Book Marketing & PR, Book Reviews, eBook Publishing, Readers Q&A, Self Publishing Your Book

Reader Q&A: How do I send an ebook to a reviewer, and is it safe?

Book marketing questionsUH asks:

“I’m looking for info on how to send an ebook to a reviewer. do you happen to know if one just sends the mobi or epub file as an attachment, or…? And is it secure? I know pdfs are not secure (they can be copied), so i’m wondering how this works with the ebook files. I’d really like to get a book review!

Thanks for any info!”

The A to your Q:

Hi UH,

Great question! If you are concerned about security, the safest way of sending a review copy of your book is to gift the book to them (by buying it on Amazon/ B&N yourself and have it sent to their email) but obv this costs you a little $$$. You still get royalties though :) 
I send ePub/ mobi files to reviewers all the time and I’ve never had a problem with piracy since most people in the industry know this is how things work. (Sending PDFs is fine too, but they often don’t look as good on eReaders since the text can look too small.)  If you are sending review copies to non-book bloggers/ people outside of the industry, just a friendly reminder that “this is for your kindle’s eyes only” should be enough to get the message across that this is not to be swung around the Internet willy nilly.
According to US copyright law (The Copyright Act, Title 17 of the U.S. Code), once anything is written down on paper it is automatically copyrighted to whoever penned it. The UK Copyright Law is similar to that of the US – copyright automatically arises when an individual or company creates a piece of work that is regarded as original. Hopefully you have a copyright page at the beginning of your eBook too for added security – a disclaimer such as ‘All rights reserved’, or ‘Any unauthorized  copying or adaptation constitutes as an infringement of copyright’.
Hope that helps!