Reviews
Reviews don’t bring actual sales to your book, because those reviews are from people who have already read the book. But what reviews do is to encourage those people who come across your book to buy it.
Many people aren’t even willing to buy a book from an author they’ve never heard of unless there are good reviews for the book, so reviews are critical if you’re a relatively unknown author.
There are many ways to get reviews for your book, but be sure you do it in an ethical way that won’t upset Amazon. First, we’ll take a look at a few good ways to get reviews. Then, we’ll look at some ways you should never use to get reviews.
Ways to Get Reviews
There are a few ways you can get reviews without being dishonest or resorting to tactics that could get you banned from KDP forever.
- Review Copies – Giving away free copies of your book in exchange for reviews is a great idea, but make sure you tell people they are not required to leave a review, and that if they do, their review should be completely honest. If you require a review, or if you ask for only 4-star and 5-star reviews, it is considered a paid review. Just state that honest reviews are appreciated. You can find people who want review copies at a variety of different places such as Kboards.com, GoodReads.com and various Facebook pages that relate to your book’s genre.
- Giveaways – In addition to giving copies to people specifically for review purposes, you can also hold giveaways in order to get more people to read and potentially review your book. Some sites (like GoodReads.com) only allow giveaways of printed copies of your book, but others allow eBooks.
- Inside the Book – Don’t forget a very simple way to get people to leave reviews of your book. At the end of your book, simply include a note asking people to leave a review if they liked the book. Many people simply don’t think about doing this, so a friendly reminder doesn’t hurt.
- Bloggers – We’ll have an entire section on this later, but for now, just remember that many book bloggers will also leave their review on Amazon and other book selling websites after they post it on their blog.
Ways NOT to Get Reviews
Don’t ever be tempted to do any of these things in an attempt to get reviews. To do so would not only risk getting the reviews deleted, but could even potentially cause you to lose your Amazon account forever!
Don’t risk it!
- Paid Reviews – Some people sell reviews on sites such as Fiverr or other similar websites. Don’t ever do this! If Amazon finds out you’ve paid someone to review your book, you could definitely lose your entire account! Paid reviews are the biggest no-no as far as reviews are concerned.
- Good Reviews in Exchange for a Copy – It’s fine to give away copies of your book and ask people to please give you an honest review on Amazon after they’ve read it. However, it is not okay to ask for or demand positive reviews. When giving away free copies, always state you are looking for honest reviews.
- Exchanging Reviews – One popular method is for authors to give each other’s books 5-star reviews in exchange for the other author doing the same for them. This is not a good practice! If Amazon discovers this happening, your reviews are likely to be deleted, and they could even ban your account from KDP!
- Friends and Family – Many new authors ask their friends and family to leave reviews. This could backfire in a big way if Amazon ever finds out. Not only that, but if another author or buyer finds out, they will potentially destroy your name by telling everyone they know. This has happened to many authors. Don’t risk it!
