How to Get Reviews for Your Book
Hy Bender
Email: hy@hyreviews.com
A reader who stumbles upon your book on Amazon.com or some other online bookseller may have never heard of you before and know virtually nothing about your book. That reader has the option of buying numerous other books that, at least on the surface, appear very similar to yours. So how can you persuade that reader to choose your book over those of your competitors?
A key factor in your favor can be the reviews on your page. Positive words from both customers and professional reviewers can go a long way toward influencing a reader to buy your book.
So how do you get reviews? The ideas and strategies that follow have worked for many authors and, hopefully, will deliver results for you too.
Include a Call to Action at the End of Your Book
Most efficient are things you can do once and that will then keep working for you. A top example is making maximal use of the space directly following the conclusion of your book.
When readers arrive at the end of your book, their feelings about your work are likely to be at their peak. That's why right after the ending (and a decorative divider line to mark that end), on the very same page you should include one or two calls to action to leverage those emotions.
First, if you have another book for sale—especially if it's the next book in a series—include a brief description and a link to that book.
But whether you have another book or not, also ask readers to provide the book they're just finished with a review. There's no time when your readers will be more motivated to share their thoughts, perspectives, and passions about your book as when they've just completed it. So if you include that call to action directly following your last chapter, you're likely to vastly increase your book's number of reviews.
You can do more than just ask for a review and point readers to your book on Amazon.com, though. You can send those readers to the precise page where they can enter the review for your book, sparing them from minutes of fumbling around trying to locate the page themselves...and potentially becoming so distracted that they neglect to ever write the review.
Courtesy of Dave Chesson, the link you can use to take readers directly to the review page for your book on Amazon is as follows:
https://amazon.com/review/create-review?&asin=ASIN or 10-digit ISBN
with your book's actual ASIN, or else 10-digit ISBN, in place of the italicized text at the end.
This raises one other issue, though. The above is fine if your book is being distributed exclusively via Amazon. However, if your book is wide, i.e., sold by dozens of different vendors, those other sellers aren't going to like the Amazon link. Some of them will even disable it in the ebook version. At the same time, it's in your interest to push reviewers to your Amazon page, as that's the primary place readers will go to obtain objective feedback about your book.
The solution to this problem is to not put the link above directly in your book, but instead insert a seemingly neutral link (e.g., https://mywebsite/reviews) that instantly and invisibly redirects readers to the Amazon link above. There are many ways to create a redirect link, ranging from free URL shorteners and customizers to more sophisticated (and pricier) services such as Pretty Links (though even Pretty Links has a free version; to understand what it does vs. the paid version, please click here).
By providing a customized link at the end of your book that appears to point to your personal website but actually takes readers directly to the Amazon reviews page for your book, you maximize the chances of getting copious reviews for your book on the site likely to be most helpful for your book's sales. Further, this is something you need to do just once, and it will then keep working for you as long as readers continue reading and finishing your book.
Send a Call to Action to Your Subscribers/Followers
What I've described above applies to more than the end of your book. You can follow the same strategies to ask for reviews from your email list subscribers, social media followers, and other audiences you're reaching via various platforms.
Some authors even include a request for reviews in the signature of their email address, effectively asking for support automatically with every message. If that degree of pushiness exceeds your comfort level, then don't do that. But simply keep in mind that you're much more likely to get people to do something for you if you explicitly ask them to.
Make Readers Empathize With You and Your Need for Reviews
Not all readers understand how helpful and meaningful their reviews can be to you, both professionally and personally. But you have the opportunity to make that clear to them, be it at the end of your book (see above), via social media, via your email list, and/or whatever else you use as a platform.
So let readers know you're a human being who appreciates their support via word of mouth recommendations and, even more, reviews on Amazon that will potentially be seen by thousands of people.
Some authors drive the point home with a photo of them and their kids, implying "Hey, I need sales to pay for their food and shelter, help a parent out."
Other authors will find tactful ways of saying "If my book provided value to you, it's a simple courtesy to pay that forward with your review."
And yet others will mention their feelings, describing how much a review will bring them joy.
Use whatever wording best aligns with who you authentically are and/or how you want to be perceived. However you achieve it, when you remind readers that you have the same basic needs for financial and emotional support that they do, they'll be more inclined to help out.
In addition, mention that you read every review. This shifts you from potentially being perceived as living in an ivory tower to being someone who any reader can connect with and express thanks to by writing a review. In addition, a reader knowing you'll be reading every word is likely to result in a more positive review.
Send Free Copies of Your Book to Select Readers
Send free copies of your book to people who have a reason to support you: e.g., fans of your work, fans of you personally, people whose agenda powerfully align with that of your book. These readers are motivated to help you and/or your book, which substantially increases the chances that your time and effort in sending them the book will result in their writing reviews of it.
Also send free copies to professional reviewers and influence leaders who make their living by sharing their opinions with large audiences via such platforms as newspapers, magazines, websites, and podcasts. While they aren't motivated to help you personally, they have a professional commitment to spread the word about great books likely to be of interest to their audiences.
Timing also matters. It's especially helpful to send out your book shortly before it's published, via Advance Reader Copies (ARCs), for the sake of populating your book's Amazon page with reviews in time for its critical launch day and launch week. Make clear to your fans that they don't need to read the entire book to write a review, just enough to form a clear opinion before your publication date.
For each free book you send out, include an email or cover letter that's customized to its recipient (never generic) to make that person feel special and valued, and so motivated to follow through for you with a review. The effort you put into personalizing the note helps justify your later following up to ask, "When do you think you'll get a chance to write that review?"
By the way, sending an ARC of your book to prominent people can also work for gathering back cover and front matter endorsements. You can learn much more about strategies for obtaining both endorsements and contributions from celebrities by accessing a Clubhouse "Writing to Sell" interview with author Gabe Henry I conducted in March 2022 titled Recruiting Jerry Seinfeld for Your Book.
Reach Out to Frequent Reviewers
As just noted above, the primary group of people you should focus on are those who have a reason to support you or a professional reason to spread the word about your work. That's because these are the people most likely to provide you with a return on your investment of time, energy, and free books.
If you want to widen your net, though, you can also pursue those who simply write a lot of reviews. These include folks Amazon assigns a "Top Reviewer" badge and whose opinions might carry more weight with readers.
You can pursue such reviewers by looking at the Amazon reviews of books most similar to yours, picking out the reviewers you like, reading their Amazon bios or Googling them for their contact information, and then reaching out to explain why your book might be of interest and asking if they'd care for a free copy to review. (You can also find a long list of Top Reviewers here and here, but these are of limited use since they cover reviewers of all Amazon products, not just book reviewers.)
Another way you can find frequent reviewers is via a book dedicating to them titled The Book Reviewer Yellow Pages by David Wogahn. This ebook is available at no charge via Kindle Unlimited, or else can be purchased for just $3.99, and provides descriptions and contact information for "174 book bloggers, 9 book blogger directories, 42 book review businesses," and more. The most recent 10th Edition was last updated in 2020.
Other ebooks that you might find useful include The Book Review Companion: An Author's Guide to Getting and Using Book Reviews by David Wogahn (free via KU, or $3.99) and Getting Book Reviews: Easy, Ethical Strategies for Authors by Rayne Hall (free via KU, or $4.99).
If all that's not enough, you can also consider submitting your book to websites dedicated to providing book reviews for voracious readers and/or readers focused on a particular genre. While such reviews appear on these sites, not on the customer reviews section of your Amazon book page, every little bit can potentially help. Plus if your book is self-published, you can potentially quote a review from, say, Crime Fiction Lover or The Kindle Book Review in the "Editorial Reviews" section of your Amazon book page. You can find lists of both free and paid book review sites here and here and here.
Consider Using Paid Services
There are a number of paid services available to help you get reviews and/or get your book in front of influencers likely to be of help your book.
Among the most popular are services that can distribute your Advance Review Copies (ARCs) to potential reviewers. These include BookSprout, BookFunnel, and Story Origin.
If you're aiming to get your book reviewed and seen by as many librarians, publishers, and other high-end publishing folks as possible, an appropriate service is NetGalley, which is more expensive than the services just mentioned but can be worth it for high profile books.
Finally, a service I know nothing about but that Dave Chesson has seen fit to mention is Self-Publishing Review, which uses its email lists to help generate both sales of and reviews for your book. According to Dave, using the code KINDLEPRENEUR5 will result in a 5% site-wide discount.
Regarding Bad Reviews
When you work to garner reviews, the hoped-for results are positive reviews (e.g., 4-5 stars on Amazon). However, if you receive some negative reviews, that's not entirely a bad thing.
First, a small percentage of negative reviews can make your book page appear more legitimate. After all, if all the reviews were rigged in your favor, or if your book appealed to only a narrow band of rabid fans, then those 1-3 star ratings wouldn't be there. So a negative review now and then can lend your page authenticity.
Second, one person's poison may be another reader's pleasure. So if you receive, say, a 1-star review complaining that your book contains too much cursing, or is too disrespectful to conventional thinking, or is too stupidly fun, there may be readers who consider what that critic hated to be a huge selling point, in which case that review will be earning you sales. In fact, there are authors who include excerpts from some of their most memorable bad reviews in ads for their books. This can be especially effective for comedy authors (who mine humor from ironic reversals and satire) and romance authors (many of whom love reviews chiding them for being "too steamy;" e.g., Zoe York treasures a pan that called one of her political-themed books "MSNBC porn").
Other Perspectives
If you'd like additional perspectives on getting book reviews, you can check out advice by Reedsy here, by The Creative Penn here, and by Dave Chesson/Kindlepreneur here and here.
I hope this page ends up being of some help to you. If you spot any errors, or if you know of a resource that belongs here, please feel encouraged to email me at hy@hyreviews.com.
For help with any kind of book, please visit BookProposal.net.
Copyright © 2023 Hy Bender
Email: hy@hyreviews.com
