The Thing About Blogging for Books…

July 31, 2014     erinbook     Feature, The Thing About...

A lot of publishers have different programs available for bloggers to get books for review. Some bloggers have a difficult time getting up the courage to contact publishers directly for review copies myself included. For us, there are programs like Blogging For Books.

 

What is Blogging For Books? Well this is from their website:
Blogging for Books is brought to you by the friendly folks at The Crown Publishing Group. This program was designed for one purpose: Give out free books to bloggers in exchange for an honest review.
 
It’s a win/win really. Bloggers get free books (who doesn’t love a free book!) and The Crown Publishing Group gets bloggers talking about our books (we love it when people buzz about our books!).
 
For more info about the Blogging for Books program check out our FAQ page.
 
It’s pretty simple. You sign up for an account and choose your first book. It takes a little over a week for your book to arrive. Once you’ve finished with the book, it’s yours! Put up your review on your blog and fill in the review form on the Blogging For Books website. Then you may request your next book.
Note: Most of the books in the program right now are adult, not YA (And I highly recommend requesting Dear Luke, We Need To Talk. -Darth by John Moe. I laughed all the way through).
Do…
 
1. Review the book you request. That is the entire point of the program, let’s not cheat the system, ok? Besides, you cannot request a new book until you review the last one.
 
2. Look at all the categories for available books, you never know what you will find. 
 
3. Be open to new things. Sometimes you may not find something you think you’ll love right away, give something a chance. I’ve found some really cool books.
 
 
Give the program a shot!
Keep Reading,

 

5 responses to “The Thing About Blogging for Books…

  1. Despite the fact that I'm a book blogger who has been reviewing fooooorrrrevvver (which basically just means I'm old, lol), I completely understand where you're coming from and understand what you mean when you say it's hard to get the proverbial foot in the book blogging door with publishers. You wrote a very nice post here with good, solid advice.

    That said, I would add the following: pick and choose the books you review with originality in mind. Don't review the same books everyone else is (utterly boring, right?). Is there a hot book right now? Look for that author's backlist and grab it from the library and review THOSE books. Try to stay away from self-published authors (you don't need that headache….trust me). Editorials, editorials, editorials — seriously. There are about 10,000 book review blogs with nothing but book reviews every single post. Reader induced coma. You'll never stand out. Networking (of course). You have your own genre that you love, but network outside your genre. You never know when a contact will pay off. And this most of all: don't feel like you need to be reviewing the latest and greatest ARCs. I know it feels like all the blogs are doing that. And some of them are. But the "flash blogs" (as some of us like to call them) are the ones who are obsessed with doing nothing but getting their hands on every arc they can. Uh, okay. Now what? It doesn't do them any good if no one is reading their blog, lol. And reviewing the "hottest" arc isn't going to get them readers because tons of bloggers are reviewing the "hottest" arc. Gah. So….make the blog solid first. Establish your base. Find your blogging voice. And the arcs will come. And then you'll find that you won't need Blogging for Books because you'll find yourself on publisher's email lists and books arriving on your doorstep and/or on the auto approval list at NetGalley and Edelweiss, lol.

    Whew. Okay, this turned out way longer than I intended it to. Sorry!!! It's just that I looked a little through your blog and I liked it — and that doesn't happen too often these days (both the looking at a new book blog or liking what I see, ha ha….I told you I was an old crotchedy book blogger…..pffft!). Ohhhh, and what I really meant to write when I started was this: the Crown program is meh…try Penguin's First to Read program if you haven't yet. It's way better, I think (no prompts to do all the social media crap, lol).

    • All excellent points. I'm also part of First to Read (and I'm doing that post next so if you have dos and don'ts for that program then let me know). I like to try and mix old and new books on here, like you said it's not all about the hot new thing. I can't imagine just doing book reviews, I'd get so burnt out that way.

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