Let Me Review Your Book
You can check out my previous free mainstream reviews for Forge Books, Turner Publishing Co., Bright Sky Press, and the University of Oklahoma Press.
Meanwhile, I know how hard it is for Indie, POD and small press authors to get reviews these days.
Newspapers are cutting back on book review sections or eliminating them altogether. News magazines, likewise when they aren’t threatening to fold altogether (See Newsweek). Even when print media was going full throttle, getting them to give you a shot was chancy at best. Heck, getting them to give a big publisher a break and a review was (and is) more problematic than the big publishers like to admit. Today, they don’t know what to do.
Nowadays, the best way to sell a book is not at the corner bookstore (independent or chain) but on the Internet at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Alibris. But first the readers have to know you’re out there and that means advertising at places with high hit counts like this one. But once you’ve drawn them to your book page, you really need something to distinguish it, with your story summaries, from all the others that have similar copy.
After you’ve had family and friends leave their five-star reviews, you’re pretty much stuck. Yes, you can hire a review done by, for instance, Feathered Quill Book Reviews of Goshen, Massachusetts, which will post it on Amazon for you. Then you can wait until Amazon takes it down, as they did to me.
For my short-story collection Leaving The Alamo, Texas Stories After Vietnam. Feathered Quill’s reviewer did a nice, detailed job. Not just a pocketful of generalizations like you’d get from some other services I’ll refrain from naming here. But FQBR set me back $50, and in this game that’s cheap.
You probably will need to do that, too, as well as hire some of the other more expensive services. But, in addition, you can let me review your book free of charge. All I need is an email to scribbler at texasscribbler dot com with an attached e-copy of your book.
You know, a PDF. If it looks like something I want to spend six or more hours reading, I’ll email you back with an address where you can send me a free, reviewer’s hard (or paper or Kindle) copy—-just like the big boys do it.
After I get that, I’ll email you with a date when you can expect me to finish a review and put it on your Amazon or other page. I can also include a Microsoft Word printout, under the heading of Cavalry Scout Book Reviews, of Austin, Texas, if you want a news release to photocopy for your other marketing efforts.
Give me a try. You can’t beat the price.
