Four Reliable Book Review Sources for Indie Authors
When it comes to marketing, pre-publication book reviews are key to spreading the buzz around your new book. They provide credibility to you and your book and are relied upon by many players within the literary community, including librarians, educators, publishers, and future readers. If you want trusted voices in the industry to back your books, we recommend going through the review process.
Like everything else in the indie publishing world, there are many review sources that have cropped up, but they aren’t necessarily all of the same quality and reputation. To get you started, we’ve listed some of the more credible and effective review sources that you should check out.
With roots dating back to their start in 1933, Kirkus Reviews has been writing unbiased and honest pre-publication book reviews for generations. They’re an esteemed name trusted by many of the top publishers and literary critics in the industry. Fortunately, they also offer services to self-published authors through their Kirkus Indie program. While, in our experience, Kirkus sometimes provides more of a book report (summary) than a thorough commentary, all you need is a strong excerpt from the review that you can place on your cover and other marketing materials.
A standard review costs $450 with a turnaround time of 7-9 weeks.
Established in 1976, the Midwest Book Review is an organization that promotes small press publishing and provides the literary community with resources. They happily accept unsolicited submissions of physical copies for review consideration, and, should your work be chosen, there is no charge for the review. Just be sure to follow all their guidelines when preparing your submission.
If you want a guaranteed review of your book or your book is only available in ebook format, there is a fee of $50.
In our experience, Midwest provides substantial commentary on a book that reflects their knowledge of the essentials of a good book.
A subdivision of Foreword Magazine, Clarion Reviews provides guaranteed sponsored (paid) reviews for indie publishers and self-published authors. (Note that you can always submit your book to Foreword Magazine, though the work has to be unpublished and must be submitted several months prior to publication.) So, if you want a quality and respect review but your book is already published, or you don’t want to delay publication in the hopes of getting a review from Foreword, then Clarion is the way to go.
For $499, you get a 400-600-word review, including a marketable quote.
One of the more popular review platforms in the publishing industry, NetGalley is a platform that provides books and audiobooks to book reviewers. These book reviewers can include librarians, booksellers, educators, and book bloggers as well as passionate readers. While the quality of the reviews can vary greatly, NetGalley’s ability to make your book available to so many people is hard to match. Our recommendation is don’t make NetGalley your only source of reviews, but it definitely doesn’t hurt to include them in your overall pre-publication strategy.
There are a couple of options for listing your title with NetGalley, each with its own pricing model. As a member of the Independent Book Publishers Association, we offer our authors a special discounted price on their NetGalley subscriptions. Contact us to learn more.
Getting reviews is just one of the elements of a successful book launch. The Aaxel Author Group offers full support to authors who want to launch their book properly. Contact us for more information, and we’ll get started!
If you are still in the book production phase, we invite you to download our Author Success Tracker below to help you put together a professional-looking book.
