Dear Authors Who Request Reviews Themselves

Dear authors,

Let me start with how much I appreciate that you visit my blog and think highly enough of me to read your book. I’m certainly not a professional reviewer but I do my best to review all your books fairly and honestly. And that they get the attention they deserve.

I think you have an amazing and difficult job as an author. The business isn’t an easy one, especially if you are a minority author. So I understand that it is hard to keep track of how to do everything. But please, please think of how you send your review request. I’m more likely to be inclined to take on a request from someone who is polite than when I feel that I get an email that has been copied and pasted. And I am not the only one.

I have a name

Sending out an email that only starts with hi without my name feels like this is just a copied and paste email. As if there wasn’t enough interest or time to figure out my name. It isn’t hard to find. I use my real name everywhere. You can already find it in the sidebar. Please use it. You don’t have to ask me how I am or how my day was. But at least adress me as a person.

I am friendly, not your friend

Overal I think of myself as a friendly person and I am more then willing to have a chat with all. But don’t act like I am your friend in replies or in a review request, unless we have had personal exchanges. Don’t shorten my name.

Send me the title and the synopsis

If you want me to be interested in reading your book sending me the title and the synopsis (in your own words or the copy and paste synopsis from the back cover) is important. It is hard to be interested in a book when I just get an email with ‘Hi do you want to review my book?’ and a link.

Just to be clear, this author wrote a good review request. ❤

Don’t expect me to download your book from Amazon

If you want me to review your book don’t ask me to buy it. I don’t have a fund for my blog. I do it for free. Also expecting me to download the book from Amazon on the one day it is free does not work at all. You are expecting me to do all the work here. Plus, I might be away that one day and not have time to download something before a specific time.

Please make sure you have correct information

It is great to add in where you have heard of me. So if you found me through instagram that is fine. But don’t say things like that I post reviews on bookstagram. Because I do not. I post photos and I might mention if I like the book or not but I do not review them there. Best not to do those type of things.

After the review don’t send me an email to ask me to update or change things about my review

When it comes down to it, if you update your book on basis of reviews/feedback or if you update the cover, that is great. But I am not going to change my review. I will not change the cover because that is not the cover I had when I read the book. If I do reread the book, and sufficient time has passed, I would most likely just write a new blog about it. Do not send repeated emails about it as at some point we or I am likely to start ignoring you.

Finally

Please take some of the above in consideration when you email bloggers. We want to help. But we are people too. Sending out review requests to bloggers is apart of your job, often at the start of your career. You don’t send out emails like some that I’ve gotten when you are an employee at a business. So if you want to move forward, just make sure your emails sound professional like. They don’t have to be formal. But think of the image/idea you are sending of yourself.

And hey, it is a trial and error kind of thing too. I’m sure I didn’t sound as great in emails replies back the first time as I did now. But it is important to consider.

Kind regards and greetings,

Annemieke