You Got Your Endorsements, Now What?

by David Wogahn, @Wogahn

Let’s say you’ve followed Elizabeth’s advice about asking for endorsements—and your endorser(s) came through. Congratulations! Now what?

Endorsements, or what’s been traditionally called a ‘blurb,’ are essentially marketing tools. Here are ten ways they can be used, not all of which are appropriate for all types of endorsements.

1. On the front and/or back cover of your book
2. At the very beginning of your book
3. In media kits and on collateral such as bookmarks
4. On your book’s sales page on online stores (on Amazon this area is called Editorial Reviews)
5. In your website and social media postings
6. In your bios, including those used for social media accounts
7. In your email signature
8. In email newsletters to your mailing list
9. In letters or emails to potential partners, retailers, wholesalers
10. In emails to other endorsers when you ask them to blurb your book! (In fishing, this is called chumming the water.)

Obviously if you have one, or very few, the decisions are easier. Also, you don’t have to include endorsements in all ten of the applications in the above list and you can always add them as they become available.

How to use endorsements (editorial reviews) on Amazon and IngramSpark

In the list of ten possible places to use endorsements, you’ll notice that it is in order of permanence. That is, adding endorsements to books is usually done before they are published and then rarely updated due to the work involved.

For purposes of this article, I want to focus on number four, putting these endorsements to work on your book’s online sales page.

Amazon and IngramSpark are notable because they allow self-publishers to add editorial reviews directly to a book’s sales page in selected online stores. Traditionally published authors can also do this on Amazon (via Author Central), but you need to ask your publisher for help with other online stores.

Adding editorial reviews on Amazon

The reviews listed under the Editorial Reviews section for a book’s listing on Amazon appear there by manually entering them using Author Central or are placed there automatically by select review businesses (for example, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and School Library Journal).

You can add or edit Editorial Reviews for each format that is listed for sale or on pre-order. For example, my client Jill Thomas’ book Tales from the Trance was traditionally published. Her hardcover was available for pre-order, but not the Kindle edition. I was able to add editorial reviews for the hardcover before the release date but had to wait for the Kindle to be available before adding editorial reviews to that edition. It works the same way for self-published books.

Pre-release view, hardcover only book format

Hardcover only: Pre-release view of a book’s Author Central page

Live-release view, Kindle and hardcover formats

Here is the view of Jill’s Author Central page five days later. You manage Editorial Reviews for each format separately.

Additional notes about editing Editorial Reviews using Author Central

• In a few instances I’ve found it necessary to ask Amazon for help in formatting Editorial Reviews. When that happens, they turn off your ability to make further changes. I think this is because their HTML editor is a little wonky—at least that’s my experience. Be prepared to experiment, or just give up and ask for help.
• As previously noted, some reviews are placed here automatically. In fact, those are added under their own heading under the top-level heading of Editorial Reviews. If that is the case with your book, you won’t be able to edit or remove those. Amazon states: “In order to keep Editorial Reviews objective and informative, we rely on many sources to provide content for this section. We work to create a diversity of opinion on our site, and this may include negative reviews, when they arise.”
• Managing your Author Central profile for other country-specific Amazon stores isn’t as easy as it is for the U.S. store. In my experience you need to use their contact forms to have the changes made by Amazon staff.

Adding editorial reviews on IngramSpark

If you are using IngramSpark to distribute your book to stores such as Barnes & Noble, they too have a field where you can enter editorial reviews. In their system these are called Review Quotes.

Login to your account and select your book. You will find the field to enter Review Quotes in the section titled Categorize Your Book.

It usually takes a couple weeks for these to appear on BN.com (Barnes & Noble) and Indigo.ca, the large Canadian book retailer. Whether the reviews appear on other retailer websites that IngramSpark distributes to is up to those retailers and is not something IngramSpark guarantees. For example, my books on Books-a-Million and Powell’s do not show Review Quotes even though they are entered in IngramSpark.

I’ll close with this excellent and concise advice from IngramSpark:

1. Include two to eight positive review quotes. These should be from a variety of sources and should highlight different aspects of the book. Ideally, reviews will come from people and publications known by and influential with potential buyers.
2. Each quote should be brief (no more than fifty words each). Provide excerpts from longer reviews.
3. List the most powerful or effective review quote first.

David Wogahn is the author of five books including The Book Review Companion, My Publishing Imprint and Register Your Book, and he is a LinkedIn Learning author. He has worked for the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, and was co-founder and COO of the first online publisher of sports team branded websites known today as the CBS College Sports Network.

He is a frequent speaker and trainer, including presentations for Publishing University (IBPA), the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), the Independent Writers of Southern California, and the Santa Barbara Writers Conference.

David is also the president of AuthorImprints, an award-winning professional publishing services company that publishes books for authors and businesses using their own publishing imprint. Learn more at AuthorImprints.com and DavidWogahn.com.

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