Getting reviews for your book can be one of the big challenges authors face. We all know that readers often either look through the reviews for a book, or they look at the number of reviews left and the average rating to help them make their decision. So, we obviously want reviews!

To give an idea of how big a deal it is, a while back I posted a simple blog on how to get reviews through a site called Booksprout. Booksprout is a review site that offers both a free and a paid subscription for authors to get reviews. That single blog post has become my most popular blog both in 2019 and in 2020 (this year it has around two and a half times the visits that the second most popular blog has had). It’s just one blog, yet that is what draws so many to my site! Authors are after reviews.

There are two other sites I want to blog about. One is BookSirens, and the other is NetGalley.

NetGalley is, by far, the big one (and disgustingly expensive to use). I’ve used NetGalley three times now through another group, which has cut down the cost tremendously. I look forward to sharing with you what that’s all about in a little while.

But today, I want to talk about BookSirens.

Here’s my short review: BookSirens is awesome.

Here’s my longer review:

Upsides to BookSirens

Huge Number of readers

BookSirens has 10,000+ readers ready to read and review. Now, keep in mind that this is across genres. If you write in a smaller genre (like I do) then you will certainly get less reviewers than if you write in Science Fiction or Romance, but there are enough readers to go around. Those who like reading your genre of book will enjoy diving right in!

Impressive Genre Categories

I find with BookSprout, as good as it is, does seem to have a heavy focus on Romance novels. That’s great if you write Romance, but as someone who writes Middle Grade Fiction, I find the response smaller than I’d like. The great thing about BookSirens is there are a lot of books spread out across the genres. As a result, the readers will be there to review! Check out this link to see what books they have right now and search in your category to get an idea of what your book will look like next to the currently listed books.

High Review Rate

One of the advantages of BookSirens is they boast an average review rate of around 75%. That’s not an empty boast by any means. The truth is they have a high response rate. While with Booksprout you could easily have half your potential reviewers simply not review your book, BookSirens reviewers are more than likely to review. I have three books on there right now and the most recent one has had a 100% review rate (everyone who signed up to review has posted a review).

You can focus in your reviews

One of the options BookSirens gives you is to focus your reviews on just Amazon, just Goodreads, or either one. I tend to go for the “Amazon or Goodreads” option and, since people post that it’s a review based on an ARC from BookSirens, Amazon generally approves the review.

Compared to BookSprout, however, this may seem a little underwhelming. BookSprout gives you the option to request that reviews be posted on up to eight different sites including Kobo, Apple Books, Google Books and even BookBub.
I have, however, often found that BookSirens’ reviewers sometimes post their reviews around in other places.

Ongoing Chances for Reviews

One of the nice features of BookSirens is you can post your book on their site for reviews and simply leave it up there. BookSprout, however, has a limited time period. The great thing about leaving your book up there is you’ll continue to find new reviews showing up now and then as time goes on. That’s encouraging!

Samples

Part of the process with BookSirens is to upload a sample PDF of your book. This would include something like the first 10 pages or so of your first chapter. For one of my books I uploaded the first chapter and a half (since the book and the chapters were short). This gives your potential reviewers the chance to read a little bit of your writing and style to see if it’s for them. I suspect this is part of why there is such a high review rate–people don’t often sign up to do a review in order to “see if the book is for them.”

Downsides to BookSirens

Cost

BookSirens costs a bit of money. It’s not much, but it does cost. While BookSprout has a paid option, their free option is so fantastic it’s worth going that route for starters.

With BookSirens, there is a free option, however it is much more limited. With the free option, your book is not made available to all of BookSirens’ readers, but instead you just get a link to advertise for your own readers to come and review.
With the paid option, it costs $10 to sign up and then $2 per review after that. This does not violate Amazon’s review rules as the money is not paid to the reviewers, but to BookSirens.

Two good things to add to this: First, anyone you send to the site with a special link (found on your BookSirens page) can still review the book for free; Second, you can set a limit as to how many reviewers you want (so you don’t find you’ve gone poor paying this review fee).

Slow Acceptance Process

One of the things BookSirens does is they evaluate your book ahead of time to confirm that they feel it is of good enough quality to be reviewed on their site. This is good news, actually, because it means the books that they post are of a decent quality. It does, however, slow down the process. Be prepared for a process that takes a week or two to get your book up on there.

Pickiness

One of the things I’ve found with reviewers is that sometimes they can cease to be readers and begin to be connoisseurs. What I mean by that is a reader can no longer read a book and enjoy it. Instead, they will sit down like a food critic and tear it apart.

Most of us could sit down to a simple meal that we might enjoy… and enjoy it. For me, if I sat down to a simple burger and fries, I’d likely enjoy it a lot. A food critic, however, will say, “The fries were not laid out in an appealing way, the bun seemed somewhat dry, the burger was just a tad overcooked, the ambience of the restaurant was dingy and my waitress did not wear a hat. 2 out of 5 stars.”

It is similar with some review sites. I find reviewers at BookSirens approach books more as “food critics” or a “connoisseurs” than as readers. You can easily get a review that says something like, “I loved this book. It kept me turning page to page from beginning to end. I can’t wait to read the rest of the series. 4 out of 5 stars.”

Now, 4 stars is still a good review, but as an author you’ll be left wondering, “If they loved it so much, what happened to that fifth star?”

In comparison, I have found NetGalley to be far more of a site of connoisseurs than BookSirens (you can easily get a “this is a great book,” followed by 3 stars), but be prepared for this with BookSirens. To a book critic/connoisseur, 4 stars is a good rating.

Sometimes 3 out of 5 stars is a good rating to a Book Connoisseur.

For those who are new to the process and struggle with this, understand something about the review process. Most readers are looking for books that have a 4+ review rating. That means if you have some five star and some four star reviews, you’re good to go. Even if you end up with the odd three star or less review, you should be okay. As long as you can try to keep your overall rating above four.

Well, there you have it! I would highly recommend BookSirens for you. It’s a great way to pull in some more reviews! I encourage you to check out their Facebook Page as well.

And remember… as an author, you can still read and review books! So check out what books they have available and have some fun reading!

Shawn

NOTE: some of the links above are affiliate links, however, this has not affected my review and recommendation in any way (actually, the entire blog was written well before BookSirens started offering an affiliate program and I have added the links since then).