New Review

I've been soliciting.

Not like that! No... a few months ago I happened across a post by a well-known blogger of "all aspects of writing, publishing and book promotion" suggesting how one might go about persuading one or more of the Amazon top x00 reviewers to review one's work.

Sounded good to me. Sounded worth a go. So I did. I trawled through the top 500 reviewers (this list changes regularly - we're talking those who were the top 500 last October) and found a couple of dozen who (a) accepted requests and (b) had biogs or existing reviews which suggested they might be interested in my book. I fired off the emails.

Surprisingly quickly, I had some replies. Positive ones. And in the fullness of time (it does, after all, take SOME time to read 90,000 words) a review appeared.

There was one request I sent out back in October that didn't result in a reply. But that was entirely expected, since those are his rules. It's Big Al, over at the Kindle Indie Author's review site "Big Al's Books & Pals".

The deal there is, you pick the reviewer who you think is most likely to be interested, fire off a request, and wait. They either pick up the request or they don't, but if they do a review will eventually turn up on that site. And for good measure they will also syndicate the review to the Amazon product page AND Goodreads. Cool!

And sure enough, just last week, Al's review of War of Nutrition was posted, giving it 4 stars. I particularly liked the bit where he says "[War of Nutrition] surpasses the typical thriller in characterization. Not only the protagonist, but many of the minor characters are fleshed out well beyond the norm, which gives rise to many sub-threads or stories". I was well chuffed with that.

You can read the full review here.