By Steve Windwalker
Every day authors and indie publishers sign up for sponsorships with Kindle Nation and our partner and sister sites, and we are honored and pleased to have them (or, if the shoe fits, to have you.) Since we launched our sponsorship program a year ago next week we’ve proven week after week our relationships with thousands of serious readers can be a big help in getting exposure for books of distinction.
But we’re not the be-all and the end-all. The exposure that we can help secure will fall flat if the book that’s being exposed is not presented as effectively as possible. Most of the elements of presentation are, of course, in your control: such as the book itself, the cover, the title, the price, the book description, the blurbs that you can get from fellow authors, for starters. But getting thoughtful, helpful reviews for your book — without stooping to something that you wouldn’t want to do — can be a challenge. And thoughtful Amazon reviews are important!
So I’m happy to report that our friends and partners at BookLending.com have come up with a great solution that I can heartily recommend
in the form of a new site and service called BookRooster.com. Barely a week old, “BookRooster is a community of over 1750 passionate readers/reviewers drawn from BookLending.com and other Kindle reader communities. We organize the distribution of review copies of your novel (in MOBI format for Kindle) to reviewers in exchange for their objective Amazon customer review.”
It’s important to be clear right up front that “BookRooster.com is not a pay-for-review service. Our reviewers love to read in their favorite genres and they will write objective, sincere reviews that reflect their real opinions about your book.”
We’ve been working with BookRooster founder Catherine MacDonald for several months now in her role as co-founder of BookLending.com, which has grown to 25,000 members since it was established in January, and we have found her to be a truly impressive innovator of great personal integrity. I feel very confident that you’ll enjoy working with BookRooster, so I was pleased when Catherine invited Kindle Nation to become affiliated with BookRooster.
Because of that relationship, we are able to make a pretty cool special offer on BookRooster’s behalf to the hundreds of indie authors and small-press publishers with whom we work:
For one week only, through June 22, 2011, BookRooster is offering members of the Kindle Nation and indieKindle community a very generous discount of $15 (over 30%!) against the $49 administrative fee it has established for the service it provides in
- inviting suitable reviewers to review your book;
- distributing your book to those who have agreed to review it; and
- tracking to make sure at least ten reviews are submitted by BookRooster.com reviewers.
In order to take advantage of this valuable offer, make sure to do the following before June 22, 2011 (but prefereably sooner since they are already getting booked ahead):
- Use this link to go to BookRooster: http://www.bookrooster.com/wwm/ (The discount code below will only work if you use this link.)
- Enter the special promotion code 15OFFWWM in the appropriate field on thePayPal form similar to the form shown below, and click the “Apply” button.
- Provide further information on your book once you sign up, and let the BookRooster folks know about any special scheduling parameters that you may have for your book.
- Be sure to get your order in as soon as possible, and no later than June 22, 2011.
