Reviews sell books, right? But the problem is to get them. Ads are easy, you pay for them but they tend to be ignored unless you tie them to a promotion, making your book free or at 99 cents for a short period. The grand-daddy of book promoters is of course BookBub, recently joined by EBookBargainUK and EbookSoda, all excellent sites if you want that kind of promotion.

But how about tying your efforts to garner reviews with free book promotions? 

Story Cartel has the answer, to check it out, see here. I thought I’d test it out. I recently joined and here’s how my book looks on the Story Cartel site: free digital copies are distributed in exchange for honest reviews, though no one is required to post a review.

Looks nice, doesn’t it? It’s sitting there together with related books and a notice clearly indicating how long the offer lasts (at the time of this writing, 17 more days). To see it on the Story Cartel site, click the image.

Actually offers on Story Cartel are meant to last 20 days (I already lost 3 days in telling you about it!). And when the promotion is over, Story Cartel organizes a sweepstake among reviewers and the winners get a free printed copy that I have agreed to provide, in total 5 print copies (offer limited to the US).

So if you enter, you can even get a free print copy delivered to your home!

I don’t know how well such a promotion works – I shall let you know asap. If anyone has used it, please leave a comment about your experience! 
And there are already some very positive evaluations of Story Cartel, see here: