Great to see this thread pick up some notice and current activity. The climate for reviews has changed dramatically. I (recently) started with the largest sites like Book Siren, Indie Reviews, Reedsy and Shirley's List, among others that I concentrated on. I did not go for paid reviews, but once in awhile paid for coffees as a perk tip. I did not send out lots of paperbacks because I was swarmed from reviewers from India for those and I just couldn't afford more than six copies sent out to foreign countries in total.
I wrote up personalized, individual review press packages addressed to the personal reviewers. It took me 5.5 months to send out 1,650 requests--all modified according to each guideline request. I read individual reviews, guidelines and About Me pages, without fail. It was hell, tedious and very time consuming. My genre was YA fantasy/thriller, although many of them referred to it as YA horror or YA paranormal.
When the dust settled (still hasn't settled yet) I received aprox 160 requests for the book. I did not send in any copies cold. I waited for a response. I must say that out of those 1650 review blog sites and review websites, about 25% of them claimed they were on hiatus, too busy with school, in the midst of a family emergency, swamped, changing their theme, or quitting altogether. About 35% of them said NO to self-published books and gave "overload" as the excuse. That was until I really took some of the those reviewers on the side and asked for the truth about why the indie authors were being refused. The excuse that I finally got was that "lack of editing" was the primary reason. This kind of worried me because I'm a hybrid. Plus, how can we prepare ourselves if someone is not going to tell us why they are refusing us, wot?
Now, out of the 160 review requests, 90% of them told me I would have to wait in a long TBR pile since they were backed up, and it could be months before a review materialized. I was okay with that, knowing that the reviewers were inundated. In case you didn't know, we have a book glut in the industry like never before and the numbers are compounding every day. I've been watching this industry for the past 15 years, and in just the last 2 -- 3 years, we've reached a critical clog in manuscript numbers at the biggest retailers, especially Amazon. Hardly news, if you compare Amazon book numbers from a few years back until now.
When the second dust settled, I had received and am still receiving) 34 bona fide foreign and domestic Amazon reviews. I'm still getting requests and reviews which are popping up from the late arrivals--one here, one there. I had ONE friend/relative read and review my book. I have no street team. I do have an agent and a manager, but their efforts produced almost nothing--which is expected, it's not their primary job to promote me all over Kingdom Come. I should say that I took advantage of any interview or guest blog spot that was offered in addition to the review, and pulled about 14 or 15, until I got so tired of writing and answering questions that I threw up my hands due to fatigue. Did the interviews or guest spots/articles sell books? No, not in my instance.
Did my publisher receive any review requests? Out of 14 packages sent--no. Zero
This is my experience for this genre. I will not have to do this again, nor would I ever attempt this onslaught in the future. I'll simply send books 2 and 3 of the trilogy to the positive prospects I have in my database, those who were the most receptive.
I was so bewildered by this campaign, which I've termed
terminally aggressive, that I just had to write a couple of blog posts about how and why I went about it. I'm not saying that your numbers will match mine. I'm talking about a recent YA fantasy release that went out there and fought it out in the trenches. Your book might very well do outstanding. Don't get me wrong, the reviews were spectacular, many of them over-the-top in praise. I just recently won a nice little award for best YA novel of 2019. No sour grapes.
If you are intent on going after reviews, here are two articles that might help you nail as many as you can:
REVIEWERS: OUR LIFEBLOOD
https://christysyoungadultimagineers.com/2019/08/08/reviewers-our-lifeblood/
REVIEWERS: OUR LIFEBLOOD PART 2
https://christysyoungadultimagineers.com/2019/09/08/reviewers-our-lifeblood-part-2/