A Publisher's Conversations with Authors: Reviews

 

It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side.

Today's topic is about reviews. How do you get reviews?  How should you interpret them? How should you handle bad reviews?

So, let's take each question separately.

How do you get reviews?

• There are professional reviewers. Some will review before the book is published -- they want a 3-4 month heads-up (i.e. book in hand, with a later release date). These are highly desirable. Examples are Library Journal, School Library Journal, Foreword Reviews (the free version), and Publishers Weekly. All of them accept submissions sent directly to them. (There are also otherLs; Google them.)
• You can put your book up on NetGalley, which makes your book available pre-publication to potential reviewers (not necessarily professional but many bloggers, which is helpful). While the potential reviews can be helpful, putting a pdf of a full book online makes our editorial staff nervous, especially since we had one book purloined (put online for free download by a company we could not trace); our suspicion (unproved and unprovable) was the Netgalley copy since it was the only digital form we had shared at the time (the epub came later). Just be aware that you will need to be very cautious about protecting your work digitally. (There are also regulations that do not permit others to upload your book for free to other sites, but authors and publishers have to be vigilant about finding violators and enforcing their copyrights -- more on this in a later blog post.) 
• You can offer your book, usually prior to publication but post publication is also possible, to readers on Library Thing. Note the date by which you have to upload the information about a forthcoming book. You will be asked to offer at least 15 books; LT selects the winners who will receive those copies. Books offered via Library Thing can end up in the hands of experienced reviewers, inexperienced reviewers, reviewers with a "chip" on their shoulders--such as atheists who sign up to read religious books, reviewers with an ego who seem to feel best when they are putting down a book, and reviewers who accept a copy of the book but never review it. LT says that this is not supposed to happen, but it happens all too often, and, in our experience, LT does not enforce well enough the requirement to write a review.
• Local journalists are excellent sources as reviewers. They are motivated to tell the stories of people in their communities, and you are one of those people with a story. 
• After publication, these same local journalists can be very helpful in getting the word out.
• There are post-publication reviewers, as well. Our favorite is MidWest Book Review. 
• Post-publication, you can run giveaways in exchange for a book review, e.g, via Goodreads.
• There are paid reviews, e.g, Kirkus, Foreword Reviews, US Review of Books, and others will write a review for a fee. The only fee we have found to be reasonable is US Review of Books. However, some authors are very smitten with the others listed here and are willing to pay the several hundred dollars they charge. Jane Friedman, book publishing guru, does not believe paid book reviews are worthwhile, and we agree with her that in most cases they are not. Here is her longer take on the subject: Paid book reviews. Since the only paid reviews that we recommend to our authors are from US Review of Books, that is the only link provided on this blog post. Of course, you can Google the others. Just keep in mind that the paid reviewers are a known quantity, and a free review generally is considered by readers to be more valuable and honest than a paid review (though, to be fair, most paid reviewers do try to provide unbiased work).
• Places to get book reviews for free are actually all around you. Ask your friends and acquaintances--and their friends and acquaintances. Offer a free book in exchange for a review on your blog or website and those of bloggers with whom you are acquainted. If a blog you follow is directly related to your publication, ask the blogger if s/he would be willing to write a review. Who knows? You may make a new friend. We have seen that happen with our authors. Are there local book clubs? Offer your book to members. Do you belong to a professional organization that reviews books in your field? If you have written a technical or professional book, then those journals will be interested in reviewing your book.
• Pubby is a new review service that does not ask for a fee. Instead, in a new and interesting twist, Pubby asks for book reviews in return for book reviews.
• Leave us a comment with other suggestions and experiences. There is nothing more valuable to an author than the experience of another author.

How should you interpret reviews?

• Oh, oh! Someone did not like your book. That happens. Before you panic, get angry, or try to take revenge, analyze the situation.
• Perhaps the reviewer is right. Is perhaps the reviewer seeing something that you did not consider, i.e. is right about some things? If those things damage the book (like, oops, somehow some typos slipped through -- it happens), you might want to re-edit or reorient the book, especially if several reviewers make the same comment. Some publishers will not republish with error corrections; we will (though we have some pretty good copyeditors who catch these things in advance, usually), and many others will as well. 
• Perhaps the reviewer is biased. Did you perhaps get a "happy heathen" reading your spiritual book? At least, you have an explanation and can discount the opinion.
• Perhaps the reviewer is inexperienced, did not read the book carefully enough, or has not written a review before so is floundering. Forgive these things; these reviewers are learning, and this fact will generally come across to everyone who reads the review.
• Was the reviewer trying to show off? Well, at least you know the source of that particular opinion, and unfortunately, some reviewers do have an unwarranted sense of superiority. It comes with the turf. Just make sure that your interpretation of the reviewer's attitude is accurate and not a matter of your reluctance to accept good constructive criticism shared publicly.
• Likewise, if a book review is very, very good, be humble. Is it hyperbole to flatter you as sometimes happens with paid reviews (this is actually not helpful because readers see through this), or is it really an honest and fair assessment (kudos to you in that case).

 What should you do about a bad review?

• If there is a legitimate serious problem with the book, you can fix the errors and republish the book if you self-published it or work with the publisher to have the errors fixed and the book republished.
• You can kill in the review in some cases; some reviewers, particularly paid reviewers, will allow you to stop a bad review from being published. Others will not.
• If the review is one of only a handful and truly harmful, don't ignore it. For every bad review, work to get 8-10 more reviews (hopefully, positive ones) to balance out the bad review(s). Although there is some guidance among marketers that any review is to be welcomed and that bad reviews at least bring the book more attention (infamy is sometimes a better marketing tool than fame), our advice is not to ignore a really truly bad review, but analyze the reason behind it and do what you can to make it less harmful, the best way being to bury it in a flood of good reviews.
• If you continue to get bad reviews, you do have a serious problem whether you see it or not. Get some help from a professional to help you see and repair the problem.
• Do not sweat the small stuff. An unjustified had review here or there is not going to be a death knell for your book, and truly unjustified bad reviews are generally seen as such by readers.

Want to do some more reading on this topic? Certainly, scads have been written about it. For starters, here is some advice from Writer's Digest, one of the "bibles" for writers. Now, go on and Google the topic and take solace in and get ideas from authors who have walked in your shoes--and done so well.

And keep in mind that reviews, while very important, are only one of the marketing/promotional tools at your disposal.

Lesson for today's Tuesday talk: Put reviews into perspective!
Seeking reviews should be an ongoing task no matter when the book was published. Interpreting book reviews accurately and learning from them, as well as knowing when to ignore them, can save your sanity--and your book.

Read more posts about publishing HERE.

The Tuesday talks reflect real discussions between the management of MSI Press LLC and our own authors or those would-be authors who come through our doors but don't make the cut--yet. If you have a topic you would like addressed, leave the question in the comment section. Chances are, in our 17 years of publishing first-time and experiences authors, we have had a conversation with one of our authors that we can share with you.