How to Get More Book Reviews – Part 4: How to Attract Outside Reviewers

How to Get More Book Reviews

Part 4: How to Attract Outside Reviewers

The key to getting online book reviews is not to focus on choosing the very best strategy, but to maintain a persistence and work ethic in carrying out any strategy you choose. There is an overabundance of strategies to go with and you don’t have to only pick one. Simply asking every chance you get, motivating your fan base, or utilizing call-to-actions in your content are all great game plans that we’ve discussed in previous posts. Of course, these are most useful if you consistently push your efforts throughout the course of your campaign.

Our next strategy is no different and works best when you operate under the same principles of hard work and persistence. Let’s dive into the best ways to gather reviews from reviewers outside of your network, whose voices will have the most impact on motivating prospective customers to action!

How to Get Outside Reviewers

An outside reviewer is someone who is not already in your network of friends, fans, or followers – typically bloggers and podcasters, though can range to anyone with significant influence among a large enough group of people. Here’s how to get these reviewers, whose opinions hold more merit than the average reviewer, to post a comment about your book.

1. Analyze Their Fan Base

The ideal outside reviewer is someone whose words will have a lasting impact on their followers and drive them to buy your book. This means you’ll want to analyze a few of their main indicators to decide if they are a good match. The first thing to find out is if their fan base matches your target audience. Is the topic of your book even relevant to them? The outside reviewer may have a large following, but we want to make sure that they will be interested in your book or else the review will not hold any weight with them.

In a perfect scenario, the reviewer will have a large enough reach so the review is being taken in by a large amount of interested prospects and who are loyal to the reviewer. Fans who have been following certain influencers for a long period of time are much more likely to take their recommendations to heart, just as you would a recommendation from a long respected friend.

2. Find as Many as You Can

Monitor topics on social media that relate to your book in order to find the most active and influential voices across all platforms. You can do this by browsing hashtags, trending topic sections, and more to find the best accounts running them. Analyze what they talk about and how they present their content to make sure this is someone who can boost interest in your book in a manner that you like.

3. Incentivize Outside Reviewers

You can pay outside reviewers to read and post about your book but oftentimes this is a major turn off to fan bases because it does not come across as a genuine review. A better way to go about it would be to send them value in other forms such as a free product for them to review; in this case, a free download or hardcopy of your book, supplemental merchandise, one of your most valuable ‘reader magnets‘ if you have them, or even share some of their work on your social media channels to provide growth in return for them.

Make sure to stay tuned for the next steps in generating reviews, where we will discuss how posting reviews for other books can lead to more reviews for you!

Happy Writing,

Marquina