We love authors. We want to help you sell more books. That’s why we offer editorial submissions: so that authors without a marketing budget can still get the word out about their books.

However, we can’t feature every book that comes through our editorial submissions. Here’s how to maximize your chances of being featured.

 

1. Get reviewed on Amazon.

A book with even one review looks better than a book with none. We do sometimes feature books with no reviews, but not as often. We want to provide readers with high-quality ebooks, and Amazon reviews are a great way for us to figure out if our readers will like the book. Send free copies to your friends, but tell them to be honest. Three 5-star reviews that are overly glowing and clearly biased aren’t helping your case, and will make readers skeptical.

 

2. Submit your book at least one week before your promotion.

We schedule our content calendars about a week in advance. If you tell us about your book a day before it goes free, our calendar will already be full and we won’t be able to feature your book. Fill out the form in advance to make sure it doesn’t slip through the cracks.

 

3. Have an engaging cover.

We put most of the books from our editorial submissions into ’round-up’ posts (like this one), which feature multiple books in the same genre. Readers don’t have a book description to rely on – they’re clicking on covers that look good to them. We want to provide content that readers will love – and books that readers will download. As cliche as it might be, people do judge books by their covers. Make sure yours is good. Not only will it increase your chances of being featured, it just might boost your downloads and sales.

 

4. Categorize your book broadly (without being inaccurate).

As stated in #3, we usually put our editorial picks into round-up posts organized by genre. Pick one genre that you think represents your book best. Maybe your books is a thriller, but has some SciFi and Fantasy woven in. If it’s primarily a thriller, put ‘Thriller’ in the genre classification. We still want to know that it’s a bit a SciFi and a bit of a Fantasy, so put that in the ‘other info’ section. Clear genres save us time, which means your book is more likely to get included.

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Ricci Wolman is founder and CEO of Written Word Media, whose mission is to empower authors to reach their audience and sell more books. Ricci started Freebooksy, Written Word’s first book promotion site, in 2012 to help her mom, an author, publish and market her book. Ricci has over 10 years of experience building online audiences. She is a data geek, a book lover and a mom. She also holds an MBA from Harvard University.