What's Worked to Get More Book Reviews

Someone posted a comment on one of my videos that asked me what has worked and not worked to get reviews for Self Publish and Succeed. So if you're wondering what has worked and not work to get book reviews, then this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers and author of three soon to be four nonfiction books, including the book you really should be checking out if you want to write a book that is set up to sell. That's this beauty right here. Self Publish and Succeed. I wrote this book to help nonfiction authors write a book that is set up to achieve your goals and be set up for book marketing. I also wrote it so we would have a book to use for testing a bunch of things to help our authors at Book Launchers. Right now. For example, I'm currently knee deep testing a bunch of bookbub ads as an example. So you should subscribe to the channel if you want the lowdown on bookbub ads for selling ebooks and audiobooks because I'll be ready to share my lessons learned on that real soon. So subscribe and turn those notifications on. All right, but back to reviews. Oh boy. So what are, let's say, five things that work to get reviews? Well, I kind of am guessing in some ways because you don't really know for sure where a review came from. But reading through Goodreads reviews helps me because there's a bit more context on some of those reviews than some of the Amazon reviews. I mean, some of the Amazon reviews will indicate if it was an ARC copy or if they watch the YouTube channel. So you can kind of guess so in order of where the most reviews have come from, number one, my beloved YouTube besties and our Book Launchers clients. They were absolutely the biggest source of reviews. I mean, look at this. On Goodreads right there on the first page you see Mike Herd, Robert Bell, Martha Tettenborn, Efren Delgado, Kevin Berry, Sandra Rodriguez, Benny Bullock, and Erin Crowley. These are my besties. My friends here that comment on most of the videos and come to live streams. They all have noboringbooks swag at. I have spent time building relationships with these people and when I needed support, they were there for me. So thank you, besties. So number one, has been cultivating a community of people and that has been the best source of reviewers, adding value to other people's lives consistently and then asking for support when you need it. Now, can we pause for a second? Just hang out on this review. Jamie. Jack's review stung a little bit. Especially this quote. The author has attitude as well, so sometimes disparaging of her potential readers. I never like to see that in a nonfiction book. But I pause here because this review actually makes it super clear to me that Jamie Jack is not my ideal reader. This person didn't like my storytelling. They didn't like my creative chapter titles. After reading this, I would anticipate the favorite reading of this person is the style guides for the different editorial styles. Like A Great Sunday is kicking back with the latest Chicago Manual of Style. Maybe I am disparaging, all right. But I did bring this to your attention because there's something important for you to take away from this. Your book. If you're doing this right, your book will not be for everyone. And there will be people who don't love it. And you don't want everyone to love it. It stings when they say they didn't like it. And I was also stung by the thought that someone reading my book would feel disparaged because I have the utmost respect for anyone brave enough to become an author. But I do think that was this person's opinion. And most people don't share that opinion because most people that reviewed it were positive, grateful, and appreciative of the stories, the chapter titles, and my tone. But do celebrate the bad ones because it means you've written a book with a clear audience and that not everyone is into it. And it means you're reaching beyond your fan and support base because those people wouldn't post a review like that. So woohoo. Okay, the second thing that worked well for reviews was NetGalley. We went through IBPA to get netgalley reviews and you can see a handful of reviews source that as the place they got their free review copy. The third was booksprout. This is another service we used for book reviews and I think we got four reviews from there. I've talked about book review services before and I've also shared that we've had hit or miss results with them for our authors, but for my book, it was a good source. Number four is Goodreads giveaway. Well, I can't be certain that this resulted in much in terms of Amazon reviews, it did generate activity on Goodreads. I believe that some Goodreads reviewers do post on Amazon as well, but it's not something I can really truly know with certainty. The fifth thing was asking, begging, pleading, celebrating every review. I held reviewer parties. I posted thank yous on social media and every person I've met that's told me they read my book, I've asked them for a review. When you tell me you reviewed my book, I thank you in whatever way I possibly can. Our reviewer party was super fun and I was able to provide content, have fun, and and send swag to people who came to that party. It's not against the rules because I didn't promise anybody anything in exchange for a review, but I did invite all my reviewers that sent me their contact information to a review party and we made sure everybody won something. All right, so that's what worked. What didn't work? Well, the biggest thing that didn't work was essentially I just hoped reviews would manifest for all formats. I didn't do anything to proactively seek reviews for audiobooks, and I don't have many audiobook reviews, despite the audiobook selling well. I know a few YouTube besties have posted audiobook reviews and they actually got removed. But in general I need to be more proactive in asking people who have listened to the book to post their review on Audible. Specifically, Audible doesn't accumulate the reviews from Amazon, so when someone goes to their Audible app It shows like six or seven reviews, which doesn't look very good versus if they're buying it. On Amazon.com, there's nearly 100 or more reviews. If you're an Audible listener, please help me find other listeners that should listen to, Self publish and succeed by posting a review. Thank you. See, I have to do more of that in order to get audiobook specific reviews. The only other thing that didn't work was asking for reviews in my newsletter. I don't really think the launch letter generated much in terms of book reviews. Again, it's impossible to tell, but the links where I ask people to click here and post a review didn't get much click action at all. So I would guess they may have served as a reminder to some people, but likely didn't really move the needle anywhere near as much as the specific services like Goodreads, Booksprout, Netgalley, my wonderful community here, and just continuously asking people one on one to post. Otherwise, I can't really think of anything that didn't work. Everything worked to a degree, but there wasn't anything I did that was a solid home run of okay, that got a boatload of reviews. There was a handful of reviews from one source and a handful from another, and over time just continually asking for them keeps the momentum going. So I'm curious, that's what's worked for me so far. What's worked for you, go ahead and post about it in the comments below. And if there's a specific question you want me to answer in a future video, I think this question came from bestie Sean Hayes. Thanks, Sean. You can go ahead and post that question below, and I might shoot a video for you right after you're done doing that. This video right here is all about the book review sites I mentioned, and this one is all about netgalley. And well, you need three today, because this one right here, that's awkward over here is all about Goodreads. Happy viewing, my friends. See you over there.