How to review books for publishers

I was emailing back and forth with one of my fave self-published authors, and mentioned that I hadn't even turned on my Nook in months because I had a continuously-replenishing stack of hard copy books to review these days since a few publishers send them to me.

She asked what I have often been asked by other bibliophile friends-  how did I get hooked up doing that? (Often followed by "Do they pay you?" to which I always sadly reply - "No, unfortunately they won't let me make a paid career out of this.")

After I typed up my reply, she told me that it would make a great blog post. I decided I agreed so here it is:

I worked hard at it.

Wait... what? ;) Yep, it didn't get handed to me easily, and I am still thankful every time I get contacted, because I know that I'm part of a pretty great elite group of book bloggers/reviewers that gets asked to read books handpicked by publishers for review - and often before they are even available to the public.

So without further ado, here's my mostly unedited emailed response so that the rest of you, my lovely readers, can find yourself with a nice stack of free books to review. Enjoy!

"Basically, a friend told me about Goodreads – and from the first time I visited, it was love at first site. I started trying to rate every book I’ve ever read, though I didn’t have time to review all of them. I didn't  get very far, because I’ve read so many that I can’t remember all of them, but also because I discovered the Giveaways tab. At first, I applied for every single book just because I wanted a bigger chance of winning. I started winning left and right, so I started refining it. I also started reviewing every book I read, and posting the reviews both on Goodreads and my blog. After winning many books and writing many reviews, I started getting contacted by self-published authors, and then it feels like out of nowhere I got contacted by Harper. They had noticed that I had won many books and were wondering if I’d be interested in reviewing some of their new releases. Of course I said yes, and so they started including me on their email out to other reviewers where I could pick usually about 3 of their upcoming books to review.

I don’t remember, but I may have gotten contacted for the first time from a publisher after applying and making it pretty far into the Goodreads Independent Book Blogger Awards contest.

Anyway, somehow after I started reviewing for one publisher, I started getting contacted by others. Then one of the original gals that had contacted me for Harper moved to Penguin and asked if she could still send me ARCs to review, and I said yes!

Yep. That’s about it. Lol. It’s not terribly exciting, but it did take a bit of work to get there. "