The Blog Squad - Part 27

We are a group of three book bloggers situated on different continents but brought together by our love for books and a penchant for talking about them. We’ve joined our forces to create a collaborative series of posts about book blogging and we hope you’ll enjoy the discussions.

A MAGICAL WORLD OF WORDS - AmyNikita

BOOKS.BAGS.BURGERS - Uma K

BOOK REVIEWS BY DI - Di Hewlett

Where do you post your reviews?

All of my reviews are on Goodreads - whether I enjoyed the book or not. I don’t like to blog about books that I can’t rate positively but I will still send my review to the publisher and leave it on Goodreads because even negative reviews on Goodreads add to the book popularity.

If I receive a book for review from an Author or Publisher and I enjoyed it, I will make sure I cross post my review to my blog, Goodreads and Amazon and if I received the book off NetGalley or Edelweiss I will also be sure to post my reviews there.

Any books from my personal TBR that I purchase or borrow that are published traditionally I will generally post these reviews on my blog whether they are positive or negative.

I always post on Goodreads - no matter what. And if I’ve received the book for review, I’ll definitely post it to my blog as well as Goodreads. Review copies always get posted to my blog.

If I’ve received the book from Netgalley or Edelweiss, then I’ll post to there too (as well as on GR and the blog).

All library books and books I’ve bought myself: those will definitely be posted to GR, but not necessarily my blog. It depends on the book. .

I’m hoping to start posting my reviews on Amazon as well - sometime in the future - since that really helps authors.    

Why should bloggers crosspost their reviews?

Crossposting reviews is one of the easiest ways that a book blogger can help out authors and publishers. It’s not always quick and easy but it’s worth it! The more places your review is in, the more likely it is to be seen and the more likely the book will get publicity and that’s the whole reason we book bloggers exist, right?

Like Di says, it helps authors and publishers! Even negative reviews on Amazon can boost the author’s ranking on the site or allow him or her access to other book hosting sites (some whose guidelines explicitly state that they want a certain number of Amazon reviews before considering the book). I think there’s something like getting a certain number of reviews on Amazon and then you get a higher rank or something? I’m not sure. But I do know that authors are always asking for bloggers to crosspost their reviews on Amazon.   

Are there other ways to promote an author/book?

Definitely! Other than simply posting and cross posting book reviews I’ve always found that something visual gets across really well.

• Creating a ‘mood board’ on Pinterest for a book and promoting that
• Creating an inspirational makeup look or nail art
• Artwork and/or picture quotes from the book you are promoting

Other types of promo posts for your blog can be:

• Guest Post - where the author writes a post for your blog
• Author Interviews - you do a Q&A with the author. Personally I love reading these as I love to get to know a bit about the person behind the book and sometimes an answer on an interview can push me to read something by that author where I may not have picked it up to begin with.
• Cover Reveals
• Excerpt Post - Sometimes nothing can reel a potential reader in faster than reading an excerpt of the book in question!
• A music playlist
• A Character Interview - this can be a fun one where the blogger sets interview questions for one of the characters in the book. This can really help readers dig deeper into a character profile.

Aside from just using your blog as a platform for promotion there is also Twitter and Facebook and a huge one right now is Instagram/Bookstagram. A beautiful photo featuring the book you want to promote can go a loooong way with PR for a book or an author.

Oh yes! Here are some ideas:

• Tweet about the book. Say how much you loved it, retweet other people’s tweets saying how much they loved it, or even retweet posts from the author where he/she talks about his/her book.
• Cover reveals.
• Excerpt.
• Guest post or Interview. Ask the author questions, or get him or her to talk about something relating to the book.  
• Go crazy with Bookstagram photos. And you don’t just have to take pictures of the book - why not share quotes from it or design an aethestic board?

Get creative with blog posts. Share ideas for your dream cast who could play the characters if the book was ever made into a movie, or share songs you think fit the story, or share your favourite quotes from the book. Another type of post I love seeing around the blogosphere is one like this: “Five Reasons Why You Should Read Caraval”(for example). It’s short, fun, and it’s great way for you to promote the book.   

Go over to their collab posts to know my answers!:

❤ Book Reviews by Di
❤ A Magical World of Words

We hope you’ve enjoyed the latest in our series of discussion posts! Please talk to us and let us know YOUR answers below. What do you think of our responses? If you have any specific questions you’d like us to address in the future, please let us know in the comments section below.