Get Free Books You Want to Read As a Book Reviewer!
A Guide to Getting Started as a Book Reviewer.
This post is the latest one in my paid series "How to Read Voraciously and Build a Personal Library Without Breaking the Bank." Here are the previous posts:
· (Part One) This Habit Can Save You Hundreds of Dollars on Books!
· (Part Two) Mindful Practices of Book Buying
· (Part Three) Being Generous in Our Bookbuying Habits
· (Part Four) How to Make the Most of Your Local Library
· (Part Five) The Joy of Library Book Sales!
· (Part Six) Audiobook Deals ... And Where to Find Them
· (Part Seven) Secrets to building an ebook library
· (Part Eight) A Guide to The Hunt for Used Book Bargains
NOTE: This series will be drawing to a close soon. There will be at least one more post, but we will be announcing new perks for paid subscribers very soon – including probably another series of posts for paid subscribers only. Stay tuned for news about these perks!
If you love getting free books, if you like to write, and if you have more free time on your hands than you have money for book buying, book reviewing is a great way to get copies of some of the books you want to read!
Publishers often will send a free review copy of a new book to a reviewer who is willing to write about the book. In this post, I will explore what book reviewing is and how to get started with it, including how to get publishers to send you free books to review.
What is a Book Review?
Although they share some traits in common, the sort of book review that I’m discussing here differs significantly from the customer review of a book that one might leave on Goodreads or Amazon. Generally, a book review will be longer than a customer review and will spend more time introducing the book (and in some cases, the book’s author) and telling the reader what it is. Like the customer review, it will also contain some reflection of the writer’s thoughts about the book. Grammarly has a pretty helpful guide on what a book review is and how to write one. Here’s their concise definition of what a book review is:
Book reviews on blogs and in magazines often serve to tell readers what to expect from a book so they can decide whether they’re interested in reading it. This type of book review gives readers a preview of a book’s content, themes, and storyline.
Grammarly also offers this helpful image for the would-be book reviewer:
Think of your book review as a conversation with a friend: You want to share your opinion and insights without giving everything away. Don’t spoil the book’s ending or its surprises, but do discuss how effectively you think the writing navigated its literary elements—such as plot, theme, and conflict—throughout the text. (emphasis added)
I’d take Grammarly’s suggestion of a book review as a conversation, a step farther. Think of it not only as a conversation with a friend, but also a conversation with the author, and perhaps even as a conversation with the content of the book.
Building a Portfolio of Reviews
When you start out as a book reviewer, you will have to provide your own copies of the books you are reviewing. You can buy them if you want, but getting new-ish books from your local library is a much more cost-effective way to start reviewing. Eventually, you’ll have a portfolio of reviews that you have written that you can provide to publishers when you ask if they could send you a review copy of a particular book. Publishers want some assurance that the cost of a review copy and shipping it to you will be offset by your review actually being read by people who might be inspired to buy the book. Getting your reviews published by recognized periodicals or websites will help publishers get their assurance faster than if you are just publishing your own reviews on your personal website or social media channel. If your portfolio primarily contains reviews that you have published yourself, a publisher may also want to see numbers associated with them: how many pageviews has a review gotten on your website / Substack, or how many people did your video review on Reels or TikTok reach (and how much did users on that social media platform interact with it – e.g., likes and shares)? If you have a Substack, blog, or website, you can keep a digital version of your portfolio there with links to reviews that you have done. If you have written many reviews, you might only highlight the most significant ones in this digital version of your portfolio, ones that were published by highly recognized publications or ones you published that got significant traction on your website or on social media.
Many book reviewers, including myself, write both reviews that are self-published and reviews that are published by an established media outlet. We will examine the ins and out of both of these approaches below…