A good book reviewer is worth their weight in ink to authors in need of creating an online presense.  They are doing a great service, reading a book and then writing about their experience.  Some reviewers are gaining large followings using giveaways and other promotions to bring readers to their blogs.

I found Kathy and her blog; I’m a Readers not a Writer on Twitter @toobusyreading.  At her review blog she offers lots of giveaways to her readers.  I asked her how she started.

“When I first started doing giveaways I offered books I had read for giveaway and sent them out myself.  I got everything I read from the library or borrowed from friends.

Once my blog had grown I started contacting smaller publishers asking to review their books.  I would offer those for giveaway once I’d read them.  Then authors started coming to me offering their book for review and/or giveaway.   I then started contacting authors and asking them if they would like to have their book reviewed or do an interview & giveaway on my blog.

Books are coming at me faster than I can read them.  I wish I could read them all.  Even reading 250 books in a year I don’t put a dent in what I wish I could read.”

That’s a lot of books and a lot of work for a stay at home mom who confesses to reading one book every 1 ½ days.

But does she feel giving away books makes the authors’ time spent at her blog as successful?

“I’ve never really thought of giveaways as being successful or not successful.  If I help an author by exposing their book to new readers who are interested in reading it I would say that is a success.  If a book gets into the hands of a reader who loves it and shares their love of the book that’s even better.”

I would say she’s doing a pretty good job of spreading the word.  Her blog shows 198,560 page views.  She also has a widget to show visitors who else visited, from where and when they read the reviews Kathy has posted.  During my last visit which lasted about 10 minutes, eleven other fans stopped by.

How did she do it?

“My blog is not the norm.  I’ve only been blogging for 7 months.  I put a lot of time into my blog.

Most of my followers have come through blog hops and giveaway hops.  I started participating in hops several months after I started blogging and then began hosting giveaway hops in October.

I also use Good Reads to cross promote everything I do on my blog.

I’ve networked with other blogs for events like BIR2010 and donated items to other blogs when they are having a special event which also brings people to my blog.

My blog posts automatically post to twitter and I use twitter to tweet about contests on other blogs but other than that I’m not really savvy on Twitter.

I contact authors and publisher for interviews and giveaways.”

So you see, for a book reviewer who uses a blog to share their reviews it takes time and energy to create a following.

And it’s this kind of reviewer that Authors yearn for when circulating their books during their publicity rounds.

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