How To Get Book Reviews

A powerful element of your book marketing plan should be getting book reviews. It’s not always easy to do, but here are some ideas for how to go about getting them.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Book reviews have been around forever. A 9th Century work of Constantinople Photius is composed of 279 reviews of books he read, which makes it the first set of book reviews on record.

While authors have what we might call a love/hate relationship with reviews and reviewers, book reviews are incredibly important to your book marketing plan, which should also include:

• distribution
• metadata optimization
• an author platform
• author website
• Twitter and other social media profiles
• your own blog
• a promotional budget

Book reviews offer social proof

Success begets success, and that’s basically what reviews do, they give you initial success, like priming a pump, but I like a much more recent term to describe what reviews provide: social proof.

So, yes, this is pretty basic stuff — you get a lot of reviews, you appear to be popular, it’s human nature that other people will be curious: “Oh, this book has a lot of reviews, I’ve got to check it out.”

This can lead to a snowball effect, even if they aren’t all five-star reviews.

Amazon’s algorithms

Amazon recognizes how important reviews are and they have brand-new, sophisticated algorithms that look for the number of reviews a book has and what the ratings are, and a large number of good reviews is going to bring you up in the rankings. So it’s not just about these reviews appearing on your book’s page, Amazon will help by putting your book in front of readers as you get more positive reviews.

And it’s not just individual readers. Book clubs, bookstores, blogging communities, even filmmakers looking to option books might take notice. So reviews can drive awareness, and it’s more than just making sure you have some nice things posted about your book.

Though, don’t forget, word of mouth is the greatest form of marketing.

Reviewers are influencers

85 percent of the books sold these days are selling through Amazon and other online portals, so getting validated by influencers/reviewers becomes increasingly important. So I advise that you spend some time and effort — and maybe even some money — to get reviews to start the ball rolling.

I encourage you to start by making a “review ask list” and spend 30-60 minutes a day trying to solicit reviewers. So, who’s on the list?

• Mom
• Dad
• Aunt Carla
• Your buddy Mike
• An army of cheap fake reviewers
• Legit paid reviewers
• Other Amazon reviewers
• Complete strangers who I persuade to review the book

Amazon’s review rules

Looks good, except that Amazon has new and constantly changing rules in place, including this really important bit straight from Amazon’s community rules:

We don’t allow individuals who share a household with the author or close friends to write Customer Reviews for that author’s book.

This means Amazon is going to take a hard look at all of your reviews. I believe they know who you’re sending gifts to at Christmas — they look at your address list — so if you sent your buddy Mike a Christmas gift last year, even if he lives on the other side of the country, and you ask Mike for a review, it’s probably not going to be accepted by Amazon because his name and contact information are in your address book.

And this might hang up your other reviews, as you’ll draw more scrutiny. Even reviews that are legit will be looked at sideways.

So pay attention and review Amazon’s community guidelines before you do any serious work looking for reviews.

Cheap fake reviews: A cautionary tale

If you’re thinking you can get a bunch of cheap reviews and flood your Amazon page with them, let me tell you a story about an indie author named John Locke. About 10 years ago, he launched a self-publishing career. He had a very slow start, he self-published a few books, then all of a sudden his sales went crazy. He had four titles in the Top 10 Best-Sellers, he sold over a million eBook copies of his nine Donovan Creed novels, and he was celebrated by the publishing industry as the first self-published author to really achieve a high level of success.

He even had the gall to write a book, How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!, and it listed all his hard work and pricing strategies and … it just wasn’t true.

The New York Times published an article in 2012, “The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy,” and cited John Locke as example. Turns out, he used a website called “Getting Book Reviews,” and for something like $5 each, he bought 300 book reviews that were just completely fake and loaded them onto his Amazon page.

That got the got the algorithm thinking, “Looks like he’s popular,” which caused it to serve his book to more people, which prompted folks to buy his books — and it was all a facade. Then he was vilified by the publishing community, which is when Amazon really went to work to determine which book reviews were legitimate and which weren’t.

Paid and unpaid reviews

Amazon does accept unpaid and paid reviews.

Customer Reviews are written by a reader — someone who ideally bought the book and who assigns a number of stars (1–5). Most authors are referring to Customer Reviews when they reference “Amazon reviews.”

An Editorial Review is a formal evaluation of a book, usually written by a professional reviewer or expert within a genre. These are also called blurbs, endorsements, and testimonials.

Who can review your book?

Here are four paid services that Amazon recognizes as legitimate:

• Readers’ Favorite*
• Kirkus
• Blue Ink
• IndieReader

You’re probably going to get a favorable review from all of these sources, but it’s not guaranteed. I know people who’ve gotten bad reviews — these sources really do read the books, and their reviews will end up on the editorial section.

* As the official review company for BookBaby, BookBaby authors receive a guaranteed FREE review from Readers’ Favorite. Learn more on their website.

How long do reviews take?

You can expect to wait four to six weeks, though you might be able to expedite them, and the prices range from anywhere from $100–$600.

You can apply for a Publishers Weekly review for free, though there’s fierce competition and no guarantee you’re going to be chosen — though they do hundreds of self-published books every year.

There’s also Book Life, PW’s side publication, and you can buy a book review from them. It’s completed in about six weeks, it’s about 300 words, written by a qualified reader. That’s all they do, all day long, is read books and write reviews.

How to find great reviewers

Do an internet search for “book reviewer,” or go to Amazon itself and it lists its Top Customer Reviewers. Filter them out for book reviewers, then click on the links to see what they’ve reviewed.

Avid readers actually follow their favorite reviewers. If a reviewer has reviewed five books a reader loves, they’ll start following where the reviewer goes and look to the reviewer to help them discover new books.

Look at the reviewer’s website and read the submission guidelines. All reviewers are different, some want a chapter, a sentence, a few sentences… give them what they want how they want it.

Query package

Compose what I call a query package, which includes a pitch message for the reviewers. Tailor it to make it as personalized as possible.

A sample letter might read:

Hi [Reviewer’s Name]

My name is Steven Spatz, my latest sports thriller, Duck Turns Into A Falcon, was released May 1st through BookBaby. I have attached the cover image.

Here’s a brief synopsis:

[Synopsis of this amazing football redemption story]

I’m currently looking for reviewers and wondered if you’d be interested in receiving an advanced reading copy (ARC) of the book for review. All eBook formats are available.

One nice thing is you can send eBooks out before the actual print books are dropping in your in your pre-sale period.

Other considerations

Know your genre. Don’t waste your time on any reviewer who isn’t experienced in your genre. The more you can narrow down in the niche, the better off you’re going to be.

Get professional editing. I shouldn’t even have to mention this, but if you’ve got an unedited book full of typos, you shouldn’t be talking to reviewers in the first place.

Don’t expect reviewers to pay for their review copy. They’ll give you free publicity, the least you can do is pay for review copies.

This is totally legit for Amazon. Amazon accepts and knows that these reviewers are not buying their books. And remember, these folks are very busy, they get dozens of requests a week, so give them a few weeks before nudging them gently with a reminder.

Send a thank you note. If you get a review, a thank you note is always a good idea.

I would recommend targeting 20 reviewers at a time, wait a week, and then go back in find another 20. If you get two or three of these people interested from each batch of 20, you’d be doing well.

There’s more! Watch the full BookBaby Live presentation.