In Review

Hey everybody! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and got some of your holiday shopping out of the way. Me, I’m pretty much done with my shopping—and I’m under budget! Seriously, online shopping is amazing. Cyber Monday deals saved me a ton. But I’m not here to be a commercial.

I’m here to talk to you about things we could be doing better, to get more people interested in us and our work.

Here’s a question for you:

How many reviews do you have?

This one’s actually been really hard for me. I’ve had a bunch of people tell me how much they loved my books, I’ve spoken to dozens and dozens of people at events, all of whom say they couldn’t put my books down, but trying to get them to leave reviews on Goodreads or Amazon has been like pulling teeth. It just hasn’t been working.

But reviews are a big part of sales. If you hadn’t noticed that, then you probably haven’t been in the game very long.

For starters, it’s important to make sure everyone you know, your friends and family, read the book and leave reviews. That’ll at least give you a nice springboard start on reviews. Ask those people, the people you love, to leave only four and five star reviews. If they didn’t like it, ask them not to review it. There’s nothing wrong with that, even if Amazon tries to tell you there is. You can’t pay people for reviews, no, but you can talk to people you know about leaving them.

Unfortunately, sometimes that’s not so easy either. So, then what do we do?

Well, then we have to rely on other people who have purchased and read the book. There are possibilities. You could run contests, where anyone who leaves (or has left) a review will be entered to win something special from you. Or, put a little note in the back of the book to ask your customers to leave a review once they’ve finished reading.

The two primary places where you should be getting reviews is Amazon and Goodreads—and yes, they’re technically the same company. But they’re also where the most people go to find reviews on books. It’s where we turn to find out what books we might like to read next. So, put little incentives on these places. Maybe try different contests for different places where reviews are left, or start sending out responses to every review that is left on your books. You could also try to contact everyone who’s purchased the book, and thank them for their support. This one is, of course, a little more difficult to manage if you’re only selling eBooks, but you get my point.

Do something to incentivize. Get people interested. Be involved with them. Because even if your work is some of the most amazing work known to mankind, if people aren’t leaving reviews, other people will never know how good the books are.

That’s just the way it is, unfortunately. Let's work on it together, shall we?

[love]

{Rani Divine}

P.S. If you have read one of my books and loved it, I would so appreciate you leaving me a review on one of these sites! Send me a message here or on Facebook if you do—I'd love to hear from you :)