Learning how to get book reviews on Amazon are what make or break you as an author. Since Amazon is the leader in book retailers, getting reviews on Amazon is even more important.
As scary as it can be to leave your own fate in the hands of others, it’s true…especially if you publish through Amazon.
Gaining a portfolio of authentic, positive Amazon reviews right from the beginning can skyrocket your book launch and make your book stand out in your market.
I’ve written a lot of books, and trust me, reviews can make all the difference. And yet, reviews are one of the hardest things to get. Because I’ve published so many times, I understand that how to get book reviews on Amazon can feel overwhelming.
But where do we start to get Amazon reviews? Who do we ask? How do we get reviews that our audience will respect?
How many people should we have on our launch team to guarantee a certain number of reviews for setting up promotional sites? How many reviews is enough?
We will look at how to get book reviews on Amazon so that you can reap the benefits of turning your book into a thriving, long-term business.
I’m here to help you learn how. We’ve taught over 8,000 authors how to write, publish, and market their books over the last 10 years..and this includes teaching our authors how to get book reviews on Amazon. Ready to take your marketing to the next level?
Here’s how to get book reviews on Amazon:
- How to get my book noticed on Amazon?
- How to obtain Amazon reviews?
- Why do book reviews matter?
- What’s the difference between verified and unverified book reviews?
- How to get book reviews on Amazon: 4 steps
- How to deal with negative reviews
- How to get book reviews on Amazon: checklist
How to get my book noticed on Amazon?
Learning how to get book reviews on Amazon is one of the best ways to get noticed. Once someone reviews your book, you can expect reviews to be posted within 72 hours after being submitted. Because there is a system in place to avoid faulty reviews, it may take Amazon more than this allotted time for the review to get posted.
While it can be worrying, especially for authors launching a book, your review will get there eventually—and we cover tips for ensuring they get approved in this post, too!
How to obtain Amazon reviews?
There are many ways to learn how to get book reviews on Amazon, including from your book launch team. While reviews are vital, when you publish a book, there are essentially 6 things that score at making your book a bestseller.
They are:
- A great book cover design.
- An irresistible book title.
- An amazing book description.
- Stealthy keywords.
- Targeted book categories.
And…book reviews.
When Amazon ranks your book, the ranking is based on the volume of downloads your book gets and, the
Amazon’s system is designed to take notice of books that are getting steady traction when reviews get posted.
This is why it is critical that when you launch your book, you know how to get book reviews on Amazon and set everything up to get as many reviews as possible.
This gets momentum going, increases organic traffic, and drives your rankings in the search engines. You need a higher percentage of people writing reviews for your book, not just at launch, but for months (and years) down the road.
The bottom line is, reviews carry big weight in the form of social proof that can drive your book to a bestseller and continue to bring in healthy, passive income every month.
How to get book reviews on Amazon: guidelines
You can find everything you need to know about posting reviews on Amazon right here under the Community Guidelines. Amazon has tightened the ropes on reviews and as an author, you have to be aware of the tactics that are prohibited.
Here is what not to do when it comes to getting book reviews on Amazon:
- Pay someone to leave a review. This not only goes against Amazon’s terms, but it could get your book removed from the shelf and your account banned.
- Offer a free gift in exchange for a review. No gifts allowed. This is still considered payment for a review.
- Join Facebook groups offering book review swaps. These sites are bad news. Amazon prohibits review swapping and is considered gaming the system. The Amazon algorithm can easily trace reviews back to these sources.
- Offer an Amazon gift card after a review has been published. It works like this: “You download the book and leave a review, and I will send you a gift card.” Again, this is against policy and is considered paying for a review.
- Leave a review for an author, then contact that person requesting they leave a review in return. This would be a form of blackmail or trapping the other author into guilt. But this doesn’t work and if you receive any such email, inform the other author that you don’t work that way. I did this once and they just removed their review.
Most of these fall under the label of “incentivized reviews,” as there is a form of compensation in exchange for a review by Amazon sellers. Amazon has made it their mission to crack down on these on their platform.
How to write and submit a review
Writing a review for a book you like is a great way to drive potential readers to the title, as well as pinpoint what you want in book reviews for your book. While we all want to learn how to get book reviews on Amazon for our books, it’s also helpful to give back. If you read a great book recently and you want to tell people about it, you can take a few minutes to write up a positive review.
Writing a review is easy. Just go to the book’s front page and, under the heading Customer Reviews, you will see a button for write a customer review. Click on that and you will be taken to a page set up for Your Reviews where you can write reviews for your purchases.
What you do is:
- Select the rating of the book from 1-5 stars, with 5 being the best score.
- Write your review in the box provided. Keep in mind that if you leave this page before submitting your review, you’ll have to start over again. I would recommend writing the review first in Word or Evernote and then copy and paste.
- Create a headline for the review.
- Hit submit. Your review will go live within a couple of hours, although it could take up to 24 hours.
One point to note here is that, with Amazon’s policy for posting reviews, you have to have an account that has made a purchase of at least $50 using a valid credit or debit card.
Why do book reviews matter?
Learning how to get book reviews on Amazon matters because of Amazon’s algorithm. Maintaining a steady income of new book reviews is vital for your book to rise in the rankings…meaning that if you want your book to continue to sell, you need to obtain real and fresh book reviews.
This is a breakdown of why book reviews matter:
- The more reviews you get, the more visibility your book gets. This means more sales and potential organic reviews.
- You create a stronger relationship with your readers.
- A boatload of reviews adds credibility to your book and brand.
Book reviews for your book on Amazon are one of the defining factors that determine if a potential reader will click the BUY NOW button or not. In fact, if your book has less than 10 reviews, there is a strong chance that your book will get passed over.
People want validation before purchasing, and the best way to make that decision is on the front of the product page: reviews.
What’s the difference between verified and unverified book reviews?
According to Amazon, an “Amazon Verified Purchase” review means they’ve verified that the person writing the review purchased the product at Amazon and didn’t receive the product at a deep discount.
Learning how to get book reviews on Amazon that give you that social proof relies starts with understanding the two types of reviews.
Product reviews that are not marked “Amazon Verified Purchase” are valuable as well, but we either can’t confirm that the product was purchased at Amazon or can’t confirm that the customer did not pay a price available to most Amazon shoppers.
Verified reviews are favorable and are social proof that the reader did
For unverified reviews, in most cases, the reviewer received an advance copy of the book (also also called a book galley) and was possibly on a launch team to support the book’s release.
While this is still a legit practice for garnering reviews, if the majority of reviews are non-verified, this could affect your potential customer’s decision to buy or not.
How to get book reviews on Amazon: 4 steps
There are many ways to learn how to get book reviews on Amazon. No matter how you do it, remember that it isn’t just about quantity but quality as well.
While we can’t control what reviewers will say about our work, we can stay focused on writing great content that adds value in order to increase our chances of getting positive reviews.
To learn how to get book reviews on for your next book launch, or to add reviews to an existing book, consider taking action on these strategies.
1. Build a launch team
There are many ways to hunt down reviewers for your book. As we have seen, you can contact the top reviewers, target free book review sites, or reach out to book bloggers.
These methods, while they may help you learn how to get book reviews on Amazon and even get you a handful of reviews, is time intensive and a lot of work.
I have found, after running over two dozen book launches, that the most effective way to get reviews fast on launch is through setting up a launch team. Your launch team is a group of people who have agreed to read your book in advance and follow up with a review immediately after the book is live.
When it comes to building a launch team, it is about building relationships over the long term. This is why, in order to run an effective launch team, you should focus on the relationship with your early-bird reviewers. Here is a step-by-step process for organizing your team:
Start building your relationships early.
Are you wondering how to get book reviews on Amazon through a launch team? Launch teams don’t just happen. They take work, months of outreaching, and asking the right people if they want to help launch your book when the time is right. You can generate interest by posting snippets of the book on social media, sharing chapters of your work with your list, and promoting your cover to people.
Share your content and advertise your brand. Communicate with people in person and through online channels about your writing. Keep in mind the purpose for this is to make genuine relationships with people and not to just add them to your launch.
And most importantly, to make friends with people who read in your niche, so that your book gets recommended alongside the other books they’re reading. This is foundational for learning how to get book reviews on Amazon…ones that are authentic and mean something to potential readers.
Create your list of potential reviewers.
As you build these relationships with your fanbase, you’re learning how to get book reviews on Amazon in an organic way. Start making a list of people who express interest in joining your launch. If you have multiple books and have been through the publishing process already, take note of the readers who have left reviews already.
Contact them closer to the launch of your next book to get them on board. Set up an excel spreadsheet and keep track of the names of people who sign up.
Set up an email template through your email server.
Add everyone to the list. If you aren’t using an email server yet you can check out Mailchimp, Convert Kit or Mailerlite. Make it as easy as possible so you aren’t wasting time searching for contact information.
Ease is the best strategy for how to get book reviews on Amazon. If it doesn’t feel doable, chances are your efforts will slowly fizzle. Send out a welcome email with a link to your book in PDF or/and Mobi form. You can create a folder in Dropbox and just include the link to a shared folder.
Make it easy for them to access the material. Ease for your readers is also vital for how to get book reviews on Amazon. The easier it is for readers to review your book, the more likely they will.
Send out the welcome email.
Ideally you want to send out your book at least two weeks before launch. This is an important piece in your process of learning how to get book reviews on Amazon.
Why? It gives people enough time to read it through. In the welcome email I include details for the launch date and any other expectations. At this stage the book isn’t live yet so you will send another email on that day with the link.
For the book delivery, you can upload a PDF version as well as a Mobi version of the book. To create a MOBI, PDF or EPUB file you can check out the Calibre ebook management software. Here’s the difference between EPUB vs MOBI vs PDF so you can choose which to use.
After you have all the files ready, you can create a shared folder in Dropbox and share the link with your team. If any top reviewers agreed to leave a review, you absolutely want to message them to follow up.
Two words can transform your journey of learning how to get book reviews on Amazon: follow up. Always follow up.
Send out a take action email on launch day.
Your book is live and it is time for people to step up. Contact the team on launch day as soon as the book is live. After publishing a book it should take 12-24 hours for Amazon to get it posted.
In the email, include a link to your book. More specifically, a link to the review page so that team members can go straight to the page with one click. This is how to get book reviews on Amazon.
On day 3, send out a reminder email. I wait 3 days and send out a reminder email. In this email I thank everyone who has left a review and thank people in advance who are still working on the book and haven’t posted yet. Remember, following up is how to get book reviews on Amazon.
Send out a final call email.
This is the last email I will send. Similar to the previous email, this one reminds people the book is live and is ready for a review whenever they are. You can remind your team that the book is at a special discounted price if you are launching it at $0.99, or that it’s free.
Contact your list.
If you have a list, this is gold for how to get book reviews on Amazon…as well as paid downloads. You should contact your list on the first day the book is live and let people know that the book has just launched.
Then, several days later, email them again asking if they had a chance to get into the material. You could add something of value here just to show subscribers how much you value their support. This is the email where I include a “leave a review” invite.
You can make it a habit to ask people to leave reviews. Asking is a great way to learn how to get book reviews on Amazon. People are often happy to do so.
These are the steps I use to communicate with my launch team. I’ve learned that, generally speaking, if you want 100 reviews for your book, you should aim for at least 200 people.
That is a lot of emails but, what I have experienced is that, on average, you are batting a 50% success rate. What happens to those other 50% who don’t review?
Here’s why some people won’t review your book:
- They didn’t like the book.
- They forgot to review altogether.
- They didn’t read the book.
- They couldn’t be bothered to review.
If you can get 20+ reviews on launch after one week you are looking very good. This is enough to get momentum moving and the Amazon algorithm will see that your book is doing well. You’re well on your way to learning how to get book reviews on Amazon.
2. Book review sites
There are a number of sites out there that will find reviewers for your book. This is not the same as buying reviews for your book which, I’ll restate again, goes against Amazon’s review policy and should be avoided.
In fact, Amazon has taken action against over 1000 sites on Fiverr that were selling incentivized reviews and fake review services. Yes, avoid.
There are many sites you can check into regarding how to get book reviews on Amazon, and many of them are free, while some are paid:
3. Include a reminder in your book
Here is a tactic that works well for how to get book reviews on Amazon: Simply include a request in your book for readers to leave a review. It’s a great way to invite people to review your book and really helps in how to get book reviews on Amazon.
I have a page at the back of my books that looks like this:
What Did You Think of [Your Book Title Here]?
First of all, thank you for purchasing this book [Your Book Title Here]. I know you could have picked any number of books to read, but you picked this book and for that I am extremely grateful.
I hope that it added at value and quality to your everyday life. If so, it would be really nice if you could share this book with your friends and family by posting to Facebook and Twitter.
If you enjoyed this book and found some benefit in reading this, I’d like to hear from you and hope that you could take some time to post a review on Amazon. Your feedback and support will help this author to greatly improve his writing craft for future projects and make this book even better.
You can follow this link to [Book link here] now.
I want you, the reader, to know that your review is very important and so, if you’d like to leave a review, all you have to do is click here and away you go. I wish you all the best in your future success!
When you do this, you want to have a link directing customers right back to the review page on Amazon. Make it so easy for them that it requires as little effort as possible. Remember, ease is king in learning how to get book reviews on Amazon.
Many authors will include a cute cat photo or even pictures of their kids asking for a review. This strategy can work well if you sell a large volume of books during the initial launch phase.
But remember, it takes readers time to go through your book and so, if you don’t see the reviews appear in the first week, you might get them trickling in weeks or even months later.
Part of learning how to get book reviews on Amazon is realizing it does take time.
4. Relaunch your book
You can relaunch your book if book sales drop and the reviews stop coming in. When you relaunch your book, you can put together a new launch team, and even add a new chapter to the book to generate a renewed interest in your book.
Creating new content is a great way to to learn how to get book reviews on Amazon without having to write a brand new book.
I have tried this strategy several times in the past year and, by relaunching the book, and adding new value to the content, I put together another small launch team of 30-40 people.
This brought in
How to deal with negative reviews
Learning how to get book reviews on Amazon and then getting positive reviews is a great feeling. In a perfect world, we all want to have just the good stuff when it comes to our review platform.
But alas, there will always be that dissatisfied reader that was expecting something much different than what your book was offering. Readers will leave a negative review for various reasons, and in most cases, there is nothing we can do.
But first of all, receiving a negative review isn’t the end of the world. It’s part of learning how to get book reviews on Amazon…and deal with them. In fact, it can lend to a book’s credibility.
Look at it from a reader’s perspective. If a book has 100 positive 5-star reviews, although the reviews may be legitimate, we know that not every book is perfect.
Having a load of good reviews and nothing that is under 3 stars could create doubt for the browser, just as having a book with only a handful of reviews turns browsers the other way.
While negative reviews aren’t all bad, there are steps we can take to reduce the amount. So how can we prevent our book from getting a lot of negative reviews and turning away potential book sales?
Here are three areas to pay attention to:
- Book quality: The single biggest reason a book will get negative reviews is poor quality. This is credited to sloppy editing. A book that is not up to the quality expected by readers will get hit with a high amount of bad reviews. Then, it could get pulled off the shelf by Amazon until the author upgrades to better quality. Make sure your book is up to the high standards people expect. Always respect your readers. The book business is like any other business: Make good products, and your customers will love you.
- Inaccurate description of the book: Make sure that your book description, title and cover all point toward the theme of the book. If your book is titled, “How to become rich in 21 days” and, after reading through the book the reader isn’t rich, well, they bought the book because of the promise you made. So, if reading a book delivers a negative outcome for your audience, someone is going to shout about it in a review.
- Your book is a sales pitch for your other products. If there is one thing that readers don’t like, it is being hit up with offers and the push to check out other services or products. This could come across as spammy and devalues the content that the readers paid for. While your goal may be to use the book to attract customers for your online business, you want to avoid any sales pitches in the book.
How to get book reviews on Amazon: checklist
If you follow these steps, you’ll be able to get more book reviews and in turn, sell more books. Like I said, I’ve run over two dozen book launches, and I’d love to share my checklist with you.
I hope you find it helpful:
- Set up a launch team for your book. Send your team a PDF/MOBI/EPUB file and follow up with email right up until launch. Follow up with several reminders after the launch.
- Include a Review Request page at the back of your book. Insert the link taking customers directly to the review page. Make it so easy they don’t have to search around for the book on Amazon.
- Contact people in your business. This doesn’t include friends and family. Contact professionals in your field who would be willing to read the book with the possibility of leaving an honest review.
- Hire a site that specializes in finding honest reviewers for your book.
- Relaunch your book. Add more content, a new book cover, or make it appealing for people to join your relaunch of an existing book. You can relaunch a book as many times as you want as you find new ways for how to get book reviews on Amazon.
There are a lot of strategies out there to get book reviews on Amazon. Most are legit. Some are not.
As an author, make sure you are aware of what Amazon considers to be authentic reviews when it comes to gathering reviews for your next book, and steer clear of anything it considers to be “incentivized reviews.”
If a site promises to get you positive reviews in return for cash, stay away. It isn’t worth it, trust me. Keep hunting and adding reviews to your book.
How to get book reviews on Amazon: take your next step
Book reviews are the secret sauce to adding value and credibility to your work, boosting sales and making your book stick on the bestseller lists. Don’t skimp out on them.
Now that you know the details of how to get book reviews on Amazon, take your next step by using our free resource below!
