.jpg)
Write the Damn Book Already
Writing and publishing a phenomenal book doesn’t have to be ridiculously complicated or mind-numbingly overwhelming. From myths and misconceptions to practical tips and sound strategies, Elizabeth Lyons (author, book writing coach, book editor, and founder of Finn-Phyllis Press), helps writers feel more in control of and comfortable with the business of book publishing. Her interviews with fellow authors discussing their writing processes and publishing journeys aim to help you untangle YOUR process so you can finally get your story into the world.
Write the Damn Book Already
Ep 114: Getting Amazon Reviews That Sell More Books (The No-Cringe Guide)
Click Here to ask your book writing and publishing questions!
If the thought of asking for Amazon reviews makes you break out in hives, you’re not alone. But here’s the truth: reviews are gold for indie authors. They help boost visibility, credibility, and—most importantly—book sales. The good news? You don’t have to beg, bribe, or feel weird about it.
In this episode, we’re breaking down how indie and self-published authors can ethically and confidently get more Amazon reviews without feeling sleazy or pushy. You’ll discover:
✔️ Why Amazon reviews matter (and how they impact your book’s success)
✔️ Creative, no-pressure ways to ask for reviews that actually work
✔️ The power of social media, email, and direct outreach in gathering reader feedback
✔️ Common mistakes that keep authors stuck (and how to avoid them)
✔️ Real-world examples from indie authors who’ve cracked the code on getting reviews
If you found this episode helpful, don’t forget to follow/subscribe, drop a quick review (see what we did there?), and share it with another writer who’s working hard to get their book into the right hands!
Awesome Email Templates for Authors
From communicating with your launch team to building relationships with readers, my customizable templates take all the guesswork out of writing emails that turn email subscribers into loyal readers.
🎉 CLICK HERE to access to the templates
Is 2025 the year you start your own podcast? Let's make it simple!
Get 35% off the Podcast Starter Pack with code PODCAST35 at https://publishaprofitablebook.com/podcast101
"I got my podcast launched in 3 days thanks to this great mini-course!"
--Dr. Diana Naranjo, The Characterist podcast host
Write the Damn Book Already is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with authors as well as updates and insights on writing craft and the publishing industry.
Available wherever podcasts are available:
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
YouTube
Let's Connect!
Instagram
Website
Email the show: elizabeth [at] elizabethlyons [dot] com
The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores.
To see all the ways we can work together to get your book written and published, visit publishaprofitablebook.com/work-with-elizabeth
Elizabeth Lyons than absolutely necessary Because, let's face it, some overthinking, second-guessing and overwhelm is going to come with the territory, if you're anything like me. In short, I love books and I believe that story and shared perspective are two of the most impactful ways we connect with one another. A few things I don't believe in Gimmicks, magic bullets and swoon-worthy results without context, as in be sure to reveal that a result took eight years or required a $30,000 investment in ads, because those details are just as important. What I believe in most as an author, the long game, is the shortcut For more book writing and publishing. Tips and solutions. Visit publishaprofitablebookcom or visit me over on Instagram at ElizabethLionsAuthor. Hi everybody, all right.
Speaker 1:This week we are going to touch on a topic that is near and dear to every author's heart and also very close to most authors' bane of their existence list, and that is Amazon reviews how to get them without feeling sleazy, how to keep them from disappearing because that happens, all these sorts of things, and I decided to crowdsource this one and ask out on Instagram specifically what current published authors strategy and approach is for getting these, because in this area, like so many others, my voice should absolutely not be the only one. Crowdsource this stuff. People Get other people's experiences and opinions and insights so that you can make the best decisions for you. That's always been my modus operandi as a business owner, as an author, all of it and I encourage you to do the same. So that's what I've done here and I'm going to share with you the responses that I got. There were a lot of them, so I'm going to do my best to get to all of them. But first I want to address a question that came in via email. Actually, I sent an email out earlier in the week about keywords and how to set up your keywords correctly on Amazon in order for your book to have the best discoverability by your ideal readers and so that Amazon knows exactly where to put your book in their metaphorical bookstore, like the biggest bookstore on the planet. And in response I got an interesting question from someone and she asked if I would share my thoughts slash opinion on what authors can do related to the boycott of Amazon that many people are pushing based on the new administration.
Speaker 1:I am never shy about answering questions, even if the answer is I don't know. I've never heard of that, so let me get back to you, because I feel like if I can answer a question confidently by saying I don't know or saying that's not my area, let me talk to some people and see what they say and get back to you. Then I can be even more confident when I say, okay, I feel like that is my lane. I've been doing that for a long time and here's my absolute opinion and it's not just an opinion, it's my guidance based on all these years of doing it. So I certainly am not the girl who's going to tell you that I know everything about everything, or even a little bit about everything, because that's just not the case. So in this instance, I thought about this question for a few days prior to recording this, because I have a thought on it and I want to be very clear that that thought is really just an opinion. So, as with everything else, I would encourage you to ask other people in the publishing space what their opinion or thought or expertise says about this potential hiccup and how authors can come back from it.
Speaker 1:First of all, I don't yet personally see I haven't seen anything about boycotting Amazon related to the current administration. I certainly am well aware that there is a percentage of book buyers who don't want anything to do with Amazon under any circumstances. Not only will they not buy books from Amazon, they won't buy anything from Amazon, and that has been the case for years and years and years, and it's just what it is, and on many levels I understand it. I'm a huge supporter of bookshoporg. I'm a huge supporter of indie bookstores, even with the upsell in price Like I'm more than happy to pay my local indie bookstore an extra three to $6 for a book in order to procure it from them. I also will readily admit that sometimes I too don't wanna drive into downtown Phoenix, which is about 40 minutes for me to get to the indie bookstore that may or may not have the book that I want, and I do like the convenience occasionally of having it just delivered to my front porch along with dog food and potato grow bags, which is what arrived yesterday. So I want to be clear that I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who doesn't see herself boycotting Amazon anytime soon.
Speaker 1:That being said, I saw both yesterday and today on Facebook a post. It was the same exact post, but it was screenshot and posted by two separate individuals and it was encouraging the boycott of, I would argue about 50 different stores or brands, I should say, based on their alleged support of certain political things that are currently going on. And you know what? There are always going to be people and I support these individuals who feel like, yeah, I'm not going to buy from that company anymore if they're supporting X, y and Z. I certainly remember years and years ago there was a whole thing for quite some time, and there still is about boycotting Hobby Lobby because of their religious beliefs and boycotting Chick-fil-A because of their religious beliefs and like it's never going to end. And so I encourage people if you feel strongly about a particular cause and you can find an alternate source or create an alternate source, which many business owners have done, or create an alternate source, which many business owners have done for a particular product in order to take your business away from someone that you don't want to support financially and give it to someone who you do. I mean all the live long day. Do that.
Speaker 1:I don't personally envision a world anytime soon and of course, because I just said that it'll happen in an hour where people are boycotting anything in mass, and again I think back to many years ago when people started boycotting certain brands because it became either clear or it was reported that they had inhumane working facilities overseas and people didn't want to support that. There are, you know, people who don't want to support certain farm industries, like the meatpacking industry, because of the way that the animals are treated. There's always going to be something. So I don't. Personally, when I look at the data today as an author, it still seems to be true that upwards of 80% of people are still purchasing their books online and of those, 50% are doing it at Amazon. So we see peaks and valleys in Amazon sales, in book sales, in egg sales, in all the sales of all the things at any point in time, for a variety of reasons. But I'm not hitching my own wagon to the notion that Amazon sales are going somewhere and that authors need to have some sort of a preventive strategy or a recovery strategy in order to deal with that. Now, if it happens and it's longstanding meaning more than a couple of weeks and people are really scrambling to figure out what to do next, we can have a different conversation.
Speaker 1:There was, for several months, a big brouhaha over like what are creators, specifically in the BookTok community, going to do if and when BookTok goes offline and BookTok went well. Tiktok goes offline and TikTok went offline for I don't know 14 minutes and there was a widespread panic because, understandably, there are a lot of authors forget just creators, and I mean don't forget them. But irrespective of creators in general, there are a lot of authors who have made an entire career and community for themselves on TikTok, specifically on the BookTok segment of TikTok, and I can well understand how that might have been quite scary were TikTok to have stayed gone or go away again. And I think in some, in many cases, those authors are putting together contingency plans. I mean, anybody who talks about email newsletters has been saying ad nauseum get those email databases growing, because that is the one asset over which you have control, regardless of all these other platforms and whether or not they disappear. So, whatever you can do to make sure that your community, you have a direct outreach option for your community, regardless of what platforms come and go, the better your chances of frankly, not feeling at the mercy of all of these different platforms.
Speaker 1:The debate is ongoing. The debate will continue to be ongoing and I'm not freaking out. So that's my opinion, that's what I would contribute to it, and you might talk to somebody else who says, oh my gosh, I'm totally freaking out, amazon's going to completely disappear in every aspect, or this is going to happen, or that's going to happen, and you know, if that whatever that person is saying resonates with you and you want to take their directive and then by all means do that. So I think that's so much. What this and so many other spaces is about are about is that there's always going to be a variety of opinions which, on the one hand, can feel extremely overwhelming, because you want to not pick the wrong one, if you're like me and you want someone to tell you, do this. And then, if you do it and it doesn't work well, you just blame them. So the fact that it's important that we take personal responsibility for the choices that we're making is often not comfortable for many of us.
Speaker 1:On the flip side, I think it's great that you can find a lot of opinions and thoughts about any topic, really, because it allows you to open your own mind and decide okay, what feels good, what feels reasonable and how do I want to move through this space and time and industry in a way that feels like enjoyable, because if it doesn't feel enjoyable, we're all just going to quit and go, do I mean I? I found a farm yesterday in Hillsborough, oregon. It's not a well, it is a farm, but it's also an Airbnb, and now everyone's going to book it and I'm not going to be able to, but they have llamas and you just get to hang out with the llamas while you're Airbnb-ing it. I mean, don't be surprised if, in a couple of years, I am now raising miniature cows, highland and goats and llamas. Like, if something becomes uninteresting and unfun for too long, that's what happens. If something becomes uninteresting and unfun for too long, that's what happens. So the goal for me is to help people remember that you can find the approach that doesn't freak you out and compels you to say, okay, what's the solution going to be for this? Like, first of all, is this even really happening? Because just because somebody says it's happening doesn't mean it's happening. So where's the data that says that this is happening? And then, if it is happening, or if it does happen, even if it happens rather suddenly, what's the plan? Like, how? And trusting yourself that you can come up with something, a different plan, because there's always another plan. There's always, in this day and age, another way to to do something.
Speaker 1:All right, so getting into Amazon reviews, I talk in From Manuscript to Market, which is my touted as my book launching course, and sometimes I think that's not entirely fair, because what it essentially is like I mistitled it somehow, which I mean it's a story of my life, but it really is about how to give your book the best shot. Well, that's not even fair. It's how to give it a solid shot, right, how to feel confident that you are launching it with intention and thoughtfulness into the world. It doesn't mean that you can screw it up, it's one and done. It's not necessarily the best approach. It's certainly not the best approach for everyone, but for people who are like my book is coming out and I don't know, I need a process, I need a roadmap. That's what from manuscript to market is For people who launched their book and just hit publish and didn't really know how to not even how, but just a way to launch it in a strategic manner.
Speaker 1:It's also for you, because you can come back and sort of do what I call a relaunch. There's nothing about the course that makes it a requirement that you undertake these steps within the first X number of days that your book is officially on the market. So, for people who are, like you know, I don't know how to create an email list, I want the templates, I want social media templates, I want dates, like I want you to tell me on day one, t minus five, do this T minus three, do this Day one, day two, day three, all the way up through day 12, which is what the course covers. That's what, from manuscript to market, is. How do I get my website set up properly? What pages do I need so that you don't feel like you're missing something and have panic about that?
Speaker 1:Okay, so within that course, I have a big bit on reviews, on Amazon reviews specifically, because there are two spots, depending on your genre, where reviews are the most important. One is Amazon and one is Goodreads. And what a lot of people don't realize is that Amazon owns Goodreads. And what a lot of people don't realize is that Amazon owns Goodreads and Goodreads is really a great, or I should say a better, spot for reviews. If you are a fiction author, it doesn't mean it doesn't matter if you're nonfiction. I just find that Goodreads is much more utilized by consumers who read fiction than consumers who read nonfiction and with Goodreads also, reviews can be left before a book comes out, which is sometimes a pro and sometimes a con. We saw you know, I think it was last year, but again, time has very little meaning anymore irrelevance. But where there was a debut fiction author who created a bunch of false profiles in order to review, bomb some of her I guess you could say competitors I'm sorry that she looked at it that way but some of her colleagues and people who wrote something similar in the space in order to give her book more of a chance of doing well in its first week. And so because you can leave those early reviews which are often biased. Sometimes that doesn't go well for people, but that's a separate topic. So with Goodreads you can leave reviews before the book is officially available. With Amazon you cannot. So within that first, I'd say, week or even month of being on Amazon, one of the biggest goals for authors is to start getting those reviews up, because if you're anything like, think of yourself as a, because, if you're anything like, think of yourself as a consumer when you go to Amazon.
Speaker 1:I just did it this morning. I was looking for a book on a specific topic, didn't have the slightest idea where to start. I actually, admittedly, used ChatGPT and I said this is the kind of book I'm looking for. This is what I want it to help me with. Can you give me 10 options? And it did.
Speaker 1:And I went and I looked at the first one looks great. The second one only had four reviews and I thought I don't know, that just didn't sit well with me. So I refined my chat GPT query to say can you give me eight more? Make sure they are written by experts and have at least 25 reviews. And then it gave me a whole new bunch. And now I have, you know, 37 books in my cart, but nonetheless, reviews matter the challenge with review and they matter for a couple of different reasons. Number one is what I just told you. Number two Amazon uses the.
Speaker 1:If you're consistently getting good reviews, like three stars or more, that tells Amazon that your book is being enjoyed by the people who are purchasing it, who are reading it, and so it therefore uses that to determine who else to show the book to, sometimes completely unprompted ie, you don't even have to run ads for it. But the key is that you're getting consistent reviews. You're not getting 20 in one day and then none for three months, and then 20 and then none. So you want it to be a consistent thing. And then the other thing that Amazon is looking for is consistent sales. So consistent sales, consistent reviews those are important for Amazon in terms of helping you, help them, help your ideal reader find you. And then having the review is helpful for you as the author, because when someone's trying to make a decision and they've never heard of you, if they, if they've heard of, was doing this morning as a perfect example, I had never heard of any of these authors.
Speaker 1:I did not. Truly I did not. And, interestingly, the one book I did buy not only had 21,000 reviews, but it had. I bought a. So I bought one with 21,000 reviews, didn't even look any further than that. It also was a New York Times bestseller. But then the second one that I looked at only had I think it had about 28 reviews, which you could argue was a little bit lower because it was a book that was published in 2021. But what I noticed was that the foreword was written by a doctor whose name I know and trust. Like I don't know of this doctor well, I haven't followed him extensively, but I know other people in the same space who rely on him and his expertise and do follow him. So the fact that he wrote the foreword sort of negated the low review content for me and that went into the cart.
Speaker 1:There are all these different things that come into play, all right. So what happens is authors go. Well, how do I get these? Because I don't want to be a nag and I don't want to be sleazy and I don't want to bug people, and also I've heard that there are all these rules around reviews, and all everything I've just said is true. As far as how to get that. I mean, there are a lot of different ways that you can go about it, but what I wanted to do for this episode is actually crowdsource from other authors.
Speaker 1:Okay, how do you handle it? What is your approach? My approach, I'll tell you right up front, and the authors with whom I work this is what I tell them is ask, ask, ask, ask and then ask again. We are all busy and I can almost guarantee you that if someone calls you right now and says, hey, can you go leave a review for my product, you're going to say, absolutely I will, and you will not get it done today, because something else will happen. Or you'll think, oh God, I got to think about what I want to say. And, by the way, people don't need to do that as much as they think, and it's sort of our job as authors to remind them. Just say it was a great read, just because the number of times that people actually like those 21,000 reviews I didn't go down and read any of them, I just saw that it was an average four and a half star with 21,000. I'm imagining that was pretty. It's a pretty good book and the majority of the people who read it liked it. So we ask, we ask, we ask again, and we don't only only ask, but we make it absolutely as easy as possible for people to go and do it. So I want to share some of the responses that I got from authors as to what their approach is.
Speaker 1:Okay, so first, one of my favorite people on the planet, anne Garvin, who's written most recently Bummer Camp. I swear everyone needs this book in their arsenal right now. But we all just need a lot of Anne Garvin, anne herself and all of her books, because they just will make you happy. So if you don't have an Anne Garvin book, go get one, and if you already have read several, just go get another one because it'll bring you joy. So Anne's solution to this is she has little stickers that say please consider reviewing if you liked the book. Otherwise, I try to look very intensely hopeful. So that's just Anne. If you know Anne, you know that's her humor, and we're all looking very intensely hopeful, but people don't think about it unless we tell them. So, putting a sticker on the front of your book if you have that option If you're doing print on demand, you probably don't have that option, but if you're handing your book out at events, you could certainly put a sticker on the front or on the inside or put them on your bookmark.
Speaker 1:I did get another response from an author I'm scrolling. Okay, yeah, donna Norman Carbone, who's written of Lies and Honey and All that Is Sacred. She has a request printed on all of her bookmarks, which is just smart. And then lots of times, if you want to, you can even have a QR code on that bookmark that takes them right to the listing on Amazon or the review page, specifically Because sometimes people get to that listing and they're like where do I go to write a review. It feels really intuitive for some people, but if you're not a frequent user of Amazon or you're not great with technology, it can be a little bit more confusing, right?
Speaker 1:So this one I got from JR, who works with self-published authors. His handle on Instagram is publish, underscore yourself, and I completely agree with him. He says whenever someone expresses excitement about reading your book, kindly ask them to leave a review. Make it as easy as you can for them. Literally write down their words and email it to them with a link directly to the Amazon review page for your book. People want to leave reviews, but nobody wants to write reviews, even with ChatGPT. I'm adding that in JR didn't say that. Use their words and put it in writing for them. It's no different from and blurbs is going to be another topic we're going to discuss a different day because the thinking on that has changed a little bit. But when I work with authors who are wanting to seek out blurbs, especially from extremely busy individuals, one of my biggest tips is write the blurb for them. Or write 15 blurbs and say would any of these work? Are you willing to attach your name to any of these? Because nine times out of 10, they'll say I'll take number seven, and then you take seven off the list, you attach their name and now you've got your blurb and you're good to go.
Speaker 1:One thing I've done, similar to what JR just said, is I actually I did this. It was my I think it was my cousin but I said, hey, have you reviewed? I think it was write the damn book already. But have you reviewed it yet? Because she kept telling me she was going to, and then life took over. She's got two young kids and the whole thing.
Speaker 1:So one time she was visiting and I said have you done this yet? And she said I'm so sorry. I said can you just give me your phone? So I took her phone, I pulled up Amazon, I wrote the review and then I gave it to her and I said how do you feel about this? I mean, the review was very brief. It said something like a great. It was stuff I knew she had said to me, but it was like it was also very generic, like a great resource for people who are looking to write nonfiction or memoir. I don't know, I just showed it to her. She said let me zhuzh it. I don't know if zhuzh was her word, but she added a couple of things to it, hit submit and off. We went. Like sometimes it's just taking the work off of people's shoulders and you understand this, because how many times have you thought, okay, I have this little thing to do today, but I'm just not going to do it, and you put it off, and you put it off, and you put it off and then, once you actually do it, you're like why the hell did that take so long? It literally took 42 seconds.
Speaker 1:Joanna Rakoff, who I also completely adore and who wrote my Salinger Year and several others. She's such a delight. I loved her answer. She said don't look at Amazon reviews or any reviews, or think about them or talk about them, or look at Amazon reviews of other books. That's my only tip. I've never read a review of my books and I remember when I had her on this podcast and she told me that and I thought that is really smart. I then replied to her and said well, also, joanna, you have a lot of reviews, so I understand not reading them, and that's a different topic. Like getting them versus reading them are two different things. But do you just let them come in organically or like, do you do anything to encourage people to leave reviews or are you at that point where you kind of don't have to because your review, your books are so heavily consumed I mean, as are, by the way, ann garvin's? Like ann garvin know 25,000 or something reviews on her most recent book, but the point is she's still asking. Anne is Now. I haven't heard back from Joanna yet, so stay tuned on that.
Speaker 1:I also heard from Rhiannon Rolnas, who, on Instagram, is Riri, underscore, reads and writes. Riri is R-H-I-R-H-I. If you just search that you'll be able to find it. Her I think it's her first novel, but nevertheless it's called Black and Blue Widow and it is now out. She said.
Speaker 1:When it comes to arcs, I made sure to follow up via email on release day and a week after I included the Amazon link in my email. I still don't have a huge number of them. The book is Black and Blue Widow, but I got the biggest bumps the day I sent the emails and that is kind of similar to how, if you have a product that you're selling and it's on a sale, you'll get the most sales, oftentimes on that last day, because people just wait, like they don't take immediate action on things. So this just goes to show, rhiannon's comment just goes to show you have to ask and that is part of the templates I have in From Manuscript to Market. It's like what do you send people? How do you ask this?
Speaker 1:Sarah Gormley, who wrote such a fun memoir guys called the Order of Things, she loves pizza and hates bullshit and if that's not a reason to follow her, I just don't know what is. She is at SC Gormley. I'll just tag all these in the show notes so you can go find everybody. She just said ask for them. Not very creative, I know, but she's actually correct. I said do you have success doing it via email, linking them directly to the review page text? What's your poison? And she said I do all of those, but in person, with an explanation of how much they matter works best, and then only like 15 to 20% take the time to do so.
Speaker 1:People are intimidated. I think I agree with that, the intimidation. It's like people are, I don't know. They feel like they're writing something that everyone's going to read and judge them on. So they'll say like I got to get it written correctly and I'm like you don't have to write anything. You can just go click hopefully five stars and be done with it. You don't actually have to write a commentary and also you could just say loved every minute, couldn't put it down and you're good to go. But I think a lot of people don't realize how much it helps authors, and so if someone is close to you and wants to see you succeed and then they understand how important it is, they're oftentimes more likely to take 37 seconds if that to do it.
Speaker 1:I also heard from Jennifer Bellingrode, who is the author of Fix your Freaking Marriage Practical Tips to Just Start Somewhere, and she said she reaches out to individual buyers and asks them to leave a review. She also requests review on Facebook and through her weekly email newsletter sometimes. So there's only one thing I yes, and there's one thing I want to say about this. So asking in your email is great and yet another reason to have an email. And somebody else I feel like posted about posting on social media NL Blandford. She is a crime fighter by day and a thriller author by night, so that's exciting and I'm going to need to have her on this podcast. She said she has a similar process to Riri or Rhiannon as her backlist grows, she's thinking of requesting ARC readers or a street team to provide a link to one or two reviews they've left on past books in the signup form. This shows they are engaged and hopefully keep the engagement going. So her first book in a three book series is called the Perilous Road to Her. Again, I will link all this below.
Speaker 1:The thing about asking for reviews on social media and where it can get a little bit dicey is that technically, technically, that's against Amazon's terms. You cannot ask for a review, nor can you compensate someone in any way for leaving a review with anything other than a complimentary copy of the book. So you cannot enter them into a giveaway. If they leave a review, you cannot give them a $5 gift card to Starbucks. I mean, you can do it, I guess, without saying that you're doing it, but you can't post. If you post out on social media, hey, I'm looking for 100 people to leave a review. If you do, I, but you can't post. If you post out on social media, hey, I'm looking for 100 people to leave a review. If you do, I'll enter you in this giveaway. Or if you do, I'll send you a $5 gift card.
Speaker 1:That's not good, and while people get away with it on occasion, and I put get away with it in quotes. It's questionable how much they get away with it Because anecdotally ie allegedly when Amazon's system it's not a person, but when the system sees those things, they then are able to decipher who's following you on that social media platform and if and when that person logs into Amazon with the same email address that they use to log into the social platform and they leave a review of your book, amazon discounts it because they are already looking, as they do. By the way, if they can tie someone to you as a friend or a family member through social media, they consider that to be a biased review. It's completely crazy because wouldn't our friends and family I mean specifically our friends and specifically our friends air quote on social media, wouldn't they like? Of course, they'd leave a review of your book, of your product, of your service, of your anything.
Speaker 1:But the key with Amazon is that you have to. You can't say if you know, please leave a five-star review. You cannot lead the reviewer in any way, shape or form. You have to, or you're supposed to ask them to just leave an honest review and you're not supposed to ask them directly. You're not supposed to solicit the review and, furthermore, you are not allowed to compensate a reviewer in any way beyond a complimentary copy of the book which ostensibly you're giving them so that they can leave an honest review. So we can go way deep down the rabbit hole of what works, what doesn't work, what's likely to be discarded, etc. A lot of it. There's no method to the madness, but the end result is that getting Amazon reviews continues to be.
Speaker 1:Whenever you ask an author about Amazon reviews, more often than not they're like oh my God, it's just something that is uncomfortable. It feels labor intensive, icky. It's the same thing people feel when they're like, hey, you want to buy my book, like it just doesn't feel great. So try to find ways to make it feel comfortable, to sort of normalize it. And truly one of the best things and I tell the authors with whom I work this whenever anyone messages you on social media, like in a DM, or they send you an email and they say I just got your book, I loved it. Or I just got this book for my sister, she loved it, thank you so much for writing it. When you reply to them, make sure to not just say thank you so much, you just made my day. Also, get in the habit of saying if you wouldn't mind taking less than a minute to leave a quick review on Amazon, they help so, so much, and then putting a link so they don't have to, they don't have to search for it, they don't have to do anything, they just click that link, leave the review and they're out and you can even say you know, you don't have to leave a worded like words, you can just leave a star ranking. But I'd be so, so, so appreciative. I swear eight times out of ten people do that.
Speaker 1:One of my authors with whom I work, joanna Hardis, her book Just Do Nothing A Paradoxical Guide to Getting Out of your Way came out about a year and a half ago and she was sitting at eight reviews for the longest time. I think it was eight, it might have been 12. And she was like Elizabeth, we got to do something and I said, ok, well, here's what we're going to do. You're just going to start asking. We're literally going to take one step at a time and within I think two weeks she was up to maybe 28, 29 reviews and she's now sitting at I think the last time I checked 51. So they start to. There is a tipping point where they start to kind of just come in themselves.
Speaker 1:But we have to do some work usually to get them to that point, and so I wanted to put that encouragement out of some different ways that you can do it, from asking directly to sending emails, putting QR codes on bookmarks, putting stickers on your book, putting a little blurb on your website, even saying hey, if you've read it, would love it if you could click here real quick and leave a review. I understand that soliciting a review, but it's not doing it out on social media and then also take comfort in the fact that you actually want to space them out, because if you get 20 in a day, first of all it raises a red flag for the Amazon system, because they're like why, you know, does she have someone coming into her house and she's just got the iPad open and is just telling it? This is something people were doing for a while. They were just gaming the system, and so they'd have a book launch party, may have a 100 people show up, and as you walked in the door, you had to click five stars and what was happening was a lot of those people hadn't even read the book.
Speaker 1:So there are all these different things that Amazon does in the background to try to determine it discounts a lot of reviews that it should not. But don't be afraid to just ask and remember that everyone who has 50, 100, 10,000 reviews got their one review at a time and, in all likelihood, that book's been out a while. They come in slowly, and that's what you want, because that helps Amazon continue to say, oh, this book is not only being purchased, but it's being liked, and then it can look at the people who are purchasing it and liking it and find similar people to suggest the book to. It's all this kind of stuff that goes on in the background on Amazon that we, as authors, very much want to understand in order to take advantage of, so that we can help Amazon, help us grow our readership. So if you have any additional questions about that, please don't hesitate to let me know. Again, I will link all the Instagram handles and the authors whose suggestions I've included in the episode notes. I'll also put a link to From Manuscript to Market.
Speaker 1:If you're looking for a program that will help you make sure you've got a solid foundation to usher your book into the world or re-usher your book into the world in a way that it puts processes in place that you can then build upon, as opposed to feeling like you're starting over each and every time. You either relaunch a current book or launch a new book, and now I'm going to go plant my potatoes in my new potato grower bags. I will talk to you again next week. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, this is your friendly reminder to follow or subscribe, leave a quick review and share it with someone you know has a great story or message, but isn't sure what to do next. Also, remember to check out publishaprofitablebookcom for book writing resources and tips and to see all the ways we can work together to get your book out into the world. Again, thanks so much for listening and I'll talk with you again soon. Thank you.
