Professional Book Reviews: Using them to Your Advantage

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Have you gotten any professional book reviews on your work? Now, do you know how to best use them to your advantage?

Have you gotten any professional book reviews on your work? Now, do you know how to best use them to your advantage?

Have you gotten any professional book reviews on your work? Congratulations! Now, do you know what to do with it?

One thing that is constantly drilled in to all authors, no matter if you’re an indie author or not, is to get as many reviews for your books as you can. But what’s more elusive than a regular review is a professional book review. Professional book reviews are more official reviews from more credible sources

We’ve previously detailed why indie authors should focus on garnering reviews rather than sales as one will lead to the other, but this takes it a step further. Indie authors should focus more on gathering professional book reviews over the regular kind as they carry more weight in terms of influencing others to pick up a copy of your book and therefore, eventually adding more dollars to your wallet in the long run.

Here are some suggestions on how you can better use those professional book reviews to your advantage once you have some:

1. Add them to your cover. Including endorsements to your marketing material is a classic promoting tool. Having a snappy, one-line endorsement from a credible source will definitely encourage potential readers to check out your book. You’ve definitely seen this in usage multiple times, when was the last time you saw a DVD cover without a major critic’s approval slapped on the front?

2. Promote the reviews on your social media. There’s no better place to post a quick update to your followers and potential customers by including an excerpt of this great review of your book directly onto your Facebook or Twitter account. It’s also a great way to both remind them you have a book out and that it is worth reading or else it wouldn’t have this positive review.

3. Use them to get more reviews. Reviews are like money. The more of them you have, the easier it is to get more. You’ll have an easier time approaching those smaller review blogs and getting them to agree to review your book if you point out to them that this influential party has given your work a positive review. It’s almost like math in a way. More professional reviews equals more reviews in general which also equals more customers.

What do you think is seriously going to influence more people to read your book? A glowing review from your mother or a glowing review from Kirkus Reviews?

Read more about what else you can do with professional book reviews at IngramSpark’s blog.