7 ways to find beta reviews or reviewers for your book

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

In this video training, I'm going to share with you seven ways you can find beta readers for your book or reviewers for your book. Hi, my name is Shelli Hitz. I'm an author coach@authoraudienceacademy.com and I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. It's time to let your light shine. And it's been a few days since I have been live. I have been deep, deep into a book publishing project and I've been sharing it with you along the way. Been sharing in detail with my Author Audience Academy members inside our private Facebook group. The things I'm learning, the things I'm doing, sharing the tips and tricks and that I am doing as well. Because you guys, I am in the trenches with you, I am doing this with you. But I have been busy and I have specifically been having to let go of some things in order to finish all the deadlines I have every week. If you're an Author Audience Academy member, you see my Take Action plan every week in the Monday Motivator post. I share that with you inside Author Audience Academy. And you know, I have quite a bit of stuff going on every week, but praise God, I have been making progress. I'm still on schedule with my project, but recently I was sharing how I'm using a beta group for this project and it's really been super helpful for me. You can find that in a previous training. It's available on my blog@shellyhits.com, my YouTube channel, my podcast, and so forth. And but after I posted this on my YouTube channel, I had a question and somebody asked, these are great tips and tricks. Thank you so much for sharing. But I have a question. How do you find beta readers? Great question. Because my previous training was all about three ways beta readers can help you when you're publishing your book. But I didn't cover how to get the beta readers, so I thought in this training I would answer her question. Share with you 7 Ways to Find beta readers and reviewers for your book if you haven't read it yet. I have a book, it's available in Kindle and print called how to Get Honest Reviews. Now I'm going to be sharing some of these directly from my book and so if you haven't read that book yet, I'd encourage you to get it it's on Amazon. Or if you're an Author Audience Academy member, you can download it for free inside the publisher module. But first, I'm just going to dive in and tell you what I did. I simply asked those that are already following me on Facebook if anyone wanted to be part of my beta group. I set up a page where they could sign up to an email list and I said, this is what I'm doing. This is what you get as part of the beta group and if you would want to be part of this, this will only happen once. I'm going to be sharing live videos as well as you. You'll get a new chapter of my book every week. You can sign up here. And I got quite a few people actually that signed up just from hearing about it on Facebook. You know, those beta readers, they will give you so much really, really good feedback and they will help you really have the best quality product you can have. And that's what I'm finding with my beta readers. Guess how many beta readers I was able to get. It kind of shocked me like, you don't need a ton, you just need a few that are really going to give you honest feedback. I had 150 people sign up for my beta reader program for this upcoming book, Broken Crayons Still Color. Now I only have 127 that actually took the step of getting into the Facebook group and are really being active. But 127, that that is incredible. I feel so blessed and so honored. And so the very first thing I did was I just asked on Facebook this is why it's so important to really build your author platform. If you haven't taken my free author platform challenge yet, you can sign up@shellyhits.com platformchallenge and I really dive deep into finding and determining your target audience and where you should be spending your time. And I really only recommend one or two social media platforms, thinking Facebook is where I spend a majority of my time. I record these trainings on Facebook Live because that's where I really invest a lot of my time. So when I asked on Facebook, I'm really engaged with my friends and followers there and I got a ton of people to sign up. The other thing I did, I didn't just put a post, I changed my cover graphics. So I changed the COVID graphic of my profile and of my page. That is for my husband and I's ministry. So it's CJ and Shelly Hits and it's where we share more ministry related things. And so I Changed the Facebook cover graphic and then in the description. This is a big mistake. I see a lot of authors making. You're missing out on that real estate. Make sure to add a clickable link in the description. So I talked about the beta group. I added a link in there and I did that as well. So that was the first thing I just asked my current followers. So wherever you're the most active online, ask, tell them you know, I'm going to be putting together this beta group. If you're interested in this, sign up here, have it set up ahead of time so that it's automated so that once you put that link on, all they have to do is go to the link, add their name and email. And you're not behind a computer, you know, adding people to a list. Work smarter, not harder. That's my mantra these days. The second thing that I did was, was I asked my existing book reviewer team, this is something I teach step by step inside my book, how to get honest reviews. Again, if you have not read that book, I highly recommend you read it. Even if you gain one little nugget can really, really help because reviews are so important when you are publishing online and on Amazon and so forth. So I have a book reviewer team of hundreds, I don't know, maybe even seven or 800 people that are on my book review team at this point. And so I let them know that I was going to have this beta group for this particular book. Broken crayons still color. And between asking my existing book reviewer team and my followers on Facebook, I had 150 people sign up. Now, I know not all of you are at that place. You haven't been investing into building a book reviewer team. And if you haven't, why not.

Do it? Start today. Even if you start with one person, that is one person you can contact when you have another opportunity. And I do hope that you will continue to publish new books and products in the future. Why I like using an email subscriber list is because then I can follow up with them every week with one email. Like I'm not spamming them. I'm not doing like a bcc. I'm not trying to do all of that. And so it's a very, very easy way to follow up with everyone on my beta group. And, and I don't really recommend just using a Google form. I mean those are great if that's the only thing that you have. But you should also have an email subscriber list. I mean, I talk about this all the time. And if nothing else, sign up for a free account with benchmark email. They also offer free autoresponders with their account. It's a whole nother training, but I definitely recommend doing it through an email subscriber service. It's going to save, save you so much time on the back end when you're following up. Following up, following up with your beta readers has everyone in one place and it's just going to keep everything organized and it's going to make things so much easier. All right, so those are the first two things that I did. But like I said, you may not be in the same place I am. So the third way you can get beta readers or reviewers for your book is to to be active in a couple groups. You don't have to be active in every group. So either Facebook group, Google group, LinkedIn group, some sort of group like that in your niche. Be active, be helpful, be responding. Don't just go in there and spam. Be very, very careful in these groups to read the guidelines. And never, never, never spam, please. I organize and I have started a few Facebook groups and there's some people that come in there and they just want to spam. And you know, it's not the way to get on the good side of the group owner or of the group itself. That's just not the way to do marketing. You want to be doing it in a way that's relational, that's not pushy or self promotional. So please, if you do post in groups, make sure that you read the group guidelines. Like my group, godlygain.com we, we don't allow promotion in there. It's for support. It's for prayer. It's for helping one another keep our eyes on Christ as we're publishing new books and growing businesses and that sort of thing. So really make sure that you know what are the guidelines of the group before you post. The fourth thing you can do is as you get people who contact you or reply back to you in social media or in email or even word of mouth and they say, I loved your book. Oh, that was so great. I'm so, so thankful that you wrote that book or I just couldn't put the book down or wow, that was a really great tip you shared in your book. Anything that they share with you about your book, you could invite them to be one of your book reviewers or to be on your beta team so you could reach out to them. And I also recommend, I actually just posted this the other day on social media. I Said, don't be afraid to ask for reviews when people tell you they've liked your book. And I had two of my author audience academy members that were like, it feels so, like, scary to ask people. And I'm like, just put together some canned responses. A simple canned response could be, oh, that just really just made my day. Thank you so much for that feedback about my book. It would just mean the world to me if you could post that same feedback on Amazon. And it just helps the message of the book reach more people. I am so blessed by you. Thank you so much. You know, I mean, just make it your personality, make it what fits you. But put together a couple canned responses and ask. We have to sometimes ask, can I get an amen? And so that is the fourth way is just to ask people who actually reach out to you on social media, in email, in person, and tell you they've enjoyed your book. The first fifth way is to just ask people that you have a relationship with already. So I asked my mom and my sister to be part of my beta team. And they're my best friends, they're my family, but they're also part of my beta team. And my mom just sent me something today that was really, really helpful for chapter two, and then she sent me a correction for a grammar issue from chapter one that even my editor missed. So sometimes your best friends, your closest family can really be your strongest supporters when it comes to beta groups. Now, I wouldn't have your family necessarily be posting reviews for you though, because Amazon has some rules that they can't have any financial investment. And sometimes they'll take down reviews if they know they're from your family. And anyways, you don't want your mom saying, oh, I'm so proud of my daughter, and da, da, da, da, da. You know, you want those reviews on Amazon to be legit. You know, I mean, if they're distant family, go for it. But for beta readers, your family and your best friends are going to be some of your best beta readers. At least they have been for me. And number six is to add a link about your beta group or about your book reviewer team. Add that link to your website. You could have a little graphic in the sidebar. So when I was growing my book reviewer team, in the beginning, I started with one person, right? We all start with one person. And when I was first starting my book reviewer team, I think it was in 2012 that I really decided to go for this and start it. And I'm sorry, so glad I did it's the best decision I ever made because I was so tired of trying and trying and trying and spending so much time getting reviews. Now I just send one email and we can get more than like 30 to 40 people that say they'll review our book and then, you know, they're posting and it's just a real big blessing. But when I first started, I had a little graphic that I put in our sidebar of our website that was getting the most traffic at the time. And I just said, you know, would you want to read more free books or do you love reading Christian books? Or I don't know, something like that. And then the graphic had a link underneath it and both the graphic and the link had a clickable link to the page where they could sign up for my book reviewer team again. My book how to Get Honest Reviews gives you all the step by step training on how to set up your book reviewer team. I highly recommend you look into that. But. But you can just post it on your blog and share that way. Now, the last way, the seventh way, is to add an email in your autoresponder sequence. You do have an autoresponder sequence for your email subscriber list, right? That's something I teach in the Author automation system inside authoraudienceacademy.com and it's amazing to me how many authors do not have this set up yet. But if you just put one email in your follow up sequence that tells people that you have a way for them to get access to your books first. They can read your books for free by being part of your book reviewer team. Or you can send out a broadcast email when you're forming your beta group. I wouldn't put that on your autoresponder sequence, but you could send a broadcast email out to your list letting them know, I'm writing this book. I need some beta readers. Would you be interested? If so, sign up here. We continue to get new book reviewers on an ongoing basis because I have an email in my autoresponder sequence telling them about it. You have to tell people about it. You have to get the word out. You have to be building and investing time into building your author platform. It is so powerful and we all start with one person. We all start in the same place, but we have to start, start somewhere. And so what questions do you have about asking people to be a book reviewer or asking people to be on your beta group team or in your beta group? You know, let me know in the comments below. I would love to Hear from you. This is a learning process. I'm continuing to learn every day. And to be honest, last week I was in decision fatigue. Like, I've had to make so many decisions for this project because it's just the biggest thing I've ever done in the publishing realm. And I have over 40 books. Our publishing company has over 50. But it's really exciting. But it's really, really been challenging as well. And so I am learning, I'm in the trenches and I always love hearing from you as well. During these next 10 weeks or so, it's going to be intense for me. I'm finishing the draft of one chapter every week. I'm getting back a chapter from my editor every week where I have to accept the edits. And this week it was pretty extensive edits I had to add to that chapter. I'm creating a coloring page every week. I'm creating a PowerPoint presentation every week. I'm creating a viewer's guide every week. And I'm recording the video that will go along with the book chapter every week inside my Veda group. Like, it is intense and that's just the bare minimum. I'm also running a business and doing a ton of other things on ongoing basis. And so if you don't see me as often on Facebook Live, that is why over the next 10 weeks or so I'm gonna try to get on as often as I can. But this is just a really, really intense season for me. And if you're listening to my podcast, it would mean the world to me. And if you would post an honest review on itunes, that will help get the content and the training to even more people and I would just really appreciate it. So just to recap the seven ways you can get beta readers or reviewers for your book. Number one, share with your existing audience online. So whatever social media platforms you're active on, the most shared share with them there. You can consider changing your Facebook cover image. And in the description, make sure to put information with a clickable link that takes them to where they can sign up. And make sure you automate the process as much as possible. Number two, share with your book review team that you already have. You know, if you're doing it for a beta group, that's what I did. And so if you haven't started your own book review team, I definitely recommend it. I give you all of the instructions on how to do that inside my book. How to get honest reviews. Number three, be active in a few groups in your niche on social media Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, and don't spam. Read the guidelines, make sure you're able to ask and you're doing this. You're giving things to someone for free. You're not asking people to buy something. So it might be something that would be a little bit easier to post in those groups. But always remember not to spam. Add value, add value, add value. Number four is ask those who email you or contact you on social media and let you know that they love your book or that they read your book or that they like your book. Ask them if they'd want to be part of your book reviewer team or part of your beta group. Ask personal friends and family. My family are my best beta group people. They're just giving me the best feedback. They know me the best and in my situation. My mom and my sister are both Christian counselors and so they have a lot of experience even in the topics that I'm talking about. So that really helps as well. But friends, family, people from your church, people from your community say, hey, writing this book, would you be willing or interested to be part of what I'm doing and help me to make it the best it can be? People love to feel like they're part of something and that they can be part of this with you. Add a link to your website or your sidebar. When I was first getting started, I put a little image on there and then make it part of your autoresponder email sequence to invite people to your book reviewer team. So I hope that you found wonderful value in this training and that you got at least one thing that you can implement right away. Write it down. What is the one thing you can do right now? And I want you to take action. I don't want you just to take in more information. Well, thank you guys so much for being here with me today.

It has been a rough few weeks for me. I tell you what, I have felt a spiritual battle, an intense, intense spiritual battle as I'm writing this book. Broken crayons still color. So if you are a praying person, I would definitely just covet your prayers and I would appreciate them so much. I have not felt resistance this strong. I don't know if ever like this, but I know that God's going to use this book and I'm really excited to see what he does with it. Right now I am just taking one step at a time. So if you feel resistance and if you feel like you want to give up, if you're just like, oh, believe me, I know what it feels like I'm there with you right now. There were a couple days this last week, like, I barely. Like, I stayed in my pajamas all day. Like, I couldn't. I didn't have the energy to do anything. Like, I wouldn't say I was depressed, but, oh, my goodness, it's been tough. I'm still on schedule. I'm still moving forward. Today I have makeup on. I got showered.

But I just, like, I'm just being real. This is real life. Things aren't always easy, even when you're doing what God has asked you to do or what, you know God has called you to do. It doesn't mean it's going to be easy. But I just encourage you to never, never, never give up. I do feel better today. Oh, my goodness. Yesterday was just. It was a hard day. But, you know, we all have them, right? We all have the hard days where we just feel like hiding under the covers, forgetting the author thing, forgetting publishing any other books. Let me just do the normal life stuff. And yet, I believe God has a purpose for each one of our lives. There's a reason he's gifted you in the ways he's gifted you. There's a reason. And the Bible says we are to let our light shine. We're not to hide it. We're or not to keep it to ourselves. And he will show you each step of the way what to do. And if you need help, I would love and I would be honored to be your author coach. I coach my members. I have hundreds ofmembers inside authoraudienceacademy.com I'm very active. I'm in the trenches with you and in our private Facebook group every day. So I'd love to see you there as well. All right, we'll see you guys later. Bye. Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.