Plug Your Book!, Steve Weber [the unexpected everything TXT] 📗

of your Web site or readers of your blog.

You can find more prospective reviewers by posting a message on Amazon's discussion board dedicated to customer book reviews:

http://forums. prosperotechnologies.com/n/mb/ listsf.asp?webtag=am- custreview

Will giving away several dozen copies of your book hurt its sales? Perhaps you'll lose a sale or two, but you'll gain much more from word of mouth. The initial readers who enjoy your book will recommend it to friends, and those new readers will recommend it to more.

Don't ask for reviews from people who haven't actually read your book, even your mother. The result will be an unconvincing review that will detract from your book's credibility rather than bolster it.

Amazon Top Reviewers#

_The Stolen Child _author Keith Donohue was lucky that Amazon Top Reviewers helped make his book a bestseller; it wasn't part of his plan. But you don't need to depend on luck. Seek out Top Reviewers yourself and ask them to read and review your book. This takes some legwork, but if your book is a good one, it will be well worth the trouble. Reviews from some of Amazon's Top Reviewers can seriously boost the credibility of your book.

Amazon's Top Reviewers are listed here:

www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/top-reviewers.html

Top Reviewers have a special badge accompanying their pen names, such as _ Top 1000 Reviewer, Top 500 Reviewer_, Top 50 Reviewer, _ Top 10 Reviewer_ or 1 Reviewer. Having one of these badges displayed among your book's reviews isn't the same thing as an endorsement by Amazon--it's better. It's a vote by a recognized community leader--someone who takes reviewing seriously, and has earned a reputation for helpfulness.

Rankings of the Top Reviewers are determined by a point system based on the number of reviews written and the number of positive votes those reviews receive when people click #Yes# in response to "Was this review helpful to you?"

Top Reviewers are regular Amazon customers who simply enjoy reading and critiquing lots of books. Many of them review several books per week--sometimes at the invitation of an author or publisher, but usually by just following their personal interests. Despite receiving no payment for their efforts, Amazon Top Reviewers compete furiously to climb the rankings ladder. The longtime No. 1 reviewer, Harriet Klausner, has posted more than 12,000 reviews and, not surprisingly, says she's a speed-reader. It's not unusual for Klausner to post 10 or more reviews in a single day.

Contacting Top Reviewers

Clicking on a reviewer's pen name takes you to their Amazon profile containing biographical and other information they've posted about themselves. Some reviewer profiles will explain what types of books they prefer. For example, some reviewers stick with fiction; some review only movies or music. Some profiles indicate whether the reviewer accepts unsolicited books, and some provide a postal or e-mail address.

But Amazon gives you a way to reach reviewers who don't display any contact information on their profiles. At the top right of the profile page, click the link Invite to be an Amazon Friend. This generates a pop-up form where you can enter a message, and Amazon will forward it in an e-mail. This maintains the reviewer's privacy, and if they aren't interested, they may simply ignore your message.

A soft-sell approach works best when approaching Top Reviewers. Offer a complimentary book in return for their considering to review it, no obligation. Most Top Reviewers don't want to commit to a review until they've seen the book. Don't ask reviewers to return the book.

Here's a sample script you might use to approach Amazon Top Reviewers:

Dear John Doe:

I got your name from the list of Amazon Top Reviewers. I've written a book, "How to Grow Organic Strawberries." I noticed from your Amazon profile that you frequently review gardening books. If you think you might be interested in reading my book and posting an honest review of it on Amazon, I'll gladly send a complimentary copy if you'll reply with your postal mailing address. There is no obligation, of course.

Best Regards

Carefully screen out reviewers whose profile indicates they aren't interested in your book's topic. For example, don't send your fiction title to a reviewer whose profile says, "I review only nonfiction."

Some Amazon Top Reviewers make it a practice not to review a book from a new author unless they can honestly recommend it to others and give it a rating of at least three or four stars out of five.

Only a small portion of Top Reviewers are likely to respond to your offer. Some are inundated with review copies from publishers who already have their mailing address and know their reading preferences. Other Top Reviewers are skeptical of books sent directly from authors, after having received poorly written self-published books. Some busy Top Reviewers disable the Amazon Friend invitation system by adjusting their profile's privacy settings.

Etiquette in approaching reviewers

Naturally, every author wants good reviews. And although it's perfectly ethical to seek reviews, don't do anything to suggest you're expecting favorable treatment. If you succeed in getting lots of reviews, you can expect some negative ones.

"I see a fair number of books that I don't like, and I say so--including those sent to me as review copies," says Jane Corn, one of Amazon's Top 150 reviewers. "Anything else seems unethical to me."

You can safeguard yourself a bit by requesting that Top Reviewers not post a review if they simply hate the book. But it's the reviewer's call. Sometimes reviewers are willing to give prepublication feedback, providing valuable advice on fixing a book's weaknesses. Don't expect that, though, and don't ask for it.

You might want to avoid sending your book to reviewers who usually post harshly negative reviews, but don't shy away from those who offer frank criticism. These voices lend credibility to your book, Corn says:

Readers are smart. They can figure out who to trust, and those are the reviewers you want to reach. Always be clear about your willingness to have a fair, honest review. Anything else is self-defeating.

Finding more Amazon reviewers#

Another valuable source of potential reviewers is people who've posted Amazon reviews for previous books in your topic or genre. You can contact them using the same techniques mentioned above. Click on the pen name displayed with their review to reach their Amazon profile, then use the Amazon Friends invitation to send a personalized message:

Dear John Doe:

I got your name from the Amazon book review you posted of the 2003 book "Complete Guide to Organic Fruit." I recently wrote a book that appeals to the same audience, "How to Grow Organic Strawberries." If you think you might be interested in reading it and perhaps reviewing it on Amazon, I'll gladly send a complimentary copy if you'll respond with your mailing address. There is no obligation, of course.

Best Regards

These readers might not be frequent Amazon reviewers, but may consider it a treat to discover a new book in their field of interest. And there's another benefit of getting reviews from these specialized readers: Positive ratings from them can surface your book in Amazon's recommendations to buyers of similar books.

Finding volunteers to read and review your book is a long, tedious process but can be well worth the effort. If you spend two or three days inviting about 300 potential Amazon reviewers, you can expect to receive about 40 to 50 responses, and wind up with perhaps 35 reviews, a quite satisfactory result.

Remember that many folks are rightfully suspicious of e-mails that seem to promise something for nothing, and contain links to a Web site. Most users are still unfamiliar with the "Invitation to be an Amazon Friend," and often these messages are mistaken for spam, or simply deleted unread.

More ways to get reviews

Once your book is selling, you'll have a steady stream of potential reviewers. Whenever you receive e-mails from readers with praise for your book or requests for further information, you might conclude your response this way:

Thank you for the kind words about my book. If you ever have a spare moment, it would be a great help if you could post a review of it on Amazon and let other potential readers know why you liked it. It's not necessary to write a lengthy, formal review--a summary of the comments you sent me would be fine. Here's a link to the review form for my book:

http://www.Amazon.com/gp/ customer- reviews/write-a-review. html?asin=ISBN

The link at the end of the message takes the reader to Amazon's Web form for book reviews. To customize the link for your book, replace the last four characters, #ISBN#, with your book's ISBN numerals.

Amazon Spotlight Reviews

Popular books on Amazon can draw dozens or even hundreds of reviews. But no matter how many reviews a book gets, two reviews have a special impact by design--a pair designated Spotlight Reviews. Amazon displays Spotlights above all others, sometimes permanently. Because they're usually the first bit of independent information buyers see about your book, Spotlights are crucial. Many browsers read only those two reviews before deciding whether to buy.

Spotlights don't appear until your book has several reviews posted. When your book is new, the first reviews appear about midway down your book's detail page. New reviews appear on top, bumping earlier reviews down a notch. When the sixth review appears, Amazon selects one review as a Spotlight and places it on top. After your book receives a few more reviews, another review is selected as the second Spotlight.

The selection process for Spotlight Reviews is automated. The review with the most "helpful" votes by customers usually gets the top spot, although reviews written by Top Reviewers carry more weight. Subsequent reviews appear in reverse chronological order below the Spotlight reviews. A maximum of six reviews appear on your book's detail page, along with a link to all previous reviews.

Negative reviews#

Positive reviews certainly help your book, but negative reviews on Amazon can have a bigger impact, according to a 2003 study published by the Yale School of Management. Multiple glowing reviews for a book tend to be dismissed by shoppers as "hype" generated by the author or publisher, the study found. Negative reviews, however, are taken more seriously because buyers usually believe they represent honest criticism from disappointed readers.

Buyers understand that no book pleases everyone, and that any book reviewed often enough will get an occasional thumbs-down. But in some cases, a single detailed, critical review can devastate sales on Amazon, particularly with nonfiction how-to books.

The study, The Effect of Word of Mouth on Sales: Online Book Reviews examined random titles from Global Books in Print and bestsellers from Publishers Weekly. You can read the entire study here:

#www.WeberBooks.com/reviews. pdf#

Early on, Amazon's decision to allow readers to post negative book reviews infuriated publishers, chief executive Jeff Bezos recalls:

We had publishers writing to us, saying, "Why in the world would you allow negative reviews? Maybe you don't understand your business--you make money when you sell things. Get rid of the negative reviews, and leave the positive ones."

Yes, negative reviews can hurt sales in the short term, but over the long term, allowing criticism builds credibility and helps shoppers decide what to buy, Bezos says: "We don't make money when we sell things, we make money when we help people make purchase decisions."

This how-to book, published in January 2006, had very strong sales and overwhelmingly positive customer reviews on Amazon for its first six months. Then, a harshly negative review appeared in June 2006 that seemed to effectively question the book's value. Immediately, sales slumped, shown here by the rising line indicating a worsening Amazon Sales Rank.

Over the next several weeks, Amazon users who read the negative review consistently voted it "helpful,"