Book publicist Ben Cameron has been in the game for twenty years, working with both traditional and self-published authors.

But he’s noticed a bigger change in the publishing world in the last five years than he has in the last fifteen. 

“That’s come down to the self-publishing revolution, and the revolution in ebooks,” Ben observes.

He recently talked to us about these changes — and what they might mean for self-publishing authors’ publicity games.

In this article, he offers his professional insights on what kinds of reviews are out there, how to find them, and how to get them. Let’s take a look at what he has to say.

TYPES OF REVIEWS

First up: the types of reviews out there that you can secure. As you might expect, the Internet’s revolutionized this quite dramatically, such that Ben now divides them into two categories: professional reviews, and “real people” reviews.

Professional reviews 

Professional reviews are reviewers paid by media companies to review books. Places like Kirkus Reviews, The New Yorker, and The Guardian are a few examples.

These tend to work best for literary or academic books — but their standing in the industry is so great that even just one of this type of review can make a big difference for any book.

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