Publications and pro reviewers who will consider self-pub

[Guillermo Stitch]

Apologies in advance if the mods don't consider this worth its own thread. I have rummaged around and found interesting threads on reviews and marketing but nothing with this specific focus.

It's something I'm up against at the moment with a book I'm about to publish on July 1st. I've had about 20 reviews agreed by book bloggers (it remains to be seen how many of them come through but, encouragingly, a few already have).

But publications are another matter. A lot of them gleefully stipulate up front that they will not look at self-pubbed or vanity press books.

To get the ball rolling, SFCrowsnest seem to be open, in principle.

I've had one publication with guidelines that exclude self-pubbed make an exception for me, but I dont want to name them and annoy them before I've got my review! All going well though, I'll let people know.

Is there a pool of knowledge around here with regard to friendly publications?

 

[tinkerdan]

I think there have been several occasions, here in the forum, where people have shared links to reviewers and such--however I'm not sure how to dredge those up. They might need updating also.

There are some services that offer press releases that amount mostly to spam by fax to news agencies and I think that they get largely ignored and there are no guarantees and it can be rather costly to pay for the services. (I wouldn't recommend them--however I thought that a reasonable FYI as it could be helpful to know.)

Probably the best thing to do is publish and self promote hard for the first 6 weeks(especially if you are using mostly amazon)since new releases can get buried pretty fast. Then continue to self-promote and keep publishing work for visibility in the new release section. Those twenty some odd reviews should help some.

I think there are some writers out there who haven't done that much self promotion, but have a large enough body of work that they are getting regular incomes.

It always helps to write well.

I only have two books out and I can't claim a whole lot of sales though I've given away a few thousand copies.
I have flushed a finite amount into some forms of promotion, because I wasn't thinking self promotion when I started things. Some of that money was part of packages that gave me other services so it wasn't a painful loss; however, I wouldn't suggest putting too much money into having other people do work that you don't want to do(especially as respects work that is not guaranteed to have any result whatsoever) just because you don't want to do it.

 

[Guillermo Stitch]

Thanks for this, very interesting at the moment to get others' perspectives.

That "keep publishing work" advice for visibility and to build following etc, is unfortunately never going to apply to me. It takes me a very long time to comlpete a book. years, not months, and idon't see a series happening at any point. I don't doubt the advice is good - it's just that I'll never be in a position to take it.

As far as the self-promoting goes...yup, on that curve now.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I had a look at this when I debuted, and ended up giving it a miss - there are reviewers out there, but it will take an awful lot of work to find them. Even then, they are not working to your timescale - they might be open to submissions but not actually read it because they have too many books - else if they do read it, it might not be for many months.

There is also the added danger that these reviews might end up being filtered by Amazon at some point (note how I almost had all my reviews deleted by Amazon recently).

Personally I'd just suggest hanging around here and putting on your most cheerful face, be helpful where possible, and try to make note of which members may or may not be interested in your genre.

Additionally, putting up work in Critiques is a great way for people to get a flavour of your work - too many people skip that step then wonder why no one wants to take a risk buying their book. The ones who have done that - then revised and resubmitted for Critique - have tended to do better and get more attention IMO.

 

[Guillermo Stitch]

I'm definitely considering critique for future work - the horse has bolted on this current book.

Yes, my blood ran cold when I read what had happened to your reviews and I was relieved to see that the matter was resolved (totally? or has there been damage?).

Not having a firm grip on algorithms and not being likely to ever have a firm grip, I am expecting some attrition on the books reviews, but I hope a decent number of them will survive.