Words: 1284
Time to read: 7 minutes

Since I’m going to be releasing A Heartache for Christmas soon, I’ve been thinking about ARC teams (or street teams as some authors call them). I have to admit in my years of publishing, I wasn’t doing this right, and take this blogpost with a grain of salt because I’m still not. One of the things I did wrong was sub-genre hop, and it’s really difficult to build a review team from scratch if you do that. Think about it–you draw in your advanced review readers with a sweet (fade to black) small town romance, and then the next book you write is a dirty motorcycle club. You’re going to tell me that some romance readers will read anything if it has an HEA, and okay, maybe. But maybe you like writing sci-fi and then scooch over to YA dystopian. The point is, a lot of readers read one thing and your book has to sound pretty enticing for them to stray. So if you start out with billionaire romance and then change your genre to mafia, you probably will have some that will follow you because they aren’t too different, but like my billionaires to rockstars, you might have some that drop off.

I’ve gotten great requests for all my billionaire books on Booksprout, but the second I moved to rockstars, the number of requests went down by half. I’ve talked about that before, and it will be interesting when I go back to billionaire with my Christmas novel to see of those requests go up again.

The second thing I did wrong was not think about reviews at all until the book was published, and I made that mistake with my duet, not putting them on Booksprout before they were live. They sell the least out of all my books now, and I’m pretty convinced that it’s because they don’t have any reviews. That duet is a year and a half old, so at this point, I’m not sure what I can do about it. I gave away 950 copies of Captivated by Her in August of this year during a promotion and it yielded one review. I actually don’t know why I saw it–I don’t hunt for reviews–but it made me happy she liked it at least.

So, of course, I want reviews before my book goes live and with the exception of my rockstars, (their loss as they are selling well) I’ve had good results building a street team of sorts on Booksprout.

I do give away ARCs, and I use Bookfunnel to distribute them, which brings me to the subject of today’s blog post–where do I distribute them and how do I choose?

I have to admit, I don’t like the thought of review forms. I’ve never created one for people to fill out, and I’ve never filled one out. I’ve heard people mention creating them, and for the purpose of this blogpost, I looked up a few to see what in the world people are putting in them. (You can find some if you look at these Google search results.) I wasn’t sure I liked what I found… authors asking where the readers were going to leave the review, links to their social media accounts (for proof that maybe readers are active online?), how old they were…one author asked her readers if they were going to rate the book three stars or fewer to wait until after the launch week to do so. Another added the warning that just because a reader asked doesn’t mean that would ensure she got a copy. I mean, I get it. Reviews are tremendously helpful, but as a reader who is giving my time to an author, all those forms and questions turned me off.

We forget that when we ask readers to help us like that, we are asking them for a lot of time. A lot. And as someone who is going to be giving someone ten plus hours of my time, the last thing I need is to feel insulted before I even open my Kindle.

Have authors forgotten books are free everywhere? Every day? And that readers aren’t obligated to review? Like, ever?

I suppose that is part of what building an ARC team is–you want readers to want to read and review YOUR books, but I don’t think you need a form and to quiz your readers before they even have your book in their hands.

Where do I put the link when I upload my book to Bookfunnel? All the usual places I suppose: my FB author page, Twitter (I still have a few friends on there who will grab it), Instagram, and my newsletter. I don’t make unlimited copies free–I set the limit at about 30, and first come are first served. My standalones tend to go quicker because there’s no monetary commitment to read other books. That’s fine, though I am trying to build my brand on being in KU, so all my readers should know by now that if they get the first one for free during a promo they have access to the other ones with their subscription.

Between Booksprout and my ARCs I post elsewhere, my books tend to release with around fifty reviews. My rockstars still haven’t even reached twenty a piece, but that’s okay. It hasn’t hurt them–they’ve made up most of my royalties since they’ve been published.

Maybe my nonchalance is surprising, or maybe if you’ve read my blog for a while, you’ll think it’s par for the course with me. I just don’t make a big deal about things, leave a review if you want, if you don’t, whatever. I’m not watermarking my ARCs either. My books have ended up on pirate sites and that has nothing to do with ARCs, watermarked or not.

Perhaps if I was more strict about who would get a review copy, i would have built a better team by now, or a team at all, but authors and reviewers have a shaky relationship, mostly due to authors freaking out publicly over bad reviews or responding to reviewers when they shouldn’t be. Reviewer spaces are not for authors! I don’t want readers to think there is going to be some kind of backlash if they don’t review or don’t like the book. There are billions of people in the world, and if a handful of readers don’t like what I’m writing, I don’t care. There are books I’ve read I don’t like, so I really don’t understand why authors throw tantrums online. I want to put a vibe out there that I don’t take myself or my books that seriously because if you have a chip on your shoulder, it will show and you’ll get a reputation as an author who can’t handle negative feedback. If you start earning a reputation for that, you’ll stop getting good feedback, too. A gracious, “thanks for trying it!” if you’re tagged in a negative review can go a long way, and maybe that person will read the next thing you write and like that.

Anyway, I understand the purpose of an ARC form, but I don’t like the feelings I get thinking about creating one for my own books. Booksprout has been working well for me (damaged rockstars aside) and even though my newsletter list was built on a freebie, there are some who do open my emails, click on links, and download ARCs.

We all want readers to like our stuff, but as authors, we need to give readers the freedom to dislike our work, too. What do you think of ARC forms? Have you created one for a new release? How did it work for you? Let me know!