In this blog post, we will be considering how to get reviews for your self-published book from friends and family, as well as how to make sure that these reviews are unbiased so that there are no consequences for your book. Getting reviews is an important part of marketing and promoting your book, so we will start by considering what the advantages of having reviews are.
Before we get started though, bear in mind that many online retailers, such as Amazon, do not allow immediate family members of people in the same household to leave a customer review, as it is too likely to be biased. Check the terms and conditions for reviews on your chosen seller carefully to make sure you are following them, as breaking them could result in your book being penalised.
Advantages of Having Reviews
One advantage of having reviews on your book is that it should lift it up in the rankings of your chosen seller. Having reviews means that people are both buying and engaging with your book, even if they are negative (although ideally, they would be positive). Being higher up in the rankings should mean that your book appears more often and nearer the top in readers’ searches, leading to more sales and more reviews.
Reviews can also help to make up people’s minds about whether to buy your book. Looking at a book without any reviews (other than those chosen by you for the description) means that it is hard to judge whether it is actually good or not – book descriptions always make the book sound great! However, if there are other readers who are enjoying it, it is more likely that a potential buyer will decide to purchase it.
Even negative reviews are not necessarily a bad thing if they are detailed. Maybe the very thing that the reviewer disliked is something that another potential buyer would love to read about – sometimes it’s just personal preference.
Negative reviews can also help you. If you notice that several reviews are picking up on the same thing, consider whether you can change this. If it is an editing issue, you may well be able to make minor alterations to fix this, then include a note saying corrections have been made in the description. If it is a more general problem with your writing, it may be too late to do anything with that book, but you can certainly try to improve it for future writing.
Approaching People for Reviews
One of the best ways to get reviews on your self-published book is to reach out to your network and ask them to leave an honest review. This helps you to gather reviews quickly when your book is first released, meaning that your book should rise in the search results. In turn, this should then lead to more reviews from people finding your book naturally, now that it is more likely to appear when they browse the selling platform.
So, who in your network can you reach out to? This includes a wide range of people, such as family and close friends, but can also mean people that you might not be in such frequent contact with. In a way, these people are better as they are more likely to give an unbiased review if they are not as close to you. Simply posting on social media will let people know that you have written a book and would like reviews on it.
If you do reach out to people directly, remember that you can only really do this once, making it clear that you want an unbiased review. You don’t want people to feel pressured into leaving a review, as this reduces the chance of an honest and carefully written review. In addition, do be very careful about reading the terms and conditions of your selling platform regarding reviews from family and friends, as stated above. You don’t want your book to be blacklisted for the sake of a few extra reviews.
It can also be worth getting some initial reviews from people you speak to directly, then posting on social media a bit later to ask for reviews. This means that your reviews are staggered, which keeps your book’s listing active. Potential buyers will also be more likely to read current reviews, which often hold more weight when they are deciding whether to buy your book.
What Should Reviews Include?
If your reviewers are unsure where to start with writing a review, you can give them a few basic tips. Remember these need to be general ones that would apply to any review and that you are not telling them what to write. If you already know what keywords you will be using, you can request that they include these if appropriate. If the reviewer has relevant expertise, it would be great if they can include this in their review, especially if your book is nonfiction.
You could also offer a few questions for them to use as starting points, such as what they did and didn’t like about the book and whether they would buy more from the same author. Be very careful that you are not influencing them too much, though – it has to be an honest review.
Wrapping Up
I hope that this helps you when you are trying to gather reviews for your book. In my next blog post, we will be looking at how to approach other potential reviewers, so come back in two weeks for that!
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