Do you remember checking reviews about the product before making the final buying decision? Chances are you did before buying a book.

If you have already published a book, your next part of the work starts here. The review process can even start even before the book’s official release date. Authors can give reviewers advanced review copies.

To make a distinguishing mark as an author you need to ensure that you have a strong reader base. It is essential for you to influence and convince people to buy your book. Only then you can churn profit out of your creative investment.

To begin with, start thinking like a reader. The first question from a reader that you have to be ready to face is -Why will people read your book?

How will you convince them?

Here’s a secret ingredient: REVIEWS

Book reviews are an essential ingredient of the book marketing process. When it comes to sales, nothing works better than a few kind words by a reader. If you manage to get reviews from an established author, editor or newspaper it’s excellent. However, high praise from a reader’s peers can also help you build credibility.

In this article, we will focus on:

1. Why reviews are important for the book

2. How reviews are a form of marketing

3. How to get reviewers of your book

4. How influencers will help in book reviews

Before we get deep into how to get good reviews, let’s find out why reviews are important for the book.

1) Book reviews add exposure and increase attention to your book.

2) Authors can also rely on pre-publication reviews. The booksellers and librarians keep a track on these reviews and accordingly update their inventory.

3) Reviews improve your title’s organic search ranking and when your book is more visible in the stores, there is a better chance of increasing the sales number.

How are reviews a form of marketing?

Marketers will agree to the fact that no marketing works better than word of mouth.

It is essential for authors to get useful reviews of your book as a recommendation by one reader will pass to another reader who is searching for something new to read.

A useful book review often summarizes the subject. It is written on the reader’s experience and has opinions on the writing style, depth of the topic and what readers can expect from the book. All authors look forward to reviews as it is a highly effective way to influence more readers to buy the book.

How to get reviews for your book

Getting reviews might seem easy if you have a big group of friends and family who will be posting reviews in the different channels, but this does not ensure that your book is bought and read. To gather reviews strategically, you have to take care of the following steps:

1. Use a call to action at the end of the book. This might be your email id, phone or the online sites where your book is sold.

2. Make your book free for a few days. You can even keep a portion of it free which will invoke the interest.

3. Go to your mailing list and find out the potential people you can ask for reviews.

4. Find Amazon reviewers (they are most trusted)

5. Use social media to promote your book and create a fan base

6. Go to Goodreads groups to find people who will love your genre.

7. As video posts work best in social media, try out for video reviews

Remember! When you are gathering reviews, try to collect them from people coming from different lines of work. That would clearly mean that your book has a mass reach.

Rethink your approach of asking for reviews and ask a basic question-Is your book reaching the right kind of readers?

For example, you might be approaching a complete vegan with a Mughlai dishes cookbook. Of course, you won’t get the reviews you want for the book promotion. So the hack is to find out the reviewers of your genre.

How will you find them?

With social media imparting a strong influence on the lives of people, there is a new section of people who are called influencers.

How influencers will help in book reviews

Influencers are the new age reviewers who can create a mark with their presence, especially in the digital world. Their recommendations are taken seriously by the viewers. You have to find the influencers who will be interested in your book’s genre.  For example, if you have written a cookbook, you can approach authors who will be interested in your book or a chef or even a food blogger.

Influencers have a strong fan base, and when they take the responsibility of reviewing your book, the credible review will reach to a large section of people. If you are a self-publishing author, it is crucial to have people talking about your book on a large scale.

To end it here, we would like to recap the entire thing in a few pointers.

1. Reviews are a form of marketing.

2. Reviews are essential for book referrals which will improve sales.

3. An author needs to gather reviews from credible sources to keep it real.

4. Approach influencers for reviews

Hope, you now have a decent knowledge of book reviews. Let us know if you want any more details related to book publishing. Share your queries in the comment section below.

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