By Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Excerpted from the newest in Carolyn's multi award-winning
HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers.
To find even
more reviewers, you can put your reporter’s hat on and ask—tactfully—for what
you need. Make the point that a review is a gift to you, a gift that authors
treasure above all others—whether it comes from a reviewer or a reader. Try
some of these possibilities:
- Ask fellow attendees at writers’ conferences.
- Ask directors of writers’ conferences if they offer a review exchange or have other suggestions for you.
- Ask writing instructors if they have a list of reviewers or know where you can find one.
- When you’re on the Web, look at the resource pages of the Web sites owned by how-to authors of books for writers and of online book review sites.
- Think about classes you have taken. The instructors may have a policy against reviewing students’ work, but your fellow students may review yours. (I hope you would try to do the same for them!)
- Ask members of your critique group.
- Ask members of the organizations you belong to. Writing organizations come to mind, but members of other organizations may be even more open to your suggestion. It may be something they’ve never done, may never have thought about doing, and they may find it is lots of fun.
- When you read, make a note of reviews and the names of those who wrote them that you find in some issues of magazines like Time and newspapers around the world.
- Learn to write great query letters that won't tick off agents (or reviewers!) from my The Frugal Editor (http://bit.ly/FrugalEditor). I interviews dozens of agents to learn about their pet peeves and most of them didn't mention typos! You'll want to know what they did mention!
MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This little how-to article was extracted from my
giant (415 pages) of How to Get Great
Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically: The ins and outs of using free reviews to
build and sustain a writing career (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews)
third in the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers
by Carolyn Howard-Johnson. It was released a few months ago. There is just so
much to know about putting reviews to work for your book! I am still celebrating its release because
authors are still benefitting from it. Learn more about my books for writers
and visit my free Writers’ Resources pages at http://howtodoitfrugally.com. It’s also
easy to use my review blog. Just follow the submission guidelines in the left
column at http://TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com
2 comments:
I have been contributing to @KarenCioffiVentrice's WritersontheMove blog for a long time and I can't think of a more important post I've contributed--not so much for the practical advice for writers but for the idea that learning to ask for what we need or want is such a valuable skill --and one that is hard to develop.
Sometimes it's tough asking for book reviews, but How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically has tons of ideas and tips.
Word of mouth is powerful in marketing. Getting book reviews is word of mouth and is a powerful book marketing strategy.
Thanks for sharing, Carolyn.
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