Some say reviewers are the lifeblood of publishing these days. It’s the way “word-of-mouth” happens, the way books get sold, and there are many bloggers and book reviewers out there who do unpaid book reviews all the time. So why might you want to fork over your hard-earned money to get an Editorial Review?

 

You Get a Complete Review

With book reviewers, you’re gambling that the reader will say something nice about your book, even if they don’t like it. Hoping that they’ll note the positives and not be blinded by personal taste where genre, characters, or plot is concerned. With an editorial review, you’re hiring a professional who is trained to set aside one’s personal bias and write about your book: the good, the bad, and how it compares to the expectations of the genre you write in.

 

You Get Marketing Quotes

If you pick up a book published by a “big” publishing house and look at the cover, front and back, you’ll usually find “money quotes”–reasons why someone might enjoy your story. Editorial reviewers are there to give authors these sorts of quotes as part of the journalistic style, with no “I thought” or “I felt” getting in the way. You can then take these quotes and put them on your website or in your marketing material, in general, without it having to be you making the statements.

 

You Get Constructive Comments from a Professional.

Not every editorial review service will offer this, but most strive to share the positives and the negatives with potential readers, which helps reassure your audience that the piece wasn’t written by your marketing manager. People want to know what they might not like so they can go into the experience “forewarned,” and editorial reviews provide that without lashing out at you, the author, for having such negatives there in the first place.

 

You Get Positives…With the Reasons Behind Them

Book reviewers often have a tendency to gush about what they like: which characters they adored, the prose, the swoon-worthy cover, etc. Editorial reviewers take the “I” out entirely, so when they say “This was good,” they’ll go on to tell potential readers why and how, without spoiling the story. So whether your descriptions shine or your characters are delightful, the editorial reviewers will share that fact with your reader in a simple, easy-to-read format without all the gushing and memes.

 

You get an Unbiased Review

Some might worry that, with money in the equation, there’s no way to ensure a neutral opinion, but editorial reviewers are paid for the article itself, not for the author-centered experience. So they’re more like the staff at a local newspaper or a nonfiction magazine than a marketing team. They have nothing to lose by writing about the negatives (since they don’t know you and have never had any direct contact with you, whatsoever), and they have nothing to gain by trashing your book. They’re paid to be honest and to write their review up to the standards of the company they work with…and that’s what they do.

Interested in receiving an Editorial Review for your fiction or non-fiction book? Check out our Editorial Review services.