Getting free books: My Christian book review journey

Through the last year and a half, with the encouragement and help of Becca Syme to start with, I have began a book review journey. Today I have found that I have built up a network for book reviewing that gets me enough books that I can barely keep up. I wanted to tell you how that happened.

I began by searching online for Christian publishers that use online reviewers. I found four, and eventually I was able to subscribe to them all.

Thomas Nelson has book review program called "BookSneeze". It is fun for a number of reasons. First of all, it is not always time sensitive. As a matter of fact, for the most part it is a "get a book, publish the review, get another book" model of book reviewing. Also, Thomas Nelson has a broad variety of the kinds of books they publish, so I am able to get biographies, inspirational books, and business books as well. TN gives clear guidelines on how they want the books reviewed, which is also very helpful. If one was starting out with blogging and book reviews, I would start with Thomas Nelson.

Soon after, I also began to review books for Tyndale. Tyndale has a similar format to Booksneeze, although they read your reviews more carefully. Tyndale's registration is not as user friendly, nor is its site to navigate. But, they publish some good books, and I have enjoyed reviewing some of them.

After that, I signed up with Bethany House Publishers. Bethany House is more loosy, goosy with their review program. They just ask you to send links to a guy when you finish their reviews. They ask that you finish their books in a month, but they are really flexible. I have began to have people guest blog my books from Bethany House. And I have some books I am WAYYY behind on.

Finally, I also got plugged in with Waterbrook/Multnomah's book program. I have been less motivated to read the books they provide, but in general they have one of the most exciting book review programs out there. Waterbrook/Multnomah is also a review one/get one program. They keep it competitive with small prices for the best reviews. They target promotions at certain audiences. They have a larger selection of books to review. But they are more challenging to get started with, and I have been lazy in my reviews for them as well.

Soon after I began reviewing for publishers on my blog, I also researched and found two review sites that allow me to review books. One is Authors Choice Reviews and the other is Christian Book Previews. Reviews for these two sites are my top priority in reviewing, which has led my publisher reviews to suffer. Slowly, I have begun to find my voice in both review sites. Part of how I did this was by moving to primarily non-fiction reviews. I can read these quickly. Actually, if I have a fairly low interest in the text I can half-read and half-skim the books over the course of a couple days and write a decent review. I generally have to read fiction slowly, and pay attention more. This means I need to invest significant time in my fiction reading. For this reason, I have spurned much of the fiction I have an opportunity to get. And both sites have supported me as I start to specialize in non-fiction reviews.

Finally, I have affiliated with a couple of review distributors that are middle-men for publishers wanting reviews done for their books. One such distributor is Litfuse Promotions. I generally only take books from them that I have a very strong interest in and would not be able to get otherwise.

And, because I have become proficient in reviews, and many of these reviews require posts of reviews on Amazon as well as a blogging platform, I have been selected by Amazon.com to review both books and products through their Vine Program. I was so close to getting a weedeater to review last week. Darn it! Vine is similar to the publishers in that it is a "review one, get a new one" program, but allows you to review up to four products at once. It is an invitation only program, so I was honored to get in it!

So there you go! Besides work, baby, and weight loss, that is what is keeping me busy these days. Let me know if you want some guidance on how to do reviews for free books on your blogs, or if you are seeking ways of reviewing for Christian websites.