Readers’ Favorite

Readers’ Favorite gave Aluminum Leaves a 5-star rating. The reviewer said it was a fantasy “of majestic scale.” Overall, I’m pleased by the generous review, given by a reader who clearly “got” the story.

Readers Favorite exists to connect readers with books. It’s a business. They make their reviews available to the author for posting, they post them on their site and they will do an email push to 500,000 people.

Like many internet businesses, Readers’ Favorite offers services on a sliding scale from free to expensive. You can send your work to them and pay nothing, and your book goes into a pool that reviewers can draw from. They may review it. If they decide to review it, they have 90 days to do so. They only post 4-and-5-star reviews on their site, but they will send the writer a mini-critique of any review they do. If you are looking for a beta-reader and don’t have a writers group, this might be a good place to start. The site advertises that all their reviewers are writers.

You  can also pay $59 for a guaranteed review within two weeks. You are paying for a guaranteed review and for the timeframe, not a positive review. This model is like Kirkus Reviews, where payment is for the act of reviewing, not for a rating.

Your $59 also gets you the email push if you have a 4-or-5-star review. (There are some other internet things, like a “5-star badge” you can put on your website if you get a 5-star review, but I wasn’t terribly interested in that.)

Part of the $59 package gets you a press release written by them, which you can use. You can also pay them to send it out to about 800 sites. They are clear and honest in their write-up that it is unlikely the press release will inspire news outlets to call you and beg for an interview. What it will get you is Google’s attention for its search engine. I haven’t made up my mind yet about the press release. I’d do one myself, but I don’t have 800 contacts.

The best parts are the review, the link on their site and the email push. For me, that alone is worth the money.

They also offer a book contest, but I am wary of contests. I’d steer clear. The hype around the contest makes me skeptical and the entry fee is $99. That’s high. That’s too high. I’d take a hard pass.