Magic Bullets to Getting Book Reviews (Plus Review Hint #Ten For Getting Them)

ANOTHER AUTHORS HELPING AUTHORS MARKETING TIP
Plus HINT #TEN

by TheNewBookReview Acquisition Coordinator, Lois W. Stern

"Reviews are directly linked to book sales on Amazon because that’s what drives their algorithms. The more reviews you have, the more people will see your book. The more people that see your book, the greater the chances are that someone will buy it, and therefore review it. You see where this is going, right? Due to Amazon’s algorithms, if you have less than 10 good reviews, your book will likely never be seen."

Jeniffer Thompson, Personal Branding Expert & Digital Marketing Strategist, San Diego, Ca.

Two things I know for sure: How important it is to get Amazon posted reviews and how hard it is to get them! So here are a couple of ideas I have tried to make it easier for potential reviewers:
http://www.tales2inspire.com


1.  On a time crunch? Aren’t we all! Suggest that potential reviewers read a specific portion of your book to get its flavor. (Maybe 35-50 pages). Honest, you don’t have to read the entire book to get a good feel for it. 

2. Try offering some discussion questions to help target several key points in your book. I have made it super easy for my readers by posting BOOK REVIEW DISCUSSION QUESTIONS at the end of each Tales2Inspire book. (Click here to view the Book Club Discussion Questions I added to the end of my Opal Collection book.)

3. And be sure to offer folks a FREE book in exchange for an honest review. (Ask that they post it within 30 days or they are likely to forget.)

Alex Phuong Reviews Carol Smallwood's Poetry

Title: Patterns
Subtitle: Moments in Time
Author: Carol Smallwood,. Cincinnati, Ohio
Genre: Poetry, 
2019, 103 pp., 
$19. 
Purchase on Amazon

Review by Alex Phuong originally for BookSmugglersDen

One of the most interesting features of life is patterns that exist all around the world.  Clever designs prepend artistic merit to an otherwise mundane life.  After all, life without vivacity is oftentimes monotonous.  Patterns help people connect with one another because of the universal and fundamental fact that everything is interconnected because of the diversity that defines the world and its inhabitants.  Therefore, Carol Smallwood's newest poetry collection, entitled, Patterns: Moments in Time, once again explores the sublime nature of reality that reveals how life can be truly extraordinary.

Smallwood organizes her poetic masterpieces with a prologue, three sections, and an epilogue that create a gestalt-like collection that proves that the entirety of her collection as a whole greater than the sum of its parts.  Within the prologue, Smallwood addresses how “Driving Into Town” offers the idea of embarking on the mystical journey known as life itself.  Life has been compared to traveling on a road that can be a bumpy ride metaphorically, but Smallwood suggests that reality can be like a cabaret, or as she puts it, “a cocktail party” (4).  The classiness of an elegant party compares life to an experience that must be felt to enjoy what life can offer any given person.  Therefore, Carol Smallwood immediately establishes her assertion that “moments in time” must be enjoyed since time is limited.

Smallwood reiterates the importance of time by acknowledging the cyclical nature of life.  Her poem entitled, “A Dawn Trio” reveals how life operates like clockwork.  Specifically, she capitalizes the phrases, “Dawn Comes” (1), “My Hands” (5), and “Every Morning” (17). The structure of this poem is similar to the doctrine of the Trinity because devout Christian believers believe that the purpose of life is serving with humility.  Even though the “Dawn Comes” (1) daily, human hands must perform good work to add significance to an otherwise bland existence.  The phrase “Every Morning” (17) emphasizes the fact that people who enjoy life will be able to “recall home” (24) since Earth itself is the only home.  This “Dawn Trio” figuratively creates the daily circadian lifestyle that defines human existence and emphasizes how there is beauty in every day even though all people encounter bad days.  Therefore, this powerful poem with a structured pattern suggests that life itself is beautiful no matter how bad life may seem.

The second part of this poetry collection, entitled, “In the Observing” demonstrates how people could observe patterns in both the natural world and their daily lives by simply looking around with their eyes.  Patterns do exist in the world, and sometimes these patterns exist just because they exist.  Specifically, the poem entitled “Carl Sagan Called Our Planet” openly exhibits one of the most puzzling questions about existence, which is, “what makes water blue?” (4). Smallwood then attempts to answer that question by reminding readers that young children might also ask, “why the sky's blue?” (6). This reply suggests that some patterns in the world might exist so that there is no need for an explanation.  Maybe patterns exist just because they do, and all of the patterns in the world help create decorative elegance within an otherwise harsh and painful existence.  Life can definitely be challenging, but big questions oftentimes have no easy answers, and should instead just be accepted for what it is (just like knowing life and loving life for what it is).

The third section and epilogue of Patterns: Moments in Time emphasize the eponymous phrase through symbolic poetry.  The third part is called, “Connections” and it contains poems that beautifully explore how patterns reveal the aestheticism within everything in the world and in life.  Specifically, the poem “Select Moments” is actually similar to another poetry collection by Carol Smallwood, which is called A Matter of Selection.  This beautiful poem contains the stanza "Surely if I stood tall as possible / Long enough, tried hard enough / there'd come some hints, some pattern? (18-20). The rhetorical question that concludes this poem directly relates to the importance of demonstrating sincere effort to live a meaningful life.  Life itself is a matter of choices, as explored in A Matter of Selection, but Carol Smallwood uses this stanza to reveal how people would sometimes pursue their dreams while also confronting the anxiety associated with what the future holds.  Sometimes choices lead to unintentional consequences, but that just shows how life is a process.  People might make poor choices sometimes, but Smallwood suggests that there is no need to fret over making mistakes because of patterns that result from cause and effect.  Therefore, causes and effects are essentially patterns that form from human behavior.  Such an insightful examination of the way people act within moments in time ultimately create the patterns that exist all around them as they make choices based on their own matters of selection.

Carol Smallwood is truly a profound poet.  Her previous poetry collections delve deep into what it means to be alive, which is what most writers hope to achieve when they create their own original works of written art.  Smallwood's poetry offers insight into the connections that people in have along with their relationships with the world around them, and ultimately the entire universe itself.  In Hubble's Shadow explores how people are compared to the unfathomable universe, and A Matter of Selection reveals how choices, both good and bad, really do determine the future.  Once again, Carol Smallwood examines how human behavior establish patterns based on decisions they make within moments in time.  Therefore, she has achieved fame as one of the most gifted and prolific authors in contemporary writing.  Through simplicity and profundity, Smallwood's poetry examines what it means to be alive with audacity.  Life itself is short anyways, so why not treasure moments in time?  Carol Smallwood once again writes poetry that will hopefully inspire readers to re-examine what truly is beautiful in the world.



MORE ABOUT THE BLOGGER, THIS BLOG AND ITS BENEFIT FOR WRITERS

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ) that covers 325 jam-packed pages covering everything from Amazon Vine to writing reviews for profit and promotion. Reviewers will have a special interest in the chapter on how to make reviewing pay, either as way to market their own books or as a career path--ethically!

This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Note: Participating authors and their publishers may request the social sharing image by Carolyn Wilhelm at no charge.  Please contact the designer at:  cwilhelm (at) thewiseowlfactory (dot) com. Provide the name of the book being reviewed and--if an image or headshot of the author --isn't already part of the badge, include it as an attachment. Wilhelm will send you the badge to use in your own Internet marketing. Give Wilhelm the link to this post, too! 

New Book Offer! And Lois's Hint # Two for Getting Them!

Author and Reviewer Alert! Free Review Service 

         

This is a regular service offered by Lois W. Stern that helps authors find interested reviewers for their books and helps reviewers find fascinating, published work to review. Watch for more of them along with some great hints for getting reviews. Scroll down to see one of Lois's How-To-Get-Great-Reviews hints! 

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Looking for some honest reviews for your book? Follow our posted guidelines to submit your book HERE.

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LOIS'S HINT #2 FOR GETTING REVIEWS:

“Think creatively. When a newspaper or radio station doesn’t have a regular feature that focuses on books, try to find a way around that.” 

Page 80 of Carolyn Howard-Johnson's How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally 

I recently sent a human interest story to our largest LI newspaper about a WWII hero who loved his pipe! This story has nothing at all to do with my Tales2Inspire books, but I was sure to end with a few words about Tales2Inspire and me as an author. Now I’m holding my breath to see if they will publish it. 

Lois W. Stern, Creator of Tales2Inspire®

               

Author and Reviewer Alert! Free Review Resource

This is a regular service offered by Lois W. Stern that helps authors find interested reviewers for their books and helps reviewers find fun, published work to review. Watch for more of them along with hints for getting reviews. Scroll down to see both a new book offering and Lois's first How-To-Get-Great-Reviews Hint! 

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You can get the book listed below FREE 
in exchange for an honest Amazon posted review.

TITLE: Super Spoons to the Rescue: A Math Measuring Story

NUMBER OF PAGES: 58 Pages

DESCRIPTION: This is a math story about spoon superheroes who help people measure ingredients for things like chocolate cakes. When their town is hit by a tornado, they help dispense the exact amount of medicines needed. They fly to the rescue as requested. This book also has worksheets and activity cards.

AUTHOR'S NAME: Carolyn Wilhelm
Illustrator: Oxana Cerra

E-MAIL: cwilhelm@thewiseowlfactory.com

FORMAT:3 PDFs, 3 of PAPERBACK BOOKS  (people can have both)

AGE/NTEREST LEVEL: Primary Grades 1-3 (Ages 6-9)

SHORTENED LINK: https://tinyurl.com/y495v5nc 

To get your copy of "Super Spoons" for review:

1. Email the author directly using her address above.
2. Commit to writing a review within 30 days.
3. Post your review on Amazon.
4. Give the author permission to post it on this New Book Review blog, credited to you with a link to your website or social network, of course.

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LOIS'S HINT #1 FOR GETTING REVIEWS:

You can make writing reviews for others' books work for the marketing of your own book. Do not worry. It is ethical. It is all part of traditional Publishing standards."

Page 245 of Carolyn Howard-Johnson's How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally 

Carolyn reminds us to include a byline and credit line or tag line as part of the review.

For example, I end each Amazon review I post with the words:

Lois W. Stern, Creator of Tales2Inspire®

     MORE ABOUT THE GUEST BLOGGER AND HER TALES2INSPIRE PROJECT

Lois W. Stern's Tales2Inspire was a kernel of an idea that started in 2012 and has grown to proportions even she didn’t dare to envision. Her innate curiosity about potentially fascinating human interest stories was the spark that ignited this idea. But it was the confused state of traditional publishing that propelled her forward. Tales2Inspire delivers exactly what it promises as both an ‘Authors Helping Authors’ project and a contest. Winners get their stories published in print, as e-books, and some even in video formats that their names, headshot photos, and mini-autobiographies. Then she spreads the word about the winners and their stories on her blogs, social media and monthly newsletter. FREE to enter, this is a great competition for talented newbies and seasoned authors alike.  Learn more about her an her projects here:

Tales2Inspire website: http://www.tales2inspire.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/tales2inspire2

Facebook page: www.facebook.com/tales2inspire

LinkedIn profile: http://tinyurl.com/odtw2wt

Get a FREE Tales2Inspire Sampler book at: www.tales2inspire.com/gift

Tales2Inspire trailer: https://youtu.be/FuDgXkYMHvo

Blog: http:://www.tales2inspire/blog

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MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Authors, readers, publishers, and reviewers may republish their favorite reviews of books they want to share with others. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read and love. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page and in a tab at the top of this blog's home page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites so it may be used a resource for most anyone in the publishing industry. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.