Getting Your Nonfiction Book Noticed by Reviewers

Updated List of Nonfiction Book Reviewers

Where do you send copies of adult nonfiction books for review? (Many of these places also review fiction.) I decided to blog this process to save other authors time, since these reviewers change policies, consolidate, and otherwise change over time. Old lists may be dated.

Why send books out to these reviewers?

1) You can use the review in your online press information and various other places.

2) Some submit their reviews to other review sites, giving you links and recommendations from many other sites. (Example: Dead Trees Review sends the review to 17 review sites, including Amazon.com.)

3) Since many of these people review many books and put their reviews on Amazon, Amazon ranks them highly as reviewers. (For example: one prides himself on being a top 500 Amazon reviewer. This not only means that he’s reviewed a lot of books, but additionally that many people checked that his reviews were helpful.) I assume that if a top Amazon reviewer positively reviewed my book, that this would figure into how highly Amazon would rank my book in a search. »» Getting Your Nonfiction Book Noticed by Reviewers

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010, by Cherie K. Miller, Filed under: Get Published, Sell Your Books, Writing| , , , | No Comments

Create a Over the Top On-Line Presence

Wise Online Counsel for Book Publishing and Marketing

To get an overview of book publishing and book marketing, read good respected works, such as Poynter’s Self-Publishing Manual, Kremer’s 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, or Jud’s Beyond the Bookstore.

But sometimes I need specific information that most books don’t address, or need information that’s quickly dated in books, such as:

  • What publishers are currently offering the best services?
  • What are the best blogs to send a book to for review?
  • What book marketing techniques are working best today?

Fortunately, writers and publishers like to write, so you’ll find them churning out gobs of great information in various social media. Here are three examples that I’ve been learning from recently. They have lots of active discussions by knowledgeable people: »» Create a Over the Top On-Line Presence

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010, by Cherie K. Miller, Filed under: Get Published, Sell Your Books, Writing| , , , , | No Comments

Promote your book with a Video Release

Marketing Books with Online Video

This week I participated in a seminar on using videos on social media sites like YouTube and Google Videos to market books. Here are some tips I picked up, as well as some questions I have yet to resolve. I’ll present the basic strategy here, then add my thoughts and concerns. »» Promote your book with a Video Release

Monday, March 8th, 2010, by J. Steve Miller, Filed under: Get Published, Sell Your Books, Writing| , , , , | No Comments

Are Press Releases Old-Fashioned and Out of Date? No!

Using Press Releases to Promote Books (Part 2)

Considering doing a press release to promote your book? Perhaps my experiences can help. Here’s what I’ve done and the results:

1) I sent a release through several free press release organizations. To see what I did and what organizations I used, click here to my former blog post. This was a general release about the publication of my book, but put in a newsy way that showed how it addressed some of today’s issues. I didn’t get any response, but did find the release posted on an Atlanta business site. »» Are Press Releases Old-Fashioned and Out of Date? No!

Sunday, March 7th, 2010, by Cherie K. Miller, Filed under: Get Published, Sell Your Books, Writing| , , | No Comments

How to be Reviewed by the Top Bloggers

Want to get your book in front of people? One way is to find the most popular sites and blogs that speak about the subjects you write on. Send an e-mail to the main writers for the blog or site to see if they’re interested in reviewing your book.

And how then do you find those popular sites and blogs?

1) Technorati ranks blogs according to number of incoming links, assuming that a blog is more respected and visited if more people link to it. Click “blogs” on their site to find their blog directory.

Now find the subjects that most closely match your topic and click on them to find the most popular blogs that talk about those subjects.

2) Download the free Alexa toolbar to discover how many people visit any given site. Click “Download the Alexa Toolbar” to start the process.

3) Search key words or phrases in Google Blog Search to find more blogs.

4) Of course, search Google to find other popular sites besides blogs.

Other ideas?

Saturday, March 6th, 2010, by Cherie K. Miller, Filed under: Get Published, Sell Your Books, Writing| , , | No Comments

Cherie K. Miller Nominated for Georgia Author of the Year Award
ATLANTA, March 8  — Author, columnist, speaker and board member of Legacy Educational Resources, a nonprofit organization specializing in writing effective character education lessons for public schools, Cherie K. Miller has been nominated for a Georgia Writer’s Association (GWA) Georgia Author of the Year Award for her book, BackWords: A backwards word list for gamers.
The book has been nominated in the Specialty Books category. The winners of the 2009 Georgia Author of the Year Awards will be announced on June 19 at the GAYA Awards ceremony to be held on the Kennesaw State University campus. »»

Saturday, March 6th, 2010, by Cherie K. Miller, Filed under: Writing| , , , , | No Comments

Twitter, Facebook and Linkin to More Book Sales

Go Where People Are Already Gathered
This concept, found in a Ning book marketing discussion, caused me to question the conventional wisdom on both social networking and book signings. An author was relating what was working for her. Rather than trying to gather a bunch of people to talk to them about her books (like traditional book signings), she chose to talk to civic groups and other pre-existing meetings that already had followings and publicized their own events.

When I did a recent book signing, I had to publicize the event, e-mail folks, etc. About 10 people came and I sold several books. Perhaps more will sell since I left some at the place of business to try to sell. But that was a lot of time and effort to try to draw a crowd and sell a few books.

Yet, there are many civic organizations and universities that have budgets to bring in speakers. They’d probably pay me something and allow me to sell books in the back afterwards. They already have loyal attendees and they do all the publicity. They gather the crowd and I just show up to speak. That sounds like a great use of my time. »» Twitter, Facebook and Linkin to More Book Sales

Friday, March 5th, 2010, by J. Steve Miller, Filed under: Get Published, Sell Your Books, Writing| , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments

Very Best Advice on Book Marketing

I’ve been following Ning discussion in their Book Marketing Network entitled “What’s the Biggest Challenge with Your Book?” Many excellent ideas have been shared over the last couple of years. I decided to try to consolidate the ideas, which come from authors and book marketing experts and publishers.

* Go to Google Ad Words Keywords Tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal to find many phrases that people search concerning my topic.

* Sign up for Google Alerts about your topic. Experiment with several of the key words/phrases I discovered. When it alerts me to an interesting article or blog that speaks on my topic, thank the writer for the article and add a comment, signing off with my name, the name of my book, and a link to my book on Amazon. »» Very Best Advice on Book Marketing

Thursday, March 4th, 2010, by J. Steve Miller, Filed under: Get Published, Sell Your Books, Writing| , , | No Comments

Use Book Contests & Book Awards to Become as Well-Known as Stephen King

The Benefits of Book Awards

An author friend submitted his book to be considered for an award. Although he didn’t win, he was nominated for an award, giving him the right to put a sticker on his book saying something like: “Nominated for Georgia Author of the Year.” He says that this sticker really helps him with sales.

For low platform authors who aren’t household names, we need all the help we can get. So why not pursue honors, awards and blurbs that tell buyers, “This book is special!”? Authors who win awards can say to a bookseller, “This award-winning book…” which sets it apart from most competing books.

Additionally, winning books are often displayed at ceremonies, given special promotion. Distributors and booksellers may take notice, and finalists and winners often receive cash awards.

So I took a couple of hours to hit the library and peruse the 2009 editions of both Literary Market Place (LMP) and Writers Market, both of which have sections listing book awards. (There’s also a section of the Christian Writers Market dedicated to contests.) Don’t be overwhelmed by the huge number of awards. You can narrow down pretty quickly which ones apply to your book. »» Use Book Contests & Book Awards to Become as Well-Known as Stephen King

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010, by J. Steve Miller, Filed under: Get Published, Sell Your Books, Writing| , , , , , | 2 Comments

Amazon is Important to Authors – a

The power of Amazon to sell books demands that authors consider it carefully in their publishing and marketing decisions.

According to Morris Rosenthal ( http://www.fonerbooks.com/booksale.htm ), here’s where some of the main book sales (includes media like CD’s and DVD’s) occurred in 2007 in North America:

BN.com = $477 million
Borders/ Waldenbooks = $3.41 billion
Barnes & Nobel/ B. Dalton = $4.68 billion
Amazon.com = $4.63 billion

Perhaps more significant is the growth in sales from 2006 to 2007:

Borders/ Waldenbooks = 0%
BN.com = 9%
Barnes & Nobel/ B. Dalton = 4%
Amazon.com = 23%

If this growth rate continues, I’d assume that 2008 figures will show Amazon far outselling each of the primary booksellers. If this trend continues, Amazon will only increase in importance to book sellers.

Implications:

  1. Make sure that your publisher will offer your book on Amazon with a “Buy” button.
  2. Know the percentage that you will get from each Amazon sale. If it’s negotiable, consider pushing for a higher percentage of Amazon sales in your contract. The difference can dramatically impact your profits. I get 35% of each Amazon sale by publishing with Booksurge.
  3. Learn to take advantage of all the Amazon tools for authors. It’s very difficult to control how bookstores carry and display our books. It’s relatively easy to control many features of how our books are displayed on Amazon. In my last blog I discussed the book Sell Your Book on Amazon, by Brent Sampson. I love the way it lays out, step by step and simply, how to take advantage of all the author tools offered by Amazon.

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010, by J. Steve Miller, Filed under: Sell Your Books, Uncategorized| | No Comments

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