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Book Marketing Basics: Book Reviews


Book review image

Book reviews are probably the best sales and marketing tool you can have in addition to a great landing page.


Granted, reviews aren’t easy to get, but they are worth the effort because there is no such thing as having too many reviews. They tell a landing page visitors that other readers liked the book. That eliminates the visitor's suspicion that she may be getting tricked into buying a piece a junk.

You can get reviews on your own, use review sites and by buying them.


On your own

Every author does a bit of this. You contact your relatives and friends and ask them to read and review your new book. Another approach is to send out social media posts asking for contacts to review the book. This is quite iffy. Many of the contacts who respond have no intention of ever writing a review: they are simply after a free book. Still, you will get an occasional review this way.


Review sites

There are many sites that will, for a fee, spread the word about your book to their list of potential reviewers. Many of these sites will only promote ebooks on Kindle. Of those sites, many will only promote ebooks that are heavily discounted. Others will only accept ebooks that are free. Note that any reviews that come out of these promotions are not paid reviews. The fee does not buy a review: rather you’re paying for access to the site’s list of potential reviewers


Buying reviews

Sites such as Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews will review your book for a fee. A large fee. Amazon will not allow paid reviews to be posted for your book. These reviews can however be added to the book’s content using the Amazon Central Page feature.


While getting more reviews can be a frustrating and time-consuming chore, it’s an essential task in an author’s basic marketing plans.


There is a lot more material about book marketing on my site: https://www.hankquense.online/bookmarketing

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