3 Top Tips to Get Book Reviews on Amazon
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It feels like banging your head against a brick wall.
You’ve written a great book, you’re getting wonderful feedback on it, people are contacting to tell you how they’re getting on and how much they love the book, and yet on Amazon… it’s crickets.
Tumbleweed.
Maybe you have a handful of reviews… but other than that — nothing.
It is incredibly frustrating because you’re getting all this private feedback, but you can’t make it visible on Amazon where it’ll really help your book move up the ranks and encourage others to buy.
The struggle is real, my friend. And the last thing you want to do is keep pestering people to leave a review because you’ll piss them off.
So today, I have 3 simple tips that’ll help you get more reviews on Amazon — without turning into a Nagging Norman.
(If you haven’t done so already, make sure you go and listen to the latest podcast episode in which I interview Dan Laxton about how he has more than 1,000 reviews for his baby products. They’re not books, but the principle is the same.) https://moxiebooks.co.uk/episode-210/.
1. When you sell on Amazon, you have no direct access to your buyer’s email address, so you can’t follow up directly. Instead, you can insert a message into the book itself. If you’re using Amazon’s print on demand service, add a page into your book that thanks the reader for reading and asks them to leave a review. The best time to ask for a review is right after they’ve finished reading and enjoying the book.
2. In your Kindle book, you can insert a direct hyperlink onto your thank you page. Thank your reader for reading, and invite them to leave a review right now — get them to click the link that’ll take them straight to your Amazon product page to make it really easy.
3. Your book should contain multiple invitations and calls to action to get people to join your mailing list and your Facebook groups. When they do, make sure one of your emails in the welcome sequence asks people to review your book. Put a link directly to your product page, and explain to people what you want and how to write it. Make it as easy as possible.
Bonus tip:
If you’re selling books through your website, as I do, you can include a handwritten postcard (as I do!) thanking people for buying and reading the book, and asking them to visit Amazon and leave you a review.
It’s still going to be a long, hard slog to build up your reviews so don’t expect it to be easy.
Expect to be frustrated.
And remember: always be polite and kind. Don’t let your frustration come through. We have no right to expect people to leave a review; it’s time out of their busy day and we’re not their priority.
Instead, be delighted and super-grateful when they come. They’ll mean that much more.
Don’t give up!
More deadly sins of writing:
