In this article, I want to share with you how I onboarded 60+ early reviewers to check my next book called "Service Design Principles 201-300" with pretty much little effort.

Learning from last year

Last year I onboarded each person personally via messages on Linkedin or Email. It was so, so, so much work. But it had a few exciting learnings. It taught me:

How to make this book and the next better
For example, I received feedback from an early reviewer about how frustrating the way I mix both the past and present tense is. So now I decided to stick with the present tense in my service design principles.
 
Another book reviewer said that this book could benefit from more diversity and stories worldwide. So that's what I did in the next book in this series. Now about one-fourth of the principles in the book are based on community stories.

What could be automated
I learned that people really need reminders.

In fact, most people forgot that they decided to be an early reviewer, and I had to send them reminders to check in and say, "Hey, can you post your review"

This communication type can be automated easily without losing the human touch. So now I have little reminders set up one day after the person subscribes, one week after she subscribes and two days before the deadline (more details on that below).
 
It also showed me that many of the explanations and questions I answered were always the same. So I could just pack all these questions and explanations in one place and guide people through them. This means that I don't have to have many one-on-one conversations, and people still get the answers to their questions.

What explanations sucked
My main goal was to get early reviewers to write a review of what is good and what is bad about the book. In that way, people interested in the book can make better and smarter purchase decisions. 

But this wasn't so clear to people. Many asked: "Oh, should I send you notes about every little grammatical mistake in the book?" 
So now I'm stating more clearly that it's already enough if people write the review about what's good and bad. 

I also tell them that there will be a professional proofreader who goes through every grammatical mistake. So if they want to add more feedback, the feedback should not be on grammar, but rather on sentences that make no sense or unclear sentences. Or they could share references, examples and stories that make the service design principle even smarter.

Using Podia once again

So after learning all this, I decided there is a lot of value for me, for the early reviewers and for the community in bringing early reviewers into the process. "So let's do it again!". But maybe let's try to do it effortlessly.

To do that, I decided to build a more automatic system using the tools I already own. Especially Podia is this website builder tool and eLearning platform I use for the Swiss Innovation Academy.

The elements I used:

1. The Podia course creator: that's where I share instructions and the table of content of the book

2. The Podia Community: that's where I published all my drafts and where people can leave comments and give feedback.

3. Jotform: a form embedded directly within the "instruction course" so people can send their reviews.

A few advantages of this way of working:

Onboarding one or a hundred people is the same amount of work

It's less effort. I don't need to answer each person individually about the same question, as I can automate things with a newsletter system. I can automate reminders.

I can work in parallel.

I can still make progress on each Service Design Principle when I update the community post where a Service Design Principle lives, it's updated for all the reviewers.
This wasn't the case in the way I did it previously. Previously people got a PDF of the book. So I couldn't update anything, or I had to re-send the PDF to everyone.

The answers I give to one person benefit the whole reviewer community
Everyone is onboarded through the same website. So when they add a question in the comment section of this website, everyone else benefits from the answer I give to them as the answers are public. 

Previously when I answered a question from Bob, Bob was the only one to see the answer because I sent him that personally. It didn't make sense to send a message to the 30 other people by saying, "Hey, Bob had this question. So maybe you're interested in this question. So I'm sending it to you." 

The reminders

One of the significant parts of the system that makes it so much easier for me is the email reminders sent automatically.

Click on the image to see the emails in more detail.

Next-day email
This is just an email to thank people and remind them where they can find the book. 

Next week email
The next week email reminder is more about telling people now is a good time to really start reading and start writing your review. There I'm sharing a little tip so people can save a draft of their review in the form.
 

2 days left email
Two days before the deadline, I check in to say I'm excited to see the review and propose my help if anything is unclear or blocks them in the process.

The questions and prompts I use in the review submission form

Once someone has read the book, the person can then submit a review via a short form. There are three basic questions to answer (outside of the personal questions like what's your name, public profile, etc.). You can find these three questions below with the prompts to help people avoid the blank sheet syndrome. 

Why is this book interesting to you?
To help you out, here are a few start sentences that can avoid the blank sheet syndrome:

• What I particularly liked in this book is...

• This book helped me...

• I recommend this book for...

• Daniele's writing is really...

For who isn't this book for or what parts sucked?

I'd love these reviews to be deeply honest and not feel like fake Amazon reviews. Therefore I think it's important to also show what sucks. Particularly it's important to me that people who will hate this book, know it in advance before they buy it.

Again, to help you out, here a few start of sentences that can avoid the blank sheet syndrome:

• There is one thing that I didn't like in this book..

• For the next book in the series I'd love to ...

• If you are ... then this book is definitely not for you, and I'd recommend you rather read...

• No book is perfect, and this one isn't either, one thing I didn't like was... 

What other books would you recommend as companions to this one?

This book doesn't exist alone in the world of Service Design. Therefore I think it's important that people can see what would be the next book to read after this one. The books you recommend don't have to be service design books, but books that would complement this one well. 

To help you write this part of the review, here a few start of sentences that can avoid the blank sheet syndrome:

• After you read this book, I recommend you check out XXX by XXX

• If in parallel to this book you want a more academic/business/XXX view to Service Design I highly recommend you also read XXX a book written by XXX.

• If you liked this book, I think you'll also like these other books

How I recruited people

To recruit participants for the early review program, I sent:

1. one newsletter

2. made 3 Linkedin posts

Not so much effort on this side. And then, I had a landing page with all the answers to the most common questions like a deadline, how much time it takes, etc.

Learnings of this year

1. Show the question of the form outside of the form: People like to know what's exactly in the form before they open it.

2. Let people know why you don't share a word or PDF document: It makes sense to explain why you're giving extra work to people by having to check individual links instead of a nice PDF.

3. Having a one-week window to register is enough to get 60+ reviewers

Feedback I received this year

Here are some of the feedback I recieved this year at the end of the review process:

1. Save for later: for one person, the finish later form feature didn't work

2. Have it in a book form: two people told me they would have loved to have the book already in a PDF or ebook instead of a list of links

3. Unsure if the review arrived: one person told me she wasn't sure if her review really was saved, as when she came back to the site, the form was still shown, and she still got an automatic reminder.

I haven't yet worked on this feedback so I write them here to save them.

Written on Wednesday, 19th of October 2022, by Daniele Catalanotto 
Updated on Saturday 5th of November, with the feedbacks I received this year