In order to find the readers who will want your stories you need to find what books and authors they are reading now. Knowing your niche means you will write to that niche and market to the folks who read it.

Working towards Independent Author Success

When a customer is looking for a book to buy, they stick with what they know. Authors they’ve read before or maybe one recommended to them. When the internet came along and shoppers were able to browse more books then ever before, this changed.

Customers still look for books by authors they are familiar with but there is now many seek out new authors. There are readers out there who search for new material, new writers, new stories. For most of us who write these stories, these are the people we want to get our books in front of.  They are our customers and potential fans.

So how do you get customers to consider your book? I read somewhere that if you put every book published in a day in a row, you would have to travel at 90 mph to keep up with them! This means there are more books published in one minute than you will possibly read in a year. So getting your book noticed would seem a daunting task. Thankfully, there is a system that does just that.

 I have discussed the two main ways to attract customers: The book’s cover and the book’s description. But potential buyers also want to know they are not wasting their money on books that might turn out to be trash. No one likes the experience of buying a book that is badly written. 
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Before buying a book, we want to know that it’s worth reading. This, of course, is sort of a “catch-22” situation. You can’t really know if a book is worth buying without reading it and you can’t read it without first buying it!  So, what to do? 

One sure fire way to tell if a book is worth reading or isn’t, is to find out what other readers are saying about the book. If you find that other people had a good experience with the book you are more likely to purchase it for yourself.

So if you are about to publish, how do you get anyone to post a review?  This is what I’m going to discuss in this writing. How to get reviews before your book is for sale. This is important because many of the advertising offers that an independent author can use require that there be reader reviews before they will allow you to give them your money. Seems odd I know, but they are just being kind to their patrons. ​They don’t want a bunch of spam operators filling up their ad slots with books trying to hype something rather than giving actual value to their subscribers.  So here’s what you do:

​1. First a word about soliciting reviews for Amazon. You have to be careful of a couple things. In order to review a book on Amazon, a person must have an Amazon account and have purchased at least $50 worth of stuff with the account in the last year. I’ve hit this snag a couple times and it’s best to be up front about it. Also, never try to encourage, coerce, bribe or otherwise twist an arm to get someone to give you a ‘good’ review!  Amazon is very clear about this and if they catch someone handing out more than a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review, they will take down the reviews and possibly suspend selling for that author. They take this very seriously so I suggest you don’t try to circumvent the process. 

2. Go to all your family and friends and ask if they wouldn’t mind reviewing your book and submitting a reader review.  Typically, about 1 in 4 people who say they will, actually do leave a reader review.  My goal for a new book is to get ten reader reviews and five editorial reviews (more on those later).  So you want to shoot for at least 40 people who agree to leave a review in exchange for a free Advance Reader Copy of your book.

3. Work your social media account.  Post a message on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Linkdin, or whatever other media account you use. On Facebook you can actually create a page for the book and invite people on your friend’s list to like it. On the page, you ask for reviewers. You can word it as you are looking for people to be a part of your ‘street team’ who will give you feedback on the various steps of your marketing launch (cover, sales copy, ads, and authors to target for instance). You can let them know you will give them a ‘back stage’ pass to your launch by keeping them up to date on the latest in your process. 

​4. You can pay someone to review your book. There are various services out there and it seems sometimes a new one pops up every day. Do a web search for book reviewers and you’ll get a lot of hits. I haven’t found one yet that I would recommend even though they work. They tend to be rather expensive in my opinion. But if you have the money and don’t have the time they can be a legitimate and valuable service. Just be sure to check them out a bit. (You can write to me if you wish and tell me the service you are thinking about using, I’ll be glad to share what I know about them if anything.  mj@mjalbertbooks.com)

5. There are services you can use to give you people who have reviewed books already. The advantage is these people have reviewed similar books AND they have put contact info on their Amazon account. Generally, this means they want people to contact them. To use the service, you find books that your readers would purchase and review. Try to find newer books with at least 100 reviews to them. The more reviews, the better as very few reviewers will have entered contact info on their account. 
 You pay either a subscription or a per person fee for contact info of people who have read books you specify. I’ve used two of these services which I’m going to review for you here. 

Book Review TargeterOwner: Debbie Drum
Website: https://debbiedrum.lpages.co/brt-new2-2019/
Cost: Basic membership is $19.95 per month. A pro subscription allows you to download more reviewer names for $37.95 per month and also includes a web crawler that will try to find the subscriber’s email address.


Book Review Targeter or BRT, will search reviews for any book you enter into the website’s application. It returns any Amazon account it finds that left a review for the book along with any contact info it finds. I’ve used BRT many times for clients and it works. The trick is to find books that you believe your readers would buy and that have more than 100 reviews. Fewer than that, and you risk the software not finding enough reviewers to contact.  Of course, I have often had to run the app multiple times with different books in order to get a sizeable list. I generally shoot for over 100 names. BRT gives you the account name, website, and social media info. It all depends on what the reviewer has entered. Amazon, unfortunately, no longer allows account holders to enter an email address.


Positives: You get all the information you need to make a personal request to the reviewer to read your book.  The book that is reviewed, a link to the reviewer’s Amazon account page, a link to the book, how many stars, and a copy of the review itself. You can download the info into a csv file which can be opened by Excel or other spreadsheet program.


Negatives: This process is very time consuming. Many of the reviews are going to be dated and often so will the contact info. This is why I say try to choose newer books that have been published in the last year or so.  I’ve signed up for the ‘Pro’ service on BRT and while it gives me a lot more reviewers, it’s claim to use a webcrawler to find email addresses has not proven to be very useful.  I normally spend 8 to 10 hours generating a verified list of 50 people to contact. Overall I give it 3 stars 

AMZ DiscoverOwner:AMZ Discover Team
https://www.amzdiscover.com/
 
Cost: varies, one reviewer with contact info costs about 10 ‘coins’. Coins can be purchased initially in the amount of 900 for $9. So it costs 10 cents per interviewer, but you can purchase bulk amounts at a discount.

AMZ Discover is an easy to use website application. You paste in an Amazon URL (note: this isn’t just for books, it can be used to find reviewers of any product sold on Amazon), and the software generates a list of reviewers for that product and tells you which ones have contact information. You can purchase the reviewers information  for 10 coins (note: the software automatically prevents you from spending their ‘coins’ on reviewers who have no information).
 
Pros: AMZ returns good information and almost always attaches an email address to the reviewer. By entering multiple books that I think my client’s readers would purchase, I can quickly generate a list of possible reviewers for any book. In less than 15 minutes I can have 50 to 100 possible reviewers to contact. I’ve used it on books I entered into BRT and it has come back with more names that were more usable (had email addresses).

Cons: The download mechanism seems to automatically download everything you’ve searched for. This means that if I’ve got three different books in three different genres loaded up in AMZ, I’m going to get all of that info in a csv file and then have to sort out the ones I am currently looking for. AMZ also only gives you the ASIN of the book, no title or author, I had to add those in. It also doesn’t give you a copy of the actual review, if you want to see what that person wrote you have to go search it out. The cost is higher than with BRT because you pay by the name.
Overall though, I give AMZ 4 stars.  

BookSirens
BookSirens LLC.
https://booksirens.com/
Cost: varies but the main plan is $10 per ARC, and $2 for each download of your book.

I have only recently discovered this site. BookSirens offers to you the chance to get your book in front of a lot of readers. The way it works is you submit your book, if it is accepted you pay them $10 to offer your book as an ARC to their readers. Anytime one of their readers downloads your book, you are charged $2. (Note: If the same person downloads it more than once you are not charged more.) You tell them where you want the review posted (Goodreads or Amazon). You also control how many downloads you authorize. They also will convert your kdp file to a MOBI if you gift them your book.

They claim that about 75% of their readers who download a book actually review it. It seems expensive but it might be worth the cost to get reviews. Plus if the 75 percent number is true, it will save you a lot of time in contacting 4 people to get 1 review. If their claim is correct, you would need 13 to 14 people to download your book in order to get 10 reviews at a cost of $38. ($10 for the book submitted and $2 per download). They also offer packages to authors for multiple books.
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At this time, I don’t have enough information to give a star rating to this service. When I’ve had more time to use them I will update this blog. 

Online Book Club
Onlinebookclub.org/
Owner: Online book club LLC
Cost: There are different levels but the lowest priced review will run you $95.
 
I include this service only because I have used them to get editorial reviews. They currently do not offer any service to get reader reviews. The way it works is you submit your book and pay the fee. The service finds one of their reviewers to read and give a review. The review is posted on their site where you can copy and paste it as an editorial review or post a link to the review on their site.

My opinion is they charge way too much for what you get. I submitted a children’s book I wrote and I got a review from someone. A member of onlinebookclub.org. She wasn’t an authority or a celebrity and I’m still confused as to why I was charged so much money for such a basic review.
I give them 1 star 

Contacting people to review your book is problematic, especially when the only link you have is that they reviewed a similar book. But, if you word it correctly, you will get some people willing to give your book a read. Try to be personable in your email or form contact. Let them know you saw that they reviewed such and such a book and you have written one that you think they would enjoy reading. Offer them a free Advance Reader Copy in exchange for an honest Amazon review. If they respond, add them to your email list.
On Social Media, you can find people who read your genre or type of book. Doing a search will yield up different groups which you can check out and follow. Simply pasting a link or request isn’t going to get much attention however. You will find that you’ll need to spend time getting to know the group if you want anyone to review your work. Still, it is a great way to develop a following and get to know the audience you are writing for.
 Editorial reviews are important and you have much more control over these. Of course, the more famous your reviewer, the better it will be but don’t underestimate the power of a great review because the person isn’t well known. Look for people who read and write in your particular niche/genre on Goodreads, Amazon, or even a Google search. When you approach them make it personal. Get to know something about the person you want to review your book and make your appeal authentic.
 
I hope I’ve been of some help here. If you want more information please sign up for my mailing list Sign Up or drop me a line. I’m always looking to help authors with their marketing! 
 
M.J. Albert
mj@mjalbertbooks.com
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• The most effective way to know if you are doing your marketing right is to get feedback from those people who want to read your books and/or purchase your service(s). 
• You need early reviews when you publish a new book and a ‘street team’ built through your author platform is the best way to accomplish this.
• To create buzz out in the marketplace, you need to have a ‘landing page’. This is a site where readers can sign up for information about your books, where they can purchase these books, and what the future holds.

No matter what your overall goal is as a writer, you will need an Author Platform. 

​On one of my recent projects I struggled with why the book was not getting sales. I had put together what I thought were some great ads for the book and we were getting about 4% CTR (click through rate- the % of people seeing the ad who actually clicked on it) which is great. But people were not buying. 

​I had designed a great cover and gone over the book description with the author. Everything looked good. I fiddled with the ads, I researched and found more relevant authors to target, and I even considered making a change to the cover which would have cost us some money.
Then I decided to take a harder look at the sales copy (book description). It was fine in describing what the book was about (a positive message about faith and togetherness) but it didn’t ‘sizzle’.  

When we are looking for a book, we click on a cover that conveys something we want to read and looks interesting. That takes us to the short blurb which informs us a bit more, and hopefully makes us want to buy the book and read or listen to it. It has to pull at us emotionally or make us curious intellectually; hopefully it does both.
 
So I got the author’s permission to tinker with the sales copy and I added more sizzle to it by evoking some emotions. I smoothed it out, trimmed it a bit, made it professional and ...it worked.
That same day the book went from zero sales to ranking #1 in eight different categories. I am not making that up. The day before I changed the sales copy there were no sales. The very same day I changed it, the book shot up in the rankings going from an overall Amazon rank of around 500,000 to ranking in the top 25,000 and ranking #1 in eight of the ten categories we had placed it in. All with just one tweak: The book description.

As an author, I never gave much thought to writing the description. It’s just that summary on the back cover after all. A couple paragraphs, no big deal right? That could not be more wrong. I found out that in marketing a book that small, couple paragraph long blurb is what closes the deal for you with potential buyers. The cover gets them there, the sales copy sells it to them.

So, how do you write a description that will work? We are writers and most of us tend to think because we have mastered the art of writing a novel, a short little blurb to describe our book is going to be easy. I mean, I just wrote 100,000 words worth of a great story, I can write a couple paragraphs telling people what the book is about!

This is a mistake however. That two paragraphs is going to be essential to the number of people who will read your 100,000 word novel. It needs to be taken seriously. You could hire a professional like me to do it for you, (shameless promo) but if you follow a few simple steps, it can be done by any writer I think. 

​Step 1: Know your audience. Who do you envision buying your book? This has to do with genre, knowledge, or area of expertise. Did you write an epic fantasy? Then you want readers who enjoy that genre. Did you write a book on home repair? You are targeting do-it-yourselfers and new home owners maybe.
 
Sit down and write out who you see buying your book. Have this audience firmly in mind as you write out ideas for your sales copy.
 
Step 2: Capture your book’s essence. Write out the theme of your book. Don’t worry about making it short at this point, concentrate on getting the idea down on paper. You want the heart of your story.
Step 3: Include the major character(s) in your work (if fiction). Readers love good characters. People they would like to fall in love with, have a beer with, or people they would like to beat to a pulp, see go to jail, etc.
If this is non-fiction historical, then you should include the major person(s) you have written about.
For non-fiction expertise, write out the problem you are solving and talk about yourself; what makes you the expert to solve that problem.
 
Step 4: For Fiction, write out what the story is going to feel like. What emotions are you going to invoke in the reader as they devour your story. For non-fiction be sure to give the buyer a vision of what it will feel like to have the expertise and/or knowledge you are about to impart to them.
 
Step 5: Once you have it all written out, read it out loud to see if there is anything you are missing. Make any changes you think are necessary then start to whittle it down. Use a thesaurus to find shorter phrases or even one word to convey each thought. Take out any characters that are not essential to the core of your story. Keep doing this again and again until you start losing some of the meaning of your story. Hopefully, you get it down to just a couple paragraphs.
 
Step 6: Write it again. Go through the same process but try some new angle. Remember to put a emotion into it. Do this until you have at least three and up to five different versions of your sales copy. You want each to entice the buyer into finding out what your story is, make them want to click that buy button or take the book to the sales desk in the bookstore. They just have to find out what happens in this book! Make it sizzle!  

Now, email it to your friends and family. Hopefully you have a list of people who have agreed to give you an opinion and one day read your book and post a review for it. Ask this ‘street team’ to vote on which sales copy they like best. The one getting the most votes is the one you want to use.
I’d love to hear from you.  Any thoughts or questions are welcome!  Also for help in writing your sales copy or designing your cover, write me here: MJ Albert Books

Independent authors who sell books have great covers. It’s very simple; when we are looking for something to read, if a cover doesn’t catch our eye, we are going to move to the next one. It’s just the way the book world works!  If you have an idea what your cover should look like, make sure it does these things:

1. Stands out
2. Fits in
3. Conveys the tone of your work

I know, I know you are saying to yourself this MJ guy is nuts. How can a cover stand out and fit in at the same time?
It does seem contradictory, but here’s what I mean:
When you go to a bookstore or peruse books online, you are usually looking for a particular author or a book that was recommended to you. Alongside the book you are looking for will be other similar books. If a spine catches your eye in the bookstore, or a cover sizzles online, you might be tempted to check it out and then maybe buy it along with the one you were looking for. There will be things these books have in common and things that make particular books stand out. These things are going to be the colors, the fonts, and possibly the images. 


If you go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble and type in ‘Romance’ in the search window, you will be shown the top sellers in this category. There will be a few covers depicting beautiful people, some that show a scene, others a design. They won’t be much alike but they all will fit in to the genre or category.

The story being told by the artwork, the font(s), and colors points to a story about two people overcoming or struggling with a problem and falling in love. The colors used will be basic and eye catching, the font will generally be white or a light color in a flowing script.

As you are thinking about the design of your book or working with a professional, make sure you browse covers of books that would fit along side yours. Imagine your book cover among these others and ask yourself if it looks like it belongs there and does it stand out.
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As a reader looks for a new book to read, they generally are going to stick to what they already know they enjoy. A favorite author, or a friend’s recommendation, perhaps they read a review of a book they think they might like. This is the way it goes for book sales. You need to be known in order to sell, but you have to sell some books in order to be known!
 
The only way out of the dilemma is to have your book slotted near books that are selling successfully. If you can put your cover in with the books that are popular and make the cover sizzle enough to get a potential buyer curious, you will start to get people clicking on it and potentially buying it.
 
 A great cover contains the following 4 elements:

• communicates what your book is about
• conveys the feeling the reader will get from reading it
• vouches for your credibility
• draws people in

 

People should be able to look at your cover and intuitively know through the artwork and lettering what your topic is.  An unclear message will result in unimpressed potential buyers who will click on some other book and cause you to lose a sale.  
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In fiction, making clear the genre is important. If people don't know your work, and your cover doesn't make it clear what sort of fiction you have written, they generally are not going to bother finding out more. There are lots of other books they can buy!
 
In non-fiction, you need to convey to potential buyers that you have the expertise to teach them or inform them. They must get the sense that reading your book is going to take care of the need or knowledge gap they are looking to fulfill.
 
Does the cover convey the essence of your story? Does it convey the genre (if applicable) or the area of expertise being offered (if non-fiction)? A great cover is a mini-story in itself. In a half second our eyes tell us if this is a book we might want to read, so simplicity is crucial but being over simplistic will lose the interest of the buyer. The entire front of the book is the canvas. Any unused space is wasted space.

 

The cover should set the tone for the ambiance the audience will feel when reading your work. 

Is your work uplifting? Is it instructive? Is it entertaining? What is the general tone of your work? Sad, comic, ironic, informative, authoritative, instructive?

​Make sure the cover gives the viewer a sense of what to expect as far as the tone of your writing. 
This is mostly done with a visual, but the title, subtitle, colors, and the font you use are also contributing factors. 

If this is non-fiction, simply putting your degree title can convey credibility. Even more so would be how many people you have helped and/or the number of years you have practiced. Whatever it is that validates you in the subject you have written in needs to be conveyed on your cover.

For both fiction and non-fiction, you can use the sub-title to convey to potential buyers why they should read your book: “internationally known writer of best sellers”, 'a veteran tax consultant', ‘Story teller extraordinaire!” 

If you are a new writer, then make sure the genre is made clear, “A new Suspense Novel by: (author's name)” or something similar.

It can also be used as a way to communicate the book's popularity as in “Amazon Top Seller”. Information that will tell the reader this book is valid and needs to be read.
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The objective is to give the potential buyer the feeling that this book is worth buying while being honest and brief.

This is the most intuitive part of a book cover. It needs to 'pop' so that people are instantly drawn to click it and read more or pick it up in a bookstore to read the back cover and see what it's about.

Why is your story is interesting? Does it teach something? Does it fulfill a purpose? Is it an intriguing whodunnit? A classic romance? A Sci-fi projection of future technology?


Distill what is interesting about your book
Close your eyes and think of an image that is representative of that concept
Sketch out this image or describe it in detail (if you are like me and can’t draw beyond stick figures!)

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Try this in different ways, different concepts. When you can’t think of anything else, compare them and combine or decide which represents the more appealing image. One that will sizzle and draw buyers to your book.
 
Once you have a few ideas, run them buy your friends or list of readers if you have one. Getting their feedback can be valuable in deciding on the right concept.
 

​In my next blog, I will talk about the second most important marketing tool for you book: The Book Description or Sales Copy.
 
Remember, every failure is step in the direction to success. Don’t quit!
 
If you have questions or just want to let me know what you think of my blog(s) please feel free to write me at mj@mjalbertbooks.com . I would really like to hear from  you.