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A high quality book review is about as good as it gets for an author with a new book interested in becoming a best seller. There are dozens of ways to promote a book today, yet most of them are far from advantageous when it comes to a simple business analysis of return on investment. Purchasing a PR package from one of the major PR firms representing new and established authors will cost thousands to tens of thousands of dollars in fees. These fees do not promise a return on your initial investment in book sales, they just promise you'll have the privilege of working with established PR representatives in the industry. Conversely, using a quality book review service for much less money one can obtain major publicity power for the cost of two tickets to a movie. If the author is lucky, one day the reviews done by those people could help the author land a movie deal of their own.

To best understand why book reviewers are so in demand, and why they hold such a powerful grip on author publicity today we must first look into the mind of the book buyer. With the advent of the internet, mobile internet devices, and million channel digital HD TV people are reading less books today than ever before in recent history. This means that the few people actually buying books today are becoming a much wanted commodity, and are absolutely being courted by authors from all corners to buy their books.

So what does the all mighty book buyer look for when interested in purchasing a new book? Chances are they are interested in book reviews and critiques of a given genre of books to help guide their decision. Book buyers want to know what others think about a book before they spend hours of their life reading it.

The bottom line is that people are interested in peer reviews of products before buying them, so they can learn from the mistakes of others, if it's a bad book, they don't want it. If it's a good book according to a peer or a book reviewer, chances are they'll be more likely to buy it. Book buyers, like most people, trust other people's opinions when they are given in large numbers.

If we now understand the power of selling books is in the hands of those that review them, it makes a lot of sense to start courting book reviewers and book review companies for honest and detailed book reviews of the book you are trying to sell. These reviews will hopefully work in a viral fashion to promote a book to the masses, and in turn send them to the checkout counter with the book in tow.

Affordable author publicity is not an easy thing to come by these days, however through the time tested art of book reviews one can still sell books without spending their life savings on a big name PR firm.