How Do I Get Reviews for My Self-Published Book?

 Another author on Goodreads asked me this question on my profile, but after asking immediately pushed her own book. If you include a link to your book anywhere it wasn't asked for (including in a comment here), it is spam and will probably be deleted. I struggled all day today with (a) responding to her question on my Goodreads profile and thereby not only encouraging her (and others) to spam because her book link would now be published on my profile or (b) report her to Goodreads as a spammer or (c) ignore her. None of these options appealed to me. 

First, I have not read her book, and I do not intend to read or review it. It's a self-help book, and that is one of the few genres in which I have no interest. You have to write a really good self-help book to get me interested in reading it--although it doesn't necessarily need to be targeted to me. 

Second, she called me "Jenna," which makes me think I wasn't the only author who got thus spammed. Note: If you are writing to anyone, especially book editors of traditional publishing companies, and you are using a form letter, make sure you change names, addresses, etc. No one wants to get a letter addressed to someone else. 

Third, I have no way of questioning her to try to find out if she was intentionally spamming me or not. I have reported other people for doing things like this, but usually only under pressure from fellow moderators (who want me to report people because they don't want to be spammed, too--and reporting them will mark them as a spammer and reduce their ability to do this or get their account banned). 

Finally, I really don't like to ignore questions--especially legitimate ones, which is why I decided a blog post was the best way to deal with this.

So, the best way to get reviews is NOT to spam people--especially other authors. Sending me a link to your book is not going to get me to buy it. Even if I do buy your book, that doesn't mean I have to or will review it. Plus, if the person you spam gets upset over that, they could leave you a bad review.

I discussed Goodreads Giveaways as a method of getting reviews here. It is expensive and for about every 100 books I gave away, I got 2 reviews in return. Still, that is one way to get reviews.

You can also pay scammers to write (usually AI generated) reviews for you that are vague. These are generally all positive because you are paying them and really have little value beyond tricking algorithms (at least temporarily). These are also usually expensive, and you are not dealing with good people. Most fly-by-night marketing scams also use these. 

You can do review exchanges--but by that I do not mean you give me your book for me to review and I give you mine. This is called a reciprocal review (you are reviewing someone who is reviewing you) and it is forbidden (and can get you banned) on most sites that allow reviews. A legitimate book exchange allows you to give your book to someone to review and in exchange you review someone else's book. There are a few groups like this on Goodreads. These do not usually cost anything (or sometimes cost the price of a book), but they require a time commitment to reading other books.

There are also numerous paid services that have started doing this--but only a few are reputable. These are also online review exchange websites. These are a little more risky and also tend to be expensive. Some require you to use them before you publish your book fully (it should, however, be edited and polished fully). Some are set up so that you can give reviews for other books to earn your reviews, but all of them use a business model with varying costs if you want to get enough reviews for it to be worth it. I watched a YouTube video where an author talked about how great one of these was. However, I noted that she spent hundreds of dollars and admitted she only got about 16 Amazon reviews. Goodreads reviews are great, but they don't usually translate into sales as well as Amazon reviews. I find it hard to justify that kind of money for the return. 

I have some other methods of getting reviews that I plan to explore over the next couple of years. I plan to write a second post about those methods and explain whether or not they worked. 

Avoiding Market Saturation with Books

 The problem with self-publishing is that anyone can do it. One problem is, of course, that books with little to no editing are published, which are irritating to read. Sadly, this is the least of the problems with self-publishing. Many self-published fiction books lack a beginning, middle, and end or other necessary parts of fiction. Non-fiction lacks proper sources and citations. Now, the above you can sometimes find in traditionally published books, as well. I have also, uniquely, discovered that the self-publishing industry is extremely dishonest because so called authors will publish awful "romance novels" that are 12 pages long and charge you $1 for them! 

Something else you won't usually find is market saturation.

What is market saturation? There is only a certain audience for any type of book. For example, just because you can put out fifty word search puzzle books a day doesn't mean there are enough people in the world to buy them. This is why puzzle books were usually created by specific presses dedicated to printing them and these presses only put out a limited number each month. They could put out ten books a month and make plenty of money where today a person could put out 50 books a day and might only sell ten books each month because the market is saturated. There is not a big enough audience for puzzle books to buy all the puzzle books that are being printed by indie publishers who have watched a couple YouTube videos on getting rich quick by publishing puzzle books. 

Obviously, there are a lot more than these "low content" books out there. Journals, coloring books, notebooks, planners. All of these are being pushed out because the latest "influencer" has said you can make a ton of money doing it. 

When the self-publishing craze first started, it was public domain books, like Pride and Prejudice. From the time Jane Austen first published her masterpiece until about 2005, there were about 100 editions of this book produced by various publishers. Now there are over 5000, which, of course means, thousands have flooded the market in the past few years. Amazon actually prohibits these at this point, but they are still getting produced by fooling the system. 

Once Amazon stopped people from reprinting public domain works en masse, people then switched to creating "commentaries," "analysis," or "reviews" of the books--again en masse. Market saturation does not make you a million dollars. Nor does attempting to enter a market that is completely saturated--especially if you are an unknown publisher. The only thing market saturation does is ensure people, who write good puzzle books or book commentaries will never make money off of them or even be discovered by readers who might enjoy their work. If anything, market saturation with quickly produced garbage only ensures that the market for those kinds of books will shrink even smaller. How many times is a reader going to purchase a book only to be disappointed with the content because it was generated by AI or only superficially written in a hurry before s/he decides to stop purchasing books?

Publishing companies with marketing departments understand this. If you publish one or two junk books each year, it won't destroy your audience. If you constantly turn out poor quality content, it will. This is why most of the major traditional companies have set up "imprints" to capitalize on the self-publishing craze while keeping a distance from themselves. I question if they will escape unscathed, though. 

I will tell you honestly that you may put little effort into jumping onto the latest self-publishing craze, but by the time you hear about it, it will already be a saturated market. If you want to make money self-publishing and have that income continue, it is hard work.

Off Topic Publishing More Scam Than Real Publishing Company

 So, I subscribe to Globe Soup's Contest Newsletter, which I plan to write about in the future. They send e-notices for contests not affiliated with them (albeit these are prefaced with warnings that they are not from them). Last month, I entered one from Tadpole (in addition to entering one from Globe Soup). I would deem Tadpole to be a legitimate publishing company--even though their material comes from publishing paid contest entries and the "longlist" winners seem to be high. The reason is because they are upfront about being an online literary magazine, and they have real prizes. Some of these are marketing packages, but you get a complete, free marketing package if you win one.

When I went to check out the Off Topic Publishing Contest, warning bells went off. First, there seems to be only one contest judge--the owner and founder of Off Topic Publishing. This, in itself, doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it is a flag. The only reason this would be legitimate, in my opinion, is if the small publishing company needed more submissions and was using the contest to do that. 

Then, however, I looked at the prizes. In reality, the first place prize is the only one that wins anything: a free manuscript critique/ and $100 CAD. That would be a decent prize, except a manuscript critique is not very valuable--you can get those for free from a beta reader. An edit would have been more valuable, as long as the editor knows his/her stuff. You also get free tickets to an online writing conference promoted and created by Off Topic Publishing. Writing conferences are, in general, scams. It is great to hear authors talking about their work, and this particular conference discusses copyright, which is important, but like all such conferences, the cost of attendance is high. Because this one is online, you could just go to YouTube and find a similar experience by piecing together your own conference. In person at major writing conferences, you might at least get some vendor freebies and contacts with publishing companies in exchange for the outrageous price. 

Sadly, and something that should always send up more warning bells, the rest of the prizes consisted of worthless "free" tickets to the conference and discounts on editing or critiques. Presumably, since you are paying for it, you get to choose which you prefer. Please note: A discount is NOT a prize. That is what car dealers send to everyone on the scratch off "prizes" they use to get you to come to their "sales event." 

At $20 CAD a pop to enter this contest, one has to wonder why the prizes are so chintzy. I have no clue how much she has offered to pay the four speakers at her conference, but at $120 CAD per ticket, presumably, she can have 20 full-paying attendees and still walk away in the black. Keep in mind that it is online, so she doesn't have to pay for space or anything else, other than potentially a Zoom meeting if she gets more than 90 people registered. At that point, she can certainly cover Zoom charges. As far as the contest goes, if she gets 5 entries, she has covered the first prize payout. In fact, if 125 people enter her contest, she has more than covered prize and conference fees. 

So, perhaps, she is just a smart businesswoman? (Even then I wouldn't recommend entering this contest--why pad someone else's pockets?) Then, I went to the "submissions" section of the website. Unfortunately, this is a short-story vanity press. You submit a short story/essay to their website, but you have to pay a rather large fee--$50 CAD, if you are accepted for publication in their anthology!!! Now, presumably 10+ authors will be included in this single book. For that $50, you get only 1 "free" copy of the book. I can publish and buy books a lot cheaper than that on Amazon-and Amazon allows you to have your own imprint if you want to buy ISBN numbers. Notably, ISBN numbers cost $30--but that isn't per book! I understand they are using IngramSpark, which is more expensive than Amazon but offers wider distribution, but IngramSpark does not require exclusivity. They could also offer books on Amazon and buy the copies they distribute to the authors for lower cost. Apparently, the founder is not a smart businesswoman.

I am okay with self-publishing authors starting their own publishing business, although I don't recommend it. (Yes, I know, I am trying to do just that.) However, I am not okay with self-publishing authors starting a vanity press. If you want to hire me as an editor, I am all for it and advertise my services on my website. At the same time, I do not have the capabilities at this point in time to accept and review manuscripts that I will then publish under the Dreaming Reality name. When I do that, if your manuscript is accepted, it would not cost you a thing to have me edit it other than a percent of the sales. This would be a big jump to go from only producing my own work to producing the work of others. I need to make sure all books I publish can be available across a wide spectrum of platforms--right now I am only set up on Amazon, although I am going to be expanding, hopefully by the end of this year onto other platforms (IngramSpark and Draft2Digital-formerly Smashwords) so I can get better library and institutional coverage. I would need to have more marketing strategies in place. I would need to also have the time to review submitted books--which for me would mean submission windows that would not be open all year. 

Most disappointing, is that since this contest requires you to submit the first 2,500 words of a novel, it makes it seem like you might get a publishing contract with them. However, when you look at their published book list on their website, there are only 10 different books and one calendar offered. Most of these are poetry anthologies edited by the founder, and two poetry books are written by the founder. Only one is a novella, which seems to be a collection of flash fiction--even though the contest seems to be looking for full-length novels. Although the contest does not limit genres, it seems like only poetry and flash fiction is all they have ever published. To me, there is no reason to offer a contest for full-length novels if you don't print them, except to get authors' hopes up that if they win they will get a traditional publishing contract. Instead, they will get connected to a vanity press that seems to have been started to boost the founders vanity. 

Big or small, a publishing company should put promoting their author's works and making money by selling them instead of promoting contests and making money by selling tickets to online writing conferences. In this case, it seemed like the "publishing company" also did little to promote the books they produced.