How to become a Book Reviewer
Becoming a book reviewer is easier than ever before, but becoming a good book reviewer is harder than ever. Along came sites like Blogger and Wordpress giving anyone the ability write their thoughts down for the world to read. Now anyone who wants to start a review blog can do so in less than 5 minutes. This is great for you and also bad. You can start your book review blog, but might have some trouble becoming a well-known book reviewer. Good news though, you can still do it and do it well.
First, realize some things. It is going to take you over a year to get known. Not popular, but just known among blogs. Faster if you work super hard, but don’t put your expectations too high. It isn’t easy and requires some hard work. You might be met with disappointment and hard times, but mostly you get to read lots of free books and have fun.
Okay, so now you are prepared mentally. Let’s get the physical space ready. You need a blog. There’s three ways you can do this: semi-pro, pro, or for someone else.
Semi-pro is just by starting a blog on blogger.com, wordpress.com, or tumblr.com. It is super easy to set-up and get writing your reviews. You can put up advertising on the site and also gain subscribers for newsletters and postings. It is a really easy and useful to work with. You don’t have control over your work and can’t expand in the future if you want to add reviewers once the books start piling up.
Professional is getting your own book review site to be a book reviewer. This isn’t easy and might put you out some cash depending on your skills. You need to get your own URL and find a web server host. I recommend bluehost.com (good price and quality help, but shop around too cheap isn’t good and too expensive isn’t good either). If you can setup a blog on the URL yourself, do it. Otherwise I recommend hiring someone from elance.com or guru.com ($300-1000) to make the website professional for you. This will let you look good and have an awesome website. Get your site setup for advertising (Adsense is an easy setup for this) and ready for your reviews. Professional lets you bring some money in, eventually, and also learn to promote your site. You need to learn about SEO if you are interested in this route and social media promoting. I’d say this is more of a business model than anything, so prepare yourself for a long road, but it is something you can do part-time. You aren’t going to make any money for the first few years, just like any business so just keep working hard.
You can be a book reviewer on someone else’s blog. This is a great way to build a portfolio and following so you can start applying for newspapers and magazine book reviewing publications. You get some free books and eventually get paid. Good luck, it is a hard and fun route too.
So no matter where you review there is a system to become a good book reviewer. Read, write, promote, rinse and repeat. This is the system to make a name for yourself and have fun connecting with other readers. Read a book and take notes. You should write engaging, honest, interesting, and fun book reviews. Then promote that book review to the author, other readers, blogs who wrote a review about the same book, Facebook, Twitter, and anyone else who will listen. Then do it again. Remember to have fun even though it is a long road ahead and become a book reviewer that writes great reviews.
