by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
I read a lot about the importance of book reviews to a book’s success. There are tons of articles out there about how to get more book reviews or how to find and contact book reviewers.
But sometimes I think writers don’t do enough with book reviews, when we have them. We allow them to sit statically on our Amazon book page.
I’m guilty of this, myself. But I’ve made more of an effort lately to highlight my reviews, recognizing the importance of social proof.
Amazon Product Page
As I mentioned above, this is usually the repository of many of our reviews… at least, our customer reviews. Although the focus when I first got published was more on reviews in publications like Library Journal and Kirkus, the importance of customer reviews to potential readers has become increasingly important.
But that shouldn’t be the only place on the product page where our reviews are listed. A strategy that works for series is to add up all the 5-star or 4 and 5 star reviews and mention them under the ‘editorial review’ section on the page (we access that through our author central account). That way you end up with something like “readers love Winston Pepperjack! 500 5-star reviews.”
You can also create and format a list of your favorite reviews from other books in the series and list them on the editorial review page (Praise for the Winston Pepperjack series: ___ ).
Back Matter
This is something that I’m trying soon. I have all of my books listed in the back matter of each book (every book is linked to its own page on my website with ordering information for each retailer), but I don’t have any review snippets in the back matter at all.
If I include short reviews, I’m thinking it will help readers crossover from one series of mine to another. I do have some readers who are very loyal to a particular series and reluctant to try another. Reviews could help convince these readers to try something new.
Images
This is something new for me, although I’ve seen others do this really well. Using a free design program like Canva or Visme, take part of a review and create an image with it. This creates a little visual interest for your website. I always feel like incorporating reviews on my site is a bit awkward, and the images help, I think.
I’m absolutely horrible at design, but even I was able to make a couple of serviceable images with the help of Canva.
Newsletters
We can also take the images we’ve created and include them in our newsletter with a link to the book in question. That could be a good, again, for reader discovery.
Finding your best reviews
Some writers avoid their review sections at all costs. But there are ways of finding your most flattering customer reviews without having to trudge through the one-star, discouraging stuff. Just click on ‘5-star’ and Amazon will return the 5-star results.
What do you do with your book reviews?
Making the most of your reviews: Share on XPhoto on Visual hunt
Never thought of utilizing reviews this way, but sounds like a great idea. And sometimes I read reviews as a reader to decide whether I want to try a new author or not.
I do, too. I’ve learned to take some customer reviews with a grain of salt, but I also try to use them to formulate an idea on whether a book is a good fit for me.
Those are all good ideas. I didn’t know we could add reviews ourselves through Author Central on Amazon.
Through the editorial reviews section. With a little formatting, it looks really nice on the product page.
You make some good points about using reviews, Elizabeth. I’m quite guilty, too, of not doing all I could with mine. You can even have review comments on your web page if you want, so readers who know you from that page can see them, too. Hmm….lots to think about, for which thanks.
On our site is probably the best place to have them, since many readers go to authors’ sites to check for new releases. Good luck with your upcoming release!
We took reviews of our books and made fun Pinterest images of them.
That’s a great idea!
Hi Elizabeth- lots to learn here for future ideas. Interesting to see how things can work, and I like Diane’s idea too … cheers Hilary
Diane always has great promo ideas!
I learned some really good tips here. Thank you. I sometimes tweet review snippets or add them to a Facebook post.
Thanks for coming by! Review snippets on social media is a great idea.
Thanks, Elizabeth. Another post I’m bookmarking .
Thanks, Ken!
When I’ve used my reviews on facebook, I’ve noticed that more people read, like and share those posts. You’re so right about maximizing these little pots of gold.
Good point about using Facebook to share reviews! Hope you have a great week. :)