You’re a Reviewer Too!

I have to start by acknowledging how annoying it is to be asked to give feedback on every single thing we do online. Every restaurant visited, product purchased, entertainment site enjoyed, business connection made. Sometimes I review and sometimes I delete the request. There is one time, however, when reviews are  important, to me anyway, and that’s when you purchase a book.

For those of us who are self-published and don’t have a publishing house behind us creating ads, applying for awards, and pushing orders by stores, your reviews are paramount.  There’s Goodreads, but I am primarily talking about reviews on Amazon, because they drive sales.

Getting reviews is a challenge for indie authors. There are a ton of people in the cybersphere who review books. They may have thousands of followers (potential buyers), so a review from them would be great. It takes a lot of research to find the right ones for your book and then you usually have to send them a copy. A few months back I agreed to send a book to a potential reviewer in the U.K. It cost a bit to mail the book (no media mail for overseas) and I never heard from her again.

So that leaves the hundreds (if you’re lucky, thousands) of folks who purchase your book in a store or on Amazon. Books with hundreds of positive reviews are more likely to be purchased. And negative reviews can hurt. A few people recently posted negative reviews on my Laugh and Live, Advice for Aging Boomers. It’s clear they either don’t have a sense of humor or were looking for something other than what my ad promises. But without a lot of positive reviews, those few ads will get too much attention from potential buyers. So I’m asking people who have read the book and liked it to please post a review.

To do a review on Amazon, you have to have an Amazon account, so if you’re a “never Amazon” shopper, thanks anyway. But, even if you find a book some other way, you can still do an Amazon review if you have an account and shop there, even occasionally. Your review need only be a sentence or two, but those 4 or 5 stars make a huge difference for the author. So when you really love a read, please review it!