Goodreads Reviewer Outreach Campaign
Dear Author,
Because most of our clients don't have a large existing email list, we rely heavily on Goodreads for finding reviewers. It's been the most effective way we've found to get reviews (and we always start by reaching out to any of your former readers already on Goodreads).
Much of the advice I hear on book promotion assumes the author already has existing reach, which excludes most of us. I can also tell you from experience why that doesn't work for your contacts who are not already familiar with writing book reviews. Also, Amazon has become ruthless in removing reviews from anyone they can draw a direct connection to you and they have more data on us than we think.
If you need assistance in building your readership and want more reviews, here's what I suggest.
Our Reviewer Outreach campaign on Goodreads is proven to be effective. It's something we started doing in 2016 and continue to improve on. It's phase 3 of our Bestseller Blueprint:
Our Process
- We create a page to log reviewer requests (example @ https://reviewerperks.com/dan). This self-populates a google sheet (see below) for tracking purposes.
- One of our marketing coordinators reaches out to 10 reviewers per week on Goodreads (this has proven effective about 20-30% response rate depending on the genre).
- All requests for review copies are logged in a google sheet you will have access to (you can also be notified by email).
- You are responsible for the cost of review copies, but we will handle fulfillment. Note: We can offer them a pdf or Kindle edition which will reduce your cost (but some reviewers will still prefer a print copy). I will send you an invoice after the close of the month to cover the cost of review copies sent out the mont prior.
- We follow-up with those reviewers 60 days after we send a review copy.
- You can (and should) send anyone you feel is up to the task to your reviewer request page as well!
Evidence
Here are a few recent campaigns we recently completed so you can see the results for yourself:
No promises your book will do as well, but we put the same effort into every campaign and some (notably the ones above) have done extremely well as a result!
Cost
Our fee covers the cost to of reaching out to a minimum of 120 reviewers from a list of comp titles you can help us identify. We spend time vetting legitimate reviewers based on the other reviews they've posted recently. Month 1 is allocated towards setup (30 days before starting outreach). We start by contacting any reviewers on Goodreads who may have posted a review for any of your previous title(s) since they are already familiar with your work.
Commitment
The commitment is 6 months and requires at the very least you have a Kindle version published to give reviewers a place to post their review where it carries weight (on Amazon). I'd suggest that at some point during the tail end of the 6 months that we allocate one month towards setting up an AMS campaign (this is noted in phase 5). For the 30 days when we shift our focus to an AMS campaign, we will halt our reviewer outreach (this is optional, but recommended).
If you haven't yet published your book...
While we can try to ask the reviewers to write their review but hold off on posting until your launch day, there's little evidence to support this outdated approach. At one time, this made sense, but today Amazon seems to prefer to see reviews come in more 'organically' over time. I've seen clients' accounts get flagged as suspicious when they push to get too many reviews posted to soon as I suspect Amazon is using a common reviews-to-sales ratio.
The idea of a launch day only makes sense if you have a big following with a 'tribe' of followers you are confident will buy it when you ask them to.
I can assist with getting an ARC edition formatted for print and we don't need to assign an ISBN to it (and if you want, it can have a generic 'ADVANCE COPY' stamp on the cover (just like the big publishers). There will be some additional costs related to formatting and setup.
We can also run a KDP bestseller campaign for you in the future as noted in Phase 4 (after you have at least a dozen reviews).
Artifacts
Review Workflow
This is the Google sheet that is auto-populated whenever someone completes your review copy request form:
Our effort is very transparent and will be logged in a Google Sheet you will have access to. You will also receive an email notification anytime a review copy is requested.
We also nudge the reader for a review 60 days out):
Additional Info
I'm available to elaborate and discuss additional options. You can always use my online scheduler to book consultation.
Committed to your success,
Brian Schwartz
805-225-1251 PDT