Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Guest Post: Querying other authors for a review/blurb

Amelia of eStar Books contacted me a few weeks ago with a request to trade reviews, which I agreed to immediately! It’s a great way to get some blurbs that you can use on your Amazon page!

Today, Amelia is going to talk about how the process works.

Here’s Amelia:

You have probably seen the Review/Blurb on other peoples books:

An example KC May's Kinshield Legacy

Or Jonathan Saville's Curse of the Crystal Dragon

How in the world did she manage to get these blurbs you ask?

It is not too difficult but it can be scary.

Create a query letter asking for the other author to do a review, if they are an independent author you can offer to do an exchange of review/blurb. I think the biggest thing that holds authors back at this step is fear.

As one author put it: Imagine if you sent your masterpiece to your favorite author(ess) and got an email back saying "Don't give up your daytime job"!

The query letter doesn't need to be long, just a short letter explaining what you want and if you are willing to reciprocate.

After you write up your query letter you need to locate authors, I suggest starting with ones you know, then moving to ones that are in the same genre.

If you are a Sci-fi author try and get another Sci-Fi author. Expect to need to send out a number of these emails before you get a response. You can start small, send out 10 letters, then if no one responds send out another 10.

In reality most of the authors won't respond, but a few will!

Confirm that they are willing to do the blurb/review and send them a free ebook, I send a coupon for

Smashwords that way I do not have to worry about format issues.

Then comes the wait and hoping that they like your ebook! Realize that not everyone likes every genre.

On the same token if it is an exchange and you did not like the book be honest. Let them know and why.

Hopefully you love the book or at least enjoy it!

Send off your review and wait anxiously for the other author to do the same.

Add the review/blurb to your marketing material.

It would be wonderful if we all got reviews by Piers Anthony, but realistically that may not be possible. An exchange with another author at least provides a review/blurb and offers a marketing opportunity for both parties.

As I said previously the hardest part of the review/blurb query process is the fear, don't let it hold you back.

eStar Books is always looking for new authors, see our submissions page for guidelines. We are also always looking for people who are willing to review/blurb exchanges. Feel free to send us a email at: contact@estarbooks.com

Amelia St. John
Editor
eStar Books LLC
Publisher of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Paranormal ebooks.


8 comments:

  1. Something is crazy about your text! No matter how many times I refresh, it goes outside the boundaries of the blog and disappears behind your banner ads. I can't read the explanation :(

    J. E. Medrick

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well I might be getting in touch!! The more reviews the merrier *grin*


    The Arrival, only .99c on Amazon/Smashwords
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  3. i love this idea. sort of a co-op for author reviews. I was just researching how to get more of those... *grin* You'll be hearing from me.

    www.heatherhildenbrand.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. Echoing Mythos up there--the post formatting seems to have freaked out.

    ReplyDelete
  5. JE, Ace, what browser are you using? I can't replicate your bug.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'm having the same problem with the text using Firefox 3.6.

    On topic, the review exchange sounds like a great idea. I might have to start looking up fantasy authors. Believe it or not I actually wrote Piers Anthony once for advice (naive writer that I am). His assistant sent me an email back, paraphrasing his thoughts. Basically: he couldn't do anything to help me because the major publishers have become a closed shop. However, he said my writing was good and that I should look into either small presses or e-publishing.

    Guess what? lol.

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  7. Crazy text problem: I will look into this tonight after work. I pasted the text in from Word, so maybe there is some formatting artifact causing some problem.

    ReplyDelete
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