how few reviews I currently have. It has since dropped down to #79 (US) and #12 (UK).
Reviews are the MOST important resource for an author. Without reviews, you don't get noticed.
I suspect the strength of my sales so far have come from the momentum of the freebie day at the start of last week, and (hopefully) a compelling synopsis and book cover on the store page.
As a debut author, it is much harder to get reviewed. Forget traditional reviewers like TV, radio, and newspapers, on or offline. Not a chance, not that I expected it, even in New Zealand.
Yet even book bloggers geared towards indie publishers rarely responded. Of the 30-40 requests I sent, maybe 6 replied, and of them, only 2 agreed to review it. And one of them won't get to it until 2014!
The sad fact is that there are hundreds of thousands of books and not enough book bloggers to weed out the rubbish. They are all inundated with books "to-be-read". Fair enough, I can't expect preferential treatment.
I've posted in forums offering freebies for reviews... no responses there.
So how to get reviews as a debut author?
The trick is to scour books on Amazon similar to your own, and contact the people reviewing them. People without blogs, who review fewer books (with a few exceptions). Yet they too have clout within the reviewing community, which is valuable to any author.
Finding them on Amazon is incredibly time consuming, far more than searching for bloggers. Only a minority display their contact details. This likely worked to my advantage. How many authors would go to the trouble?
After several hours, I have lined up 7 reviewers. The first should hopefully be posted in just a few days.
Of course, the battle isn't won by that point.
Once I've got at least 10 reviews (fingers crossed for positive ones) I will schedule another freebie day a few weeks in advance. With more reviews, I can sign up to the larger ebook newsletters (such as Pixel of Ink) to get the book in front of more eyeballs.
That's the battle plan.
Of course, it all hinges on whether the book is any good!
But no one will know until it gets reviewed.
Cheers,
-Petes
Incredible, especially considering how few reviews I currently have. It has since dropped down to #79 (US) and #12 (UK).
Reviews are the MOST important resource for an author. Without reviews, you don't get noticed.
I suspect the strength of my sales so far have come from the momentum of the freebie day at the start of last week, and (hopefully) a compelling synopsis and book cover on the store page.
As a debut author, it is much harder to get reviewed. Forget traditional reviewers like TV, radio, and newspapers, on or offline. Not a chance, not that I expected it, even in New Zealand.
Yet even book bloggers geared towards indie publishers rarely responded. Of the 30-40 requests I sent, maybe 6 replied, and of them, only 2 agreed to review it. And one of them won't get to it until 2014!
The sad fact is that there are hundreds of thousands of books and not enough book bloggers to weed out the rubbish. They are all inundated with books "to-be-read". Fair enough, I can't expect preferential treatment.
I've posted in forums offering freebies for reviews... no responses there.
So how to get reviews as a debut author?
The trick is to scour books on Amazon similar to your own, and contact the people reviewing them. People without blogs, who review fewer books (with a few exceptions). Yet they too have clout within the reviewing community, which is valuable to any author.
Finding them on Amazon is incredibly time consuming, far more than searching for bloggers. Only a minority display their contact details. This likely worked to my advantage. How many authors would go to the trouble?
After several hours, I have lined up 7 reviewers. The first should hopefully be posted in just a few days.
Of course, the battle isn't won by that point.
Once I've got at least 10 reviews (fingers crossed for positive ones) I will schedule another freebie day a few weeks in advance. With more reviews, I can sign up to the larger ebook newsletters (such as Pixel of Ink) to get the book in front of more eyeballs.
That's the battle plan.
Of course, it all hinges on whether the book is any good!
But no one will know until it gets reviewed.
Cheers,
-Petes
