(air whooshing)
- Woo. (groaning)
(hand slapping)
I wanted an editorial book review,
and this is what I got. (exhaling sharply)
What's up, everybody. It's Dale here.
And let's go ahead and jump right into stuff,
what are editorial reviews?
According to an editorial review service,
known as Independent Book Review, they say this,
an editorial book review is an unbiased,
reader-focused review of your published
or soon-to-be-published book, often used by publishers
on marketing material, like book covers, posters,
and on the Editorial Review section
on their Amazon sales page.
Editorial reviews usually come from recognized review sites,
fellow authors, or experts in the author's field.
But wait, aren't paid reviews bad?
Well, not all paid reviews are actually bad.
So in instances like this, this isn't bad.
What you're probably thinking about is Amazon-paid reviews.
Yes, those are bad.
You don't wanna pay for reviews to be put over on Amazon
or much less any of the other places,
but for editorial reviews,
no, actually editorial reviews have been around for decades
upon decades upon decades to actually give just a little bit
of third-party credibility to your publication upon launch
or during its publication cycle.
So the problem is most editorial reviews are
mind-blowingly expensive.
And I mean, if you're the typical indie author,
the chances are very likely,
you're not gonna be able to swing something like this
or think about affording it.
Inter-Union Square Review.
Now, full disclosure, Union Square Review
actually got with me about using their service.
And I actually got to use it at no extra costs,
but I got to see all of the stuff that works with this.
And they did not make their reviewer privy
of this particular situation.
They didn't say, "Hey, we wanna roll out the red carpet
here for Dale."
No, there was no knowledge ahead of time.
They just gave the content to them like they normally would,
and they compensate them like they normally would have.
So what do you get when you get
a Union Square Review editorial review?
Yeah, I didn't say that wrong.
The editorial review by Union Square Review.
So they get a deep analysis of the book.
And what I mean deep, they're looking
at the overall metadata of the book.
This includes like the cover, like the makeup of it.
What's the back cover look like?
What's the text and the formatting, the color choice,
how relevant is to the niche?
They look at your description, they pick it apart.
They wanna see, is there any type of editing
or proofing mistakes that you've missed, any kinda typos,
and they even look at your title choice
to make sure it's appropriate.
And most importantly, they do a deep dive of the content.
And I mean, it's at a granular level.
They're looking at everything, and how you're formatting it
to what's the structure like, what's your tone of voice?
There's so many things that they weigh in on.
Who reviews the book anyway?
So according to Union Square Review, in their words,
they say the names of our reviewers are not listed
on the review you get back from us,
but we can tell you that all our professional reviewers,
whose work is reviewed and edited by our managing editor,
who holds a PhD in English,
several of our US-based reviewers also review
for Kirkus Indie.
Now you may not have heard of Kirkus before,
but they're probably one of the longest-running
editorial review services out in the market.
And they're also probably one of the most expensive,
they come at a higher premium.
When you can be able to get a good review from Kirkus,
chef's kiss, because that means credibility
to the highest measure.
And they're pretty much getting people
that are at that level of Kirkus.
So that's pretty cool. What exactly is the cost?
Okay, so you can get a single reviewer at 289.
So that was the service that I utilize.
You can also get a double reviewer.
They give you a bit of a price break at about 499.
So rather than being 289,
it'll end up being 250 per reviewer.
Now, if you're a picture book review,
so like a children's book of some sort, that's gonna be 189.
So they drop it down significantly lower.
Here's my thoughts about the pros and cons
on Union Square Review services.
Now, the pros.
Let's get it out the way. It's way cheaper.
Way cheaper than most editorial services.
In fact, Kirkus, of you wanna get a single review,
it's about 475 and for an expedited review,
it'd be actually 575.
That's for a single review, and they're not promising
you're gonna get a good review, all right?
You're just gonna get the review.
You either take it or leave it.
BlueInk Review runs it at 395
and an expedited service at 495 for a single review.
Again, whether you get a one-star, or a five-star,
or anything else in between, that's what you get.
There is no refunds. Number two.
The other thing about Union Square is
they are very detailed.
I did not even imagine I would get as much as I did.
In fact, I actually tried to shoot the full video of me,
you know, reacting to this whole thing.
And actually I'm gonna give a link
at the very end of this video of the entire 23-minute video.
Yeah, that's right, 23 minutes for me to sit down and review
and read the whole thing, but either way very detailed.
And also the third perk is going to be
the book club promotion.
If you have a four- to five-star reviewed book,
you can actually reach into their book club's service
through bookclubs.com.
That's nearly 19,000 different book clubs
at no extra cost for three months of placement.
So that's kinda cool.
You're getting it for free
to reach out to 19,000 book clubs.
That's pretty nice.
And I'm looking forward to actually using
some of the service here very soon.
And lastly is their discounted bookstore placement.
Now, four- to five-star reviews actually get a 20% off cost
to be placed in 25 different independent bookstores
through parent company, DartFrog Books.
DartFrog Books actually owns their...
Underneath the umbrella of DartFrog Books.
Not to say that DartFrog Books is pulling the strings.
And I'll just address that, just a second here.
If you get two five-star reviews, you get free placement.
Automatically you get into the twenty-five indie stores.
So if you're able to order the two-review service
and get two five-star reviews, well first of all, kudos.
Next, you know, hey, congratulations.
You're getting into twenty-five indie bookstores
with really not too much more work.
The cons of Union Square Review.
It's not the cheapest option,
because I looked at Independent Book Review,
and they're actually $85.
However, I can't speak about the quality
that you're going to get from the Independent Book Review.
Two, 100% brutally honest.
Whew. Okay, so DartFrog owns Union Square Review.
DartFrog had a published book.
They put it into Union Square Review.
And according to the folks over there,
they actually got a two-star review on it,
a two-star review.
So this just goes to show that the reviewers are unbiased.
They're just getting the books in front of them,
and they don't care whether it's printed by DartFrog,
or if it's put out by a Random Penguin House,
or if it's done by Joe Jobrani out in Wisconsin,
you know, they're going to review it
just like they do everything else.
So that is 100% honesty. And actually don't you want that?
Don't you want 100% honesty?
I mean, is this really a con?
I just think about it and I'm like thinking no.
And the nice thing is if you don't want
your review listed publicly,
you can actually decline to have it published.
So that's kind of a cool thing.
If you see it and you go, "I don't like that.
They gave me a one-star or they gave me a two-star."
Or even if you see a four- or five-star,
you're not happy with it, you don't have to publish it.
Number three, no refunds.
This is across the board,
across any editorial review service.
There is no refunds.
All editorial services have to hire out somebody
who does the review.
That person has to sit down. They've gotta read it.
They get to take notes.
It's a whole process for them.
So they're already out, money when they bring you on
as a client and as some of it that's gonna be reviewed.
So you can't get refunds.
So think about the time, the staffing,
and energy committed to reading your book,
and realize that getting a refund just out of the car is
as soon as you process payment, goodbye,
there goes your money, you're getting your review in return.
Overall, I give two big thumbs-up, and a banana sticker
to Union Square Review on a fantastic service actually.
You can take a look at them
@dalelinks.com/unionsquarereview.
And hey, by the way, I actually have
a full-video reveal over here.
It's for channel members only, not familiar
with channel members actually I got some information down
inside the description down below,
you find out more details.
And then if you're not a channel member,
just go on over and take a look at this video
that YouTube recommends that you check out.
In the meantime, I will see you in either video.