Sarah - that is a great question. There is a belief that you should NEVER pay for a review.
There are, however, organizations that offer reasonable priced book promotion for your book by offering your book to be reviewed by their database of bloggers. The bloggers decide if they would like to read and review you your book. With WOW's (Women-on-Writing) promotion program, for example, you could get 15 reviews of your book with the promotion. Are you "paying" for the promotion...not exactly. WOW exposes your book to their arsenal of bloggers and bloggers decide to review your book and write a fair review... If "Women Writers" are in your target market, this is a sensible promotion to try. Your book will be featured in their newsletter that reaches 10's of thousands of email addresses in their network, be highlighted on WOW's newsletter and you could asl be asked for interviews which you can then post... you get the idea.
To outright pay for a review, to Kirkus, for example, seems to go against the idea of "fair review" as well, why pay for reviews when with a little elbow grease, you could get them for free?
On the subject of influencers... there are influencers who will mention your book or review your book on their social media - Instagram, Facebook, for example. Again, if their followers match your book's target market exactly and they have many followers, it might be worth the book promotion dollars to give it shot. I would ask the influencer for a happy client and see an example of what they have posted for other authors.
I would rather see promotion dollars go to writing a great press release and then paying to send that press release across all media for possible review, mention or interview. WebWire is an example of a company that will distribute your book's press release across thousands of media for a fee.
I'll be writing in the coming weeks about additional book review outreach steps that I will be taking to promote my book. The ideas won't cost much... some time and postage...perhaps outlay for media contact lists and to create an eGalley.
So I've gotten A LOT of inquiries from "influencers" asking if I will pay them to review my self-published book. I keep saying no. Is it ever worth it and how do we know what to trust?
Sarah - that is a great question. There is a belief that you should NEVER pay for a review.
There are, however, organizations that offer reasonable priced book promotion for your book by offering your book to be reviewed by their database of bloggers. The bloggers decide if they would like to read and review you your book. With WOW's (Women-on-Writing) promotion program, for example, you could get 15 reviews of your book with the promotion. Are you "paying" for the promotion...not exactly. WOW exposes your book to their arsenal of bloggers and bloggers decide to review your book and write a fair review... If "Women Writers" are in your target market, this is a sensible promotion to try. Your book will be featured in their newsletter that reaches 10's of thousands of email addresses in their network, be highlighted on WOW's newsletter and you could asl be asked for interviews which you can then post... you get the idea.
To outright pay for a review, to Kirkus, for example, seems to go against the idea of "fair review" as well, why pay for reviews when with a little elbow grease, you could get them for free?
On the subject of influencers... there are influencers who will mention your book or review your book on their social media - Instagram, Facebook, for example. Again, if their followers match your book's target market exactly and they have many followers, it might be worth the book promotion dollars to give it shot. I would ask the influencer for a happy client and see an example of what they have posted for other authors.
I would rather see promotion dollars go to writing a great press release and then paying to send that press release across all media for possible review, mention or interview. WebWire is an example of a company that will distribute your book's press release across thousands of media for a fee.
I'll be writing in the coming weeks about additional book review outreach steps that I will be taking to promote my book. The ideas won't cost much... some time and postage...perhaps outlay for media contact lists and to create an eGalley.
So I've gotten A LOT of inquiries from "influencers" asking if I will pay them to review my self-published book. I keep saying no. Is it ever worth it and how do we know what to trust?