I finally finished my quest. Amazon’s top 10,000 reviewer list didn’t know what it was in for when it met me. I came, I saw, I conquered…well, not really that last one. More like I loitered. Or pestered. Yes, I definitely pestered. I wasn’t so much a conqueror as I was a pesterer, waiting to pounce on the next reviewer profile to upload. So how did it all turn out for me? Firstly, I want to reiterate my earlier post about running the gauntlet: I truly enjoyed ferreting out all those blogging sites and email addresses. Research has always appealed to me, and I’m perfectly happy rummaging through massive heaps of information in order to find a few precious useable nuggets. Yes, I’m the weirdo who actually likes searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack. That being said, the end result was not a very prolific one for me. I’m not sure if my experience was typical, but let’s break it down by doing the math. I didn’t religiously chart statistics, but I can dredge up a fair estimation. Out of 10,000 reviewers, I estimate 1000 were receptive to receiving book review requests, or 10% of the total. Of those, half were nixed from the get-go, either because they didn’t supply contact information, or their contact information was no longer valid (expired websites, blogs, etc.). My potential pool of reviewers then dropped to 500, or 5% of the total available. Of those, about half were eliminated because they were not interested in reviewing historical romance or self-published authors, and another round was jettisoned after taking into account those no longer accepting reviews due to overloaded TBR piles. And so the final count of blogs or individuals amenable to accepting self-published historical romance for review was about 100, or 1% of the top 10,000 reviewers on Amazon. Of those 1% I queried for an honest review, ¼ responded, and of those, another ¼ accepted my book for review. So there’s my experience soliciting Amazon reviewers. I started out with a pool of 10,000 and ended up with a narrow bottleneck of potentials. I fear that sounds ungrateful, but the exact opposite is true. Even though most reviews of my book won’t come out for several weeks yet, I’m extremely appreciative of those rare souls who are so willing to give of their free time, and merely for the pleasure of reading. Everyone who responded was polite and friendly, including those who declined, and that was very refreshing. In a world where social media interactions can sometimes leave much to be desired, my experience was a pleasant reminder of the many helpful, gracious people out there willing to help someone get her jumpstart. So, in summary, I didn’t really conquer, but I came and I saw! Hooray for me! And hooray for everyone I met along the way willing to put Clingstone in their TBR pile! You have my thanks, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts! On a separate note, I’ve added new Life Picks to my About page, so pop on over to check it out. There’s a harrowing piece about my encounter with a hideous serpent…
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Marti Ziegler
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