This is my third and last entry in my “So, You Want to Sell More Books at Amazon…” blog series. The first discusses how Amazon starts to promote your books internally once you sell enough copies and the second goes over the role “tagging” plays in Amazon searches and recommendations. Today we’re going to talk about reviews.
How important are they? How do you get them? Will more reviews sell more books? Let’s jump in….
How reviews help you at Amazon
The first way they help is obvious: reviews help readers decide whether or not to give books a try. A book with no reviews is something of a cipher. In the Kindle Store, a reader can download a sample to try, so it might not be quite as much of a sales death knell as for physical books, but not having any makes it look like nobody is buying the book.
The concept of social proof suggests people are more likely to try something if others are trying it (and avoid something others are avoiding). I believe getting those first three or four reviews is a big deal and will definitely improve your sales overall (so long as you’re working on promotion and getting people to your book’s page!).
Are more reviews better?
I’ve read some theories that reviews help sell more books in a non-obvious way, too: maybe this is one of the many factors Amazon use in determining which books to promote internally, so the more reviews you have the more play your book will get.
True? I couldn’t say for sure, but I’m inclined to think not. Amazon has to be aware of services like BookRooster and Ffiver where you can essentially buy reviews for $5 a pop.
As I mentioned in my earlier posts in this series, I believe selling books is the major thing that gets you on the radar (gets Amazon to start promoting you internally).
How do you get your first few reviews?
Well, I wouldn’t use Ffiver. 😀
What I’ve done that I’d recommend to others is giving away review copies. I’ve done this by posting offers on the Kindle page on Facebook and also in forums for various e-readers. MobileRead is my favorite board for this, as many of its readers are savvy about downloading ebooks from Smashwords (where you can simply give them coupon codes to grab the books for free), but I’ve also posted offers on the NookBoards and KindleBoards.
For me, about one out of five people who received a free copy would end up posting a review (in the first couple of weeks anyway — more trickled in later), so if I gave away twenty copies, I had good odds for getting those first ones I needed. Some cool people were nice enough to post their reviews in multiple places (i.e. Smashwords, Goodreads, and Amazon).
That’s my most recommended way to get reviews. You can, of course, also ask beta readers, friends and family, etc., though these people are probably only going to leave five-star reviews and readers can and do leave irritated one-star reviews if they feel they’ve been duped because all of a book’s glowing reviews came from friends.
Other options are to participate in blog-based book tours (I did that with Encrypted and Flash Gold and, though it wasn’t mentioned as a part of the tour deal, a couple of bloggers left Amazon reviews as well as posting reviews on their blogs) and to submit your book to review sites (though book bloggers tend to be backlogged and this can be quite the wait).
Also, don’t forget the value of getting the people who actually bought the book to review it! Those are the most genuine reviews you can get since they come from your target audience, people who read the blurb and chose to buy the book.
How do you get these people to review? I always make a request in the afterword. If you enjoyed the book, please consider leaving a review….
My book with the highest reviews-to-sales ratio is Flash Gold. I worded things differently there, something like, “If you want to see more adventures with these characters, please leave a review.” I did it because that story was an experiment with the novella-length ebook for me, and whether or not I wrote another one was going to depend on reception and sales. (I’m editing a sequel now, so clearly things worked out!)
What about those paid review services?
Someone always asks, so I’ll finish up with my thoughts on this. I don’t think there’s any reason to pay someone to review your book, and readers are going to be suspicious of a paid review (the assumption being that receiving money makes a reviewer more inclined to review the book favorably) if they’re aware of it.
What are your thoughts? Are there any other ways you’ve snagged your early reviews?
Great tips, Lindsay. I hadn’t heard of MobileRead, I’ll have to check that out. I found this directory of book bloggers (http://bookbloggerdirectory.wordpress.com/) and reached out to a bunch of them directly. Several of them agreed to review my book and the results have definitely helped my sales! 🙂
LibraryThing has a free book deal that got a couple of reviews for me for Hunting Elf last year. I gave them Smashwords coupons and was able to track the response on how many people actually downloaded the book, then could see the reviews. You can’t require a review, according to LibraryThing’s rules, but you can request one. I had a couple of people kind enough to post on Amazon and Smashwords as well. FYI, I tried the same thing with one of my non-fiction books and only got one review out of 25 giveaways.
You always have such great information. I’ve been trying to goad [beg?] folks to leave some love for Translations. I’ve gotten some for the other two. I had always heard romance was a hot mover. Ya know what, not so much. Turns out it’s the slowest moving of the three. Go figure.
I’m so excited that you are writing a sequel to “Flash Gold”! The fact that you mentioned that you weren’t sure you were going to write it just made me encourage you to in my review. I was going to write a review for it, anyway. It is just THAT good!
Anyway, I get books to review from Book Rooster, so I’m fine with the system on that end, but I’ve heard authors paying for the service feel dissatisfied sometimes. I think they don’t like that they’ll get a lot of 1-star reviews all at once from people who just tried a book out because they got it for free, even though they don’t like the genre. It’s not really Book Rooster’s fault for that.
Although, there could be a way to keep the books targeted towards the right review audience, but I don’t know how.
I second Mobileread, it’s my favourite ebook forum. Its regular users are more readers than authors (compared to the Kindleboards) and they’re savvy Smashwords-loving types. They got me indie ebook reviewing! That’s also where I found Flash Gold.
Not all indie book bloggers post their reviews on Amazon (many just post on their blog), but the Simon Royle list states which book bloggers cross-post their reviews and where http://www.simon-royle.com/indie-reviewers/ so you contact the ones that cross-post to Amazon. But you’ll probably have to wait a while with these reviewers (I know quite well because I’m one of them), because we have review queues and such, whereas regular readers on Mobileread or the Facebook Kindle page are more flexible in deciding when they’ll read and review the book.
Good info, as usual.
I’m experimenting with BookRooster with my first book. Didn’t want to risk it later. I’m putting out 6 books in 8 months. Now is the time to experiment. Will see how it goes. About to offer out some review copies. Have been too slow with that. My biggest worry is that it won’t match to the right kind of readers. If someone doesn’t really like your kind of book but they review it anyway…
I’ll second Dave’s recommendation of LibraryThing. I gave away 183 copies of my second book on that site. I’m not sure of the exact numbers, but several people emailed me their thoughts on the book, while others posted reviews on Amazon, B&N, LibraryThing, and GoodReads.
I have also found wonderful reader/reviewers at LibraryThing. Another thing I did: I put a Twitter message out with a coupon code, & a big blogger retweeted it 🙂 so I got a bunch of reviews that way. But that was just good luck–nothing to rely on.
@Nicholas Thanks for the link! Frida’s going to have a guest post for us next week on tips for getting those book bloggers to review us. 🙂
@Dave & Scott I’m going to have to check into LibraryThing! I keep hearing about it, but I haven’t taken the time to investigate yet.
@Mary General romances appeal to a large audience, but SF/F romances are another story. That’s a pretty small niche. 😉 Looks like you’re doing well on Smashwords though. One tends to get a lot fewer reviews there than on Amazon.
@Cathy Thanks for reading and reviewing Flash Gold! I always like encouragement. 😉 Yup, I’ve seen a couple of authors grumble about BookRooster reviews. I’m actually glad reviewers there don’t feel compelled to only leave good ones. Makes me think the service has some merit.
@Frida Thanks for the link! Yup, I imagine that you get pretty busy as soon as you hang your shingle out, announcing that you do reviews.
@David Good luck with the experiment. Maybe I should recruit someone to do a guest post on their BookRooster results…
@Julia Yes, it’s always nice when that happens! I’ve done coupons for free ebooks at Smashwords, announced them on Twitter or MobileRead, and had bloggers who write about deals mention them. Free promotion never hurts!
I’d be happy to guest post about my BookRooster results once I have them! But that may take a while. My book won’t start shipping out to reviewers until mid-late August.