How Holly Lisle gets her Books Reviewed

This is what Holly Lisle does to get some reviews of her books on venues like Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

She asks, on her very lively and well-commented blog, for a group of reviewers who will receive a free PDF copy of her book. They read it and, Holly hopes, review it.

They send to Holly a link to the review and she checks it out. If they don't trash the book or indulge in personal vitriol against her, they are eligible for a free PDF copy the next time around.

She's hoping, in this way, to have a stable group of 25 reviewers to help her promote her books.

You can read more at: Nine Reviewer Openings for Warpaint. | Holly Lisle: Official Author Homepage. In fact, I recommend you stay and read a lot of things from Holly's blog, and become a regular reader of it, since Holly good at mentoring beginning writers through the information she provides there.

What is the lesson for the many of you out there who have a book out there--- self-published, traditionally published, small press, Lulu.com--- and need to get the word out?

Gather some reviewers by offering a free PDF copy of your book. I know that with my WP software, Open Office, it's pretty easy to make a PDF file.

Ask your readers, if they can, to post reviews in Amazon.com and like places. Ask them to contact you with the link to where they posted. Those who do can be the start of your own little inner circle of readers/reviewers.

One of my writer friends, Amanda Borenstadt, first contacted me when she found my blog, and she offered to let me have a free e-book copy of her book 'Syzygy' if I would review it. I accepted it, but I dreaded reading it because I was sure that a self-published book would be quite bad.

It turned out to be a great read and one I would recommend to others. And Amanda stayed on to be a regular reader of my blog and my number one commenter here. We've also become friends, which is kind of strange for me, since I have Asperger Syndrome, I don't have much experience with having friends.

Reading about Holly's reviewer-roundup method, it makes me wish I'd done that when my Lulu.com book came out. I may still do that, since I've long wanted to withdraw 'Opium Cactus' because of a few typos in it I didn't catch, and add some new poems, three short stories, and some articles on writing poetry from this blog.

I'm open to suggestions from my blog readers on what all will go in 'Opium Cactus: Bigger, Longer and Uncut' (or whatever I call it), and I'm also looking for a few volunteers who might like a free PDF copy and might be willing to write a review for me.