How to Get Book Reviews and Boost Your Sales? Let’s Find Out

Getting book reviews is probably the most difficult task for any author out there because in today’s day and age reviews mean everything for the visibility of the book.

Book reviews help readers make important purchase decisions regarding a book and a book review is the very first thing that readers are going to look at even before they pick up the book and read what’s on the cover.

You can think of it as the most influential hook of any book.

It is just like owning a restaurant because ultimately people are going to look at the reviews and those will be the biggest motivator to driving sales.

Similarly, book reviews are going to help you prepare your book for the best sales season ever and will help you not only establish a strong online presence but will also help you in offline traditional sales.

The reason why book reviews are so important is because it provides legitimacy to any book because people are more likely to buy something with a lot of reviews than with no reviews.

Book reviews become even more important to those who are just starting out for the first time without any reputation in the market and these reviews will help the author with a strong foundation to showcase their products.

Reviews are social proof of a book.

That is why we are here to tell you how you can get book reviews and boost your sales and make sure you can establish a strong online presence as well as strong author branding.

Ways to Get Book Reviews and Boost Your Sales

Prepare Your Book for Review

If you want to get the best reviews then the very first thing you need to do is to prepare your book for reviews because if you are willing to get reviews then you need to present your book in a very polished and professional manner.

This means that when you are sending out early copies to critics you simply cannot send out an unpolished manuscript because you need to have professional levels of editing and investing professional editors to edit your manuscript and make sure it is in its final form.

It also does not make sense to send out a final draft without its final form and for that, you also need to design a cover for the book.

If you feel like publishing early copies is difficult and you do not want to spend that much before commissioning the first batch of prints you can create an ebook and in that eBook, you need to have the book covers in place.

Basically, when you present your book to the book critic you need to make sure that it is in its final form and maybe only missing marketing material in its cover.

However, if you have already established a good relationship with some book critics then you can send them out an unfinished copy and by that, we mean the complete and final manuscript but without the cover or the other additions to it.

Establish a Strong Online Presence

There are different techniques of getting reviews and one of them is to ask people to review it on different platforms and the other way is the organically get reviews for the book.

If you want to go with one of the most organic ways of getting book reviews then you need to have an established fanbase online.

In order to do that you need to establish a strong online presence in the form of different social media groups and engagement on all your social media profiles.

And this is similar to other branding and you need to maintain active profiles on all popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram as well as Twitter and even on YouTube if you can put out short video content or even long-form videos to promote your book.

If you manage to establish an online presence then you can utilise them for some of the best and most authentic reviews.

You can share parts of a chapter of your new book as teasers and ask them to genuinely review it on different platforms whether it is on Amazon or any other place you sell the book.

This kind of response would be amazing for the algorithm which will further promote your book which already has an online authority in the form of organic search.

 

Utilize a Call to Action in Your Book

Since we are going the organic way and since it is also the most effective way of getting reviews every author can do, this is a tried and tested technique to utilise.

If you are not really comfortable with creating an online presence and being something like an influencer then the bare minimum you can do this to simply add an extra page to your book at the end.

On this page, you can simply express gratitude to your readers and tell them that you are so happy that they read through the end.

After you do that, you can ask them only once about leaving an honest review if they liked the book and you must keep in mind that this request for review should not be very persuasive or pushy and it should just be a single line.

If you try and write paragraphs about why a review helps then it is going to sound very desperate and it will have the opposite effect on the reader and especially on a reader who did not like the book.

That will lead them to put in negative reviews because negative reviews at even worse than no reviews.

If you really want your readers to notice your request for a review then you can also use technology and it will be much more interesting for readers to interact with it.

What you can do is simply have a QR code at the end of the book and when your readers scan it, they will be presented with a video where you request them to review the book and thank them for their time.

Offer Your Book for Free Temporarily

While we advise you to do your research before you take the step but one of the most effective things you can do in order to get book reviews, especially during the launch of the book is through free book days.

This is different from a giveaway because when you conduct a giveaway you have to give away books for free to different people based on if they have won something.

This is different in the sense that if you get into an agreement with Amazon’s KDP Select then you can select to give away a certain number of copies for certain days for free.

This will generate much more traffic to your book and it will boost downloads which is only going to increase the number of reviews your book gets.

However, you should shut it down after a week or something like that because you do not want sales to take a hit.

This is a very risky strategy but it can pay off if you are looking for reviews and fast.

Alternatively, you can also try out something else by releasing your book in the form of a series of books or even release your book in a series of chapters. This is difficult to do if you are launching your book in print but it might be easier if you are only planning an online release.

When you do that, you can set the first chapter for free reading and it is not only going to generate reviews but it is also an excellent strategy to hook readers.

Reach Out to Book Influencers

Yes, book influencers are a thing and they are very popular in the entire book publishing industry for their reviews and insights into new books.

These influencers have excellent reach with thousands of subscribers who trust that judgement when it comes to new books.

Yes if this blog had been written 10 years ago then we would have mentioned book bloggers because they used to hold this kind of authority but now if you want book success and reviews you are going to need book influencers.

There are primary two types of book influencers and one of them run paid influence campaigns and all you need to do it to pay them and they will review your book. This might be very expensive to do so and it all depends on the kind of reach they have.

If it is within your budget then you can definitely approach them and it will be quite easy for them to review your book and even speak positively about it but if you do not want to do it like this and go for something more organic then there is another option.

We are talking about book influencers to whom you have to send advance copies and they will decide if they want to review your book or not.

If they do then they will mention to you beforehand that they are reviewing your book. You must not tell them to review it positively and ask them to review it as honestly as possible as they will appreciate you saying that.

However, you can request them to ask the readers and viewers for book reviews and it will definitely lead to a lot of reviews.

Submit to Professional Reviewers

One of the other things you can do is to try out the traditional way of getting reviews and it is in the form of professional reviews from reviewers.

These are professionals who only do reviews on review platforms or they can even be part of a publishing company who are famous for their opinions on different books.

Getting your book reviewed by these professionals can mean a lot because they will not only review it for you and help you get very valuable reviews on your book but their reviews will also mean your book now becomes eligible for different book lists sometimes run by these reviewers.

However, sometimes the services of these professionals may require a fee which is not really a lot considering the kind of help you are going to get from this service.

But if you are planning on not spending a lot on marketing and reviews and if you want things to be as organic as possible then again there are free platforms out there where you can ask experts to review your book.

However, the legitimacy of reviews from paid review platforms such as Kirkus Reviews as well as Foreword Reviews hold a lot of weight and readers are always on the lookout on these platforms for new good books.

It is the positive review that counts and you should go to any length to secure a positive review from a reputable source.

This can also mean asking other professional reviewers in the form of other authors for a review of your book.

If you do not have any connections in the industry then this is something that might be very difficult to achieve but you should be persistent and keep on requesting people to have a look at your book and whatever they say about the book can be utilised in the marketing campaign to drive new sales.

After you have managed to gather a good number of reviews and even some reviews from very reputable sources, you can then utilise those reviews as marketing material for your book.

This is something very common and everyone in the publishing industry does it.

We hope this blog has helped you understand how to get book reviews that will help boost book sales.  However, if you are new to book publishing and you would like professional help regarding getting book reviews then we are here for you.

We are Orange Publishers and we present you with the most seamless book publishing experience which includes support for everything related to book publishing from the editing to the proofreading and book cover design process to the printing and publishing as well as marketing of the book.

When we say we do everything really mean that because we will also help you get book reviews from very reputable sources that will help boost your book sales.

We welcome you to visit our website and check out everything we do.