Where to Get Your Ebook Reviewed (2)

This article follows up my article “Where to Get Your Ebook Reviewed,” published on Triond’s Writinghood website October 23,  2011.  Please read that article as well.

In this article I review three book blogs based on reviews they posted to Amazon, the top-selling marketplace for ebooks.  All three sites allow authors to submit books for review as ebooks.  Please note, however, that if an author submits a book to a reviewer who subsequently posts a review, the reviewer will not be identified as an “Amazon verified purchaser.”

I include links to sample reviews for each blog.  Not wishing to create false hopes, I have purposely chosen middling reviews.  

Please go over each review website carefully before submission.  All three sites have very specific requirements for query* and submission. (Some terms are defined in the Notes section following this article.)

Odyssey Reviews: http://herodyssey.blogspot.com/ 

This reviewer wants wants to read self-published and independently published books, particularly science fiction, fantasy and mystery novels.  She** demands edited and well proofread submissions.  Currently lagging behind in her reading, she urges patience to authors who have submitted works for review.   54 of 55 Amazon readers rate her reviews as helpful.***  Her Amazon Top Reviewer Rank is 259,321.   

A few points to bear in mind about this reviewer:

• Rates books on a one to five medallion scale, with medallions equivalent to Amazon’s stars.
• Will posts “five medallion” rated books to Amazon, but will post reviews giving works three or four medallion ratings at the author’s request.  She last posted a review (five stars) on Amazon Feb. 10, 2011.  Is this because she didn’t read any five medallion books last year?
• Does not edit reviews after posting.  
• Requires authors to send a query before submitting work.

Sample Review

See her review of “Partially Human” by Dwayne G. Anderson.

This reviewer writes with tact.  She clearly did not enjoy the beginning of the book or the simplicity of its plot and language.  Nevertheless, she recognizes that some readers may like “Partially Human” for precisely the qualities that turned her off.

The Flashlight Reader: http://www.theflashlightreader.com/ 

The Flashlight Reader is a middle school language arts teacher who reviews young adult novels.   In the U.S., middle schools comprises grades 6 through 8.  Young adult fiction targets readers 12 through 18 (and sometimes older).   She does not want to review novels that are not age appropriate for this group.  Her reviews focus on positive qualities of the work.  

Although she prefers hard copies of books, she will read books compatible with her Sony e-reader.  Technical difficulties prevent her from accepting books from Smashwords except as .pdf files.   She is less likely to accept non-fiction, horror, or religious books.  On her blog, she rates books with on a one to five flashlights scale, roughly equivalent to Amazon’s star system.   She posts her reviews on The Flashlight Reader, Goodreads, LibraryThing, and Amazon.  Her Amazon Top Reviewer Ranking is 15,287  with 67 of 84 helpful votes.  I saw no explicit “query first” statement on her website, but she clearly wants an email exchange before she accepts a book.  

Sample Review

See her review of “North of Sunset” by Henry Baum.

The review clearly reveals the preferences of the reader:

• Put off by foul language and rates the book one star lower because Baum’s use of the “f-word” made it difficult for her to read.
• Reads the first chapter and the last page of a book to see if the book is for her.
• Rates books about the same as the average Amazon reviewer.  She gave “North of Sunset” three stars.  The average rating of all eighteen reviewers was three and a half stars, so there was little difference between her rating and the mean.

I doubt Henry Baum aimed for a young adult audience when he wrote “North of Sunset.”  The Flashlight Reader posted this review in mid-June, so she may be more open to books for more mature readers when school is out.

Red Adept Reviews:  http://redadeptreviews.com/ 

Red Adept Reviews, unlike the preceding blogs, is the review site of a business that also sells editorial services.  More than one reviewer works at Red Adept Reviews.  The site only accepts works of fiction and will not review erotica.  Of the three blogs, only Red Adept Reviews allows writers to send in their work without a query.

I recommend reading with care the entire Red Adept Reviews website and a number of their reviews before submitting a book.  The submission procedure is simple.  Fill out a form on one page of the website and submit your book as a file in doc, azw, html, txt, prc, mobi, epub, or ePub formats.  Red Adept Reviews also requests genre, vendor, and author information.  See the website for the complete guidelines.

Submission does not guarantee a review.  Red Adept Reviews seeks to help authors with fewer than ten reviews.  Books with more than ten reviews on Amazon are removed from the review queue after six months.

Lynn O’Dell, the publisher of Red Adept Reviews, has a Top Reviewer Ranking of 630, so she’s an Amazon Top 1000 reviewer.  She has 2,286 of 2,697 helpful votes.

Sample review: 

See their review of “Scream” by Mike Delloso

This reviewer, the most analytical of the three,  breaks the review into parts.  Rating salient features separately is characteristic of Red Adept Reviews.  This review also reveals that the reviewer:

• Dislikes plot holes and the resolution of a plot by divine intervention.
• Likes to see female characters fully developed in a story.  Red Adept Reviews may not be the best place to submit your mystery set on Mount Athos.
• Appreciates polished prose and has specific criteria for evaluating stylistic competence.

Recommendations

Odyssey Reviews is far enough behind in her reading that a submission to her is a good tactic to consider as part of the re-promotion of your novel that you will need to do to keep your book selling.  The Flashlight Reader has a warm and bubbly website.  I would gladly send her a well-edited YA novel.  Red Adept Reviews posts razor-sharp professional reviews.  If I wrote a novel of which I was very confident, I’d send it to them.  Moreover, if I’d published a novel and received paid professional editorial help, I’d send it to them as a free check on the quality of services I received.  I’d buy Amazon gift cards for all my relatives so they could buy and review my book before I’d send a shaky first novel to them for review.

Notes and Asides

*A query is a brief message describing a book and asking if the reviewer will accept it for review.  Some review sites require more detailed queries than others.

**I use the pronoun she when discussing the Odyssey Reviews writer and The Flashlight Reader because the website of the former is heroddyssey.com and the latter uses an avatar that is clearly female.  In the case of Red Adepts Reviews, I use they instead of she even though Lynn O’Dell is female because she has other reviewers working for her.  If these assumptions are wrong, I apologize.

***Amazon readers may cast votes on the helpfulness of a review.  Amazon tallies the number of helpful and not helpful votes a reviewer receives.  Subtracting the number of helpful votes from the total yields the number of not helpful votes.  Some writers claim giving a book only one or two stars will increase the chance of getting a not helpful vote.  

I occasionally post reviews on Amazon.  My Top Reviewer Ranking is 175,829 with 158 of 171 helpful votes.  I’ve given a book only two stars.  I’m so far behind in my reading that I still have an incomplete from graduate school despite living to almost sixty.  Please don’t send your novel to me.