So, you wrote a book, congratulations! Now how to get book reviews (and later sales)?
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Yes!! If you just wrote your first book, I just want to be the one to tell you that you rock! It is a huge accomplishment and please take time to celebrate it!
But, if you thought writing it was hard, selling it will be monumental. Unless you are already an established author, gaining ground as a newbie can be tough!
One thing that absolutely will help you is, you guessed it, book reviews!
How do book reviews help you?
Well, if you’re anything like me, you love to do a little research before making purchases. I even recently saw it in a meme where it describes how an anxious person buys anything. It explains how they research it, read the reviews, leave it in the cart for a week, check the return policy again before buying it, and then leave it in a return pile but never return it. I felt that.
But if you caught the important part of that equation it was that they read the reviews. Think about it, if you go on Amazon and you’re seeing different prices for something you want, what do you do? You read the reviews!
Getting book reviews in the beginning of your book career though is tough. Because not a lot of people are willing to go out on a limb and make a purchase if they don’t know if other people liked it. So the best way to help with that is to offer your book for free for a limited time when you first start out. Eventually, though, you will want to make a profit, that’s why these free websites are huge!
The first way you should be getting book reviews is by offering your book for free.
I know it’s a gamble because not everyone that reads it will leave a book review. And sometimes, even when they do, it won’t be a great one! But it affords you a ton of exposure from people that would otherwise not get your book. And hey, they might just like it enough to leave you raving book reviews!
By offering it for free for a limited time, you also get the added FOMO boost. People love free stuff! And they hate when they miss out! Could you imagine if you were offered a chance to read {insert favorite book} before it was mainstream? Or to get in on something on the ground floor?
Maybe make friends with a famous actor before they made it big! Jensen Ackles maybe? But seriously, what if you were one of J.K. Rowlings biggest fans in the beginning, and she showed her appreciation for that? That is the power of FOMO my friend, of fear of missing out.
You probably won’t be able to get all of the reviews that you need though…
That’s where these free websites come in! When I offered my book for free for 5 days, and I only have a very moderate following, I got 80 downloads. For me that was huge! I was over the moon at 80 downloads!
In terms of book reviews, however, I got 2 from those free downloads so far. Which, hey, I’m still over the moon about! Because they are phenomenal reviews and I made some new friends to boot! But, to continue my success with the book, 2 reviews from $0 in sales is not going to break the bank.
So by utilizing some free websites I can hopefully garner more attention and book reviews!
Important! Do this for book reviews BEFORE you launch!
I made the mistake of not playing around with these websites prior to launching my book. But lucky for you, I made the mistake already so you don’t have to!
So before you launch your book officially, you’re going to want to offer a free promotion on both Bookbub and Goodreads (I’m not sure about Booksprout but why not). The reason being that both of them do not allow you to do a free promo after it’s launched.
Essentially, I missed out on a totally free, extremely large audience of people that definitely love to read and would most likely leave me a review. That’s because that is what those two websites are designed for!
After you launch.
You should definitely still maintain your book on these websites because Goodreads is a major publication and Bookbub is too as far as I can tell. Both Bookbub and Booksprout I am new to, BUT I know they’re both great for book reviews.
With Bookbub, I have seen a few different articles stating that it’s the best for advertising your book. I can attest to that because with the ads I have run across multiple different platforms, the ones on Bookbub perform the highest, but they’re also the most user-friendly! You can’t get too bogged down in the details which is good because it eliminates room for error that way too. With limited options, you can make higher converting ads quicker because there’s less guesswork to be done.
Goodreads is just a great way to connect with fellow readers and to get exposure for your books and for you as an author. The best free website here for book reviews after launching is Booksprout. That is because you can post an upload of your book for free for readers to read for free, with the promise that they will leave a review. The only downside is that you may not get great reviews. (With some paid platforms you can pay up so you only get the stellar reviews-yeah, I know).
So tell me, what one do you want to get started with today? Definitely DO NOT FORGET ABOUT BOOKTOK!
All of these websites are easy to use and, again, free!
So if you want to get a free copy of my book Fireflies, you know how to get it now!
But if you want to support an Indie Author, I hope you grab a copy here!
