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What to do if no one is reviewing your book on Book Country
Lucy Silag - Book Country Director
Posted: Friday, June 5, 2015 10:49 AM
Joined: 6/7/2013
Posts: 1356


It's such a big deal to post your work for review, so I would like to applaud you for taking the leap and workshopping on Book Country. Since you posted it for review, that must mean that you went ahead and reviewed another writer's work, so thank you for taking the time to do that as well.

As I get to know our members and the peer review behavior on the site, I'm learning that every member gets feedback in a different way here on Book Country. Some people's books are reviewed the day that they post them; for other books it can take a few weeks. Some books have no feedback at all. When a book isn't getting feedback after more than a week and the member is feeling frustrated about that, I tell them to do the following two things:

  • Make sure the book is attractive to other members on the site. If it doesn't have a cover, I ask the member to make one using the Book Country cover designer. I also send the member over to this blog post, written by a professional book jacket copywriter at Penguin, to learn how to tighten up their "About the Book" section. We've also got a post on other ways to attract members to your book on Book Country. Take some time to think about how to make your book as appealing as you can--the same way publishers do when they put a book in a store to attract readers.
  • The very best way to get your book reviewed is to get involved in the Book Country community. Give reviews to other writers and show them that you're a serious writer who wants to workshop together. Participate in the Discussion Boards and introduce your project on the Genre threads. It's also a good idea to start connecting to other writers whose work interests you. (Here are some tips for how to connect.) I do notice that our most active members--the ones who spend time looking at other writers' work and who thoughtfully contribute to discussions about reading and writing tend to be the ones who are getting the most feedback.