Securing Online Reviews

In today's publishing world, more and more of the burden of publicity and marketing falls onto the shoulders of the author.

I've had quite a few newly and soon-to-be published authors ask me if I knew a way to get online reviews. More specifically, good online reviews. 

The answer is yes and no. 

First, what is a good review? To me, a good review is a thoughtful, professional, honest opinion of the book. That doesn't always mean it's a favorable review. 

How does one find reviewers? Well, it depends, in part, on the type of book you have written. I was fortunate. My publisher sent my book to the big review sites like Publishers Weekly and Booklist on my behalf. They also sent ARCs to reviewers who requested through the marketing department. But I did the grassroots campaign myself. 

Again, I was fortunate. My book is traditionally published mainstream YA. There are multiple tour sites that handle my kind of book. I researched and found a great fit with a teen book tour site. I did a 120-stop blog tour that included video interviews, written interviews, previews, live chats, character interviews, this or that lists, essays relevant to the book and, of course reviews. Lots of early reviews. 

But what if your book targets a niche audience or isn't traditionally published? 

I would recommend researching recent releases in your genre. You should be doing this anyway. Get some titles with readership similar to that of your own book. Google those titles and read the reviews. If you like the style of a reviewer, find his or her site and read the review policy. If your book fits the criteria, send a review request. 

The research is so important. Many reviewers put what they exclude on their site. It will save time and aggravation both for you and the reviewer if you research first. If reviewers state they don't review horror or BDSM or inspirational or whatever, and that's what you write, don't get offended. You do NOT want them to review it anyway as they've already stated it's not their cup of tea. Some don't review self-published books. Again, it's their blog; if they don't want to read it, that is their choice. Don't try to change their minds (you would not believe how often this happens). Go find someone who will. Approach reviewers who have written reviews for similarly published books. 

Summing up:

Accept no. For all the reasons above, if a reviewer declines to review your book, consider it a blessing. That review may not have helped you. 

Research, research, research. Sometimes blog tours are effective, other times it's better to arrange specific targeted reviews. Know your market and new releases in it, then figure out whose hands your book should be in to give it the greatest positive exposure. 

Be professional. As I said before, a good review does not always mean a favorable review. Not everyone will like your book. Not even those you provide with a free review copy. Hold your breath and your tongue (or fingers on the keyboard) and move on. 

One final observation: Big isn't always best. Many of the huge review blogs have redundant readership. In working with my tour coordinator, we made sure that we included many smaller blogs with unique readership in my target audience in addition to the larger blogs. 

Do you have tips for securing reviews? I'd love it if you'd share them in the comments.

Wishing everyone a fabulous week! 

Mary

Mary Lindsey lives in Houston, Texas, where she teaches acting to children and teens. She has one husband, two dogs, three children and dozens of hissing cockroaches.

Her debut novel, Shattered Souls, was released in December 2011. Upcoming projects include Annabel, a YA gothic based on Edgar Allan Poe's poem, "Annabel Lee" (2013), and a companion book to Shattered Souls (2014), all from Philomel/Penguin. 

For more about Mary or her books, please visit her website: www.marylindsey.com

Facing Your Fears

Courtesy of johnnyberg

Being an author isn't for the faint-hearted. Putting yourself and your work out there can be hard. Terrifying. Nerve-racking.

Especially now, when it's more important than ever for an author to have a public persona on the Internet. As a shy introvert, public speaking ranks right up there with impaling myself in the eyeball with bamboo skewers.

My fears, for the most part, divide themselves into two categories: not being enough and being too much.

Not Being Enough

I am made of dragon hide when it comes to getting critiques back from my beta readers and crit partners. I prefer the crits that highlight what I need to fix, because those kinds of crits give me a clear game plan for making my story shine. So I love red ink.

For manuscripts, that is.

Before I put my novel up, I never truly realized how scary it is to have a novel available for anyone to read. As a writer, I know that no novel is perfect, and that no single story is going to appeal to everyone. As an author, my nails are raw because I just *know* that every single wrinkle, blemish, and imperfection is now going to be magnified, and everyone will see it and know that I have failed somehow as a writer.

Sometimes the writer side of me wonders about this new author side. ;-)

So what can you do when you don't feel like you're enough?

Have a good support system. I can't stress this one enough. These are the people that remind you to breathe, and that everything is going to be all right. They can believe in you when you're jar of belief is empty. Some of these people will be cheerleaders, while others will not only be able to sympathize, but empathize as well. Where can you find likely candidates for your support system?

• writing forums
• blogs
• other social networking places (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• family
• friends
• colleagues
• neighbors

Not feeling like you're enough is natural, but like those insidious dandelion/sticker patch combos, it's a good idea not to let them take over your emotional yard. How to combat the weeds?

• have a good support system ;-)
• don't base your self-worth on external factors over which you have no control
• forget about numbers (as much as you can)--they'll only make you crazy
• find a hobby that relaxes you
• exercise
• do something you enjoy
• reset your mental tapes
• get good sleep at night
• do something nice for someone else
• read a good book
• meditate

The number of things you can do is endless, but the important thing is that they fill you up somehow. It is very true that we are our harshest critics, and now is as good a time as any to learn how to be more gentle and kind to ourselves. I've learned that when my feeling of inadequacy has me crawling out of my skin, it's time to take a break from being an author so I can go back to being a person. :)

One of the greatest tools I've discovered in combating the I-stink-and-who-was-I-really-kidding-anyway doldrums is to make sure I'm managing my expectations. I need to reevaluate to make sure that I'm only worrying about the things I *can* control. Like pushing myself to write to the best of my ability. Editing, editing, editing, and editing. I can't control sales, and I can't control reviews, but I can make sure I'm putting in the time and effort necessary to make the novel the very best I can.

Being Too Much

And then there's the flip side of the coin--being afraid of being too much. I'm not talking about the fear of dazzling every reader and reviewer out there with my sparkling wit and scintillating stories. No, I'm talking about the putting-myself-out-there-so-you-know-I-exist part of being an author, otherwise known as marketing.

As a writer, I just want to appease the voices in my head and get their stories down on paper to the best of my ability. As an author, I want to let people know those stories exist. The trick is finding the balance between becoming a hermit in a cave (although this can sound very tempting) and broadcasting yourself like a commercial. It's a bit like tightrope walking on a planet whose gravity hasn't made up its mind as to which direction it prefers to pull in.

Some things I've discovered that help me find my balance:

• Institute a 5:1 tweet/fb ratio (I get to talk about myself every 1 in 5 tweets.)
• Don't go it alone--group blogs are becoming ever more popular.
• Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither is my writing career. Take a day at a time, instead of expecting instant fame and success.
• Understand the nature of social networking. The people I love to hang around with on Twitter or Facebook are people I've been able to get to know, because they're human on their feeds. Not commercials.
• Dare to say something. It's okay to ask for help whether it's advice you're seeking or trying to schedule a blog tour. The writing community is filled with awesome people who like to help each other out. But they can't read minds, and can only help if you ask them.
• Don't be afraid to take a step back when you need to. Being both a writer and an author can be draining, so it's good to step away from the Internet when you need to in order to replenish yourself. I've been away from all my Internet networking places for about two weeks, and can promise you that they don't disappear and you won't be forgotten if you need to take an extended vacation to preserve your sanity.
• Be a hand that helps lift others. This kind of goes along with not being afraid to ask for help. I love good stories, and am always looking for gems that I can share on my blog or through Twitter. Sometimes, instead of waiting around for the party to come to me, I try to seek out the authors so I can host them and help spread the word about both them and their novels. Don't be afraid to ask if you can help others. I've met some incredible people this way.

So there you have it. Putting yourself out there as an author is hard, but can also be incredibly rewarding. What are some of the things you do when you're wearing your author hat?

 Danyelle Leafty (@danyelleleafty) writes MG and YA fantasy. In her spare time, she collects dragons, talking frogs, and fairy godmothers. She can be found discussing the art of turning one's characters into various animals, painting with words, and the best ways to avoid getting eaten by dragons on her blog.

Standing Out In a Crowded Market: Guest Post by Joanna Penn

Do you stand out in a crowded market?

This is a guest post from Joanna Penn of TheCreativePenn.com: Adventures in Writing, Publishing and Book Marketing. Joanna's website, podcasts, and publishing and marketing tips are fantastic resources for writers!


Three years ago I self-published my first book. It sold about twenty copies in six months despite making it onto national TV, radio and newspapers. It was utterly depressing but I knew I wanted to write more books so I needed to learn about marketing. At the time, I didn't really understand what marketing actually meant, but I knew that if no one knows who you are, no one will buy your book, regardless of how you are published.

So I began the journey of learning all about internet marketing as well as new publishing technologies. I wanted to share my lessons with other authors in order to save them time, money and heartache so I started TheCreativePenn.com as a place to share the journey and also as the basis of my own author platform. Here’s some of my lessons learned along the way.

1) Go multi-media in order to stand out.

I started to write text based articles for my brand new blog but soon discovered that I learned more myself if I interviewed experts, plus it would help more people and make my blog stand out in an increasingly crowded market. So I started The Creative Penn podcast which goes out on iTunes and also on the blog. It’s currently at 90 episodes, all freely available for anyone to listen to and has over 2000 downloads per month. The episodes are all interviews with experts in areas relating to writing, publishing and book marketing and some now feature video as well. QueryTracker’s own Carolyn Kaufman was recently on the show.

An audio interview isn’t much effort for the interviewees plus they appreciate the promotion and you get valuable content. Most people will also link back to their featured interview and share it on social networks so you get incoming links which boost your traffic and search engine ranking. Plus, if an audience listen to your voice for thirty minutes per week, they will come to know, like and trust you which means they may buy your book when the time comes for you to launch. The technology is easy to use now - here’s how you can create your own podcast. In recent months, I’ve moved into doing video interviews which have proved popular and are also unusual for the author niche as most shy from technology. Seeing an author’s body language is brilliant as generally they are hidden behind words. So the multi-media aspect will make your blog memorable, help you and others learn and also be a great way to network in the publishing eco-system.

2) Write what you love.

Many of the podcast interviews are with authors from all different genres of writing, from romance to fantasy, horror to thriller to crime and more. Each of the authors can articulate why they write what they do. It’s not for market reasons, it’s because that’s what they love to read and the experience of writing is fun if you write what you love. Listening to them gave me the confidence to write what I love - action-adventure thrillers with religious themes. You don’t have to write a Booker prize-winning literary fiction novel. Write what you love and that will sell to an audience just like you.

3) It’s ok for your first draft to suck.

This advice from Mur Lafferty of I Should Be Writing is also the basis of NaNoWriMo when I started my own first novel. It frees you from feeling inadequate as you write. So what if your characters are wooden and the dialogue is basic? So what if you repeat the same phrase over and over again? It doesn’t matter in the first draft because you can fix it later with editing. You can’t edit a blank page. The word count does matter in that first draft because you just have to get black on white. I found that Write Or Die software was the best way to get initial word count down. It just doesn’t allow any distractions. Once you have the basic material, you can then begin to work it through multiple drafts into your masterpiece.

4) Building a platform is critical and can get you a book deal.

NY Times bestselling author Scott Sigler outlined his career in one interview and emphasized the importance of building an audience in order to attract an agent and publishing deal which he did by podcasting his novels. He also noted that there is no balance in living a successful author’s life - you have to write, you have to market. His hard work motivated me immensely to continue the journey. Another group of authors stormed the Amazon charts last December with “Machine of Death” and I interviewed David Malki! on how they did it. Basically, they used the audience they had been building for years with online comics and blogs to propel them to the top of the charts. The success drew offers from publishing houses which they rejected in favor of self-publishing - their platform means they can do it themselves.

5) Publishing success can be under your control.

I interview a lot of independent (indie) authors who have self-published to sales success and who love the process and the control they have in doing it themselves. You see these authors in the Kindle charts every day now. Check out Zoe Winters, paranormal romance writer, Scott Nicholson, thriller writer or LJ Sellers, mystery-suspense author. You will have heard of Amanda Hocking and Joe Konrath but there are plenty of other indie authors making money with self-publishing now. If you still dream of a traditional book deal, you can even attract one by selling incredibly well on the Kindle store. Publishing is a business, they want to sell books so if you have proven sales success, they will be far more interested in you than someone with no platform and no sales. Publishing is changing world but it’s much easier for authors to take control of their own writing careers now.

6) Build your platform from your passion.

TheCreativePenn.com is my third blog. I started the others out of a need to promote specific books, but soon gave them up because I wasn’t interested in the topics. To have a blog with decent traffic and subscribers, you need to blog consistently and well for at least six months and then with an ongoing investment of time and energy. There are no shortcuts to creating an authentic author platform and yes, it takes up valuable time, but if you enjoy it, it’s not a chore. As writers, we have an advantage in that we love to write. Blogging is a different kind of writing, but it’s still expression. The best way to build a great blog that you love is to blog your passion. I wanted to share what I learned so TheCreativePenn.com is aimed at author education and networking. But I also have MysteryThriller.tv which has video book reviews on genres I love, and yes, I also happen to write in the thriller genre too. What do you write? What do you love? Find a blog that intersects with those topics and you’ll find your blog becomes an important and rewarding part of your life.

So has all this actually made a difference?

In the first week of my action-adventure thriller novel Pentecost being released, it made the Amazon bestseller rank in four categories, including Crime, Thriller & Mystery and Religious Fiction as well as making it to #1 on Movers & Shakers. It has sold over 1000 copies in the first month and remains in the bestseller rank six weeks after launch. For all the details of my launch process, check out this article as there are some methods you can use too. This is a long way from the sad tale of my first book launch, and I’m still learning but clearly the exercise of platform building and marketing has made a huge difference to me.

Readers -- What have you learned about writing, publishing and book marketing that has made a difference to you?

Joanna Penn is the author of Pentecost, an action-adventure thriller and 3 non-fiction books. Joanna’s blog TheCreativePenn.com is one of the Top 10 Blogs for Writers. Connect with Joanna on twitter @thecreativepenn


Top Image: Flickr Creative Commons Sweet Colors by Rogilde