Debbie Young shares her top tips for making the most of great book reviews
Great book reviews make an indie author's day – and until you've learned to thicken your skin against the less flattering comments, a low star rating can have the opposite effect. So how do you make the most of the best ones, once that initial flutter of joy has subsided? Debbie Young, ALLi's Author Advice Center Manager, offers a few top tips to help you sustain that good feeling and use readers' appreciation to fuel your progress as a writer and as an authorpreneur.
Dispelling Myths about Amazon Reviews
But first, let's debunk the most widespread myth about reviews. Many authors feel that reviews seem much harder to come by these days. On Amazon in particular, where over-enthusiastic monitoring (spot the euphemism) seems to have caused the removal of genuine reviews. This has fuelled rumors that deter readers from leaving reviews in the first place, e.g. you're not allowed to review or receive reviews from anyone with whom you're connected on social media. With most indie authors being highly connected as part of their marketing strategy, that would be very limiting – and Amazon states categorically in its guidelines that this is not the case:
“Simply being friends or liked on a social media site will not get a review removed.”
Don't forget reviews can also disappear for other reasons outside of Amazon's control, e.g. a customer deciding to close their Amazon account and delete their reviews as they leave.
All the more reason to take control of what you can control – and copy all new reviews as they are posted.
That way you have them forever at your fingertips, and you may choose to use them in various constructive ways, no matter what Amazon (or GoodReads or BookBub, or anywhere else you care to review) does with them.
First, Harvest Your Great Book Reviews
Cutting and pasting each new review as it turns up is the work of moments. Storing it in a meaningful way requires a little more thought – as does how to use it other than for your own private gratification.
If you're a technical type, the most natural way to marshall reviews for future reference is to put them into a spreadsheet with columns identifying book title, review site (eg store or blog), number of stars, date received, free text for the copy in the review. You can then sort them however you wish e.g. by reviewer (which will help you spot regular reviewers whom you might invite to join your pre-release ARC list), by book, or by store
A less technically demanding way is to stash them on your website or in a Word document. I create a reviews page for each novel, hanging off the novel's main page, and I just add the review to the top of the list, so the newest is at the top, but I'm also gradually compiling a spreadsheet of quotable quotes.
Most of my reviews are from Amazon, so I add a note at the top of each reviews page to say “from Amazon UK or US stores unless otherwise stated”. If the review is from a bookblog, I add a link to where the blog appeared to drive traffic to the site in gratitude for the blogger's support.
How to Get More Mileage from Good Reviews
Rereading your great reviews can be a real tonic in moments of self-doubt (Image by @henry_be via unsplash.com)
Having all your great reviews in one place is like having a bottle of medicine to cure self-doubt on your writing desk. Whenever you get a bad review, read your best ones to restore your self-confidence and motivation. Many of us tend to remember the negative reviews more than the positives, and reliving those compliments be very motivating and restorative.
Create benefits further afield by sharing great reviews in social media posts. A few intriguing words with a link to the review, an eye-catching image, and (if on Twitter) a couple of appropriate hashtags can raise the profile of your book, and, dare I say it, attract new sales.
If you blog or guest-blog, quotes from reviews can help you say alluring things about your books without sounding big-headed. For example, I used a quote from Wendy H Jones‘ review of Murder in the Manger (“The funniest opening line of a novel. Period.”) as my jumping-off point for a guest post on Alison Morton's writing website on the role of humor in crime-writing.
Another reason to use reviewers' quotes is that they often find ways of describing your books that would never occur to you.
When Australian ALLi author Belinda Pollard, one of my wonderful beta readers, gave me the line “Miss Marple meets Bridget Jones”, I couldn't have been more pleased.
Great one-liners also lend themselves well to:
- endorsement quotes for your book covers
- “What Readers Say” pages at the start of your books
- information sheets for booksellers
For such high-profile uses, make sure you use the reviewer's name., Quotes attributed simply to “Amazon reviewer” have less credibility and will deter bricks-and-mortar bookstores from stocking your books.
In these contexts, you really should ask the reviewer's permission to quote them as you are using their words for potential commercial gain.
Most reviewers are flattered to be asked and are unlikely to refuse – but if you go ahead without asking, don't be surprised if they're less than pleased.
Two Notes of Caution
If you are in any doubt that any reviewer may not be happy to see you share their review, then ask permission first. This particularly applies to bookbloggers, who are reviewing in their own space and under their own copyright – unlike Amazon reviewers, which Amazon actively encourages you to share (though reviewers may not realise this). Alienating a bookblogger by violating their copyright is a bad idea, especially if you are hoping they will review your future books.- If quoting an extract rather than the full review, the conventional – and ethical – practice is to indicate what you've omitted with an ellipsis […] to show that you're quoting out of context, and alerts the reader to check the rest of the review, which may not be so flattering, if they wish to. (Most won't.)
If you are in any doubt that any reviewer may not be happy to see you share their review, then ask permission first. This particularly applies to bookbloggers, who are reviewing in their own space and under their own copyright – unlike Amazon reviewers, which Amazon actively encourages you to share (though reviewers may not realise this). Alienating a bookblogger by violating their copyright is a bad idea, especially if you are hoping they will review your future books.OVER TO YOU Have you found any other uses for sharing great book reviews? Do you have any inspiring case studies or cautionary tales to share? We'd love to hear about them!
#Indieauthors - like to get more mileage out of your book reviews? Here are a few ideas on how to use them to lift your spirits & sell more books! - by @DebbieYoungBN Share on XMORE POSTS ABOUT BOOK REVIEWS
From the ALLi Author Advice Center Archive
I have been stymied, hesitant to move ahead even though I have three books ready to publish. The hold-up for me is all about reviews. Marketing is my Achilles heel.
Your article succinctly brought into focus the areas of both my weakness and my strengths. I am a creative but very private soul. Over the space of five years I ventured forth in FB and Twitter and came to enjoy a supportive group of friends and followers. Then I stepped away in order to focus on my writing. FB has its personal and political frustrations that had become a frustration to me. But the irony of that short-sighted decision is now head-slapping. Here were folks who had been asking, waiting for a way to access my art and my poetry (“let me know”) yet I allowed the intermittent frustrations of social media get in my way. I still have both my FB a and Twitter accounts. My plan now is to spend the next three to six months re-establishing those connections in an appropriate way. Those people were my friends first, my cheering team second. I have many of them “to blame” for my having undertaken such a monumental literary task; I’ve been four years compiling and editing.
Handing my books to local bookstore owners and the local librarian is going to be another hurdle for me. But I can’t expect people to buy books that have no credible reviews and nothing to affirm their interest. It is those very kinds of reviews that I myself read before purchasing a book—regardless of its great cover or it’s catchy title. There’s just no way to get around what has to be done,
Along with my reveal of self-blocking pitfalls, which I’m pretty sure other first-timers have also slid into, let me hasten to the point of my message by adding a heartfelt thank you for outlining the review process in such a way as to help nudge me forward.
This article ties things together, specifies what needs to happen, where to start, and how to go about it.
I have been hesitant to “just do it” ….even though I have a trilogy of books ready to publish. The hold-up for me has been reviews. I am a rather private person and marketing is my Achilles heel.
Your article succinctly brought into focus the areas of both my weakness and my strengths. At minimum, I know that I must reestablish my presence on FB and Twitter; three years ago I was enjoying a very good following and a great deal of support. Then I decided to step away and focus on my writing. The irony of that decision is head-slapping. Self-promotion does not come easy and I already had people asking and waiting for me to publish a collection of my work. I am deeply chagrined to think I let my private nature and self-doubt intercept the potential of social media. Mustering courage to talk to the local bookstore owners and librarian is going to be a huge bite necessary challenge. But one cannot expect people to purchase books that have zero reviews, and nothing to affirm their interest.
Along with this embarrassing self-disclosure, let me say a heartfelt thank you for nudging me forward and prompting me to take the next steps.
Your article tied together the bits and pieces of my research into a concise and
Barbara Johnson Chase
(my publishing name in case you should stumble across my books one fine day)
I would agree that collaboration & cooperation should always be mutually agreed on. Though some are right that, for them, being selfishly on all the hype, actually did yield results.
I am still pretty low, but the website I link here (click my name?) does not just show the interview I gave, Fiona Mcvie offers a free interview to all who already published a book or ebook, until her goal of 10000 #interviews is reached.
Great article, Debbie. Lots of excellent suggestions that would seem like common sense to me, but I never did that. I’ll need to start to work in capturing reviews on a separate spreadsheet for later use…just in case. Kudos on the post.
This is such a great idea. I bookmarked this post a few days ago, and yesterday I got around to both harvesting my current reviews and setting up a schedule/method for harvesting future reviews. Thank you, Debbie!
Incorporate snippets from your best reviews into your LinkedIn profile. As you’ve recommended, get the reviewers’ permission first. You can also incorporate snippets into your speaker one-sheet, the one-page marketing piece you create specifically for meeting planners. It gives them a bird’s-eye view of your topic and explains your value to audiences.