6 Platforms to Get More Book Reviews
Want more book reviews to improve your Amazon ranking? About 79% of customers trust reviews as much as personal recommendations. They are one of the largest contributing factors to whether someone will buy your book. If your book has many positive reviews, it’s more likely that a prospective customer will buy it. And if someone buys your book, your ranking on Amazon improves.
Did you know that there are many people out there who actually love reading and reviewing books? They have blogs and social media profiles where they post their reviews even for free.
Below is a list of resources to use for reaching these people. Always visit the reviewer’s website first to make sure they review books in your genre.
Search for your genre and you will get a list of book reviewers and bloggers who may be interested in reviewing your book not only on Amazon but also on their blogs which can give you additional publicity.
Price: Free
One more book reviewer directory. Simply enter your book’s genre in the search bar, and you will get a list of book reviewers to browse through. You can further filter the list by those who do free or paid book reviews, or where they post them, for example, on Amazon, BookBub, Goodreads, and other places.
Price: Free
Regularly verified list of about 300 book reviewers sorted by their posting frequency so that you can focus on the most active reviewers. In addition to their website, many will also post reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, social media, and other portals.
Price: Free
Offers a list of more than 2,000 book reviewers that can be searched by keywords. No other filtering available, therefore, you will need to spend some time browsing through the list, but it may be well worth it.
Price: Free
Submit the book you would like to offer for early reviews and LibraryThing will announce it to their members. After the application submission deadline, LibraryThing will give you the list of readers who applied for reviewing your book. You will have to contact them and provide copies of the book. After reading it the reviewers will post their reviews to LibraryThing, maybe also on Amazon and other bookstores, and on their blogs. That way you can create a buzz around your upcoming book launch.
Price: Free
Booksprout has an audience that consists of other authors and people who want to read new books and write reviews (more than 40,000 reviewers). They boast a 75% review rate, so it’s definitely worth trying. Potential reviewers on Booksprout can browse book covers, titles, and authors to choose the ones they are interested in. Then they can also opt-in to receive notifications when their favorite authors have a new advanced review copy available. This way, you can start building your following on this site. Additionally, Booksprout sends reviewers a reminder a couple of days before the review is due and lets them know when a book “goes live.” Authors, too, can directly contact their book reviewers to get feedback and remind them about the upcoming book launch. A free plan is limited to 20 reviews for a book, but it could be good enough for a new author or if you use this platform as an additional book marketing channel.
Price: Free to $20/month
Build Your Launch Team
Still, one of the best ways to get book reviews on online bookstores is by building a book launch team. These are people who belong to your target audience and are ready to participate in your book launch process. You will give them an advance review copy of your book so that they can read through it and write an honest review on Amazon, other stores, and Goodreads when the book goes live. The easiest way to recruit a launch team is to turn to your email list. Again, having a good quality email list is a key factor of successful self-publishing.
However, since building a book launch team is a wide topic, I won’t cover it here. In case you are interested, read my article How to Build Your Book Launch Team Even if You Don’t Have eMail List or Followers?
