Promoting Your Book - A No BS Guide For Authors and Small Publishers

There are a lot of different ways to get book reviews. For my book The Wealth Manifesto, I have tried several different routes to date. I’ll talk about one of them here and others in subsequent postings.

Pre-Publication Reviews - These are the big industry book review places that can, if you happen to get a review, provide you with a lot of coverage and a bit of cache … just for the fact that you were reviewed. You have to send in galleys (or in some cases, a finished book in lieu of galleys) three, four or more months before the publication date or they wont even look at your book - if it’s already published, it goes straight in the trash can from what I have read.

The Big Dogs in this category are typically considered to be Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Review, Library Journal, ALA Booklist, Quality Books Inc., Foreward Magazine, New York Times Book Review and the Los Angeles Times Book Review (this list is largely from Dan Poynters industry standard The Self-Publishing Manual).

I didn’t send copies to Kirkus Review or the New York Times Book Review as their online guidelines specifically say “No Self-Help” which my book could be classified as.

For all the others, I sent review copies in 14 weeks before my pub date. I have made follow up inquiries via email to all of them. To date, I received an email reply from Library Journal saying ’sorry, The Wealth Manifesto was not selected. I also received a form letter from Quality Books Inc.s letting me know that “unfortunately, they must decline to stock the title.” I have been ignored completely by everyone else.

Mind you, my book is not some fringe fiction monument to my ego or cookbook or hamster recipes. I have a decent book: good title, good cover, timely useful info that appeals to several broad demographics.

Bottom line: if you are self-publishing or are a very small press, I would skip this whole process entirely and put your energy and money into other review possibilities (such as was mentioned in the amazon.com Top Reviewers post and other methods I will cover in subsequent post).