I was lucky enough to have my soon to be released first novel reviewed by Publisher's Weekly recently, and it was a positive one with an excellent summary that would give potential readers good idea of what to expect. My question is, how unusual it it to a) have your book selected for review and b) have the review be a good one? I didn't even know that my publisher (a small niche one) was submitting my novel at all to PW, so when someone sent me a link to the review I just about fell over. I'm just trying to put this in perspective as far as how excited I should actually be about it. I've gotten pumped about things before only to find out that everyone got a cookie, so I want to make sure I've got my feet firmly on the ground.
I just did a bit of Googling and from what I can tell, there's currently no clear answer to that question. Ten years ago, it was definitely a big deal to be reviewed by PW. Not that it isn't now—they're still the 800-pound gorilla in the arena of reviewers—but the immediate impact on sales (these days) is up for debate, mainly because bookstores are reassessing their whole hard cover/soft cover business model. But, one thing that likely hasn't changed (except perhaps in the size of the royalty cheque if a deal is struck) is this: producers read PW with an eye toward finding likely properties for making movies. And even if it's a movie-of-the-week rather than a theatrical release, that's still a decent sale. So, I'm going to say it's potentially a good thing, maybe even a very good thing. Congratulations!
It certainly won't hurt! And it isn't something that happens for every book, for sure. I've got over twenty books out (maybe closer to thirty?) and I think I've only had two or three reviews from PW. I can't say I saw a huge sales jump for those titles, but I guess it's always kind of hard to know what sales would have been in a different set of circumstances. (Like, maybe the books would have totally bombed without the reviews, so their average sales were actually a big review-related benefit. Who knows?)
Thank you both for your replies! My novel is m/m romance, so it's got a limited audience (I would totally be down for a movie deal though, lol). But people who like to read it are REALLY into it, and there's not a lot of long plotty ones out there like mine. So hopefully the PW review will help it to stand out a bit. It's got a 4.25 on Goodreads too, which should help. I'd love to see big sales, but honestly just realizing the dream of being published (no matter how small of a publishing house) is ridiculously exciting for me.
Less Than Three Press. They're small compared to the big boys like Dreamspinner and Riptide, but they've been so wonderful to work with!
.......lightbulb.....Male on Male Murder Mystery. Romance, intrigue, and suspense. It could be the gold mine people! ...AHEM...Congrats on the review, as far as reader..I`m not sure how many of them read PW but bookstores, movie producers, and etc do. Even if they don`t affect you over the review you get bragging rates, so that's a perk.
I've heard good things about them - and getting reviews for authors is one of their big jobs, so they're clearly doing something right! Congratulations - when's the book out?
So my publisher just casually mentioned in an email to me that USA Today requested an advance copy of my book. Aaaaanyone know how common that is? Because I'm kind of freaking out about it.
It`s not uncommon for them to do book reviews, and such as for how common is it for them to request advanced copies I don`t know, they probably saw the review in PW and thought hmmm let`s look into that. Which could be a very positive trend for you if that keeps up, especially if that train of thought goes into the readers mind. Getting a good review in USA Today probably would increase sales a bit, big magazine wide circulatnatoin and all.
