An Unexpected Turn On BookSirens

An Unexpected Turn is now available for free to reviewers on BookSirens.

If you aren’t aware of BookSirens, it is a site similar to NetGalley, but not nearly as large. It also focuses on both the reviewers and the books. From what I’ve been able to see so far (and I’m REALLY new at it), most of the books offered are indie or small press.

For book bloggers/reviewers, once you establish an account, you can get review copies to read for free. It also allows you to see a stats breakdown for what you’ve read and where you fall in your reading habits if you tie into your Goodreads account. These stats and the info you put into your profile also helps authors/publishers find you to invite you to read books you might like. You can see mine here for an example.

For authors or publishers, you can list your book for a small fee and it becomes available to potential reviewers to download. This is a paid service in that you pay that initial listing fee and then another small fee per download, but the reviewers themselves are not paid. You also have complete control over the total amount of downloads when you set your book up (and can change once it is there) allowing you to control the total amount you are willing to spend. Your book is then available for a 3 month period (at least at the time of this posting) for those potential reviewers. Oh, BTW… you don’t pay for the downloads per reader when you have a reader you’ve invited to review your book download it through the link BookSirens provides the author.

Since my book has JUST gone live, I don’t have any feedback either way on how successful this is as a promotional investment, but I will be writing a follow up when this is all said and done. In comparison to other options I’ve looked at, this seems to be very reasonably priced for this type of service, so I’m hopeful.