Following up on my earlier post which garnered several emails, one question that seems to come up again and again is which blogs should authors and marketing reps be focused on providing ARCs to. From the PR perspective, you have a limited number of ARCs and want to get the most bang for your buck - so sending books out to a site that doesn't have an active readership is not a good idea. But if you do send out your ARCs to sites that you think are solid choices and don't see a lot of response then authors might wonder just why you picked those sites - and maybe missed out on some that are smaller but would have reviewed the book and at least gotten the word out to a few people as opposed to no one.
And then there's people like me who publish a post that says I request books and never get them so it's totally not my fault.
The thing about the lit blogosphere is that it is not a science. There is no list of 10 top lit blogs that every book needs to be sent to and can guarantee you coverage that will rocket your book to the top of the lists. It just doesn't work that way. I would argue though that the same is true of the rest of the literary world. With the exception of being on Oprah, there is no guarantee of anyplace that will make you the next Stephen King; even a positive review in the NYT won't make you a bestseller. What you have to get is buzz - lots of positive mentions in lots of different venues and if you are writing a YA or MG novel in particular that is not an easy thing. It's especially tough when critical space is given over to big names who don't need the exposure (did the last Harry Potter novel really need to be reviewed in dozens of newspapers and magazines?) or celebrity authors whose writing skill is dubious at best and whose sales will always be more about the author's name then the book itself. It's a very frustrating puzzle: you wrote a book and you got it published and now you want people to buy it. Where do you go on the blogosphere to get some attention?
My advice is that first you need to be thinking about this ages before your book comes out and you start panicking. You need to take a bit of time and see just what is out there in terms of lit blogs and sites that cater to your readership (age/genre/whatever). See who gets mentioned and linked to a lot by others - see who shows up in the newspaper articles on the blogosphere and talk to your publisher's PR department. Find out who they think is significant on the blogosphere and then go check out those sites and see if 1) they are right and 2) they have selected a site that will even consider a book like yours. In other words, it's a boring answer but still a good one: you have to do your homework.
When all that is done though and you think that your PR folks aren't positioning the book correctly and have skipped some valuable sites then talk to your people and find out why. If they can't give you an answer - or don't even know what you're talking about - then contact the bloggers and see if they would be receptive to your book. The worst thing that could happen is that they don't respond. (And really - send an actual personal email to people, don't just make it some stupid thing that says "hey I love your blog and I have a book and I want you to review it!") If you get some positive responses contact your PR rep again, let him/her know that you have folks who want to read the book and then see what they say. If they tell you the site is too small then consider that a valid point but it doesn't mean you can't organize a blog tour on your own or create a blog that allows you to interact with your readers and the lit blogging community. Further, you do need to conduct searches on your book and yourself to see if bloggers are mentioning you. I often hear from writers who just check in after I've posted on their title to say they are happy that I'm anticipating their book. Or, as was evident in the past few weeks, they see that I mentioned wanting to review their book, took the time to check me out and obviously found the Bookslut connection, and then contacted me to say they'd send the book my way. In the big picture, contact is good, and it doesn't take that much time out of your day to do it.
In the end you have to work with your publisher but you also need to make sure that you know enough about the blogosphere to have an intelligent conversation about it. And that takes some time on your part. Some authors will say they don't want to do this and that's fine; they can leave it up to their publisher and just accept whatever outcome, good or bad, results. Ultimately, unless you are Sloane Crosley (and I will never understand why that book is so popular) either you let the publisher do its thing and don't question it or you take the time to get involved. The key part there is take the time - that means more than yelling "my third cousin has a blog and she gets 10 unique visitors a week and she wants an ARC!" Chasing Ray is a small site with only about 5,000 unique visitors a month - that's nothing compared to the respectable numbers at Eclectica with 50,000 per issue (quarterly) and both are dwarfed by the seven figures Bookslut sees every month. I don't request books for Chasing Ray - I will often mention books I'm reviewing elsewhere here or books I'm reading for my own self, but I know this site is not nearly as big as many others. Chasing Ray keeps me in the lit blogosphere community and allows me to participate in other important projects like the SBBT/WBBT and Recommendations Under the Radar, etc. As a reviewer, but more importantly as a writer, I see this as a valuable use of my time. Others might disagree and that's fine; we are all going about this in our own individual ways.
The bottom line though is that all sites and blogs are not created equal; if you want to have your book actively reviewed in the lit blogosphere then you're just going to have to get out there and see it for yourself.
