Getting readers to review your books on their blogs is a great way of spreading the word. I have to admit that I haven’t seen a huge spike in sales after reviews are released, but it is a good way to get your title’s into readers hands. This is especially true if you have a number of titles because even if none of the book review readers buy your novel, perhaps the book reviewer themselves will come back for more.

There are huge lists of book reviewers to be found on the web. A great place to start is the Indie Book Reviewer, a place where you can find hundreds of eager readers who want to take your novel and blog about it. As you go through the listings you’ll discover that many people are simply swamped with books and cannot take on more reads, resulting in your pool of possible reviewers shrinking considerably. This can cause you to simply contact everyone that is open to taking on books. However, this may not work to your advantage; a fact that I found out this morning.

There are always going to be people who don’t like your books. Fair enough. I don’t like every book that I read either. However, it is important to try and choose reviewers who have a great looking blog, lots of followers and who are actually interested in the genre AND style that you’ve written in.

This morning I had a three star review from a reader who mentioned that Inside Evil’s pacing wasn’t very good and that there wasn’t enough back story in the book. Looking into her history, I saw that she marked similarly for all books which didn’t give back story or lots of superfluous information. She also mentioned that it took her longer than normal to read the book because she just couldn’t get into it. In my rush to find reviews, I’d simply just found a name, an email and sent the book out. Of course, EVERY reader is entitled to their opinion and I’m grateful for the honest review, but if I’d done my research, I would have discovered that perhaps this reader wasn’t the best candidate for my work.

You can then compare this to the wonderful four star rating that I also received today from The Book Barbies. Whilst the pacing was slow for the reviewer mentioned above, the reader at The Book Barbies couldn’t put it down. She was devastated by the cliffhanger and is ‘dying in anticipation for the next book’. She even had a dream about the book after she’d finished.

You can never tell if someone’s going to love or hate your work, and it’s important to not become too bogged down by the details. After all, Twilight has 715 ONE star reviews on Amazon, The Hunger Games has 501, and even Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone has 88. However, when you’re searching for book reviewers, it can be worthwhile to take some time and establish a reader’s back history of reviewing and the genre and style’s that they love. It could make or break your resulting write-up.