Yesterday was a day filled with trouble-shooting tasks. In fact, it took such a strange series of turns and twists that I left this blog post unfinished around 6am, and never found my way back to it. In the midst of the hassles, problems and annoyances, my computer shut off without warning. Wasn’t my fault. But I still got the message admonishing me for turning it off improperly.
But there were some positives in the day. One was, I got to spend time downloading my photographs and enjoying my creations shown on the computer. I photographed a lot of birds this year—in particular, hummingbirds. Interesting little critters.
Also, I got another great review posted at Amazon for Cat-Eye Witness. This is my latest Klepto Cat Mystery novel. Check it out and order the Kindle book here: http://amzn.to/1bJiq0x
How does one get reviews? You can wait and hope that people will read your book and leave reviews at Amazon.com. You can promote like crazy and hope that some of those who buy the book will like it enough to post a nice review. Or you can contact reviewers of books like yours and suggest that they read and review yours. Actually, you should do all 3—leaning more heavily toward numbers 2 and 3, of course.
I also recommend that you study publications related to the genre or theme of your book and contact the editors of those that publish reviews.
Did you know that there are book review directories? Here are a few:
http://acqweb.org/bookrev.html
http://dir.yahoo.com/arts/humanities/literature/reviws
http://www.stepbystepselfpublishing.net-free-book-reviews.html
Or purchase The Book Reviewer Yellow Pages, a Promotional Reference Guide for Authors and Small Publishers. It has 777 pages, is well-organized and easy-to-use and sells for around $20.
You can also run Internet searches for reviewers in your category: mystery book reviewer, for example.
For more about how to locate and approach book reviewers, read my book, Promote Your Book, Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author. It’s at Amazon in print, Kindle and audio and at most other online and downtown bookstores. I saw it in Barnes and Noble in Ventura, CA just the other day. Yay!!