Saturday, August 28, 2010

What Smashwords Authors Need To Do

To get your Smashwords book reviewed, do this: email me the manuscript as a Word doc or PDF. Include in the body of your email a bio and anything cool about yourself or your work. Tell me the genre, the plot, whether or not it's a series or single, what you want me to be sure to notice, what books you feel are similar, and anything else that will help me convey to our readers what makes your book special. Ordinary reviews don't do this, but I know how hard it is to market your own product. When you take out a full page ad in the Sunday Times Book Review, you'll end up doing the same thing.

Tell me your websites and blogs and provide links. Give me the link to your book and your author profile at Smashwords. If you have multiple books, let me know how they relate to the one we'll review.

Use my email: neilcrab@hotmail.com to send all this. If you have other reviews, send the links to those as well. I don't mean the Amazon links. I mean from other blogs, mags, newspapers, etc. The problem I've seen with some books is they have great reviews that Smashwords doesn't allow because they're not from buyers.
We will work with Smashwords to make sure your review is available. Smashwords is very good about helping its authors, so I see no problem there.

Go over the list: manuscript, bio, website links, Smashwords page links, plot summary, word count, selling price, author's other books, maybe a photo, anything else that will help.

I don't guarantee I'll like your book. But for some genres, I will ask for guest reviewers with more experience. The readers are the best reviewers, the folks that buy the books. Let's work together to get them to share this experience.


And at some point, the reviewed get to be the reviewer, and put me through the process. Telling the truth will make us both laugh.

Get to it.

2 comments:

  1. Great work getting this started, Neil. It is also very good to see the support from M.C. on his Smashwords site update September 2, 2010.

    I will point out that you've also provided some very useful and real advice on your page "Advice for Authors Requesting Reviews" linked at the top of your blog. We should all take heed.

    The more we support each other as authors (and readers), the more we will all benefit from using Smashwords. Your service is timely and important.

    Thanks!

    Wil

    ReplyDelete
  2. Neil,

    Just read about your blog on the Smashwords Site Upates section. It is way cool of you to do this. I am now following.

    ReplyDelete