Bo Bennett Launches Review Copy Club Platform

HOST: Bo, welcome back. Twenty episodes in, and I keep coming back to that line from our very first conversation: "It's not very difficult to publish a book; it's difficult to publish a *profitable* one." Everything we've traced since then has been about closing that gap from the author's side. But ReviewCopyClub.com looks like the first tool where you've had to build for the reader just as much as for the author. The site leads with "honest, voluntary, compliance-first"—which implies the competition is doing something dishonest or non-compliant. Walk me through what the typical ARC service gets wrong that puts authors at real legal or platform risk, and what specifically you've built differently at the structural level. GUEST: Well, I wouldn't accuse different competitors of of doing something illegal. Or dishonest, or even non-compliant. But I will say that several of the the big people out there that we do know. Um are reporting that their their reviews are getting taken down by Amazon. And that signifies non-compliance. There's no other reason that would happen unless they were non-compliant in some way. And I don't think there's really dishonesty going on there. I think it's just a a lack of adherence to the policy. And and in fairness to these other companies, Amazon changes their policy quite often. And it's very difficult to understand where exactly the lines are. But in building this company, we had to know exactly where they are. And we even have a process in place to make sure we're constantly on a regular basis being updated and know where the compliance is, where that line is. So we do this correctly. That's very important to us. So there's, I wouldn't say that um we're at we're other companies are putting um their authors at risk. The only real risk is that they don't deliver on the reviews that they promised. Um that's the biggest risk. The reputable companies are actually um putting on the authors right now. The the less reputable ones, maybe the ones that I don't even know the names of, but like maybe some people on Fiverr or whatever that promise uh reviews. Yes, those you could literally get your Amazon account canceled for using. So I would be very, very careful with anything that that's less reputable. HOST: Right, that makes sense. You're focusing on the compliant piece and making sure that authors don't run afoul of the platform rules, rather than promising reviews. And that fee structure makes sense, paying for the matching, not the outcome. Now, you've built this incredible stack for authors at this point, from writing editing covers, all the way to validation. But ReviewCopyClub seems like the first tool where you're really building for the reader, not just the author as your user. Is this the piece that closes the loop on the relationship between authors and readers? GUEST: It's one of the pieces, yes. Of course, if you have your uh authors, they're the ones that write the books. The other piece of this important puzzle are the readers. You have to connect the readers to the authors. And if we could build a site like this where we really uh collect a lot of readers, and we have a database of readers, and we can use that database. In in other uh marketing like email list marketing or introduce them to other books, then that would be a huge benefit to our existing authors. So if we could control both pieces of the puzzle, then uh then we're in really good shape and our authors are in good shape and that's kind of what we're going for. HOST: So, you're building a database of readers who've told you what their preferences are, what they like to read, and you're using that to match them with authors in your system. How do you approach acquiring those readers on that side? It seems like it has to be a very specific pitch to get them interested in joining a review club. GUEST: It is. Uh and a lot of pitches for typical arcs or review clubs are that uh they get advanced copies like before anybody else does. I don't think that's a very strong pitch. Uh just because there are so many books and who cares for I mean yeah, if you're talking like the latest Harry Potter book or something, along those lines that that's a big deal. But for the vast majority, virtue virtually 99.9999% of the authors, it it doesn't matter. So, we have to go after something else. It's not just an advanced copy. But we have to sell on other psychological factors. And that's kind of the secret sauce that I don't want to get into in too much detail. But let's just say we got that covered. HOST: Fair enough, we can leave the secret sauce undisclosed. But what about the "up to 25 matched readers" per campaign? Why did you land on that ceiling—is it a compliance decision, or something else? GUEST: It's actually up to 100 matched readers now. So that that information is a little bit outdated. I got to make sure the site is updated for that. But um we're going with up to 100 matched readers. Just because we we need to have some kind of reasonable limit. 100 readers, if you get 70 reviews out of that, that's a good number of reviews. I think any author would be very happy to have that number of reviews. Um so that's that's kind of a a strong number, a strong cap. And it leaves that freedom for readers to review other books that don't have as many reviews. HOST: Ah, thank you for correcting me on that. Up to 100 matched readers, that does provide a substantial opportunity, and like you said, ensures that readers aren't spread too thin. Before we go, for listeners who want to follow up on what we covered, where can they find you and the work you're doing? GUEST: As usual, all of our websites are at archyboy.com and this website specifically we've been speaking about is called Review Copy Club.com. HOST: Perfect. Bo, thank you so much for joining me again. I really appreciate you outlining the importance of platform compliance, that distinction between paying for matching, not the review outcome, and especially that insight about reviving backlist titles. And thank you to everyone for listening! Let's get you back on soon, Bo, there's plenty more we can cover. That's a wrap.