Comments on: 10 Steps to Obtaining Reviews for Your Book

By: Marketing and promoting a book | Katriona Chapman Illustration

Marketing and promoting a book | Katriona Chapman Illustration — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 10:56:46 +0000

[...] has another really great piece here about how important it is to get your book reviewed… some bookshops won’t consider stocking [...]

By: kenyada

kenyada — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:40:49 +0000

great info and very useful indeed. once you receive reviews from readers and reviewers, are you require to have a signed release form before printing the review in your book and etc.?

By: Sue Collier

Sue Collier — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 16:44:41 +0000

Thanks, as always, for weiging in, Judith!

By: Judith Briles

Judith Briles — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:34:58 +0000

This is a great process. I also appreciate the step-by-step details on how to go about it. It is actually very helpful for an author to have an organized list of contacts for book reviews and of course, always follow up.

By: 'ö-Dzin Tridral

'ö-Dzin Tridral — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 10:23:35 +0000

Thank you very much for your advice. I particularly like the approach to following up until you get a ‘yea’ or ‘nay’. I eventually realised that my emails and letters weren’t on someone’s ‘to do’ list, they had simply been discarded.

By: 'ö-Dzin Tridral

'ö-Dzin Tridral — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 10:19:53 +0000

By: Sue Collier

Sue Collier — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:56:28 +0000

Thanks, Irene. That’s a very valid point–the importance of reading (and following!) instructions–that could have been emphasized more. And I totally agree about making sure a review request, along with book and contact info, if included with any review copies. In fact, I recently tweeted about this very thing, having just received a book to review myself with not a bit of accompanying info!

I appreciate you stopping by and taking the time to write!

By: Irene Watson

Irene Watson — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:42:09 +0000

Disclosure: I’m writing this as a book review service.

You certainly do have some very good points and thanks for publishing them. However, one important thing you missed is “Read the guidelines listed on the site.” (Your slight mention about reading the instructions wasn’t strong enough and should be an emphasis on its own.) Every reviewer has a set of guidelines and it’s extremely important to read them BEFORE sending any queries or books out for review. Not all reviewers respond to queries and many don’t even open up the follow-up queries. As reviewers, we get inundated with queries.

Personally we get at least 10 queries per day from people that didn’t read the guidelines and those are never answered.

Another thing I want to emphasize is making sure contact information, especially an email address, be included with the request for a review. We get at least 5, sometimes as many as 10, books per week with no contact info at all – just a book in an envelope. We have no idea who sent it to us or who to contact if we review it. Consequently those books end up on the donate pile immediately and aren’t even considered for a review.

By: Emma Newman

Emma Newman — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 11:59:35 +0000

That’s a good point. Thanks for that, I will be brave when I produce my print version

By: Sue Collier

Sue Collier — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 10:58:52 +0000

Emma–there is definitely a fine line between reasonable follow-up and harrassment. But I think reviewers will expect a certain amount of it. And email makes it much more nonintrusive than calling on the phone. Good luck! And thanks for reading!