From the Booking Desk:
The wonderful Hank Phillippi Ryan recently asked me to submit a guest post for the new industry blog she is working with – Career Authors. This will be of particular interest to authors who are looking to pitch their novels to book review blogs in the future, but anyone interested in the behind the scenes action at their favorite book blogs may find it interesting.
Just follow this link over to this excellent and informative new industry blog:
WANT YOUR BOOK BLOGGED? HERE’S HOW!
I didn’t see anywhere to comment on your blog post on the Career Authors website, so I’m commenting here. Your post is excellent, and I hope plenty of authors — and even more importantly, their publicists — take note. Basically, whenever an author asks a blogger to review his/her book, that author is asking the blogger to spend at least TWELVE HOURS (eight hours reading, four hours writing — at least that’s what I spend) of unpaid time. That’s a pretty big ask, and authors need to recognize that if someone is kind enough to do that, some reciprocation, or least polite acknowledgment, is in order. When I post a book review on my blog, it’s because I feel strongly about a book and want to share my enthusiasm with my readers. My reviews are well-written and thoughtful, and I am offended when authors and/or their publishers don’t share them. Publicists at publishing companies are young, inexperienced, and overworked, I know, but they’re missing lots of opportunities when they fail to recognize the efforts of serious book bloggers.
Thank you Ann. As I understand it, Career Authors is intended to be a quick stop for followers each day, so the articles are kept short and there is no comment engagement. I do thank you for commenting here and will say that there is sometimes more engagement on Career Author posts on their FB page.
All that said, book bloggers and their value to the industry continue to grow with each year – but there is still a ways to go. Hopefully posts like mine will be seen by the “right” folks and that respect will continue to florish. Organizations like Mystery Writers of America, who in 2017 awarded Dru Ann Love (www.drusbookmusings) and will award me (in 2018) the Raven Award are just one example of industry professionals who see and value the contributions of book bloggers everywhere (in their case, crime fiction related, of course). But we must also understand that for the most part, authors are not trained in social media, so in many cases they don’t know/understand what is expected of them on that front. Articles like mine are intended to guide them to the best practices. Some will listen, others will not. Publicists are another story – and they seem to fall into two categories: excellent and not. All we can do is continue to put out quality content consistently. That is all we really have control over.
Great post, Kristopher! Thank you!
Thanks Sherry.