About Reedsy

My writer’s journey today is about Reedsy. This is a service of great use to readers and writers. There is a ton of advice and instruction for writers, plus a few fun things like the Pen Name Generator.

I am focusing on the Reedsy Discovery app. Here is a list of books, submitted by authors, that have been reviewed by Reedsy-approved reviewers as well as readers. Readers can find recently published books filtered by their desired genré.

For us writers, here is part of our book launch. For a fifty-dollar fee, we can submit a book, pick a launch date, and select a reviewer, who may or may not decide to look at our book, although the book is still out there for other reviewers to pick up. In my case, my selected reviewer agreed to review the book but then did not. I emailed Reedsy and did get a response. Eventually, a reviewer did pick up my book and gave a good, thoughtful review. Having our book reviewed is not guaranteed, and our book will not appear on Discovery until it is reviewed. Basically, this is how Reedsy vets what is on the list.

However, because of this, my “launch date” was moved forward twice. That could be a logistical problem if we have another launch date on KDP. We would prefer that all of our launch activities happen at one time so that the Amazon algorithms take notice.

Another nice thing about getting a review, besides being part of Discovery’s listing, we can use part of that review in Amazon as an editorial review by submitting it through our Author Central page.

I got nine upvotes (thanks guys), which is not too bad. I take it that an upvote is a sort of “like.” I have not as yet made the grade to be listed in their weekly newsletter or at the top of their site. However, I have noticed some of the titles with that privilege don’t have all that many upvotes. Knocking around on the site, the highest upvotes I saw was 62. Most of the featured authors’ upvote count are in the teens.

Despite the ups and downs, I plan to use Reedsy as part of my book launch this year, my book launch being my new year’s resolution. The working title is Sword of Ailuros, but as in all things about genré publishing, I will have to consider if that is the best title.

More next month, until  then check out Reedsy and its many resources.