Reedsy Launches a Book Discovery Service
In a time when many authors buy Facebook and Amazon ads to catch the attention of readers, Reedsy is launching a book discovery service called Reedsy Discovery.
Throwing humility to the wind, our aim is to make Reedsy Discovery the go-to platform for any author looking to create momentum for their launch.
So how does it work?
When you sign up to Discovery, your book will be presented to a pool of experienced and relevant reviewers that have been hand-selected by the team at Reedsy. For maximum suitability, they get to choose what they review — so make sure that your title, synopsis, and cover catches their eye!
Then, on the launch date of your choice (which, we’re imagining might coincide with your publishing date) your book will be promoted to thousands of registered readers who can then:
- Browse your sample chapter
- Comment on it
- Lovingly admire your cover design
- Read your review (if you have one)
- Upvote the book
- And purchase it through your chosen online retailers
Reedsy is a services marketplace where authors can find book formatters designers, and editors. In its newest service, Reedsy is connecting authors to reviewers and buyers.
One question sprang to mind when I heard about this service: Can Reedsy deliver interested readers? That’s is what Reedsy is selling here, after all: exposure. They’re offering to put indie authors' books in front of potential buyers.
What do you think of the service?
Comments
Will Entrekin March 5, 2019 um 8:47 am
For $50 it seems like it’s worth a try.
I like that there’s a layer of interactivity and curation that a service like Bookbub doesn’t really have. Not to say BB doesn’t have standards (and reject a great many submissions), but it’s definitely their team reviewing submissions, and then their push to all the readers who signed up.
This seems to have an added layer of conversation to the process, and I think that’s good for books.
Will definitely be interested in seeing how this turns out.
Richard Hershberger March 5, 2019 um 9:31 am
"Can Reedsy deliver interested readers?"
Can Reedsy deliver disinterested reviewers? This is, at its heart, a paid review service, with the inherent conflict of interest that implies.
Nate Hoffelder March 5, 2019 um 9:43 am
I too thought it was a paid review service, but if that were the case then Reedsy would be recommending that the reviews be posted on Amazon.
I think a $50 paid review service could easily be worth it. This, not so much.
Richard Hershberger March 5, 2019 um 10:37 am
I’ll grant you that it seems to be a half-assed paid review service, but what else is it? I am looking at it from the reader’s perspective. Why would I register for this? Apart from the reviews, it is essentially spam. I can get spammed easily enough without this. So the value to the reader is the review, but only if it is disinterested. But if it posts bad reviews, that will drive away the people paying that sweet, sweet fifty bucks.
J. Glenn Bauer March 8, 2019 um 5:26 pm
I’ve had a browse and from an indie author perspective (me), any platform that can garner reviews and drive up sales of newly released titles for this price is gold.
From a reader’s perspective (also me), the site looks a lot tidier than Goodreads and you are able to interact through upvoting as well as get recommended reads.
If Reedsy can pull this matchmaker site off and get buy in from indie authors & readers, they are onto a winner.
Peter Blaisdell March 13, 2019 um 6:34 pm
Discovery sounds like a reasonable step toward providing indie authors with exposure. And many of the existing paid book review platforms (e.g. Kirkus) suffer from 1) very high cost (way, way above $50); 2) mediocre reviews – actually they’re really just plot summaries; 3) low visibility due to the sheer number of paid reviews – in fact, some of these platforms seem to segregate their paid reviews from the unpaid reviews – the implication being that an paid reviews are less credible. I think Reedsy sees an unfilled niche.
A big challenge for Discovery is that even if a good review is received on the Reedsy platform, the visibility of this review may still be low due (no surprise!) to the sheer volume of books out there. Reedsy’s newsletters and the ‘Discovery Feed’ may be partly helpful here, but many of us already get lots of recommendations, alerts, etc, etc about promising new books. Oh well, Discovery may at least be one more piece of the puzzle in getting visibility.
On a related note, it will be interesting to see how Discovery competes with NetGalley.