I have tried to make the review submission process as painless as possible, but there are still some hoops which must be jumped through in order to get it right. After all, there is no point submitting a review without including all the information necessary in it. For one, you won't make any money off a review like that and two, visitors to the site won't return unless a minimum standard is set and maintained. For those two reasons, it's important that you read the following information, to ensure you get it right - for both of our sakes.
I will say from the outset that I will make absolutely no money whatsoever directly from your reviews. If your reviews produce sales, then because of the way I am running the site, all revenue coming from Amazon goes directly to you, through your associate account at Amazon. There are probably other ways of doing it, but I am just as happy doing it this way. If the reviewers are happy, they submit more reviews, which means more people coming to read the reviews, which means more traffic which means more sales and so on. The more traffic the site gets, the happier I am.
Therefore, the very first thing you need to do is set yourself up with an associates account at www.associates.amazon.com . This will enable you to create the advertising links you have seen at the bottom of each review on Inksmithy. This is worth doing, even if you only intend to write one review. That one review could well be read by thousands of people and if only two per cent of those people buy the book you are reviewing through your link, you could well be making countable money from that one review. This site isn't going anywhere, so your review could be being read years in the future. Its worth it, trust me.The next thing you need to do, which may seem obvious but for some reason isn't, is to make sure you read the book. It doesn't matter where you get it from, you can get it from a library, a charity shop, a trash and treasure type sale, wherever. Just read it. Lots of people will be reading these reviews, including other reviewers and if it turns out that your review is something you made up after reading the blurb on the back of the book, the review will be deleted.
Now, write the review. I find it is easiest to write the review using notepad or some other simple text editor, but thats just me. Use whatever you like, just make sure you can cut and paste your review when you have finished it.
While you are writing your review - or even while you are reading the book - think carefully about what you are going to say. If you think the book is rubbish, say so. But make sure you can say why you think its rubbish. If you think it is simply that the author of the book fell in love with the sound of his keyboard and couldn't work out how to stop typing, say so. Try to make it entertaining. A good, entertaining review of a bad book is more useful than a bad review of a good one. After all, I think it would be slightly worse to be lumbered with a bad book after reading a good review of it than to be lumbered with it by accident.
In order to submit a review to Inksmithy, you must become a member of the site. Create an account using the link below the login boxes and make sure you give a real checkable email address. Your password will be sent to that address and you will need it to sign in. Your email address and any personal details you submit to Inksmithy will never be passed on to any third party whatsoever, unless I am obliged by law to hand them over. Thats a promise.
When you come to Inksmithy to submit the review,you will find a link in the user menu on the left which uses the words 'Create Content'. Click that link and you will see an option appear under it which says 'Story'.
You will be whisked away to a page on the site which has two text boxes and what looks to be a word processor on it.
The first box is for the title of the book and the author, followed by the words "book review". This is important, because search engines looking through the site will associate the content of the page with the title you give it. If googlebot knows its looking at a book review, it will be able to show the result to people actually looking for book reviews.
The second text box is for the genre the book belongs to. If you type a couple of letters of the genre you may well see a drop down appear with the genre you are thinking off. click on this or use the arrow keys to save a bit of typing. You must put something in there, but if you can't think of a particular genre to put it in, put it in a couple or possibly make up your own. It will all get stored and saved.
The third field is the word processor looking thing. Word processor is exactly what it is, just a web based text editing applet which helps you format your text to make it look the way you want it to. Enter your review in here, tweak the way you want it to look and away you go.
If you are going to take advantage of the ability to make some money off this site by using the Amazon linking, then read the next bit very carefully.
Important! In order to get your Amazon link to show correctly, you need to press the button on the editor which has the word "Source" on it. All of your lovely formatting will disappear and you will be confronted by your book review, interspersed with lots of HTML code.
Go to the bottom of your review and paste your link. Now click the button with "Source" on it and you should see your Amazon link straight away! If you have any problems, use the contact page and I will help you out.
Reading this how to has probably taken you longer than it will to write a review on Inksmithy. Its not hard to do them, but it does take some thought. I have set a minimum length of 100 words to a review, both to combat spammy entries and to try to ensure there is some thought going into the reviews. Enjoy yourself, read lots of books. Make some money if you like.
Alan
