20 Feb 2012, Posted by caburkes in Book Reviewers,EBook Marketing,eBooks, No Comments. Tagged Amazon, Fiction Blog List, Indie Book Reviewer, TWEETING
Blog Reviewers and How To Use Twitter by a Non-Twitter User
Scratch is a specialty novel. It’s horror and not many people are into that kind of scary, suspense stuff. I knew that going in so I also knew it wouldn’t be a quick sell as Butta‘ has turned out to be. No problem. So what I needed to do to get the story moving was attract attention through a couple of good reviews. I wasn’t getting any by letting the book just sit on Amazon, so I spent one long LONG night sending emails to online reviewers.
These aren’t people who work for major newspapers and such. They are the regular joes and janes like us who happen to get 100,000 views a day on their blog because of the books they read and review, then sending people your way to buy your book or include it in peoples book club list.
Get it out of your mind that you need to have USA Today and New York Times to be ‘somebody’. You are already SOMEBODY and now it’s just taking a minute to get others to know where to find your book and how good the story is.
So, try doing what I did:
1) Found listings of ‘online ebook reviewers’… here’s what I currently have. Keep checking them because they always update. Also, adhere to their REVIEW POLICIES. Very important:
Book Reviews / Favorite Books I’ve Read: Review Policy
CELTICLADY’S REVIEWS: REVIEW POLICY
Book reviewers on the Web « Robin Mizell: Treated & Released
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. I have a bookmark section filled to the brim with Book Reviewer lists. Not a hard thing to do to Google EBook reviewers and your good to go.
2) Follow their review policy and submit what they request.
Done. Don’t pester them. Don’t try to rush their reading. By the time you submit your work to the first couple of hundred for a review, you’ll forget who you submitted your stuff to and then suddenly start getting reviews gradually by people you started with. Takes a few months … some a few days depending on the length and interest of your story.
But if there was any low to no-cost marketing I HIGHLY suggest you do … it’s that. You can take ONE whole day and just send out copies of your ebook (if they accept them and most do) and you would have done your book great justice.
TWEETING for the NON-Tweeter
Again, about Scratch, it was a specialty niche story so I had to find the niche people. Yes, I submitted it to the appropriate reviewers (mentioned above), but what to do with Twitter? I admit, I never really ‘got’ tweeting and never understood how it could be in the same category as Facebook … but millions play there so we should too.
1) In the “Browse Categories” section, I typed in ‘Horror’ and I got the great listing of everyone and anyone into horror.
2) I wrote a message for each twitter that was a magazine or reviewer type blog on horror: @horrorblog check out Scratch from Amazon.com (with a link to the amazon page)
That’s all. Some of them went and retweeted my message to their 14,000 followers and such. I was like “cool’!. I did this when I offered Scratch for free on Amazon. That bumped up my downloads big time and continued sales after that was better … not the best … but better. Again…specialty niche.
What I would need to do is keep tweeting in that fashion. I did that on Twitter once before to get the attention of Comic book companies for 40 to Go. It worked then and I just knew it would work again and it did.
Corey A. Burkes Author/CEODesktopEpics Entertainment
Stories You Can Feel!
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