UPDATE on Dec. 18, 2015: You can listen to the webinar replay here.
Collecting as many book reviews as you can on Amazon is one of the best ways to pull traffic to your page and encourage people to buy your book.
My friend, Amy Collins, a book distributor who has helped her clients get their books into big box stores and major bookstore chains, says you need at least 25 reviews within one week after you launch if you want to see some serious sales numbers. If you can amass more than 100 legitimate reviews, Amazon will consider paying for Google pay-per-click ads, and ads on Facebook and other sites, to pull people over to your Amazon sales pages.
A legitimate review is one that doesn’t violate Amazon’s Terms of Service. For example, you can’t pay someone on a site like Fiverr.com to write a review. Amazon has caught authors who have, and closed their accounts pronto. It has also sued reviewers on Fiverr and elsewhere who solicit business promising to write “positive or 5-star reviews” for products sold by third parties on Amazon.
One of the best ways to collect dozens of reviews is to target only Amazon reviewers who specialize in reading books in your niche. Many of them, even if they aren’t on the Top 100 Reviewers list, have loyal fans who read their reviews and follow their recommendations.
A few years ago, pitching Amazon reviewers was a lot easier than it is today. You could go to the list of reviewers, hover your cursor over the reviewer’s name, and up popped a small box like the one you see in the screenshot above. You could see basic information about the reviewer, including helpful tags that would help you decide if the reviewer was one you might pitch. You could click on the reviewer’s profile and read more.
The Reviewer Pop-up Box is Gone
Those days are over. That box doesn’t pop up anymore. If you want to know more about the reviewer, you have to click on the name. That’s a lot of clicking and jumping back and forth.
Sifting through all those reviewer profiles to find the ones that would be interested in your topic can take days—weeks even.
There’s an easier way.
I’m hosting a free webinar with Debbie Drum, who has published more than 50 books under various pen names, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, Dec. 16, on “How To Find Powerful Influencers on Amazon to Review Your Books and Help You with Your Marketing–for Free.” (Affiliate link.)
She’ll explain what you need to know about Amazon reviewers, how to pitch them correctly, and how to avoid many of the landmines, like review swapping, that can cause major trouble for you.
Register for the free training here.
Debbie will also introduce you to a program she sells that will let you find reviewers quickly and shave weeks off the tedious chore of manually reading each profile to see if the reviewer is a good match with your book.
Don’t miss this one!
I’ve taught authors how to pitch Amazon reviewers. But I didn’t know there was an easier way until I discovered Debbie last week. On the free call, she’ll introduce you to authors who are crushing it with Amazon reviews. I hope you can join us.
Wow!! Finding reviewers is really tough. I’m a romance author. I attended Joan and Debbie’s session on December 16, bought a copy of Debbie’s “book review tracker” program, ran a search using it (very easy to do) and got 400 emails of reviewers who like books similar to mine. The download feature is really easy too, and I already got one reviewer who is eager to read and review my book! This is worth every penny. I highly recommend it. I also recommend Joan’s webinars. They are packed with really creative and useful information (as you can see by looking through Joan’s website). Even more than that, I recommend a session with Joan. She gave me so many clear, focused, step-by-step methods to achieve “discoverability” for my books that I now have a solid plan for marketing. Thanks so much, Joan and Debbie!
Carol, we’re thrilled that you found the Book Review Targeter a can’t-do-without tool for your author marketing. Keep us posted on the results. And thanks for your kind words.