This post, requested by one of this blog’s subscribers, fellow author Joy Sikorski, deals with the task of finding reviewers for one’s books on Amazon—an often daunting task. Readers often don’t realise the crucial importance of reviews to the life of a book. Without a sufficient number of these, books languish and die.

One approach aimed at alleviating the problem is to ask readers for reviews, either at the beginning, or end of your book, and provide a link to the specific spot on Amazon. This can work, but it requires that a sufficient number of people read your work first. When your book first appears, however, especially if you are a new author, it tends to get lost amongst the millions of others on Amazon. It’s easy to miss. Few readers, few reviews. It’s catch-22 all over again.

Joining some of the various book clubs and establishing a dedicated Facebook of your novel may, and, does, help. Yet, there are many who promise reviews on such pages, but never get around to writing them—though we live in hope! One does occasionally strike it lucky through such channels, though.

Yet another method is to run a blog such as this. If you are offering a free service that people find helpful, some conscientious souls may be inclined to reward you by buying your books and offering honest but fair reviews of them. This method, for example, has yielded some success for me.

One surer way is to join a professional site such as the Author’s Marketing Club.

http://www.authormarketingclub.com/

I have subscribed to this site and have found it extremely helpful in a variety of ways. The site provides loads information and insight on how best to market your book. It develops and offers many tools that make marketing your novel(s) easier. The site offers a specific tool (reviewer-grabber tool) that identifies reviewers on Amazon in your genre and lists their email addresses for you. It even offers a template letter showing the ideal way to word your request. It is then up to you to email these reviewers, offer to send them your book as a gift, and request they review it. Because these reviewers have an established track record (which you can check with the tool), the chances are that you will receive a number of positive responses through this method. You do have to be a paid-up member of the club to benefit from this, though.

I’ve have discovered that the benefits offered through this club, more than make up for the joining fee.

These then are some of the methods that independent authors, such as myself, use to encourage reviews of their books. Taken together, they form a core strategy, which yields results.

Summary

Reviews are the lifeblood of your book on Amazon. Few reviews = few sales. This post offers methods to address the situation.

Invitation

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