Monday, November 16, 2009

What Is An Influencer?

Let me take this opportunity to explain to you what an "influencer" is in the world of Christian fiction and books in general. And influencer is someone who reads a new book that is coming out by a particular author with the hope that the influencer will enjoy the book and give it a good review on several different venues to further the promotion of the book.

There are several ways to obtain a book. The author may ask for people who would like to do this for their new book and if so they will send you a free book for them to read and promote. Another way to obtain books is by winning them in a contest on book blogs, and these books are not necessarily expected to be promoted in any way. However, if the book is good I like to promote the book. If you have a blog and you can possibly qualify to get books directly from the publishers before they come out for the purpose of reading and reviewing them. I have not done this myself - but I would be willing to do so in the future.

A few weeks ago there was a lot of talk on the blogs about a new law saying you had to disclose that the books you reviewed were given to you for the sole purpose of reading, reviewing and promoting their book. Since that time I have heard that this does not apply to book blogs were books are reviewed. However, I've seen on several blogs a notice stating this fact. I have one myself at the bottom of my blog.

One reason you will probably never see a bad review on my blog is that if I do not like the book or think it is not well written I will not review it. There is no need to criticize another's work. There have been very few books that I have not enjoyed, but sometimes if you read a book from a different genre than you are used to reading you may give it a bad review simply because it is different and for this reason I would not want to dissuade a person from reading that book.

I have been reading since I was old enough to hold a book and read by myself. I love to read and of course I love to write and I am in the process of writing a cozy mystery in Christian fiction. I have a lot of work to do on the book so in the meantime I want to promote other authors in the Christian fiction world. It is hard for me to believe that after reading all these years I did not know about Christian fiction until I stumbled on it maybe six months ago. I knew right away this is how I wanted to rewrite my manuscript. I have been so excited about discovering Christian fiction that I have devoured as many books as I could. I want you and others to enjoy what I have enjoyed and help others discover Christian fiction. If I did not know it was available with all that I read I feel sure there are many others who are not aware of it. It is my goal to help make them aware. I hope you have enjoyed reading about the books I have read and some day pick up one of those books for yourself. As always, HAPPY READING!

1 comment:

  1. Hi Deborah,
    I enjoy being an influencer. Being exposed to so many great books is a blessing for me as a writer and I love to encourage authors and help get the word out about their books. It has really been a blessing to me to become a book reviewer. And it's not bad getting free books either!

    ReplyDelete