5 Things to Know About Getting Amazon Reviews for Your Book

Amazon reviews are the lifeblood of every book, and we've talked a lot about getting reviews, but there are things every author should know about getting Amazon reviews in particular. So if you're collecting Amazon reviews right now, but you're not certain you know or understand all the rules, well, then this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers and author of several fabulous books including Self Publish and Succeed and Self Promote and Succeed, which are for nonfiction authors. You can go ahead and get Self Promote and Succeed free. Just hang on and I'll tell you how in a second. And while you don't even have to post a review for it, I am, of course, always so grateful for every review, because as you know, every review is precious. So thank you if you do post one. So let's talk about five things you may or may not know about Amazon reviews. Number one, paying for reviews. I've talked about paid book review services before and and there's always people that comment in the video comments that you can't pay for reviews. And that's only sort of true. First, Amazon permits payment for editorial reviews. You also can pay a service like Booksprout or Goodreads or NetGalley to get reviewers who might post a review on your book. When you pay these services, they can't guarantee a review because they can't require someone to post a good review. They do a lot of things to encourage reviews, but but it's not a guarantee. And that's why it doesn't go against the terms and conditions on Amazon. You cannot pay someone to write a good book review of your book and have it be under the consumer review section. Number two, you can give people your book for free and ask them to review it. Lots of people argue free books for reviews is not okay, but it is. And Amazon will let the review stand even if someone didn't buy it from Amazon. However, you cannot require a good review. You can do this as long as you are clear that you welcome all feedback, both positive and negative. Now, someone cannot leave a review on Amazon if they have not spent $50 on Amazon in the last 12 months. This is not as much of an issue as it was in the past, as there are a lot more people who have done this than have not. But for the most part, I actually like this policy because it keeps the reviews from being done by a bunch of paid people who have never made a purchase. It would be so much easier to create fake accounts without this requirement, and it is completely fine with Amazon to give somebody a book in exchange for an honest review, but requiring anyone to leave a review and gifting them anything in exchange for a review will invalidate a review and they will remove it. Number three it's not a good idea to have friends and family review a book. Yes, sometimes it does work that a friend or a family member posts a review and all is well. But Amazon's stance on this is the following. We don't allow individuals who share a household with the author or close friends to write customer reviews for the author's book in their community guidelines, they get even more specific. So check this out and I'll put the link to their community guidelines below so you can read it yourself. It's pretty clear that a shared IP address is going to be an issue, and we know from people in offices that tried to get other people in their office to post reviews and that the reviews will get shut down before they even can be posted. You also can't exchange reviews with other authors. This is expressly forbidden too. And you can't write reviews on competitors books and trash them or even say nice things. That's also forbidden. So you shouldn't be asking friends or other folks in your nearest circle to review your book. And maybe they don't figure it out and you get away with it. But again, that algorithm is so smart and you have to ask yourself, does a review from someone who wouldn't normally buy the book really help you in the long run? Number four Reviews can't be modified. The reviewer themselves can modify a review, but you can't. And unless the review is hateful or discriminatory, Amazon won't remove it or edit it either. It doesn't matter how wrong it is or how unfair it is. Amazon is not going to change or remove it unless the reviewer does. If one of your readers ever contacts you and says they tried to write a review but the review was taken down or it was never posted, you can let them know they do have the option to email community-helpamazon.com and then somebody, I assume a human, will review it and potentially repost it. But in general, I would just move on. If you feel one of the reviews written on your book violates guidelines, you can click Report Abuse link or email community-helpamazon.com examples of guideline abuse might include obscenities, privacy violation, impersonating others, defamatory, harassing, threatening, those kind of things. Otherwise your review is not going anywhere. Number five get your reviewers to disclose a relationship in order to have a better chance of that review sticking. We encourage all of our authors who give books away for free for reviews to encourage their readers to do the following thing. Usually just putting it in the last line of the review is sufficient. You'll see Netgalley or other professional reviewers doing this too. So just get them to put a simple line in it that says I received a copy of this book from publisher or the author or Netgalley or Edelweiss or whatever it was and I'm reviewing it voluntarily or I'm leaving an honest review or if they received an arc, an advanced reviewer copy, the publisher gave me an ARC copy and this is my honest review. This doesn't guarantee the review will stay or that it's going to work, but hey, every review that does stick helps. So you can do this to help boost your reviews and the chance of them staying. Now, if you happen to be a reviewer on someone's ARC team and and you disclose your free copy, simple thing that you can do to keep or to increase the value of your review is say I got this book for free, but it's so awesome. I bought a copy for my shelf or I bought a copy for my best friend. You don't have to do that, but saying something extra like that will boost the value of the review. Because saying you got it for free could in the minds of a potential buyer, discount that value of that review. Now that you've watched this, this video on 10 sites to get more book reviews is for sure something you'll want to see. And this video on 7 resources for self publishing authors will be a guaranteed good time too. Go on, click on over. I'll see you there.