Today’s guest post is from Joe Walters of Independent Book Review,  a reader-focused, writer-supportive book review platform celebrating the best in indie books. Learn more about IBR.

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Everybody’s telling you the importance of getting book reviews.

“It’s essential,” they say.

“It’s the social proof readers need,” they say.

“It’s publicity.” 

“It’s more content for your social feeds.” 

“It’s everything.”

But it’s also a mystery. How do these people find you? How do you get your family and friends to actually do the thing? How do you reach beyond those connections to convert strangers into reviewers?

My name’s Joe. I’m the author of The Truth About Book Reviews and the founder of Independent Book Review, a platform dedicated to reviewing the best in small press and self-published books. I’ve been behind the desk at indie presses, sending out pitches and seeing what worked and what didn’t, and now I’m all cramped up in my overly hot garage receiving hundreds of review requests per month, deciding which ones I think I should cover at IBR to both expand our readership and bring in affiliate book sale money. 

In this post, I’ll be walking you through the three different types of reviews and how to stand out in crowded inboxes.

Overview

There are three different types of book reviews:

• Blurbs (or editorial reviews)
• Media or trade reviews
• Consumer reviews (Amazon & Goodreads)

Each review requires a slightly different strategy and a different timeline, so let’s start at the beginning.

Blurbs (or editorial reviews)

Blurbs are the first type of review you’ll want to target.

Starting around six months before publication (if you have the time), you should aim is to get 3-5 short book reviews from notable authors or experts in your niche to use in your marketing material. You can use these reviews on things like book covers, launch graphics, websites, and the “editorial reviews” section on your Amazon page. They’re meant to show everyday readers that people who work with books or people who are pros in your field have vouched for its quality. 

Pick up any paperback book lying around you right now. The quote from Stephen King on the cover that says, “Holy sh*t, this book is remarkable,” is a blurb.

But getting Stephen King to blurb your book is…not so easy. (I don’t have his number, or I’d give it to you directly; if you do have his number, please give it to me.) 

Before you go pitching that dream author you have in mind, get out your handy-dandy review targeting spreadsheet. (If you need one, you can get my free one by signing up for my newsletter Write Indie.) 

In your Google Sheet or Excel spreadsheet, list those top-tier authors or experts in your niche. Don’t worry about their contact info or websites or anything yet; just the names during this brainstorming period. 

After you rattle those off, start listing the names of authors/experts a little lower down on that blurber totem pole. Maybe they’re authors you have personal connections with. Maybe it’s a lesser-known indie author whose book you read and adored. Maybe it’s your indie press bandmate or an alumni from your college. If you need a little inspiration, head over to the Amazon bestseller page of your genre (like this one) and find authors who’ve had some success with 50+ reviews but not too much success with 1k+. It doesn’t matter that you don’t know them yet. You’re about to try to.

Now take some time to find their contact info and input them into the spreadsheet. 

Before you go pitching them, you’re going to want to figure out your pitch angle. If you haven’t read their book(s) yet, maybe now is the time to do it. Because once we start getting into the nitty gritty of pitching them, you’re going to want to prove that you know their stuff and have a book they could be interested in endorsing. 

There are enough ways to send a strong, unique pitch to make a whole book of it. (Hence, my book.) But here’s the bare bones of what you want to do:

• A strong, friendly subject line. Greetings from a hopeful author! And a humbling blurb request. Greet them by name. NEVER use “Dear Sir/Maam.”
• The first paragraph is for pure personalization. Tell the author or expert how you know and appreciate them. Be specific. Don’t say you read and loved their book unless you actually did. And if you did, prove it with detail.
• The second paragraph introduces you and the book you’re pitching. You’ll want to make clear how it’s related to their content too. After that, share a short 1-2 line summary of what the book is about specifically.
• The third paragraph is the ask and the timeline. Say it exactly, “Would you be open to writing a short, 3-4 sentence blurb for this book? I’d love to gather them within about 5 weeks, but if the timeline doesn’t work for you, I’d be extremely grateful to hear what you think whenever you can.” And if they’re a high-profile blurber, you might even mention that you’ve saved a spot on your front cover to help entice them to say yes. No matter if they’re high-profile or not, it’s usually good to mention how you plan on using it.
• When you close out the email, do it with gratitude and grace. Don’t sound like you expect anything from them. Just thank them for taking the time out to consider it and sign off.

But the most important thing of all? The follow-up. I couldn’t tell you how many times the original email went unanswered for me only for it to convert into a review in the quick, gentle follow-up.

Give them about a week or so and then reply to the original email with a line that goes a little something like, “Just tossing a gentle follow-up your way in case you’d be open to something like this! Since I’ve reached out, [Author Name who’s already agreed to blurb you] has jumped on the blurb train, and it’d be awesome to put your name next to theirs on my Amazon page.”

I recommend getting around five blurbs before launch time. If you’re late, don’t worry. You can put those five blurbs up whenever they come in. However, it is true some people/platforms may be less interested in a book that’s already out.

If you find that you’re not going to get five, take a look at book review companies like ours. You can either submit for the chance of a free review or you can guarantee a review by paying for it.

Media or Trade Reviews

A media review is just what it sounds like—a review in the media. Think People. The Millions. Slate. But also, don’t count out social media either. If it’s someone talking about you or your book in front of their own audience, it counts as a media review.

A trade review is a review from a book-specific outlet. That’s platforms like Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, Electric Lit, Book Riot, Independent Book Review, and beyond.

You’ll probably want to start finding these outlets around 6-8 months in advance of publication. Many of them ask for that kind of lead-time since they need time to assign books but also want to get in on the action early. 

Get out that review targeting spreadsheet and research the biggest bundle of them, including their contact info and submission requirements and deadlines. You HAVE to follow their guidelines. Missing out on certain requirements or sending the pitch to the wrong email is the quickest way to get ghosted by these platforms. 

The personalization of the pitch doesn’t matter quite as much for media and trade reviews as it does for blurbers. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve read People; they want to cover books they think would be interesting for their audience, not people who read them. So write a cool book, why don’tcha? Maybe Hewes House can help.

Consumer Reviews (Amazon & Goodreads)

I’d like to say that I’ve left the best for last, but really, I’m just going off of timelines here. People can’t leave reviews for you on Amazon until your book is already live for sale (not pre-order), so you really can’t start targeting these types of reviews until about six weeks out from publication.

That’s when you start putting together your launch team. 

Launch teams are made up of people who want to support you the most. Friends and family count, but it’s usually best when they’re not friends with you on Facebook. (Amazon checks that sometimes, considers it bias, and could remove the review.) I like including beta readers in here, colleagues, and social media acquaintances who you know love content like yours. 

In the pitch, you’d use your first paragraph to be personal and then ask them if they’d like to help you launch this book you’re excited about. You share a short one-two line summary of what the book is about and say that you’re putting together a team of people who will read the book before it’s live and leave a review for you around a week after launch.

Then, once the book is out, you email them to announce it. Mention the idea that if they download the ebook, they’ll be a “Verified Purchase” on Amazon so that the review they leave is extra helpful. 

A week after launch, you share the specific review link—you can find it by clicking on “Write a Customer Review” on your Amazon page—and then paste it into the email. (You might want to cut the extraneous characters that follow the workable link so Amazon can’t track that this reviewer clicked on it after you sent it.) The link usually looks like this: https://www.amazon.com/review/create-review/?asin=B0FD8TBQTB. 

But you can’t depend on only on your launch team. You should be pursuing consumer reviews for a long time after launch week. I like setting attainable goals—starting with 50—and working pretty diligently until you get there.

Here’s a quick firecracker list of strategies to get more reviews on Amazon:

• Leave a page in the back matter of your book, directly after the END page, that asks for the reader to leave a review. You can make a link clickable in the ebook if you make a Bitly or Redirection link. Mine is IndependentBookReview.com/ReviewLink. A lot more pleasing to the eye than that https:… stuff from earlier.
• Ask for a review in your email automation sequence. This might sound fancier than it is, but if you’ve got a newsletter, you’re going to want to do this anyway. An Automation is a sequence of emails that every person who signs up for your newsletter gets. It’s usually four-five emails in a week that introduces you, your book, gives them something of value, and then asks for a review with the link.
• Search for readers of your genre on social media, follow them, engage with them, and over time, pitch them personally.
• Seek out smaller bloggers & vloggers. Ones who are excited to get pitches, not already be run-down by them.
• Find likeminded books on Amazon and Goodreads and seek out profiles of readers with websites and public contact information.
• Run a Goodreads Giveaway or two where you choose to giveaway 100 ebooks, not 10 paperback books. Increase your odds with more readers.

There are more of them! Obviously there are. You can honestly chase reviews until the end of time, but you also can’t forget about the most important part: writing more books. 

You might make a few mistakes along the way and spend more time on it than you want to—actually, I can pretty much guarantee that—but book reviews might be an author’s greatest asset. Not only can you prove to potential readers that it’s a book worth trying, but you can hear from real people how you affected them with your work. I wish everyone around you talked to you about your book in that meaningful way, but most of the time, they’ll stick to glazing and congratulating you. I like those people too, so definitely relish in it, but it’s important to widen the net. To get more book reviews.

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Joe Walters is the founder of Independent Book Review. After falling in love with reading and writing at Kutztown University, he did the only thing he could think of: quit his teaching job, become a server, and write as much as possible.

When a local job in publishing popped up on a job board, he traded in his PF Chang’s apron for a bookish t-shirt and has been promoting indie press and self-published books ever since. He’s also the author of The Truth About Book Reviews. When he’s not writing or doing editorial or promotion work, he’s playing with his kids or reading indie books by Kindle light.