*If you'd rather listen, you check out the video on YouTube.
Getting reviews is crucial for the success of a book, but not all reviews are equal, and some are easier (and more affordable) to get. But which ones stand out the most?
For today’s post, we’re referencing fiction works only, which encompasses adult, young adult, middle grade, and poetry (which is what I’m currently publishing). I know poetry is often in between fiction and non-fiction, but for our purposes, my poetry is not educational, so we’re considering it literary fiction.
Most new authors wait for reviews after the book is published, and I know because I did that with my debut, The Ones. However, a book tends to sell more in the first week or month of release when reviews steadily come in, and we don’t want to wait for readers to purchase our book, take time to read it, and then write a review later. That’s to be expected after the book has been out for a while, but it’s crucial to have a team behind you so that you can have those 15 reviews on your book as soon as possible.
For some context, 15 reviews is what most sites require if you want to promote your book to their email subscribers or readers, and sites like Amazon are more likely to push your book to new readers once others confirm that they read and enjoyed it.
Of course, how will you, a new or still unknown author, going to find those beloved early reviewers and introduce your book to the world on the best foot, or spine, possible? You have two options, and both are very different from each other. The first is the more well-known kind which is ARC reviews, or early reviewers who receive an Advanced Reader Copy before the book release to post reviews on social media, Goodreads, StoryGraph, or blogs to build hype for your book. These reviewers are also much more honest, so if you don’t have a tough skin, I suggest having someone else preview the reviews before you read them.
The second style of reviews are Editorial Reviews. These are the reviews that you will post to your book’s page on Amazon’s KDP under the Marketing tab and won’t play into the overall rating and reviews of your book but do provide credentials to you as the author for writing said book. You can even reach out to colleagues who have published to ask them to write a 1-2 sentence review (you don’t want anything longer than that for an editorial review). Otherwise, I tried out eBook Fairs so you don’t have to.
Let’s start with the ARC readers.
ARC Reviews
My first book didn’t have an ARC street team at all, whereas my sophomore book, Missed Arrows, had a team of 22 readers. The difference? 9 reviews on Goodreads with 2 on Amazon, compared to The Ones’ 3 reviews on Goodreads with 10 reviews on Amazon.
I announced Missed Arrows in December 2023 and published it on February 13, 2024. At the time, my following consisted of 200 or so Instagram followers, about 110 LinkedIn Followers, and 150-ish YouTube subscribers. All of my ARC readers came because of a boosted post on Instagram that I ran for 4 days (video card above on how that went) and it cost me less than $25 to promote it. Honestly, for early authors, I don’t recommend spending a ton on these boosted or promoted posts because it’ll simply be more difficult to earn the money back from sales, but I could swing $25 to find early readers.
Of those 22 readers, 9 left reviews on Goodreads, with a little more than half of them posting before the book’s release. That’s about average for the rule of thirds you may have heard about, which points to the predictability of ⅓ of your pool will do what they say they will. Keep that in mind. If you cap your reviewers at 10, expect 3 of them to write reviews. If you land 100 reviewers, expect 33 of them to write reviews.
I received largely 4-star reviews with a couple 5-star and 3-star reviews, and honestly, I loved all of them. The 3-star reviews provided me with constructive notes on how to improve my next collection while my 4- and 5-star reviews gave me that confidence boost to let me know I was slowly but surely finding my ideal audience.
My timeline for these reviewers was: asking for ARC readers for two weeks from the end of December until the first week of January. I then emailed each reader individually the second week of January, letting them know this ePUB file was for review purposes only, that it wasn’t proofed and could therefore have typos, and that I would email again on release day. On February 13, I sent an email out, again individually, celebrating the release of Missed Arrows and asking them all to post their reviews on Amazon (excluding any gratitude for this being in exchange for an honest review). Of those 9 Goodreads reviews, 1 found its way over to Amazon.
Now, you could email them a follow-up a week or two later, but I decided not to because I didn’t want to send emails to those who hadn’t even bothered to read the free book, and because the name I received on my Google Sign-Up Form didn’t always match their Goodreads’ profile name. Therefore, I decided to leave it and trust that any reader who wanted to copy and paste their review would.
Overall, an ARC team is a great and cost-effective way to land early reviews. Keep in mind you can’t force anyone to post to Amazon, so if you’re looking for an ARC team that will more of what you ask, I recommend steering clear of boosted or promoted posts and asking your followers directly as these individuals are the ones already supporting you.
Editorial Reviews
Now, I understand that editorial reviews are often reviews that we, as avid fiction readers, don’t usually bother to read unless they’re blurbs written by one of our favorite authors, but they can be instrumental for new authors looking to expand their readership. I used a code from Self-Publishing with Dale to gain access to eBook Fairs to check them out and see what kind of quality I would get from their review department.
Firstly, let’s talk about eBook Fairs. eBook Fairs is an author service that allows authors to coordinate virtual book fairs to promote their book alongside others. You can have up to 50 books in a fair, and only one can be yours. Once the fair goes live, you and others begin your promotional marketing to reach as many readers as possible. This allows you to expand your direct readership reach by having your book be included in the fair that others are promoting for your book.
As of today, I’ve submitted to two book fairs but they haven’t started yet, so I’ll be sure to provide an update there once I’ve seen how it affects sales, but in the meantime, let’s look at another of eBook Fairs’ author service.
You can submit your book ahead of its release (which is what they recommend) or you can submit it afterwards, which is what I did because that’s when I used the free trial code. Normally, it’s $9.99 a month, which isn’t unreasonable at all, considering you can enter an unlimited amount of fairs and have one book up for early or editorial reviews at any time. I submitted Missed Arrows on Feb. 26 and left it open for anyone to request and receive (up to 5 readers). If you have something really niche, you can adjust this so only those you approve receive a copy. Within 24 hours, all 5 of my spots had been claimed, and within two weeks, three reviews have come in. One person opted out, I guess, and another claimed it, and so I’m waiting on two readers to return reviews.
Of the three reviews I received, all were 5-star reviews, but the writing was nowhere near as polished as my ARC reviews. I had to fix quite a bit of the sentence structure (not to change the review but so it was understandable). For example, the following is the review, word for word, I received from one reviewer:
"Missed Arrows is a piece that speaks some hard truths and painful realities in love. A particular poem with the famous bible verse is on spot. It reminds of first love heartbreak into paper pouring it out. It discusses forgiveness significantly and its essence in love. This book has lots of something that is truly admiring."
Now, English may not be their first language, which is why I cleaned it a little to help it be easier to read, such as “it reminds me of” and “heartbreak pouring out into paper,” while keeping as much of the original word choices as possible. However, I also worry this could have been AI generated, especially because the others have some strange syntax as well. However, these are reviews that can be placed in that Editorial Review section if you want it, but because of how the reviews sound, I highly recommend choosing which applicants get to read your book to ensure they want to read it.
For free, I took what I received, but for $10 a month, you may want to do a two or three month trial and see what kind of reviews you receive to determine if getting reviews on the site is worth it. Granted, that monthly fee also covers the book fairs, so as mentioned I’ll provide an update on the two fairs I signed up for to see if I get an influx of sales once they begin (and you can check out my Instagram and YT shorts for the link to check it out).
What to Avoid
For ARC teams, make sure that on their Amazon reviews they DO NOT include a line thanking the author for an early copy/review copy/in exchange for honest review because Amazon has been flagging those comments and not publishing the review. This is a new-ish problem that authors are picking up on, so when you email your ARC team to prepare to post their social media and Goodreads or StoryGraph reviews over to Amazon, be sure to include a reminder to erase that line from their review before they submit it.
My Thoughts
Finding early reviews doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive. You can set a budget of $25 or $50 and between these two methods, see potentially 30-45 reviewers sign-up to review your soon-to-be published book. Remember, the magic number is 15, so if you can secure that many reviews in the first 7 days of your book going live, you’re setting your book up for the best success possible (and of course, more than that is only helpful).
If you have other methods of finding early reviewers, let me know in the comments below so I can test them out and see what results I get (as well as helping other viewers, of course).
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