5 Ways to Leverage a Professional Book Review
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New authors hoping to make a mark in the literary world need to establish their credibility to readers — and quickly.
A positive review from a professional book reviewer is a proven credibility booster in the eyes of readers, media, and potential endorsers of your book; it enhances virtually all of the marketing assets you’ll share with both your personal network and your target reading audience.
As many new authors won’t have direct access to relevant media lists or industry connections, paid professional book reviews are often the most accessible and impactful promotional course to take. And if you’ve paid for a review through a professional service like Kirkus Reviews or Foreword Clarion Reviews, it can also be a great stepping stone to securing future unpaid reviews.
In this blog post, I’ll be detailing five ways you can get the most out of the powerful marketing tool that is your paid book review.
1. Secure an Early Review
To start, it’s critical to read the fine print, particularly for expected review return dates and submission guidelines. Turnaround times, which impact some of the below suggestions, differ from review service to review service (oftentimes with options to pay for a faster return). The submission details and required assets also differ from provider to provider — like confirmed vs. open-ended publication dates, unformatted Word documents vs. final PDFs, etc.
For most independent authors, soliciting early reviews is not an easy task as pre-order strategy and traditional print times don’t typically factor into the rollout. Select professional review services, like Kirkus, allow you to submit your final, unformatted manuscript for review consideration — even if the publication date is not set.
As soon as your manuscript is complete, you can process the submission with the aim to procure a professional review while your book is in formatting and before it goes to print. If the review produces a key phrase or positive quote that highlights the strength of your book or writing, you may print it on the book cover. You may also include pieces of the early review in your endorsement outreach/blurb requests.
2. Target Audience Gut-Check
At this early stage of your book rollout, you’ll already have a good handle on your target reading audience. That said, since most professional review services match books with reviewers who are content and genre experts in that space, an impartial professional review allows you another opportunity to gauge how your core reader interprets your book.
Doing this while you still have time to pivot in marketing strategy enables you to get ahead of any hurdles or expand on a smaller detail that the reviewer caught or, potentially, break into other niche audiences not already on your radar.
3. Feature Pull Quotes in Your Marketing Material
From movie posters to bestselling book covers, pull-quote blurbs from reviewers can give prospective readers and media a bite-sized taste of your book’s value. In today’s fast moving world, that can be the difference between someone picking your title up and passing it by.
Isolate pull quotes from your review and add them to most of your marketing material. Pull quotes and phrases should appear anywhere you’re including a book synopsis: your website, press release, media kit, Bookstore Sell Sheet, event flyers and banners, social media graphics, bookmarks/postcards, social media graphics and captions, etc.
Review quotes can also be used to round out your Amazon Author Central & Goodreads pages. Include a bolded pull quote at the top of your book description. On Amazon, add the full professional review to the Editorial Reviews section for maximum impact.
4. Share It with Your Network
Draft a blog post with the complete review and your reaction to the early feedback on your book. Does it make you more excited to release? Or make launching your book feel all that more real? Does the reader’s response make you think about the book any differently?
Include the complete review or a link to the review in your newsletter or website.
Share on social media. Whether a graphic/video, a reflection post (similar to the blog prompt above), or a simple post to share with your followers, dripping out snippets of your professional review is a proven way to hype your network and create more buzz. You can also create a shareable graphic so your launch team can easily share it with their networks.
5. Weave Your Review into Other Marketing Initiatives
The value of book reviews is acutely felt when reaching out to third parties and other potential partners for their support. Here are a few specific way you can maximize your marketing and promotions intros with reviews:
Bookstore and Library Outreach: Include professional review snippets in your emails and letters to bookstore managers to boost credibility. Connect with your local library, sharing updated marketing material that highlights pull quotes from your professional review.
Signings and Events: Include pull quotes and snippets within event materials (handouts, flyers, posters, banners, etc.).
Blog Tours: When coordinating, either yourself or with the aid of a publicist or outside vendor, ensure that the final blog tour description includes a pull quote or select key phrases from the review.
Book Giveaways and Promos: For any giveaways or promotions you’re running for your new book, include a pull quote or snippet to boost credibility and appeal to readers.
Book Award Submissions: Round out submissions with inclusion of your review to help your book stand out from the sea of others competing in the same category.
NetGalley: If your book is available for request on NetGalley, include a pull quote at the beginning of the book description.
It’s important to keep in mind that a paid, professional review should be one of many “starting points” to obtaining earned, unpaid feedback and reaction to your work. A paid review alone will not move book sales nor will it miraculously elevate your marketing strategy — but it will give you an early take on impartial feedback for your book and content to uplevel your promotion plans.
Remember that what you end up doing with the paid review is the most important part of the process. Authors can receive glowing five star reviews from paid services, but if no promotional endeavors are done to showcase and have eyes on this review, the impact will be small. Review service companies rarely promote the book review on behalf of the author, so, for any reviews you do receive, be sure to leverage it to its full potential!
Corinne Moulder is the Vice President of Business Development at Smith Publicity, where she drives innovative strategies to elevate authors and brands. With prior hands-on experience as a book publicist, Corinne honed her skills in balancing the fast-paced and creative demands of both the publishing and media landscape with ever-evolving author/expert brand marketing strategies to shape enduring, holistic campaigns that far surpass a book’s publication date. Her expertise is rooted in nonfiction titles with alignment in business, business/lifestyle, trauma and recovery, mental health, memoirs and lifestyle (parenting, self-help, motivation), amongst other areas, serving authors and publishers from the Big Five imprints, dynamic small presses, and indie and hybrid spaces. Corinne is deeply invested in every stage of the publishing process, from pre-launch buzz to post-launch momentum, ensuring impactful, results-driven publicity campaigns. As a longstanding industry expert, she shares her insights through speaking engagements at trade events, local writers’ conferences, and industry forums.
