By Electra Nanou | www.makeuseof.com
The success of your creative writing career goes hand-in-hand with readers’ reactions to your work, especially what they say about it and how they rate it. While the quality of your book, story, or poem can ensure positive reactions, you can also take steps to collect those all-important reviews.
Here are preparations you should make and strategies you can follow before and after your book launches.
- Prepare Your Book’s Pitch, Blurb, and Synopsis
To get reviews, you first need to convince people to read your work. This means coming up with a great pitch and blurb, if not a synopsis as some reviewers might ask for one.
It helps if you write these beforehand and adapt them as necessary. Browse note-taking apps like Notion and OneNote to find the best one for the job and prepare your blurb and synopsis.
They need to highlight, powerfully but concisely, what makes this book special and why readers should care about it. Think about its key themes, protagonist, and popular literature to compare it to.
The blurb and synopsis are good for book review services where you need to draw the eye of users. But how well you know your own work also influences the wording and effectiveness of any pitches you make.
The process isn’t that different from cold pitching your way to career success. You research target readers to find those that accept your genre and to check whether they already have instructions for submitting review requests.
Then, you reach out with a cover letter that contains your pitch, customized to spark the interest of each reader.