"Roundheads and Ramblings"
reviews
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Gwen Perkins, Guest Blog: Posted on Sunday, April 15, 2012 10:43 AM
As anyone who is or knows an author knows, many of us frequently go
around wishing and hoping that our book will receive reviews on that
book giant, Amazon. (I also wish and hope for Powell’s and Barnes and
Noble’s but as more and more authors publish exclusively through the Big
A, that’s what this blog post is about.) I thought that I’d explain my
own reasons for wanting reviews and how they work. I’m choosing to
address this via questions that I’ve received from friends and family.
1) I’m no good at writing an Amazon review. What do I say? The beautiful thing about Amazon reviews is that you don’t have to be
Roger Ebert. You can click a star rating and then write a couple of
sentences about the book. Reviews can be as simple as “This book was
really good. I wish there was more romance” or really elaborate. Here are some things you could put in a review: - Adjectives that describe the book (it was good, it was awful, etc).
- Say something you liked about it. Things that you could focus on
could include the plot, a particular scene, characters, how things
changed during the course of the story, etc.
- If there was a moment or character that personally impacted you in
some way, don’t be afraid to say so. Put yourself in the review. Authors
love to know their readers and I know that I’m always touched when I
can tell someone made a personal connection with what I wrote.
- Talk about what you wanted to see more of or what needs improvement.
Do you wish another character was in the book more? Say so. Did bad
spelling distract you? Tell us that too.
Tips to remember: - Don’t be afraid to be honest. Do, however, remember to be helpful. Don’t just say “it sucks” but tell everyone why it sucked.
- Don’t give away the ending of the book. You can allude to it very
vaguely (“the ending surprised me”) but don’t say specific plot details.
- You’re not being graded. Write a review as long or short as you
want. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece of art—think of it more as a
conversation or what you might tell people you know about this book.
- Make sure that you read the book before you review. This seems like it should be obvious but… it’s not.
2) Do Amazon reviews actually affect a book’s sales? I have to be honest with you and tell you that I don’t yet know for
sure as I don’t have the “magic number” yet. This is what I understand
to be true from conversations with my publisher and other authors: - Around 20-25 reviews, Amazon starts including the book in “also
bought” and “you might like” lists. This increases your chances of
someone finding your title.
- Around 50-70 reviews, Amazon looks at your book for spotlight
positions and the newsletter. This is HUGE. This is my personal goal
although I use Amazon reviews for other reasons (more later on in this
post).
- Number of reviews may affect Amazon sales ranking. (Again, this is anecdotal–I have no actual proof of it.)
- Some websites will not consider or promote your book unless you have
a number of reviews on the page (this is very true of those sites that
highlight free promos—I can attest to this).
- And, of course, readers may read through your reviews and decide to purchase or not purchase the book based on this.
3) Whatever. I don’t care if you sell this wonderful/awful
book. Why should I write a review if it doesn’t change how you write the
next one? Oh, but it does. When I read my Amazon reviews, they tell me things that my editor
might not. Let’s face it, an editor is only one person and even with
beta readers, you’re working in a group of people who are familiar with
the craft of writing. What an author also needs is the opinion of the
average reader, that person who just picked up their book and doesn’t
have an English degree. While you have to have a tough skin about reviews, as an author,
they’re very helpful. They can reaffirm something that you were already
working on. For instance, I’d already decided to make one of my minor
characters in my first book a point-of-view character for the second—my
reviews have told me that people wouldn’t be uninterested in him. They
can also point out things that you need to work on. In my case,
exposition! Likewise, positive reviews tell you what you’re doing right. If
people rave about your characters, then that’s likely a good place to
keep going. If reviews talk about the fighting scenes in a positive
light, then you know you’re making a difference. So, in short, yes, what you write in that review is fairly likely to
change something about the book I’m working on now. Writing is a
process.
4) But I really hated the book! Should I still review it? Here is where I probably differ from some other authors so I’m going to speak only for myself here. Yes. Absolutely. How will I know where to improve unless I get
reviews that tell me so? Yes, it can be painful to read some reviews but
am I ever going to say that there isn’t truth in them? No.
After the initial sting, I’ll read it again and take something home from
that. I’ll be a better writer for it. To be honest, not everyone likes
every book. There are people out there who hate Harry Potter.
It would be a little presumptuous to think that all of my reviews would
be golden for any book (they’re not now and I don’t expect that to
change. Especially not if anyone reads this post. ). The only thing that I ask is to please make sure you have something
to say about why it is bad. The only review that I’ve ever been really
irritable about was a one-star on an old short horror story I posted for
fun where the reader said they were underage and hadn’t read it. Having said all of that, it is really tough to be a small press or
self-published author (I am the former). Bad reviews can kill a novel if
they’re the first ones a book receives or if they’re all that the book
has. Please hold this in mind if you decide to go forth. This post by Anne R. Allen does a good job of explaining the impact in more detail than I’ll get into here. Now that you’ve read all of that, if you have any questions, feel
free to comment and I’ll try to answer them. I am speaking from an
author’s standpoint but perhaps others will chime in with their own
thoughts on the process. (Feel free to share this post or copy it for your own blog. All I ask
is that if you do, please keep my author note here at the bottom.)
Gwen Perkins is a fantasy novelist who is always on the hunt for Amazon reviews for her first novel, The Universal Mirror (Hydra Publications, 2012). She can be contacted through email at gwen@ironangel.net. |
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Posted on Friday, July 29, 2011 8:44 AM
The following post from another author resonated with me this week. As many of you know, Amazon added the Kindle edition of Beyond All Price to its free list this week. (Note: I did not ask them to do this, and it will last only for this week.) Almost immediately the downloads began. Now, on Friday morning, the total is somewhere over 22,000 copies, which puts the book at #1 on the Historical Fiction list, and #6 on the store-wide list. I'm thrilled, of course, with the reception. That's 22,000 readers, and I couldn't be happier, even though I have not made one cent on those transactions. But will it ever help me sell more books? That depends on those 22,000 readers passing the word.
Ironically, I received a check this morning from Kindle, paying me the royalties on the month's sales BEFORE this promotion started -- a blazing $19.00 in the bank. If that sounds just a bit unbalanced to you, you CAN help. Read the suggestions below and then go to Amazon (either the trade paper edition or the Kindle edition) to leave a couple of sentences under the reviews section. If you just can't think of anything to say, at least click the "like" button. It WILL make a difference!
As authors, we spend a lot of time trying to promote our books. Our biggest
obstacle is obscurity because there are a lot of books out there. No, really. A
lot.
We like to think that good stories are all it takes to make it (in author
terms “make it” usually means “become well known enough and sell enough books
that I can quit my day job and write for a living”), but you can doubtlessly
think of mediocre books that are selling bazillions of copies and authors you
love who never make it out of the “mid-list” category.
Sometimes it’s just the author (or publishing house) with the biggest
marketing budget who wins, but you, as a reader, have amazing power. Don’t
believe for a second that you don’t have anything to do with whether an author
makes it, because you do. A lot. No, really. A lot.
Why does this matter to you? Well, authors who get to quit their day jobs
can write faster and put more books out for you!
The following are some little things you can do that can make a big
difference. Some of them only take a few seconds. Your favorite authors will
appreciate the effort. Trust me.
Helping
out on Amazon
Amazon
is the big kahuna of book sellers, especially when it comes to ebooks, so
helping an author “get found” on there can give them a big boost. You can
certainly do these things on other bookstore sites as well (nothing against
copying and pasting a review, for example), but Amazon tends to have more cool
features to help an author get found.
Here’s
the list (any one of these things can help):
- If you do nothing else, consider
writing a review on Amazon, even if the book already has quite a few
and/or you’ve reviewed it elsewhere. There’s evidence that ratings and reviews factor into the
Amazon algorithms that decide which books are promoted on the site (i.e.
certain books are recommended to customers who bought books in similar
genres). If reviewing isn’t your bag, don’t worry about writing
paragraphs-long in-depth studies of the book; maybe you could just pen a
few sentences with a couple of specifics about why you liked the book.
- “Tag” the book with
genre-appropriate labels (i.e. thriller, steampunk, paranormal romance). You
don’t have to leave a review to do this; you just need an account at
Amazon. A combination of the right tags and a good sales ranking can make
a book come up when customers search for that type of story on Amazon.
- Give the book a thumb’s up. This takes less than a second and
probably doesn’t do much, but it may play into Amazon’s algorithms to a
lesser extent than reviews/ratings.
- Make a “Listmania” List and add your
favorite authors’ books to it. This creates another avenue for new readers to find
books. It’s better to create lists around similar types of books (i.e.
genres or sub-genres) than to do a smorgasbord, and consider titling it
something description so folks will be more inclined to check it out, ie.
“Fun heroic fantasy ebooks for $5 or less”
- If you have a Kindle, highlight
some wise or fun quotations from the book and share them publicly (if enough people share their
highlights, they’ll show up at the bottom of a book’s page)
Helping
out with Social Media
If
you’re involved with Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc., you can give
your favorite authors a shout-out when they release new books. If they blog,
you can follow their site (through Google Reader or other RSS readers) and
share the link when they post something that may be interesting to your
friends. If they’re on Twitter, you can follow them and retweet their links now
and then.
Authors
don’t expect you to follow them 24/7 and repeat everything they say (that might
actually alarm some folks…), but a little promotional help now and then is
greatly appreciated.
If
you like to be social about books, you can join sites such as Goodreads,
Shelfari, or LibraryThing. You can help your favorite authors by posting
reviews and talking about their books on those sites, or you can just use those
places to find online reading buddies with common interests.
Helping
out with Your Blog
Do
you ever talk about books or what you’re reading on your blog? You might
consider reviewing your favorite authors on your site (you could even make a few dollars if you signed up as an Amazon affiliate).
Also,
if most of your favorites maintain websites, you could add an “author blogroll”
list in your menu with links to those sites.
And
Lastly…
These
days, most authors have websites and contact forms so you can get in touch. If
you enjoyed their work, consider sending them a short note to let them know.
While it won’t help them sell more books, it’ll make their day.
Thanks
for reading (this post and books in general!)
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