Julie Broad explains why friends and family buying your book on Amazon backfires: their purchases teach the algorithm the wrong reader profile, tanking long-term sales. A group of authors once gamed a bestseller spike this way, then watched sales crater. Focus on reviews from actual ideal readers instead.
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You might not want your friends and family to buy and review your books, and it's not because Amazon doesn't want that. Although they do not want bias in the reviews, there's a bigger, more important reason. Stick around. Hey, I'm Julie, the book broad with Book Launchers, a fantastic company that works with nonfiction authors to write, publish and sell a book that will build their business, explain, explode their career, make money, and possibly make them famous. Amazon reviews are essential to the success of your book. I've talked about that here and here. The temptation is there because they're so important to beg friends and beg family to buy your book and write a review. But maybe you shouldn't. And it's the same reason why you should not participate in any of the gimmicks that promise you that you'll be an Amazon bestseller in a weekend. It's because if you do this, there's a very good chance you'll mess up the Amazon algorithms your book, and you might find that it negatively impacts the sale of your book as a result. Why? How? Let me tell you. Amazon learns who is the most likely to buy your book from the purchases and the reviews. And then they show your book to people who are just like the people who've already bought and reviewed your book. So if your aunt generally likes to read steamy romance books and the odd book on gardening. Unless you're Ron Neitzel, the Green wizard, one of our awesome clients, writing a book revealing all his secrets to creating the lawn, every neighbor you know is going to be jealous of your aunt is not going to help your book. Let's say your book is on the story behind the launch of your startup company in the pharmaceutical tech space. Now this 60 year old romance gardening loving woman buys your book and writes a great review. Amazon now might start showing your book to other romance book lovers with a gardening hobby. Do you think they really want to read about your pharmaceutical startup so it messes it all up? Here's a real life example. Cough. Excuse me? A friend of a friend signed on for a program that promised him best seller status. He was in a group with another 25 authors and part of that program meant that they would all set their book to $1.99 on Amazon and buy each other's book. And they were supposed to write reviews for each other. Here, let me show you what the Alsobots are for his book. Now my question to you is based on this assortment of law of Attraction, beating cancer relationship books. What do you think his book is about? Pretty sure you didn't guess Personal Finance this is what happens when a bunch of eclectic people buy and review your book. Amazon doesn't know the real potential buyers of your book. Not surprisingly, when we talked about his book over a year later, he was struggling to get sales from Amazon. He got that dopamine hit of being a best seller in a category, got to post it on Facebook and have all his friends like it. But a year later he's not selling books. So don't mess with the Amazon and algorithm. If your friend or relative would never normally buy this kind of book, their purchase and review could do you more harm than good. Focus on finding people who are the ideal reader for your book and then ask them to read and review your book. I get it. It's kind of like working out. I know you don't want to do it, but it's so beneficial for you in the long run. When people say they loved your book, ask them for a review. Also, check out Dale Roberts over at Dale Roberts Self Publishing. He talks a lot about this too, so hit him up and say hello if you want to hear more about this from another person's perspective. But before you go over there, hit that thumbs up button. It's a small reward for me locking myself in a studio to record this for you when it's a perfect day for hitting the beaches here in Southern California and subscribe to the channel so we can hang out and celebrate every Friday when a new video comes out. I'll see you then.
