I thought I’d do something a little different to my usual post, and because my main marketing focus is about gaining reviews for my science fiction adventure series which starts with LOST AMONGST THE STARS, I’ll take a deep dive into reviews and how indie authors can achieve them.

Why Reviews?

I think the answer to this question should be obvious to anyone who has tried to choose a new book, but just in case it’s not, I’ll lay it on the line. Reviews are the social proof that your book is worth spending money. To that end, the number of reviews and their rating level are hard-baked into the Amazon algorithm and the greater number of reviews a book has then the more likely it is to stand any chance of being presented to potential new readers outside of any money you decide to invest / throw away on their marketing services.

How many reviews is enough?

It is well considered that 50+ reviews / ratings will create a measurable difference in visibility on Amazon to new readers. 100+ reviewed / rated books will outperform higher rated books with fewer than 25 reviews. It’s important to remember this is separately applicable for each Amazon marketplace.

From my own experience, my zombie series with nearly 600 reviews on both the US and UK platforms, significantly outperforms the paid social media marketing by a large margin compared to my other series where the only difference, other than the genre, being the number of reviews / ratings they have.

For LOST AMONGST THE STARS I have 64 US and 39 UK reviews. For FATE’S AMBITION I have 30 US and 19 UK reviews. I’m currently focusing my efforts on UK reviews for LATS.

How do I get reviews?

The free / low volume ways to get reviews on a mature book, i.e. one that can no longer be considered a new release, are as follows:

• Getting your book reviewed by bloggers, booktockers and bookstagrammers etc. You have to approach each of these and plead with them to consider your book.
• Using back matter to urge your readers to review the books. I recently added a paper insert into each of the paperbacks I sell at craft and gift market events to pull the heart strings of readers to get them to review.
• Offer you book for free to your social media ‘friends’ in return for a review.

Another method to get reviews is to get as many free books out to readers as possible via promotional 3rd party marketing services and hope the downloaders both read and review the book. I am actively pursuing this method. However, having given away over 1,000 books in the last 3 months, I don’t think I have gained a single review. This is part of the problem with giving away free books, you don’t know when or if anyone will read them. They may well just be collectors of free books.

A note on paying for reviews. Paying for reviews goes against Amazon’s terms and conditions and in the best case scenario will mean the review does not get published, or is later removed. In the worst case can put your KDP account in jeopardy, so don’t do it.

There are however services available that can assist authors in getting reviews by connecting you to readers who are willing to review books. This is often either a subscription model or a service whereby you pay a reader to read the book, but not to review the book. There is a distinction when it comes to the Amazon terms and conditions.

Here is a summary of the review services I have come across, some of which I have used and others I have researched.

Review assistance services

Booksirens – https://booksirens.com/

Cost – $10 per book + $2 per review.

This service is intended to get ARCs in front of readers and so your book must be a new release. I tried to add LATS to this service but as this is a four book series they required that all books must be offered for review. I have yet to commit to using this service.

Bookmarch – https://bookmatch.co.uk/

This is a fledgling service based in the UK (which is why I focused on it) and for a one off payment of £20 per book it adds your book to a library of science-fiction and fantasy books reviewers can download and review. I have subscribed to this service but as of yet I have had no new reviews from it.

Booksprout – https://booksprout.co

This is once again a subscription serviced and I tried it out but only got one review. I had a conservation with the support team and they suggested that their bank of reviewers may not gravitate to science-fiction so I cancelled by account.

BookBlaze – https://bookblaze.co/

It’s another subscription model to connect you to reviewers, but as they are based in the US I have not yet tried it.

Pubby – https://pubby.co

Much like BookBlaze it is a subscription service which I have not tried, however the reviews for the service are very poor. How ironic!

Book Reverb – https://www.bookreverb.com

Not a subscription service, I have used this to great effect, although at a high cost. For around $9 per review, you can almost guarantee results. However it produces mainly US reviews.

Getbooksreviewed.com – https://getbooksreviewed.com/

Put simply, after a free trial, for $10 you get access to their platform where you review other author’s books to gain enough credit to post your book for reviews. The more reviews you undertake the more credits you can offer other users to review your book. I am currently in the free trial period and have read 2 books and gained enough credits to offer the lowest value sum for other authors to review my book. My book has been up for about 3 days but with no sign of a review yet.

There are two issues with this service that I see so far. The first is that you have to have time to be able to read loads of books to make this worthwhile. I don’t have a lot of time for that so I end of skim reading. The second problem is the apparent low quality of the books available to review. It took me a while to find the first two books, which were both short and half decent, but I don’t know how many there are like them on the platform.

They have a very useful tool on the site which assesses your review and provides assistance in writing it to ensure that it does not get rejected, or later deleted, by Amazon. The jury is still out on this one for those reasons.

I hope this has been a helpful round up, and if anyone knows of any other service or method for getting reviews, please let me know in the comments.