How to get reviews

[Seth]

How do you get reviews for your books, either from a customers or via a professional review?

[Susan]

You send a polite query to each person, individually, and ask if they'd be interested in reviewing your book. Please don't spam and send a form e-mail to a slew of folk. And please don't spam by getting a list of names and sending queries to them without researching first! Do NOT ask someone who ONLY reads non-fiction to review your fantasy novel!

(This advice comes from the receiving end, not the sending end. You'd be amazed at how many people ignore the "This is not a review site" line on my blogs, particularly on my promo blog.)

[Lisa]

Here's a great site that has an updated list of reviews--this was from a blog post of mine a while back:
Today I share with you food for thought, as given by Karina Fabian. Please visit her site: http://karinafabian.com/index.php?nam... Thank you to my Shoutlife friend, Tannia, for sharing this. Please visit her wonderful site, too, at http://www.blogger.com/goog_126580981...
Karina has spent an enormous amount of time listing all the review sites she could find. I'll give you a taste of them here, but please visit her for updated information and her entire list, which is wonderfully long and varied.

Karina says: Please check the website before sending a book. If the listing asks you to query first, check the website for an email and then send book title, author, and brief description, unless the site indicates otherwise. Do Not Pay For Reviews. There are better ways to spend your advertising money.

This list is compiled in Jan 2010 from several sources. I tried to look at each site, but things do change. Please let me know if there are any broken links, places no longer working, or if a link is in the wrong place. Thanks!

[Guido]

Wow, Lisa. What an awesome list! Thank you for sharing.

[Christy]

Thank you so much

[P.Q.]

Lisa wrote: "Here's a great site that has an updated list of reviews--this was from a blog post of mine a while back:
Today I share with you food for thought, as given by Karina Fabian. Please visit her site:..."

Thanks Lisa! I copy and pasted them to my computer for future reference.

[J.]

I wasn't certain whether you meant blurbs (before the release) or reviews (upon the release). For blurbs, you would try to find people who have some credibility in the subject area - if you've written a mystery, for example, you would try to get other mystery writers.
For book reviews, you would send a short query with an offer to forward an ARC of the book. Many mainstream trade reviewers will not review any self-published material, but there are blogs that will. Any site or blog that is a gathering place for a particular genre (as, for example, Austenprose is for the Jane Austen community), will usually be amenable to reviewing the book.
I would politely stipulate that it should be understood review copies are not for distribution or sale.

janetility.com

[J.]

Yo J (cap),
Good point. FB is another source to find people with credibility in your genre. The self-pub review problem was discussed here some time ago. No, it's not fair. Yes, I don't blame 'em.

j (lower case)

[Gregory]

gulp! Thanks Lisa (and by extension Karina and Tannia) for sharing this. After hours of googling my list was one tenth the size.

My experience of some of these sites is that the quality varies enormously, so people should be prepared for some funky incoherent babble showing up on their Amazon and Goodreads pages. But one articulate positive review makes up for the incompetent ones.