Book Reviews
All authors know that a good book review is worth its reviewer’s weight in gold. Reviews can be posted on the web at bookselling sites to encourage potential readers to buy; they can be used on book jackets as blurbs to encourage potential readers to buy; they can be quoted in sig lines to encourage potential readers to buy. Yeah, there’s a theme here: while it’s great ego candy to read a terrific review of one’s work, the bottom line is still, always, the bottom line: to keep selling, to stay in print, to make a living.
And reviews help. One of my publishers, in fact, absolutely swears by reviews, believing that they, more than anything else, are what sell the book. Whether reality is that extreme or whether success is a mix of many factors, book reviews still count.
Getting a reviewer to look at your book, however, may be a lot easier said than done.
There are certain good places to start. Your local newspaper or regional magazine is best: be sure to obtain the name of the correct person to send a review copy to, and add a very big note that says, “LOCAL AUTHOR.” Short of already being on the bestseller list, this is your best bet for reviews.
Don’t overlook Amazon. Amazon has a list of top-hundred reviewers, whose reviews carry more weight than those of your Aunt Edna who was “happy, dear, to write something nice about your little book.” With a little sleuthing, you can obtain their email addresses and politely request a review (and, of course, offer to send a review copy!).
The Big Boys of book reviews are tougher to get to, and I’m going to leave it to your ingenuity to figure out how; but I’ll start you off with a gift — the venues themselves:
- Bookpage
- Bookreporter
- Boston Globe Books
- Christian Science Monitor Books
- Globe and Mail Books (Canada)
- Guardian Review (UK)
- Independent Reviews
- Montreal Gazette Books
- National Public Radio reviews
- New York Times
- San Francisco Chronicle Books
- Times (London)
- Telegraph (UK)
- Washington Post Bookworld
So there it is. Write a fabulous book, get it critiqued via an online or real-time group, get it professionally edited, interest a publisher, sign a contract –– and start getting those reviews! And then you’ll be … beyonf the elements of style!