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.