In March earlier this year, BookBlitzer.com was released to provide an affordable mechanism for authors to have their books reviewed in an inexpensive, timely fashion. Authors could name their price for reviews and reviewers would be paid according to their book-reviews.
However, after several months of maintaining the site, it’s become clear that the paid-review services are not effective for authors or reviewers. Therefore, as of January 15, 2012, the review mechanism of BookBlitzer.com will be simplified into a free-review system.
The 5-Step Review system of confirmations and approvals/rejections will be changed over to the following 3-Step system:
- Request a Review
A Reviewer can send a review request to an Author from the Books page, or an Author can send a request to a Reviewer to review one of their books (from the Reviewers page). Once the request is accepted, the review process begins. - Begin the Review
To begin a review, the Reviewer selects by what format they would like to review the book. We recommend uploading your book to Smashwords so your book is available in any format for the reviewers, and then providing a Smashwords Coupon Code for 100% of the price so the reviewers don’t have to purchase the book to review it. - Post the Review
After the review is completed, the Reviewer then posts the review to the external site specified by the Author (such as Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.com) or other sites.
For authors, the changes mean that there will no longer be a review-approval/rejection process, and you will no longer be paying for reviews. Your eBooks/coupon-codes will still be secured in the site, so only the reviewers you allow to review your books will be able to access them.
For reviewers, the changes mean that you will no longer be paid for reviews. However, there is still incentive to read and review books on the site since the books are provided in exchange for reviews.
IMPORTANT: For any reviews still in progress after the upgrade date (January 15, 2012), if the review has been approved by the author, the reviewers will still be paid and the authors will still be billed for those reviews. For any reviews still in progress (not yet completed), those will be converted over to free-reviews – so please have your reviews finished by that date. If there are delays/discrepancies between when the review is completed and when the author approves the review, those reviews will be handled on a case-by-case basis.
It’s my hope that these changes will not be too upsetting to the current authors or reviewers and that they’ll pave the way for the site’s user/book base to grow more quickly.
If you have any questions about these changes, please contact me (Chris) directly through the website’s “Contact Us” form.
Thank you for using BookBlitzer.com!
Being Refactored 