Steps to Get Pre-Launch Book Reviews
It is important to get good reviews for books that are available for pre-order to show up higher in search results and to help motivate people to buy. To get good book reviews, you usually have to ask happy people to post reviews. In addition to getting positive ratings for books, it is helpful to have key search phrases and motivational words in your reviews. There are some simple steps, message templates, and documents authors, publishers, and marketers can use to request, motivate, and track book reviews.
Book Review Terms of Service – most online retailers such as Amazon do not allow for paid reviews. They do allow people to post reviews from no cost advance review copies (ARCs). This means you can send review copies or links to eBooks to book reviewers.
Review Links – make it easy for people to post reviews for your book by providing them with a link to the store where you want them to post the review. Gather and create a list of your book product page links to use from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and other places your books are sold. When you ask for a review, send only one bookstore link for a person to use (alternate between Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, etc).
Example Reviews – look at good reviews from competing or similar books to give you ideas of the reviews you should want for your book.
Sample Keywords & Phrases – create lists of keywords and phrases that would likely help your potential readers to discover why your book would help or interest them. Mention some of the related topics and words(1 to 3) in your book review request.
Reviewer List – make a spreadsheet of people you want to invite to be book reviewers. Include columns for request date tracking and a column for the date when the date you sent a review request, date you sent a followup request (yes, you will likely have to send 2-3 reminders), and when the review was posted.
Reviewer Inviting – you can start with friends and family that have already purchased your book – they are verified purchasers. Get some of your marketing tribe people to post reviews. After you have 5-10 good reviews, you can expand your reviewer candidate list to book bloggers and key influencers. There are some book review services and platforms that allow you to get people to post reviews.
Reviewer Messages – create ready to copy and edit book reviewer invite and followup messages. Update your ready to copy & edit messages as you discover better ways to invite and followup with your reviewers.
Review Copies – you can send people a pre-release version of your book (sample chapters) or a draft pre-release version (beta). Let them know that it is not the final version and that it may contain typos and errors. If you want to protect your pre-release book from being copied and shared, you can use a book distribution service such as BookFunnel.com which allows you to easily password protect individual copies of your book.
Requests & Followup – it typically takes 2 to 3 book review requests for each person that posts a review. Send followup book review requests up to 3 times after your first request with each followup message spaced 1-2 weeks apart. After the 3rd attempt, you should not send any more requests or reminders because success will be very low and they may get mad and post a bad review.
Number of Reviews & Timing – it is helpful to get 10+ reviews in the first 1-2 months. After the first few months, get 1-2 new reviews each month so that potential buyers will see recent value for your book.
To get access to a guide on how to manage Pre-Launch Book Reviews, go to: LearnQIC.com/bookprelaunchguides