How to Market a Book: How to Display Your Reviews

Blurbs and endorsements from readers are a great way to start out. You should keep them in one place--one document or on a tab on a website--so that interested parties can check them out. Always remember to get a name and title of the endorser.

What kind of people do you want to endorse your book?
The best endorsements, meaning the ones that will best be able to help you sell your book, are from people who are:

• knowledgeable about books
• knowledgeable about your topic
• already famous and have clout with audiences.

Recently I flagged an endorsement on a book to be downplayed because the book's topic was very specific about something like molecular science but the blurb on the book was from someone who's title may have involved "insurance agent." Unless that insurance agent is also the vice president of the molecular science club, his kind words of encouragement are nice, but not necessarily helpful to sell the book.

How can you tell if someone will be a help?
Consider if that same blurb writer hated the book, would it really make any difference? If not, then likely they aren't going to be very effective in persuading your audience even if they like it.

For example, if your insurance agent hates your book on molecular science because, "the book was incredibly confusing and the concepts were just terribly explained," and your book isn't entitled, "Molecular Science for Insurance Agents" my guess is that the negative review wouldn't help or hurt your market share.

What about newspaper/magazine/blog mentions?
A write up from a media outlet can help your book sales. A mere mention in an author roundup is pretty good. A full article about your book is great.

One of the great boons to clip cutting in the modern day is that you really no longer have to actually cut your clips. So many media services are online, you can easily link to the article on your website or blog.

If you are sending a printed version of your marketing kit, you can simply refer to the article title, media outlet, and date. You can provide a link, and few choice lines of the article, or maybe just a solid quote.

"The advances in molecular science are amazing and this book will help scientists better understand the atomic world."
Booked for the Future: Molecular Science in the Modern Day, Science Geek Daily, May 3, 2009 View full article at www.nerdlings.com

Don't despair! If your orthodontist wants to weigh in on your molecular science tome, the perfect place for her, your mother, and your uncle Robby is on Amazon. In fact, the more people you direct to give you positive reviews on Amazon.com, the better off you'll be!

How many should I include?
Only include as many blurbs of reviews as will fill a standard sheet or two of paper (and only two if they are lengthy endorsements) if you are printing them out and mailing them.

For your website or blog, you can list as many as you want. Make sure to list your strongest, most compelling endorsements at the top. Readers tend to skim and don't have long attention spans for information on web pages, so you really want to get the key ones at the top.

Another thing you do with endorsement blurbs is to pepper them throughout your marketing materials. Use them in your press releases to give a quotable point of view to your book. Put one on a contact sheets of images to help dress it up and give it even more value! It's a nice way to get positive remarks about your book in from of people without touching that "look how great I am" nerve.

How do I get feedback if my book isn't out yet?
Something we recommend for some of our authors is to do an Advanced Review Copy or ARC. This is an initial small print run of books created for distribution to reviewers. They have an "eyebrow" that marks them as ARCS and not for sale. This is how your potential reviewers can give you feedback before your final print run. With Wheatmark, we will simply do a revision on your book when you are satisfied with your feedback on your ARCS, and send the new version to print. Yes, it costs a little bit more, but for some books, it's the most intelligent way to begin author platforming efforts and to give reviewers a jump on climbing aboard your bandwagon!

These are generally treated differently than having a book reviewer request a copy of your book. In most cases, ARCs go out to a preselected group of reviewers the author has asked to look at the book.

Getting great endorsements and reviews may not, in the beginning, do much for your book sales. What they do is provide credibility to your work. Just like when you go on a job interview you have a resume but are also asked for references, your blurbs are your references. Amazon is a great place to direct friendly reviewers to help you broaden your author platform. When it comes to blurbs for marketing you want to stick with the best!

Endorsements: Pros and cons for the self-published book

Many self-published authors fret over not having endorsements for their book. Do you really need endorsements for your book to sell?

It depends.

An endorsement is only as good as the person who wrote it. If the endorsement is from your neighbor whose only claim to fame is the endorsement on your book, it won’t provide the goals of the endorsement.

The goals of endorsements are three-fold.

First off, they establish credibility to buyers saying, “Someone else has read this book.”

Secondly, they offer insight into the quality of the book. For example, one Wheatmark title, The Big Gamble: Are You Investing or Speculating has an endorsement by Donald Trump. Yes, that Donald Trump. If The Donald likes it and thinks the book is of value, there is a pretty safe bet that you will not be taking a gamble purchasing it.

Finally, an endorsement is great for comparing your taste to someone else’s. Wheatmark recently released The Big Girls Club where an endorser says that at “one minute I was laughing and the next I was crying,” which backs up the book’s claim to be Sex in the City meets Eckhart Tolle. If you think Sex in the City is a funny but emotional show about women, then you might enjoy the way The Big Girls Club is written.

If an endorsement isn’t by a respected leader of the industry you are trying to tap— a professor, journalist, fellow author, etc.—then the endorsement won’t have the professional weight to add the credibility you need.

Endorsements, when effective, can be a useful tool when selling your book. However, they are not the most important.

For self-published authors, getting quality endorsements can be difficult and expensive. Sending review copies to reviewers and authors who don’t end up endorsing your book can get expensive and emotionally difficult.

One of the best ways to get the good word out about your book if you don’t have strong endorsements is to ask everyone who has read and liked your book to review it on sites like Amazon.com.

Positive reviews can provide leaps and bounds better leverage for sales than a vague endorsement from your Aunt Ida.

Best Series Tip No. 4: Get Customer Reviews

The Best Series is based on a presentation by Wheatmark author James D. Best, author of The Shopkeeper, The Shut Mouth Society, and the upcoming release Leadville. Best has offered 10 tips on how to use Amazon to sell your book and we'll look at each tip in depth in a series of blog posts.

Tip No. 4: Get Customer Reviews

• Get Real Reviews--People Spot Phonies


• Ask Early & Follow Up--People are Busy


• Make Sure They Like It--Otherwise, Mum's the Word


• Manage Helpful Votes--Keep Selling Reviews on Top

When getting ready to purchase something, how do you determine whether the product is one of quality? Most people do research, they read up on the item and weigh the pros and cons from the reviews the item has received online.

If you were to go on Amazon.com and look up, say, weed whackers, you are not likely to purchase the model that received zero stars and horrible reviews. Books are the same way. You need reviews and you really, really want good ones.

Reviews help to entice people to make a buy decision. Having reviews that talk positively and intelligently about your book will help persuade your buyer to put your book in their shopping cart.

How do you get reviews? You ask for them.

The majority of your first book sales will most likely be to people you know. Ask them to review your book on Amazon. That is, if they liked it. If they didn't, ask them to stay mum about it. You don't want them to pretend they liked it either. You also don't really want to go on there and write your own glowing review. Readers can spot phony reviews fairly easily.

Although you don't really want a negative review on your page, a well-written lukewarm review won't necessarily hurt you. Often a not-quite a rave will realistically portray your work and often will have nice things to say about it despite a low-star rating.

It is often easy to get people to agree to review your book. It is even more of a battle to get them to follow through. People are busy. You need to ask early and follow up. You'll probably have to follow up with them several times. Despite your discomfort in "nagging" them, in the end, their excellent review could make the difference in a sale. So keep pushing. Don't threaten their kneecaps or anything, but gentle pushes reminding them to log on and review your book won't likely break a friendly relationship.

If you do receive a negative review, well, that's life. Find someone who likes you and likes your book to put up their positive review soon. As the favorable reviews stack up, you'll be able to push that negative review lower on the page and it will have less weight to the buyer.

What if no one likes your book? The truth is difficult sometimes. If no one likes your book and the reviews are going badly, it is time to look at your product. Take the feedback into consideration and get ready to go back to the drawing board. You may need to consider some revisions and more professional editing.

Remember, having an excellent book is tip No. 1.

Another thing you might want to consider is who you are giving the book to. It might not be fruitful to give your sci-fi erotica novel to your Aunt Mona, whose views make the mother in Carrie seem lenient. Get reviews from readers who are familiar with your book's genre and can accurately review it.

Upcoming in the Best Series is Tip No. 5: Get Lots of Tags.

Seek Feedback on Your Writing

Overwhelmed by the daunting task of editing your book now that you are a good chunk of the way through?

Here at Wheatmark, one of the questions we hear a lot is, "Did you read it? What did you think?"

Why wait to find out what people think?

Wheatmark offers editing services from copyediting to book doctoring -- but that is when the book is in its more finalized manuscript.

Many authors don't realize that earlier on in the process of creation is a great time to actually begin the editing process and seeking feedback.

One of the ways you can help focus your story and also help gauge interest in your work is also a great marketing tool: A blog.

I know. You're nervous about sharing your work when it is still very much in an initial draft. Think of it this way: Which is harder, having someone read a work in progress and have some constructive criticism you can take or leave or having someone critique your final, unchangeable product?

Using a blog to post sections of your book and allowing people to comment on your passages is a great way to get feedback, let people be supportive of your work, and eventually will be a great platform for launching your actual book.

Online channels are the most open and available for independently published authors to sell their books. Social marketing is a great way to tap into a population of book readers, buyers, and other writers.

Using your blog as a home base will help you gain readership and also help you create the book you have in mind.

Having trouble getting started? Check out a previous post I wrote on setting up a free Blogger account.

We offer some great resources on writing and editing for you to read also if you'd like to check them out!

Getting reviews for your self-published book

There's a great article up by Self-Publishing Review: How to Get Self-Published Book Reviews. If you have a book in print, are getting a book into print, or are thinking about getting a book into print, you need to read this.

Among the tips:

• Make sure the book is professionally designed. Reviewers who have reservations about dealing with self-published books may not notice how the book got published if it looks professional.
  
  
• Include a press pack with your book.
  
  
• Choose reviewers who are more likely to be receptive. There are a number of sites that happily review books from small and self-publishers, and newspapers often like to write about local authors.
  
  
• Try to get Amazon reviews. Don't underestimate the impact of an ordinary reader's opinion.

Again, read the whole article for specific and very useful details. One good book review doesn't guarantee massive sales, but it can lend a whole lot of credibility to your own marketing efforts.

Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down: Book Reviews

One way to get the word out about your book is to have it reviewed.

Even when you can’t get the New York Times to even open your envelope, there are plenty of online book reviewers that can offer up insightful discussions about your book and can help lead other readers to it.

But there is a downside to having your book reviewed: you open yourself up to not always glowing reviews. Recently a post at http://botheyes.wordpress.com/2008/11/12/let-the-receiver-beware/ explored the issue of a negative review and the author’s reaction (lawyers were involved).

Understand up front that by asking a reviewer to read and discuss your book, you are asking for their opinion—which they are entitled to. If they don’t like your book, that is their opinion. Don’t get litigious. Get more reviewers! Someone will see value in your work!

Getting an Accurate Review of Your Book

First off, make sure your book is as professional as possible. Have it copyedited. Errors are a warning signal to readers that your book isn’t a quality venture--or worth their time.

Second off, before you ask for a review, make sure you do your homework. Do you like the reviewers style? When they don’t like a book, how do they write about it? Do they include images of the book? Do they review books only on the bestseller list or are they reading independently published work? Pick someone you feel good about.

Most reviewers will request a copy of your book. This does not guarantee they will review your book.

But those are just the “buyer beware” elements. The good parts are that online reviewers are generally more open to independently published books.

They also may be able to better able to reach your audience. For example, if your book is about weight loss, you’ll want to find a reviewer who is interested in your topic. The more expert your reviewer is on your book's topic, the more likely they will be to attract readers that want to learn more about that topic and will seek you out.

Let’s Talk Amazon Before We Go …

Those little reviews from readers on Amazon are gold. Particularly when they are positive! So ask people that have enjoyed your book to hop online and help you toot your horn.

The more positive reviews you have, the more confident someone will be buying your book.