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Step by Step on How to Get Reviews

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
Now that I’ve got a little actual self publishing experience under my belt, I thought I share my thoughts on how to obtain reviews. Let me know if you found it helpful.

First of all, a word of encouragement – you absolutely can obtain all the reviews you want without spending a dime, bugging your friends or family, or doing anything illegal, immoral, or unethical.

That’s not to say that obtaining reviews is without cost. You have to put in some serious time. I spent 8 to 10 hours getting the first 7 reviews on my novella, Abuse of Power.

My Goal:

I wanted to obtain 5 to 10 reviews in my first week of publication.

Why? Truthfully, mainly to make myself feel like someone actually cared that I had published a book. Other than that, though, I read some advice about reviews adding "social proof" or some such, and that sounded good to me. "Gotta get me some of that social proof," I says to myself.

How I Did It:

Step 1 – Found Amazon books that are similar to mine. Since Abuse of Power is a fantasy romance, I went to Romance -> Fantasy and searched for keywords similar to mine.

Step 2 – Chose books that have 20 to 100 reviews and that are self published. Note that this information is obtained by looking to the very right hand side of the book information. It shows five stars with some number of them shaded. Off to the right of that is a number; that’s the quantity of reviews. Under that is series information. And under the series information is the publisher. If it says “Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.”, you know it’s self published.

(I chose self published books only because I wanted to avoid reviewers who won’t review indie books. I picked the quantity of reviews based on my experience that books with a lower number of reviews tend to contain a higher percentage of profiles that contain contact info. Your experience may differ radically from mine, however. I’m simply relating what I did.)

Step 3 – Scoured reviewer profiles. Click the book title. Go all the way down below the first reviews and click “See all X customer reviews (newest first).” Go down past the “Most Helpful” reviews. Under the star rating for each review is a profile name in Blue. Click on that profile name.

You’re looking for contact information. Very few Amazon profiles list any kind of information at all, much less an email address. At first, I was even unsure of where the address would be located on the screen. Eventually, I found one. Turns out it’s located pretty near the top left. There’s the Reviewer’s Handle, a picture, ranking, % helpful, and the address is right under that above the line separating it from the “About” or “Public Activity” section.

When I first started, I literally clicked on every profile name, and my success rate at finding contact info was abysmal. We’re talking lower than 1%. Lots and lots of time spent clicking and going back. Repeat. Eventually, I noticed something: some profile names are listed as (first last “first last”). I’m not sure why, but anyone with the quotation marks seems to be more likely to have an email address listed. Note that it’s still not a high probability. I didn’t do any statistical analysis, but when I stopped clicking on people with no quotation marks, my hit rate went from less than 1% to closer to 5%.

Step 4 – Send an email. Note that I started this process with some degree of trepidation. Would I get a ton of angry responses saying, “How dare you email me out of the blue!”? Actually, the only responses I got were very friendly and positive. It’s generally considered that any reviewer who lists an email address is open to getting review requests. Note that it’s considered extremely rude to try to contact a reviewer with a request by commenting on one of their reviews. If they want to be contacted, they’ll list their info.

Aside 1 to Step 4 – The actual email format I used was something like this:

Hi (first name gleaned from profile name where possible),

I hope it's okay to email you like this.

I found your Amazon profile while searching for people who review fantasy romances and thought you might enjoy my fantasy romance novella, Abuse of Power. If you're interested in reviewing it, I would love to email you a copy in the format of your choice. It will be published on Amazon on 9/1/15.

Here's the description: (Description followed)

Thanks.

Brian

Again, no detailed analysis, but my impression was that I got a better response from people to whom I said, “Hey, I see that you liked book title because of this specific thing. My book kinda has that specific thing. Maybe you’ll enjoy my book, too!” That wasn’t possible with most of the emails (like in the template above) I sent because either a) the review didn’t list anything that correlated well or b) the book they reviewed wasn’t all that similar to mine.

Aside 2 to Step 4 – Generally, I encountered four types of reviewers who listed contact info in their profiles:

Authors – These are usually easy to spot because they also list a website like: Author Brian W. Foster | Official site of speculative fiction writer Brian W. Foster, author of "Rise of the Mages". Your preference may vary from mine, but I tended not to email other authors with requests.

Book Bloggers – Also easy to spot because they list a link to their book blog. If you’re looking for a quick response, these people are typically inundated with requests. They weren’t a huge part of my strategy, but I did send some emails out.

Top Reviewers or Vine Voice – Either of these designations will be listed beside their profile name. Like with book bloggers, I figured that these people will be inundated with requests, so I didn’t send out of lot of emails to this category.

Regular Reviewers – If the reviewer didn’t seem to fall into any of the other categories, I figured that they’re just average readers who like to post book reviews. These were my primary targets because a) they’re probably not snowed under with requests, b) they might be available to read the book immediately, and c) they might actually be flattered to receive a request.

My Results:

I ended up sending 52 emails to those with profiles who did not indicate any blog affiliation or writing of their own. Of those, I got 14 positive responses. Of those 14 “yes” responses, 7 have thus far posted reviews.

I’m pretty happy with that response – 27% of emails resulted in a positive response and 50% of the positive responses resulted in reviews in about a week. I don’t think that I could realistically expect results much higher than that. It will be interesting to see if any more reviews trickle in from this group over the next month.

The reviews were (3) 5 star, (3) 4 star, and (1) 2 star. Overall, the readers seemed to really enjoy the book. Even the 2-star review was pretty positive. She liked the story and characters, but my style didn’t click with her. I get that; not every author’s style clicks with me, and she communicated well exactly what she didn’t like so that those readers who have similar tastes will know to stay clear.

I sent 15 requests to book bloggers. I’ve gotten a “no” from 3 of those and no response at all from the others. Some could still result in reviews down the road. Again, it should be interesting to see what happens.

One Afterthought:

In this thread Get Honest Reviews from People Reading Your Genre (BookRazor.com) a business offers to sell you names of Amazon reviewers in your category. I have not used that service, but I think I probably will in the future. It took me a lot of time to dig up the names. A lot of time. Were seven reviews worth that amount of time? Probably not. Overall, I think it was good experience for me to do it by hand, though. Knowing the hard way to do something before taking the shortcut is generally a good idea, and I don’t think that spending time learning about other books in my genre and the reviews those books were given is exactly a waste of time. Once I start actually making some money from my writing, I think one of the first luxuries that I treat myself to will be the aforementioned service, though.

If you have any questions or want elaboration, please don’t hesitate to comment.

Thanks!

Brian
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
My latest review:

Book book.

5 Stars, though.

I like to analyze my reviews to see what the comments can tell me about how my writing is being received. What I've gotten from this review is that the reader agrees that I have, in fact, written a book. Perhaps even that the book is long enough to be two books, thus "Book book." Or that's it's so good that it's twice a book?

Seriously, reading over some of the person's other reviews, I think it was meant to say, "Good book." I did get a chuckle out of reading it, however.
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
It's generally accepted that indie authors should put a "please leave me a review" paragraph at the end of their published work. I recently found 4 Tips on making that paragraph more effective, 3 of which I plan to use:

Tip 1: Include a link to the Amazon book page.

Duh! Why didn't I think of that? The more obstacles you can remove, the better. My version asks the reader to find the book page to leave the review. Think of how many more people would follow through if they only had to click a link rather than go to Amazon and search for the book.

Tip 2: Clear up confusion about Amazon ratings

Apparently, Amazon is now asking readers to "rate" books and answer questions after they finish the book. This is not a review and doesn't show up anywhere obvious on the book's page. Some readers are filling in the "rating" and thinking that they've now helped you by reviewing the book. This tip is to include a sentence explaining this situation to the reader.

Tip 3: Make the review process sound as simple a possible

Some readers believe that a review has to be like a book report in high school. Emphasizing that the review can be a simple as "I liked this book," removes barriers.

EDIT: I'm a little iffy on this tip. Simple is good. Removing barriers is good. I don't, however, want a bunch of 5 stars, "Book book." type reviews as a great quantity of them can make it look like the author is employing sock puppets (and such reviews don't really do much for readers). I think I'll review my existing language to emphasize that the review can be simple but not encourage "Good book" comments.

Tip 4: Placement

This tip advises you to place your review call to action immediately following "The End." By putting my call to action on the next page, I'm losing a lot of readers who never flip that last page.

I'm not going to follow this piece of advice.

"Why?" you say.

Because I already have a call to action to join my email newsletter in that very valuable section of real estate. To me, a sign up is about a hundred gazillion times better than a review. Opinions may vary on that valuation, however.
 
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