Contacting Bloggers for Review
Jenny Blake suggests that you, the conscientious self-marketing author, make a list of potential bloggers to contact for review and/or feature of a newly published book.
Below is a list of networks and otherwise useful sites, which provide book and ebook publishing news, commentary, reader and writer forums, and reviews or features that can be submitted by anyone and everyone. These sites are helpful tools in your navigating of networking, enabling you to more quickly find popular and/or effective blogs for review, and in stocking up on voluntary reader reviews for your book, which often make landing a big-time blogger review more likely.
Websites are listed by Alexa ranking, which rates blogs according to traffic and therefore popularity.
- http://www.amazon.com 17: A website on which consumers can buy, sell, and review books and ebooks... as well as pretty much everything else.
- http://www.goodreads.com 1,009: A network/forum focusing on readers, featuring book recommendations, book clubs, trivia games, and giveaways.
- http://www.mobileread.com 7,885: A forum for e-reading, featuring e-book and e-reader recommendations and news.
- http://www.Librarything.com 8,066: A personal book cataloger, allowing readers to catalog books from Amazon, Library of Congress, and 690 other world libraries, and to find new books based on what others have read with similar tastes.
- http://www.kindleboards.com 15,928: A forum in which members can "feel free to talk about anything and everything related to Kindle!"
- http://www.absolutewrite.com 20,898: A bulletin featuring newsworthy deadline information for commercial authors and forums for writers.
- http://forum.writersdigest.com 32,083: News and forums for writers on how to write better and how to get published.
- http://www.sellingbooks.com/ 72,365: A guide to writing, publishing, and marketing books and ebooks. (Not a review site, per se; but worth reading & subscribing to, really!)
- http://www.authonomy.com 77,981: A networking community for writers, readers, and publishers developed by HarperCollins.
- http://www.Redroom.com 121,918: A network connecting published authors, aspiring writers, readers, publishers, agents, associations, students, and researchers.
- http://kindlenationdaily.com/ 127,724: A site that catalogs free kindle books, gives kindle tips, and provides related news and commentary. It features "books of the week" by genre and price.
- http://www.nookboards.com/forum 150,145: A forum featuring the Barnes and Noble nook.
- http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/ 175,292: An online magazine devoted to legitimizing self-publishing: news, book reviews, publisher reviews, interviews, opinion, how-to's, and a social network for writers.
- http://www.webook.com 178,015 :"Writing community for writers, readers, and literary agents: Submit works, read and rate writings."
- http://www.writingforums.org 205,616: A network of discussion forums and site announcements for creative writers, featuring contests and author interviews.
- http://www.writersbeat.com 374,125: A forum for writers only, featuring discussions on the writing craft, marketing ideas, and enabling posts for critique from fellow writers.
- http://kindlereader.blogspot.com 1,729,177: An Amazon.com affiliate blog run by a librarian that features kindle books that cost $4.99 or less. It is designed to be "a time-saving menu of reading choices," as opposed to a review site.
- http://indiebooksblog.blogspot.com/ 3,758,915: A blog that features (not reviews) independent writers' books. Follow the directions to submit a book: http://indiebooksblog.blogspot.com/p/get-featured.html
- http://indiebookman.com/ 22,641,246: "A meeting ground for the Indie Publishing Revolution blogging all things of interest to self publishers, indie presses, guerrilla book marketers and other soldiers of the revolution." (check out his blog radio shows)
Update, 2/7/2015:
We've found that authors who join Author's Marketing/Book Club, and--without getting sucked into any of the other wildly varying schemes, use the Reviewer Grabber Tool. This will help you find TOP Amazon reviewers--who are willing to be contacted for reviews. It's only $149.00USD (at the time that I write this) and obviously, if your book is any good, getting it out and reviewed will start moving you up the sales ranks!