Ahhh… book reviews… they are so important!

As authors, we can put a lot of effort into the pursuit of book reviews, but often the effort produces few results. Here are some of the challenges:

1. Some readers do not have an Amazon account (where we often want the reviews).
2. Some do not get around to leaving a review.
3. Some, we suspect, are not leaving a review because they do not feel that being honest about our book is good for their relationship with us, while they also feel that lying is not good for the soul. 🙂

To add to this, Amazon has been cracking down a lot on fake reviews. That is a good thing, but unfortunately, as they crack down on fake reviews, many genuine reviews are either getting blocked or removed.

What is an author to do?

For one, they can consider Booksprout.

Booksprout is an ebook reading/review APP. Readers can sign up for an account and agree to read books provided through Booksprout for the purpose of leaving reviews. It’s a bit of a WIN/WIN situation in that readers get what they want (free access to books), and authors get what they want (readers and reviewers).

As an author, you can set up an account, provide free digital copies of your books to reviewers and get an honest review.

Booksprout claims they are able to provide 76% success rate in getting a review posted by your readers and, here’s the great part, they do the work of ensuring the review happens! You make your book available for a review, people sign up to read it, and Booksprout sends out reminders to your readers, telling them “Hey, that review is due in a few days!”

There are two real advantages to Booksprout.

1) You can reach people with your book from around the world that you would not likely come across any other way. That’s a pretty great thing.

2) Booksprout does all the work of sending email reminders and keeping tabs on whether or not your reviewers have actually reviewed your book. If they read your book but don’t leave a review, you can actually block them in Booksprout from reviewing your books in the future.

As an author, you will set up a Booksprout Author Page (similar to author pages with other sites).  For an example, here’s my Author Page.

So here’s how you work with Booksprout:

1) Go to Booksprout and set up an author account

(Click “Sign Up For Free”)

2) Set up a Pen Name

(Click “Pen Names” at the top of the Screen)

This is the name you publish under (you can add multiple Pen Names)

3) Add in your book

(Click “Books” at the top of the Screen)

For this part, you will need to add in the name of the book, the price, the book description, book links, etc. The book links will direct your reviewers to your book on Amazon, Goodreads, Kobo, etc (for when they leave a review). You’ll also need to upload your book in PDF, epub and mobi so your reviewers can read your book in the format of their choice.

4) Create an ARC

(Click “ARC” at the top of the Screen)

An ARC is an Advanced Review Copy. This is typically a copy of your book before it comes out for sale, but with Booksprout you can use already published books for ARCs. So… they’re not necessarily ARCs… but we’ll call them that because that’s what Booksprout calls them.

After you’ve clicked on “ARC” at the top of the screen, you’ll get an option to “Create ARC.” Click on this and select the book you want to get reviews for (it will be in the drop-down menu since you added it in Step 3). You’ll have the option to add in your email and additional information for reviewers.

While creating your ARC, you will also have different options depending on whether you are a free or paid Booksprout user. The paid account allows you to set up security for your account (to prevent readers who have a history of not leaving reviews from reading your books). You can also set the max readers (limited to 20/book for free accounts), and you’ll have a chance to make the ARC private. Personally, I would recommend you go public with it unless you know you’ll fill up your numbers quickly.

Next, you’ll see an area for selecting where you want reviews posted. You can require that they post reviews in a number of places. You can also make certain review locations optional (e.g. Kobo could be an optional review while Amazon could be a required review). You will have to select something for each location (you can’t leave it blank). For instance, if your book is not available through Google Play, you’ll have to click “Not Available.”

Finally, you’ll want to enter a “Reviews Due By” date. This is either the date that your book is going to be released on, or it is a date when you feel your readers will have had enough time to read your book and collect their thoughts. I would recommend a date of about 4-5 weeks in the future (assuming your book is already published). This will give lots of time for people to find your book and sign up to read/review it.

5) Finally, you’ll need to promote your Booksprout ARC.

You can promote your ARC on Twitter and Facebook and more. Once you have some followers on Booksprout, it’ll be a little bit easier to get word out there, but while you’re building that following, you’ll need to put the effort into promotion.

Booksprout will make your book available to all their ARC readers. As a writer of children’s/middle grade books, I found the response of my first posted book to be somewhat disappointing, but the response has grown with time.

As you connect with readers, you will find you get a better response. For example, on the morning I wrote this sentence, I had posted an ARC for a book. Within an hour or so of posting that ARC, I already had two readers claim a copy. So… that’s two reviews of my book coming that I otherwise would not have had.

I hope they like the book… if not… I will be sad, but I will love them anyway.

Here’s an example of a Booksprout ARC.

(NOTE: this ARC is available for download and to review until May 10/2020)

Now, with a free account, you can only run a review ARC once for each book. If you sign up for a paid account ($10/month), you’ll be able to repeat ARCs, but every ARC after the first one is set to private. That means you are responsible for all the promotion of it (Booksprout doesn’t advertise it).

In the end, I highly recommend Bookspout. It’s been a very positive experience for me. I’ve gotten some reviews and even had one reader contact me, asking me if I had an ARC available for the first book in the series (she had the second one). It’s a great site and VERY helpful for review-seeking-authors.

I hope you enjoy using Booksprout!

Shawn