Reviews are the lifeblood of the book business (of course, after the books themselves). I am going to share in a moment a cool way that you can get free books and help out authors simultaneously. But first, let’s talk for a moment about why reviews are so important to book buyers. In simplest terms, reviews provide a form of “social proof” which is a fancy word for the credibility that comes from something getting recommended to you by someone else. The most effective reviews today are those from readers that you find at sites like Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes and Noble, or here on LinkedIn. Fortunately, over 50 people have provided reviews of my book Back to the Futures on Amazon, and two others have appeared on LinkedIn by Mark Shore and Christopher Bobin. I sincerely appreciate every person who has taken the time to write a review. If you have read Back to the Futures but have not yet posted a review, I hope you will consider doing so. It means so much to an author!
Now about that free book thing. There is a really cool site called NetGalley where you can sign up as a member (free!) and then download any available ebook or pdf version of a book (free!). What’s the catch you say? It isn’t required, but highly encouraged, that you write a review of the books you download from the NetGalley site. Authors, like myself, pay a fairly hefty sum to post books on NetGalley with the hope that members will download the book and review it. I know it sounds gimmicky but it works, and the site has become an important “proving ground” for new books, especially from indie authors.
With that background, I hope you will consider becoming a member of NetGalley and review my book Back to the Futures. You can get a free ebook version and access to thousands of other new books for just a little work. For free. Here is a link to the NetGalley home page where you can sign up to be a member and here is the direct NetGalley link for Back the Futures.
Hope you will check it out. Thanks!
Laurence J. Norton Chair of Agricultural Marketing
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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