This post follows on from How to Get Your Indie Book into the Hands of Readers which speaks about the first steps in marketing your indie novel. It explains how I got my all important first reviews from independent reviewers.

Amazon Top Reviewers

One way is to seek them out by going through the top reviewers at Amazon. A useful ressource will be found here >> http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/syltguides/fullview/RNCWTLEMV71VM Once you have found someone that corresponds to your book’s category you simply send them a message to inquire whether they would like to read your eBook or printed book which you would be glad to send to them free of charge.

Book Reviewers Lists

Another way is by reading through book reviewer lists. The one I used was at www.indieview.com. It takes time to read up on each of the reviewers to get to know their taste and if they are accepting review requests, but it is the way that brought me the most number of readers willing to review my book.

Very often the reviewer will explain how they wish you to submit your book. In most cases, you should first send an inquiry email. This should state the book’s genre, who you are (a line saying you are an indie author will often do), a short description of the story and in what format you could send the book to them (mobi file for the Kindle, an ePub file for the Nook).

After sending requests to 100 reviewers I got about 20 people saying they would like to review the book. Reviewers will generally place their comments on sites like Amazon, Goodreads and Barnes and Noble.

Remember reviews have to be individually submitted to each of Amazon’s websites. This means that you will only see the same review on amazon.com and amazon.uk.co if the reviewer has posted the review to both platforms. The reviewer will often be prepared to do this when asked kindly.

Have you managed to get reviews in a different way to me? Or used a different list of reviewers ? If so I’d love to hear from you.

And, by the way, what do you do if you get a bad review from a reviewer? This is what happened to me and I’ll discuss this in my next post.