What is a book review?
A book review is just what it sounds—someone giving their opinion of a book. While you may think of book reviews as being written by the New York Times or another professional publication, most reviews are actually written by regular people on websites like Goodreads, which allows readers to track the books they’ve read and receive new recommendations. Reviews allow voracious readers to advertise the books they love, hate, or want others to read—even if it's just short line like, “Harry Potter is life.” (This is a true statement.) The more reviews a book gets, the more likely it is that other people will find and read that book.
Why are book reviews important to authors?
Reviews basically equate to free publicity. When a book is published through Dreaming Big Publications (DBP), it’s primarily sold on Amazon, and one of the most important factors for generating reader attention is obtaining customer reviews on its Amazon page. A customer is more likely to purchase something if they see numerous customer reviews, especially positive ones. Likewise, the more ratings and reviews a book has on Goodreads and Barnes & Noble, the more likely people are to jump on the bandwagon and read the book too. For example, The Girl on the Train, one of the best-selling books of 2015 (and a book I'm currently obsessed with), currently has 48,664 reviews on Amazon and 73,999 reviews on Goodreads. (Granted, many of these reviews likely came from readers who discovered the book after it reached best-seller status.) In comparison, most of DBP’s books have 20-25 reviews… It’s definitely a work in progress.
How do you get reviews?
One of the initial ways we go about getting reviews at DBP is by reaching out to book bloggers and asking them to review our books. A book blogger is essentially someone who runs a blog in which they read and review books. (Yeah, I know—living the dream.) They oftentimes will host book promotions, book giveaways, and author interviews to bring further publicity to new releases (reviews are typically free, but these services often cost money). Book bloggers sometimes focus on just one or two genres, like romance or fantasy, and many enjoy hundreds of book review requests a week and a loyal following of fans. Because book bloggers do receive so many requests, they may not have the time or the inclination to read a DBP book, but it never hurts to ask. (Or beg.) They’re found through book blogger directories on the internet, and we typically contact them via email or through a contact form on their website. If a book blogger does review our book, they'll typically publish the review on their blog, along with Amazon, Goodreads, or any other website of their choosing. For an example of a book blog, visit The Howling Turtle, which is run by Larissa, one of my fellow DBP interns, or check out the one below, Wonderland's Reader.
Dreaming Big Publications also partners with other small publication companies, and we review each other’s books. These partnerships are useful for building relationships between small press publishers and for gaining a few extra reviews for DBP releases. In addition, DBP is in the process of starting a new review service in which authors or publishers can pay small fees to have DBP write a certain number of reviews for their book and publish them on sites like Amazon and Goodreads, as well as DBP’s blog.
My experiences with book reviews
One of my primary jobs at Dreaming Big Publications has been to review various books from our partner publishing companies such as Pro Se Productions. Writing a book review is somewhat similar to writing a book analysis or report for school, but it also has its differences, too. In school you’re usually required to read the entire book before writing up an analytical essay or participating in a group discussion, but in the publishing world, it’s common for people to simply skim a book in order to write a review for it. Typically I just read a few chapters of a book to get a feel for it. (The obsessive side of my brain initially had trouble accepting the fact that I wasn't finishing the full book, but it eventually came to terms with it.) Reading a few chapters usually provides me with enough information to write a review, especially because reviews are typically not that lengthy—for instance, here's a book review I did recently:
I found this collection a bit slow to get into, but once I did it was fairly entertaining. I enjoyed the Victorian settings and Sherlock Holmes-type narratives, and the protagonists were quickly likeable. At times the writing was a little long-winded, but the constant action and suspense of the stories definitely made up for it. Teel James Glenn’s work has introduced me to the world of steampunk, and I’m liking it more and more.
Pretty easy, right? And just because I’m writing reviews for my internship doesn’t mean they have to be positive. I’ve given books two stars before (I’ve never been able to bring myself to give a book one star), and that’s okay. Publishers are typically more interested in the number of reviews than the positivity of reviews. In addition, if I review a book through my internship, I’m required to place a disclaimer at the bottom saying I received the book for free in exchange for a review (we typically receive these books in electronic format, as a PDF or a MOBI file, which can be downloaded onto eReaders). It would be awesome to receive physical copies of these books—think of how many free books I would have on my shelf!—but it's not really economically feasible.
I found this collection a bit slow to get into, but once I did it was fairly entertaining. I enjoyed the Victorian settings and Sherlock Holmes-type narratives, and the protagonists were quickly likeable. At times the writing was a little long-winded, but the constant action and suspense of the stories definitely made up for it. Teel James Glenn’s work has introduced me to the world of steampunk, and I’m liking it more and more.
Pretty easy, right? And just because I’m writing reviews for my internship doesn’t mean they have to be positive. I’ve given books two stars before (I’ve never been able to bring myself to give a book one star), and that’s okay. Publishers are typically more interested in the number of reviews than the positivity of reviews. In addition, if I review a book through my internship, I’m required to place a disclaimer at the bottom saying I received the book for free in exchange for a review (we typically receive these books in electronic format, as a PDF or a MOBI file, which can be downloaded onto eReaders). It would be awesome to receive physical copies of these books—think of how many free books I would have on my shelf!—but it's not really economically feasible.