The reviews booksellers submit to Edelweiss have become one of the most important tools SIBA has to promote and advocate for its members in the book industry and to the reading public at large. It's so important that SIBA gives stores SIBA credit for every review they post. A couple reviews a week can really add up!

Things to keep in mind when you submit reviews:

1. Check your store information is accurate on your account. SIBA only looks at reviews from stores within SIBA territory. If you have no State information, or if your Organization doesn't correspond with SIBA records, your reviews won't show up in our list
   
   
2. Make sure your review "role type" equals "Bookseller." We filter out all non-bookseller reviews, and if you don't select a role type at all, your review will not be reported to SIBA.
   
   Note: If you have never actually requested a review copy on Edelweiss, you may not have ever been prompted to choose a role type. The best way to fix that is to go to the Review Copies section in Edelweiss and click on one of the request buttons. (see below)
   
   
   
   
3. Get your staff to participate. More reviewers = more SIBA credit and more chances for your store to be seen by publishers, customers, and potential customers. (Hear from Jill Hendrix at Fiction Addication on how she gets her staff involved on Edelweiss

How does SIBA use your reviews?

Store reviews (and consequently store reviewers) are shared on SIBA's websites, blogs, newsletters and social media:

• Reviews of forthcoming books are shared on both SIBA's bookstore and industry blogs, and sent out via the "SIBALAND" newsletter to every bookseller, publisher, sales rep, and publicist in our database.
• Positive reviews of eligible titles are marked as potential Okra Picks for the forthcoming season and considered de facto nominations for The Southern Book Prize
• Once the books are published, positive reviews are posted to SIBA's consumer website, AuthorsRoundtheSouth.com under its Read This! banner. All books are linked back to the recommending store for purchase. There are nearly 1000 book reviews from Southern booksellers on the ARTS website, making it one of the most extensive collections of bookseller recommendations online.
  
• The current week's reviews are published in the Lady Banks newsletter, and featured in all editions of the Lady Banks Calendar newsletter of member store events.
• Blurbs from store reviews are also used wherever appropriate in the promotional materials SIBA creates for its member bookstores.

Thanks to the Edelweiss Reviewer tool, your short reviews can have a big impact for your store.