Plug your self-published book with reviews from Amazon

How to get your self-published book reviewed. Helps if you are on Amazon, first. For me, I'll need to create a hardcopy of the basic book through Lulu.com, then pay them to promote it with an ISBN, etc.

Plug Your Book: Book reviews can establish credibility for your self-published book: "What if I contacted a whole lot more people who might review my book? In exploring Amazon's book-review system, I had noticed that a list of 'top reviewers' was maintained on Amazon's site. The top reviewers are ranked according to how many 'helpful votes' they receive from other shoppers who read their book reviews on Amazon. I began contacting these Amazon 'top reviewers,' using the same method described above. Again, I was a bit selective on who I contacted. I scanned the recent reviews, and if a person tended to give negative, harsh reviews most of the time, I left them off my list. I didn't need anybody to trash my book simply because they relished dishing out criticism. And many of the Amazon top reviewers weren't appropriate for my book (nonfiction how-to) because they reviewed only fiction, movies or music.

So of the top 500 Amazon reviewers, I contacted about 300 where I believed there was a chance they might be interested in reading and reviewing my book. I received a response from about 40 of those folks, and it's resulted in about 25 positive reviews on Amazon's site so far.

This effort involved about three days of very tedious work, plus the expense of mailing complimentary copies to the people who responded. Was it worth it? You betcha. It got me the best kind of advertising for a book: free advertising."