Welcome to Part One of a three-part summer series focusing on successfully and efficiently marketing your book on Amazon. Part one will discuss writing reviews for other products and books and explain why it is an important part of book marketing. Part two will discuss soliciting reviews for your book and how to do it properly. Part three will explain why reviews (both giving and receiving) can “tilt” Amazon’s search algorithm in your favor and how you can tilt it further by taking other simple steps.
Part One: Writing Reviews on Amazon
Writing reviews for other books and products is an important step for your own book marketing efforts. Not only does it allow you to put your name and book title in front of thousands of new people every day, but every review you write is linked to your customer profile (so if you haven’t taken advantage of your customer profile to market your book, do that now at: www.amazon.com/gp/pdp ).
You may be tempted to write a review of your own book. That is not a good idea since Amazon and its community frown upon such tactics. Instead, find books and products that you are familiar with and write reviews for them. If these books and products appeal to your target reader, all the better.
Here are the steps to writing an effective review:
Step 1: Find the book or product you are reviewing on Amazon and go to its sales page. Again, try to pick books or products that will appeal to your reader. After all, the whole point is for them to read your review and notice your book title.
Step 2: Scroll down the Amazon page to the section that says “Customer Reviews” and you will see a button that says “Write a customer review.” Click on that button.
Step 3: If you are not signed-in to your Amazon account, you will need to sign in to your account to write a review. If you do not have an Amazon account, you will need to create one. It is imperative for your book promotion that you have an Amazon account to write reviews and participate in the other promotional tactics we will share with you. But who doesn’t have an Amazon account in this day and age?
Side Note: In order to create an account that is “qualified” to write reviews, you need to have purchased something on Amazon. This is Amazon’s way of preventing review-fraud by ensuring that each review is written by a unique, real person. You’ve most certainly purchased something on Amazon already, but if you haven’t, here’s what you should buy: A copy of your book. You should do this anyway; a book needs at least one Amazon sale to trigger an ABR (Amazon bestseller rank), which is required for Amazon’s search algorithm to kick-in.
Step 4: Once you have an active Amazon account, you can write your review for the book or product you’ve selected (NOT your book). It should be at least 5-10 sentences long and it should end with your author name and a link to your book. That gives your review credibility, in addition to valuable exposure, because you are also a published author. And would Amazon have a function that so easily allows you to create a link to your book if they didn’t want you to use it? Of course not.
Step 5: Before you wrap up your review, don’t forget to use the “Insert Product Link” button. This allows you to add a link to YOUR book in the body of your review. In an alternate browser window, find your book and cut and paste the URL into the field that presents itself after clicking that “Insert Product Link” button. Amazon will use that internet address to find your product, and it will show up for you to confirm. Therefore, your review will end with “Your name, author of such & such” and the best news is, your book title will be clickable!
Write as many reviews for as many books and products as you can. The more reviews you write, the more instances your Profile Link is exposed for others to click on and the more links to your book are in your reviews. It is therefore in your best interest to review books that are related to your subject matter or topic (since customers browsing those reviews will be interested in your book, too).
Stay tuned for Part Two where we discuss the art of acquiring reviews for your own book…