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I am about to publish a non-fiction book, and I intend to give review copies to people prior to publication.

Do I have to buy copies on amazon at my own expense? Is it possible to give review e-book copies for free through Amazon (not just e-mailing someone the file outside of Amazon)? If I have to pay for the copies, do I temporarily lower the price so that the cost to me is lower and then raise the price at the time of publication? I would certainly be fine with paying for copies for bloggers/podcasters, but I was going to openly offer review copies on twitter, and this could get quite expensive. If I pay for the copy, does the review show up as a "Verified Amazon purchase"?

Another question: are websites such as booksirens where you pay to be connected to reviewers a scam? It seems like you are paying for the "matchmaking" service rather than directly for a review, and the reviews are supposed to be honest reviews, so is it legit?

Is it wise to delay publication to try to get as many reviews as possible immediately after publication? Should I just publish it immediately and give people gift copies and ask for reviews?

Thank you for your time.

As for Amazon copies: when you order something, there's the 'gift' option - this should only charge you the part of the price going to Amazon (simplified example: an e-book normally costing $3 would give you $2 and Amazon $1, so gifting it should charge you the $1) and should give the recipient 'verified purchase' tag (or maybe there's a 'gift' tag).
Beware, though, gifting kindle books is possible only if the recipient lives in the US - I don't know the reasons but my speculation is due to possible country-specific taxes on gifts which would be too much hassle for Amazon to implement. Amazon should have something about how gifting e-books works in their help section, so give that a good look.

Brandon wrote: "I am about to publish a non-fiction book, and I intend to give review copies to people prior to publication.

Do I have to buy copies on amazon at my own expense? Is it possible to give review e-bo..."

You can also set up a free account on a service like Prolific Works where you would upload the file for your book (at no cost to you), and they would provide a link to your book. So you don't have to email out multiple copies of your book to multiple people. You would just give the link to the people who want to read your book. Or in the case where you want to put it up on twitter, you can post that link.

BUT... Take into account that a lot of people download books with the intention of doing reviews and don't do them. And... if you do put it up on twitter as free, you may get hundreds of downloads by people who just want to read your book (not review it). And there are strict rules (amazon is very stringent and cracking down on reviews), so you should look up what you can and cannot say in terms of seeking reviews.

Whether it's best to wait for reviews before you release your book is just a personal call. I'm sure everyone has different opinions. Reviews are hard to come by and can take a long time, so it depends how long you want to wait before you release.

How does an author use the gift option for an e-copy on Amazon? I understand the steps for gifting a book "in general", but not the part where I only pay Amazon's portion. Does it determine that automatically, because I am the author, or I need to click something special?

Author copies for print books are in your KDP Bookshelf (based on what I've read), I'd expect it to be similar for e-books. I don't have a first-hand experience yet but looking around your KDP Bookshelf is the place I'd start.

Brandon,
The best way to get reviews is to have an email list. You ask who would like an ARC (Advanced Review Copy) to read. When you send it to them (or to the link you have for the book...I use Book Funnel but if Prolific Works has a free thing, use it) you ask them to kindly post a review when the book goes live. Remind them a day or two before your book is published then again after it is published. It is the easiest and best way to get reviews and is my plan for my next book. According to ALL the gurus, it is one of the reasons you build an email list.

Thank you guys so much. It seems like the best option for me is Prolific Works. This will save me some money and allow me to give out as many copies as I want without worrying about whether or not the recipient will actually post a review.

Is it a better strategy to openly post a link or just to openly post that you will give a free e-book copy to anyone who wants it and then send a private message with the link?

-Brandon

Brandon wrote: "Thank you guys so much. It seems like the best option for me is Prolific Works. This will save me some money and allow me to give out as many copies as I want without worrying about whether or not ..."

Re: strategy, it all depends on if you want to retain the email info from the people requesting to read your book (so you can follow up with them). Last time I used Prolific Works, they had an option to require people to leave their emails in order to download the book (in which case you can just post the link), but the opinion is that it discourages some people from downloading (because they don't want to be followed up on). If you don't require it, you will see how many people download it, but you won't get their email addresses.

If you're solely looking for reviews, have you searched for review groups on GR? There's a group called "Shut Up & Read" with a "Read it & Reap" section, for instance. I'm not sure if they do non-fiction, but obviously you can take a look. Also, you can do a search for review groups and see what comes up. BTW, if you do a general post (on twitter, GR, facebook, etc.) to allow random people to review your book, you should probably have it up on amazon so there's somewhere for them to leave a review (rather than waiting to publish once you get reviews).

And again, try to make sure you word it in a way that doesn't go against amazon's policy for reviews. If I can figure out how to message you, I'll message you a link that talks about it (we're not allowed to put links here), but you can just search for amazon book review policy and get a bunch of articles on it.

Thank you Rhonda. I will of course make sure to follow Amazon's policy, specifying that I am looking for honest reviews.

I have one more question for the gallery: If I use prolific works, will the website require that they give an e-mail? Is there any way to make it so that they can just download the e-book immediately without giving away their e-mail? I am not interested in collecting e-mails.

-Brandon.

Brandon, you get the e-mails if you join a list builder event. My question is, Why don't you want the emails? That list will be your very best marketing group. You don't have to interact with them much. (Mike Gomes only emails when he has a book coming out) but they will be the ones who will most likely buy your book.

If you are giving it away, then try some of the sites like FreeBooksy. (there is a promo folder on here with all the sites listed),. the Fussy Librarian, etc. AXP and Prolific Works are two who will send you emails if you use those promos. Then again, you can use the promos without taking the lists.

Thank you for the reply B.A

I don't want the e-mails because I am writing for people with a chronic disease, and I don't want to send them promotional e-mails. Maybe this is foolish. I don't know.

Here is a question: What is the best website for giving away free e-books to advance reviewers only temporarily prior to publication?

Is it also possible to have a private account so that you can give the book away to select people and still sell it on amazon for everyone else?

I can't be the only author with this desire.

Bookfunnel. the reader can get it in any format they want and they send the directions on how to get the book so you don't have to. (You do have to put it up there in the different formats, but you can do that for free through Draft2Digital. you can also use D2D as a distributor and they do POD. If you are going to want a big run, tho, go to Ingram)

Unless you are in KDP Select, you can sell your book wherever you want and give it way. Select is exclusive to Amazon, so avoid it. I'd also advise getting your own ISBNs (One for each version of the book ie, epub, mobi, paperback, hard cover, audible) if you don't go through a publishing house.

Remember, you are offering a service. There is no crime in asking for them to pay for a book which might help them. In fact, most people see free as not worth anything. $.99 adds value to the information. As the price goes up, most people will see it as more valuable until it get to a pain point. That is usually at around $4.99 for an ebook.

A caveat: if you enroll your book in KDP Select at the time of publication, their terms forbid you from any kind of electronic distribution outside of Amazon � another website like NetGalley, your own website, even emailing a copy to your cousin Frank in Pittsburgh.

So if you mean to distribute ARCs, you need to do it before publication, and should you enroll in KDP select, you'll need to inform whoever is distributing your ARCs that they need to delist your book, at least temporarily.

Enrollment in KDP Select is optional, and you have to weigh the benefits against the restrictions. The worst that can happen is that they'll kick you out of KDP Select if they discover you're distributing your ebooks in some other way, so it isn't a huge risk, but Amazon can drop your books altogether for more serious violations.

thank you all for the information about KDP

I do intend to enroll in KDP select, so I will have to delist it once the review copies are sent out.

As a follow up, I used bookfunnel, and I have managed to get about 250 downloads, mostly from my twitter followers and other people on twitter.

How many of those can I reasonably expect to actually post a review?

Other than sending them a message on twitter at the time of publication, are there any specific techniques for nudging people toward giving you a review?

I am planning to publish around 5-6 weeks after I gave away most of the copies which should give most people adequate time to read and review the book. I also asked them to write a review and save it on a microsoft word document so that it is available. Then, I am going to set a 5 day free promotion and ask them to download the book for free prior to posting the review such that it is an "Amazon verified purchase." I actually spoke to KDP customer service, and they said this practice is completely legitimate, and they don't care if the review is posted 30 seconds after the book was downloaded.

Getting reviews is hard, especially from people who don’t so book review blogs or that sort of thing. They really have to love it and honestly I don’t think there’s rhyme or reason to it.

I hear you Peter. I figure that if I can give 300 copies away, perhaps I will get 5% or 15 reviews. Is that a reasonable expectation? I heard that it is virtually impossible to market a product on amazon (by AMS ads or other means) unless you have 20 reviews or so.

Brandon wrote: "I hear you Peter. I figure that if I can give 300 copies away, perhaps I will get 5% or 15 reviews. Is that a reasonable expectation? I heard that it is virtually impossible to market a product on ..."

I think the ratio is closer to one percent.

Agreed. One percent or less.

I have heard 1% for the percentage of people who will spontaneously review your book if they purchase it on Amazon, but surely it must be higher for people who are receiving a free copy specifically for review purposes. Is it really 1%?

At this rate, I would only get 3 reviews. So sad.

Again, that is the reason you work on building an email list. Those people are more likely to review the book if they get an arc copy. You can remind them and give them nudges to write the review. If you give the books away on Amazon, you have no way of encouraging them to give a review.

If you have a book up for free, after The End you need to put in a request for a review by saying something like" If you enjoyed this book, please leave a review so other readers can find the book and enjoy it too." (refine this for your books). Also, put in where to sign up for your email list and to access your website. You will get more reviews with this and your email list.

FWIW I was pleased with booksirens. You cap the budget wherever you want, only $10 handling fee and $2 per review. My genre isn’t as popular so there weren’t as many readers and I was only experimenting so I didn’t spend much, but I got 12 great reviews out of a request for 20. I will definitely use for my next books.

BA: I intend to message people on twitter to remind them to post a review. Hopefully, this will help, but it is somewhat of a laborious process.

Roxie: Thanks for your input. I suppose booksirens is worth a try, though I would imagine most booksirens reviewers are looking for fiction.

Hi Brandon,

I'm in the process of trying to get more reviews for a book that is already published and enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. As I understand it, it's OK for you to approach reviewers and give them free copies but you can't have the book listed on a site that publicly offers free copies, which is what NetGalley does. Book Sprout also does this and, on their site, they flag up this issue with KU. Book Sirens get around it by saying that, if your book is on KU, they will email it out to reviewers rather than having it up on their site, so you could use Book Sirens to get more reviews.

Book Sirens also has free lists of reviewers in different genres so you could look to see if there is a non-fiction category that suits your book.

Another thing I would point out is the risk of piracy if you are sending out files to unknown recipients. It seems this is an inherent problem in self-publishing but it might be a reason to issue review copies through an established site that does this for you.

I think the best that we authors can do is focus on making our stories interesting and well written. Then we should make sure our book is as professional as possible; including the editing and the cover. When it comes to reviews, I think every genre is different. It also makes a difference if you’re a new author and don’t have other books out. I’ve struggled with this myself. I’ve only gotten 46 genuine reviews on Amazon. That’s the thing we should aim for though: honest reviews from strangers. You will notice many books have numbers of 5 star reviews that are most likely not real, not from real readers. Real readers can be honest and brutal, and we have to have a thick skin. Some real readers are generous too, and want to be nice. You will know when reviews are real for the most part. You will also know when a real reader is just being nice lol.

When it comes to how to get them, that’s the difficult part. I find, as a new author, that giving away kindle copies gets me the most reviews. But as people have said above, only 1-10% of readers leave a review (depending possibly on the genre and professionalism of the book), and some are brutal about it. And that’s okay! They still read our book. They told the world how they felt about it. It’s still an accomplishment. Sometimes the negative reviews make the book look more interesting.

Thanks Catherine, Leah

I am giving away copies on book funnel, but I will stop the day prior to publication.


Leah: 46 reviews i very good. A lot of professionally published books with distribution in physical bookstores have < 46 reviews on Amazon.

As I said, I got > 400 downloads from book funnel, and I will update this thread to let you know how many reviews I get from this in the first few weeks.

Sounds good!

I just checked out your book. It looks interesting and inspiring. I have a feeling your readers will have interests in medicine and neurology, or be people with MS themselves that want to find hope. Maybe family members of people with MS. The more people interested in like subjects you advertise your book to, the more possibility for reviews, in my opinion. For example, I have severe RA and often seek out scholarly research about autoimmune diseases and rheumatoid arthritis from authors and physicians like you as I battle my disease. I’m more prone to leave reviews for books or articles I’m most interested in. I’m sure you’re learning about how to cater to your target audiences before a giveaway. It takes a lot of time and energy. It can be tiring, especially if, like me, you work full time in a hospital lol.

You're welcome, Brandon.

Good luck with your book!

Brandon wrote: "Thanks Catherine, Leah

I am giving away copies on book funnel, but I will stop the day prior to publication.


Leah: 46 reviews i very good. A lot of professionally published books with distributi..."

Just to give an update, my book got 14 amazon reviews since 10/2 despite about 430 bookfunnel downloads. I suppose that is enough to make the amazon landing page look respectable.

Perhaps a few more reviews will trickle in over the next few months from people who told me they had not had a chance to read it yet.

Is that enough reviews, or should I try to get reviews from booksirens or another method?

It is very difficult getting reviews, I find. Even when people have clearly and genuinely enjoyed reading the novel, they are resistant to declare this - seem quite inhibited from expressing themselves even though I always say, 'just a few words will do ...'
All writers I know express the same difficulties - I am unsure of the solution!

It seems something like 1-5% of readers ever write a review.

In real life (often) - people read and move on...to another book :) often those who are reviewing- doing it all the time or simply selling it (as service). I have to say at once that I’m 100% ok with a “sponsored� review - it doesn’t mean it have to be 5 stars only. We all are living in the world where we have to survive...

I’m personally got emails from people (I don’t know them) who absolutely loved my book but never left any review. I didn’t ask them to. I think people who are reading books belongs to 3 groups:
- reviewers
- readers
- readers & reviewers :)

And to be just a “reader� is absolutely ok. Of course in the age of Amazon (for indie author) reviews are very important! I think best way to get some - thru fb groups & blogs.

Well done, Brandon - I think 14 on Amazon.com is a great start. I would say whether you try to get more before publication depends on the quality of the ones that are there already. Do you think the reviews you have are telling potential readers the sorts of things you want them to about your book?

I would bear in mind that, should you be looking to do paid promotions through sites that specialise in these, once the book is published, most of these seem to say that a minimum of about 10 reviews is what they're looking for to consider promoting your book - and you already have that.

The advantage of using Book Sirens would be to get reviews from people who might specialise in your area of interest. Looking to publication, connecting with bloggers who review books about health and wellbeing could be really useful to you - they may do author interviews, etc., which will boost your presence on the web at the time of the book's release. But you could use Book Sirens' free lists of reviewers and approach these people yourself if you have time, and the benefit of this would be that you then have a direct relationship with them.

Someone wanted to leave a review of my trilogy on Amazon, but couldn't. She does not have a credit card (because she royally screwed over her finances) and is having trouble getting even a new bank account. Supposedly Amazon requires a book reviewer to spend $50 or more in the last 12 months, plus have an account (she has an account but no debit cards-no bank account--and no credit cards).

Which is why though I'd love reviews (well, decent ratings anyway) I have stopped worrying about getting reviews or ratings.

The 1-5% of all readers will leave reviews is about correct. You do need to make it easy for them. At the end of the book, encourage them to leave a review (like right after 'The End") give them the link to get to the page to leave the review if it's an e-book. (This is store specific so don't put a B&N link in an Amazon of Kobo book as they'll pull it) In print versions, ask for a review in the same place, give why you want one. )Hint: It isn't to help you. It's so other readers are able to find your book.) Your email list...hey, ask, and re-ask and put the link in those emails. Ask up to 3 times giving a couple of weeks in between in each ask. Ask ARC readers to give review. make sure you don't say something like "In return for the free book" that is coercion and Amazon frowns upon it as it is breaking their rules, like paid reviews. Those can only be used as editorial reviews.
Yes, Amazon does require $50 in spending to leave a review, that way they make sure it isn't a review mill using fake emails which some authors have done in the past.
The best place to get reviews...your email list. They already like your books and they are the most likely to leave a review as they have a relationship with you.

B.A. wrote: "The 1-5% of all readers will leave reviews is about correct. You do need to make it easy for them. At the end of the book, encourage them to leave a review (like right after 'The End") give them th..."

I get the notion of why Amazon requires $50 spending (and I agree with that notion! I'm as tired of scammers as they are!). I don't really have an "email list" (though I do have followers/friends on facebook, my website omegabooksnet, my goodreads blog...don't use Twitter and don't have a cell phone...no cell service where I live in the mountains of far west Texas). Is my email list the folks who follow my site or blogs? I think though the reason I have not gotten reviews yet is my trilogy book is very long (nearly 700 pages print, over 1300 e-book format) since it is three-books-in-one. Thanks for the info.

The email list is the emails of followers where you use an email program like mailchimp, mailerlite, convertkit to send out regular (or irregular) emails with updates on you or your works in progress. It is one of those things that you need to put together and keep as these are the people who will buy your books first. An email list will have over 40% more buys than Facebook, twitter, goodreads, blogs ,etc. combined. These are you fans. You can collect emails through your blog by having them sign up for emails from you. You can do the same for all the other social media other than Pinterest.

You must be way out like me. My cell phone only works because I have satellite internet and get service through that. Like you the mountains and hills stop me from getting phone service. The land lines here are horrid. Centurylink had lousy service and their internet is so bad it take 5 min. to access your email let alone a website. Needless to say I told them to take a hike when I move here. I don't use twitter as it take a ton of time with few returns on that time. Most of your sales will be through fans that you have gotten. You may do well with your website, but the email list is by far the best sales tool you can foster.

B.A. wrote: "The email list is the emails of followers where you use an email program like mailchimp, mailerlite, convertkit to send out regular (or irregular) emails with updates on you or your works in progre..."

Heard of Mailchimp. If it is free I might consider it. Or one of the others. And yes, I am way out in the rural remote. Most of far west Texas (aka "God's country" it is so gorgeous out here and full of nature) is rural remote. South of I-10 between El Paso and Fort Stockton. Can't use satellite--metered and latency....hubby uses it for work. But the wireless is slow and choppy at times. That's what we get for living amongst nature I guess. Thanks for the info.

The mail list services are usually free until X followers (I think it's around 2000 for one of them), then paid.
Have a good look at the conditions, I've heard Mailchimp did some questionable change by counting all sign-ups, not just active ones.

Tomas wrote: "The mail list services are usually free until X followers (I think it's around 2000 for one of them), then paid.
Have a good look at the conditions, I've heard Mailchimp did some questionable chang..."

Thanks, Tomas, for the info. If it''s not for free then I'm not doing it!

Maybe you could look into it - if there's a way to block it from going over the limit...
Also, you can kick people from the lists. Some people do clean-ups 2-3 times per year when they see the people don't read it - and probably only signed for the 'bait' (whatever free stuff they gave for joining the list).

From my personal reader's point of view, if I want to know about an author's releases, I'll just follow them on Amazon instead of a mailing list. And even without it, Amazon does a good job reminding me of books by authors I've read a lot.