Leave a review

Trojan

Hi folks,

tl;dr: please copy/paste your boards comments on a book into a review on on the book's online sales page every couple of times you post in here.

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I've recently released a book on Kindle, completely unrelated to sff and what we read & talk about in this forum; this thread is not about that book.

In reading and learning how to promote it I've found that normal readers just don't leave reviews in most circumstances.

The stats[1] suggest that in a best case scenario 1 in 100 (1%) of book buyers leaves a review, going down to 1 in 10,000 or less (0.01%).

The 3 ways authors deal with this are:

1) Unethical authors just straight up pay for guaranteed positive reviews from people on fiverr etc.
2) Others hustle hard to find reviewers, emailing bloggers, asking on twitter, buying "book tours", desperately trying to compete with the guys who just bought reviews, while not compromising their own ethics.
3) Some give up, just hoping reviews will come in (not a good strategy).

Particularly for books with few reviews, each review is worth exponentially more than you might think, which is why the paid approach is often chosen.

I'd ask you, every so often after you post a brief review in the What Are You Reading thread, please copy/paste your text into a review on whichever you use of Amazon/BN/Goodreads/Smashwords. It doesn't have to be long: stuff like "Loved it", "Not for me but would suit X", "Ok but needs editing" is still really useful.

The author and potential readers will appreciate it.

Your thoughts?

1. I don't have hard links for this, my sources are Kboards.com forum threads and several blogs I've read.

Sleepy

Honestly, the only reviews I tend to pay attention to on Goodreads are those from my social circles on the site, a lot of the reviews tend to be from cranks spewing bile e.g. the gender studies brigade that manage to find problems with any portrayal of women whatsoever.

Manach

I review quite a few books. I've found that the issues mentioned by both posters exist: paid and those with a political axe to grind. They are a minority of such, but are enough to poison/mislead the general public. I'd say a solution would be for site providers like Amazon to be more dilligent in weeding them out.

Trojan

Sleepy wrote: »

Honestly, the only reviews I tend to pay attention to on Goodreads are those from my social circles on the site

The ranking algorithms pay close attention to the reviews, unfortunately

Sleepy wrote: »

a lot of the reviews tend to be from cranks spewing bile e.g. the gender studies brigade that manage to find problems with any portrayal of women whatsoever.

Yep. Needs more regular folks leaving them, wouldn't you say?

Manach wrote: »

I review quite a few books. I've found that the issues mentioned by both posters exist: paid and those with a political axe to grind. They are a minority of such, but are enough to poison/mislead the general public. I'd say a solution would be for site providers like Amazon to be more dilligent in weeding them out.

Fair play. I do think Amazon need to get better at spotting the paid ones. Also good to get increase the number of reviews from regular readers who have no axes to grind.

wyrn

Disclaimer: I tend to buy books if I like the cover or if they have an interesting title or hilarious tagline. I'm probably not the best person then to give my opinions.

I very rarely read Amazon reviews. I glance at them but they are almost always overwhelmingly positive. I am so cynical about Amazon reviews. So, I've taken to looking the book up on Goodreads where you tend to have a better mix of reviews. It's not perfect but I tend to find a more thought out review (even if it had a million gifs) that highlights both the positives and negatives in the book. Also, I've found at times, the synopsis in Goodreads is usually longer or more comprehensive than Amazon. Sometimes the blurb it prefaced with reviews and I have to scroll down on Amazon to see it.

I should also point out I only review books on Goodreads and not Amazon. To be honest, I feel like I'd be wasting my time reviewing them there. Now I don't know what algorithms Amazon use, but the recommend a book part for me on Amazon is atrocious. I think it's gotten worse. It seems to me that the same books are always suggested, even though I've never clicked on them. The same few books will stay recommended for a good while. They also tend to be the same few authors on the whole. I don't know if that's a concious thing by Amazon, to promote certain authors constantly and consistently over others. I also use the Goodreads list option for new recommendations as Amazon fails miserably there for me. It's a shame that there's no "I will never be interested in this book so please clear it from your algorithm to me".

As an aside, I really enjoy Rachel Aaron / Bach's blog post. It's mainly on getting motivated to write but also on the pros and cons of being a self published author. I think she previously was with Orbit and decided for her Heartstrikers series to break out on her own. She does some interesting stats on using Amazon Daily Deal and Bookbub Deals. Might be of interest Trojan. (I came across her from a cheaply priced book, the Spirit Thief in Chapters and for the tag line "what he gets away is criminal". Yeah so, I'm definitely not the best person)

Best of luck with the book Trojan, I hope it goes really well!

Dades

I've found the ratings for new releases skewed on Goodreads because absolute muppets have rated a book as five stars because they love the author - and then happily proclaim how much they're looking forward to reading it.

But I agree with the sentiments in the OP.