[QUESTION]How i can get positve +5 review for my new book?

***miguelitoxrox*** · 03-27-2021, 10:41 AM

Hi,

This is the question: How i can get a lot of positves +5 review for my new book?

Thanks!

***animationeasy*** · 03-27-2021, 06:47 PM

If it is published on Amazon, we may not be able to use black hat techniques, you can ask your family, friends and relatives to give you a review.

you can put it up on KDP promotions (make it free for 2-3 days) and you can ask our community to download it and review it.)

put it on your Facebook page, ask your readers to download

please don't try anything black hat with KDP, they are witty in finding out, and they will deleter the review and also may ban the account

in the last page of the book , you can thank your readers, ( put it as a thank-you page) and politely ask them for a review, and tell them that will be helpful and encouraging.

Facebook groups of specific niches are helpful in getting reviews (if the book is free for the day) you need to ask them to review , of course not everyone does , but a few good hearts help you. ( book promotion groups are overcrowded)

add your email address in the last page of the book , some readers contact you to appreciate or maybe ask a doubt, you can help them out , then politely ask for a review

***layna61524*** · (This post was last modified: 04-26-2021 12:46 AM by layna61524.)

HOW CAN I GET POSITIVE (+5) REVIEWS
FOR MY NEW BOOK?

Assuming Your Book Is Worthy Of A +5 Rating, Here Are
Some Things You Can Do To Get the Good Feedback You Seek...

Okay, I'm no expert (and I don't play one on TV) and that's why I always take my questions to the pros.

If you think you don't know any pros, well, think again... they're there. Waiting to bring solutions to almost any problem. You've just got to ask.

I'm talking about the search engines.

As for the REAL pros (PEOPLE), there are successful book authors who make blog posts telling us of their tested-and-proven methods for improving book sales. That's who to ask --- those who have gone before you and done what it is you're trying to do now.

And the search engines are like a telephone to the pros. We ask a certain way (using good keywords) and it connects us to the desired party (book authors who get great book reviews, in this case).

So, on your behalf, I asked Google your question and here is just a little bit of what came back...

HOW CAN I GET POSITIVE REVIEWS FOR MY BOOK? - Please use the slider arm in the opened window below to see all the links.

Magic Button :

But you won't get people writing reviews if you go about it willy-nilly. It takes a planned strategy and often, more time than you would imagine.

And, there can be several moving parts involved. It's not a one-off method at all.

First thing: it's human nature for people to be a little bit (um...how can I say this?) --- LAZY.

You've got to entice your readers to give you feedback or you may never get it.

Trust and familiarity also factor in. Your customers won't bother connecting with you unless you connect with them. Regularly.

If you don't already have an author "presence" then you want to get one --- quickly.

- Get an author's website (if you don't already have one). This is a site dedicated to your book projects, so you can have all of your titles there and organize them however you want.

The great thing about an author site is you can get swift and immediate reaction and feedback from your fans once you have built up trust and they become fans of your writing. You can post interactive sections that publish upcoming titles, have prize giveaways by engaging readers (ex: they answer questions or complete quizzes about your books, their characters, etc. by a deadline and you reward them in a random drawing with a download or other small incentive). You can get a lot of people to see and interact with you on an author's site. And yes, you can easily create a book review feedback form on such a site and send the link to customers or readers via email.

- Have a Facebook group or other social media presence where your book's fans can congregate and interact with you and one another;

- Plan a book series. If there is a way to serialize your current book, that will create a continuum of your characters and story-lines so that readers who are already familiar with the first book in the series will anticipate (translated: get excited about) the next installment. This only applies to books that naturally lend itself to this concept. Not all books do but good books that belong to a series benefit immensely from having a track record in terms of familiarity of the books' characters and story-lines as well as an existing (and growing) fan base to get the word out (and reviews from) over time.

There are countless other ways to promote awareness about your book so here are some links to strategies for self-published authors to promote their book more effectively:

BOOK PROMOTION FOR SELF-PUBLISHED AUTHORS - Again, use the slider arm to see everything.

Magic Button :

Also, there are some things you can do to entice your readers to tell you how --- or if--- they enjoyed your book.

Here are some pro-active things you can do to encourage them to provide their feedback. And you can use that feedback to catapult your book to best-seller status (or sell more copies, at least).

HOW TO GET GOOD REVIEWS FOR YOUR BOOK

Magic Button :

There's a lot more "advice" out there --- you just need to know what to look at and what to ignore (anything that you feel would not work for you or doesn't apply to your situation).

In summary, there are some things you can do now (or in the very near future) to get your customer's feedback:

- If your book isn't getting the kinds of reviews you hoped it would, try doing a quick, informal poll of your readers (maybe via email, if they ordered using their email address). Make it quick-and-easy because you want the quickest feedback possible so that you can any implement any changes as soon as you can to patch up any weaknesses in the product (assuming it's a self-published book);

- If your book isn't getting the "star treatment" you feel is due, take a closer look at your book. Maybe there are some holes that need patching up and you can do some trouble-shooting: like, test a couple of different covers or the blurbs written on the back cover (you DO have writing on the back cover ... right?);

- Get existing customers to WANT to provide feedback. Offer an incentive for them to respond. Let them know that they will receive the item (whatever the incentive will be) regardless of the nature of their review but do encourage their honest feedback. It is better to get a luke-warm or blunt review you can use to improve your product if that is warranted --- you're out to make sales, not friends;

- Make the most of the reviews you get back. Good-to-great reviews should be used in your promotional copy and on the book's front and/or back cover(s) to help catapult sales.

Never use luke-warm or so-so reviews of your book. They do absolutely nothing to spur sales. You can use the feedback as constructive criticism (if it even applies). Otherwise, it's just one person's opinion and you can't be thin-skinned about it. Either make any changes to the book that you feel will improve it or cast the feedback aside for what it is. When you ask for reviews, you can't predict what will be said so keep an open mind when reading them but extract from them only what benefits the book or your publishing projects. In some cases, the feedback will be nothing more than someone's opinion.

Poor grammar in a customer review, on the other hand, cannot go unchecked. Not everybody paid attention in their high school English class so, some people tend to write like they speak or they make egregious spelling errors when they write. Since it is illegal to "edit" other people's reviews, you shouldn't or you risk looking suspect. After all, if you doctor one thing in a customer review, it could be said that you'd completely change the feedback to suit your purposes. So, here's what I'd do...

If the review itself passes muster as being a very good or (better yet) great review but it has some minor spelling errors or improper grammar, I would dash off a quick email to the person to thank them for such useful feedback and ask permission to make the few changes needed to post their feedback publicly. Don't make them feel stupid for their errors but soften the blow by saying you will immediately send them both the original and the edited feedback for approval before you post. This takes more time but it's the only way to do it. Otherwise, if you were to post the edited reply without their knowledge, it could backfire when dealing with a certain type of personality. You don't want to upset someone who took the time to write a sterling review for your book. Any review can be hard to come by but great reviews are like unicorns --- it's a big deal when you finally find one because they're so rare (I know they don't actually exist but I couldn't think of a better analogy PLUS I've been typing this post much too long!).

But while less-than-exciting reviews won't make the cut, they can be very useful in making improvements to the book. If you plan a future edition, by all means, make those changes if the customer feedback is legitimate and your book needs work. Your book will be stronger because of it. If you don't plan a new edition, you can keep the feedback you received in mind when doing future publishing projects.

No matter the temperature of the review, a wise author benefits in learning from it.

So, I hope this helps.

That's a lot of reading, I know, but there's a lot you can (and should) do to get the reviews you feel you deserve. There is no simple quick-and-easy way to build your author platform.

If your book is good enough to earn great reviews, you've got half the battle won.

Now you've got to encourage feedback and entice readers to tell you their opinion.

The best way I can see to do that is to get noticed (that means both you and your books) and then engage them so that they get accustomed to interacting with you. This builds up trust and grows readers into fans.

Give them a deadline to complete the action and offer them something for their time.

A digital download related to the book like a booklet, infographic, etc.

A digital gift card for $5 or $10 if you can afford it;

Something.

But they all must get exactly the same incentive.

Since you want their honest feedback, be very clear in the language you use on the poll or feedback form that they will receive the incentive when you get the form back and the sooner the better but they have until a certain time on a certain date that you name in the message.

You can hope for an awesome review but you don't want it to appear that you are providing a reward because you expect one. That would be a bribe.

Try to send out all of the notices or links to the poll to everybody you want to receive it at the same time, if possible. Then there won't be any issues changing the deadlines for one batch of recipients versus another.

Remember, they must reply on or before your deadline to get the incentive. Make no exceptions. This enables you to get the feedback you want in a timely manner to make any needed changes to both the product and the copy you write to promote the book. You can't tolerate dilly-dallying. And if you send the incentive as an attachment with the poll, your customers can ignore your request or forget to return the form but they will have the incentive and that defeats the purpose of why you're doing this.

The form can be a fillable PDF you send as an email attachment, a form on your author's website that you can send them the link to, or you can simply type a set of questions you want answers to inside the email. There are multiple ways to do it. But everyone should get the same communication with the same questions at the same time.

There may be some templates on the web you can find and edit to get the right questions you want answers to for your review. Do a search for: How to Write a Good Amazon Book Review and follow the links. That should give you some suggestions for questions you want to use to create the review feedback form.

Be sure to make it easy or you'll be wasting your time. When given the choice - people don't do difficult.

Sometimes, customers have great things to say about something they purchased --- only, they say it to their significant other or spouse; their family or friends.

When it comes to your book, you've got to get them to give their feedback to YOU --- so that you can share it with others to stoke up excitement about the book that translates to new sales.

I don't know if I agree that having your family or friends write a book review is a good idea (unless they actually read the book and truly enjoyed it). It's entirely up to you but if I were a family member or friend being asked to do this, I'd feel put-upon and wonder if there's a reason you aren't getting a legitimate customer response.

I see a lot of opinions online that claim the reviews on Amazon.com are fake or that people are paid to post good ones. I don't know that to be true but, having family or friends write reviews for you pretty much guarantees that they will be biased.

I would seek only legitimate buyers of my book to give me their feedback. You can add a few people to the mix that you provide the book to as a "freebie" or maybe someone who agrees to proof-read it if that helps to "flesh out" good reviews but I would not ask my family or friends or anyone else who will feel compelled to say something positive just to stroke your ego or feel you expect a great review. That benefits no one in the long run if it isn't authentic.

After all that said, if you still want to have your family and friends write reviews, here's something to help you with that process...

HOW TO GET YOUR FRIENDS TO WRITE
AMAZON BOOK REVIEWS FOR YOUR BOOK

Magic Button :

I've never been one to shrink from competition and while I don't enjoy getting my feelings hurt, I learn from constructive criticism and tend to siphon off the bullshit if I sense that someone isn't being honest but just wants their "two-cents" heard. There will be times when a customer may give a review you know isn't legitimate "just because" ... they were having a bad day. Don't let this get you down.

You will need to ask for a LOT of reviews, over a span of time, to get good to great (or as you say, +5) ones. This is just the nature of dealing with people in general. It's hard to get people to do most anything where they don't derive an immediate benefit as a result.

But in a lot of cases where book reviews are slow in coming, the author either didn't do market the book far enough in advance of the launch or sadly, the book may not be +5 caliber. Or a combination of the two.

You mention in your post that the book is new. How new?

And what have you done to get reviews?

When did you start promoting awareness of the book?

When did the book launch?

If your book was only recently released and there was no pre-launch promotional campaign, that explains it.

It takes a very strong emotion to get people to write about something they purchased. This is why, usually, only a highly satisfied (or very pissed off) customer will take the time to provide feedback to the seller.

In closing, I have to say, I agree with animationeasy... you definitely don't want to jeopardize your book sales and your seller status with any black-hat stuff. Not only can Amazon and other platforms ban you permanently but customers who learn about your demise can post negative things about you to online discussion groups or forums. I've seen it happen where one person asks, "Anybody know what happened to Joe Blow of Joe Blow Riches e-book? Then come the flurry of replies that "Oh, yeah ... he was doing such-and-such and Amazon banned him," or "I heard he was banned for some black-hat sh*t!" That's all it takes. Stuff like that can damage your reputation to the point of no return. So it's better to play nice and do the right thing from the start.

Competition is already keen for book authors --- the last thing you need is to muck up your chances before you can get traction with sales by doing something nefarious that will get you kicked off Amazon for good.

I wish you the best.

Regards,
Layna61524

***Bobhenry*** · 03-29-2021, 06:31 PM

(03-29-2021 02:19 PM)layna61524 Wrote:
HOW CAN I GET POSITIVE (+5) REVIEWS
FOR MY NEW BOOK?

Assuming Your Book Is Worthy Of A +5 Rating, Here Are
Some Things You Can Do To Get the Good Feedback You Seek...

Okay, I'm no expert (and I don't play one on TV) and that's why I always take my questions to the pros.

If you think you don't know any pros, well, think again... they're there. Waiting to bring solutions to almost any problem. You've just got to ask.

I'm talking about the search engines.

Regards,
Layna61524

Wow - just wow - awesome gold share that Layna - thank you so much for taking the time to write such a detailed answer. I hope the rest of the forum appreciates the amazing contribution you make.

***osmanal2*** · 03-29-2021, 06:56 PM

Truly a legend to help members here and came out so many useful materials for members here. Reputation is given too and appreciate your time and effort for the valuable contribution on this forum. Nice Thread

***layna61524*** · 03-31-2021, 01:49 AM

@Bobhenry: Thank you for the kind comments, friend. I can only hope that the person asking the question reads it. I sent him a PM alerting him of the reply but, alas (and as usual) all I hear is... crickets.

@osmanal2: Thank you, osmanal2. I appreciate your kind support.

Thanks

Layna61524

***monsur*** · 04-02-2021, 06:43 AM

A useful thread, thanks

***GalaxyQuest*** · 04-02-2021, 08:48 AM

Yet again another awesome share from the tireless efforts from layna61524... Reps added. Have sent you a PM

***layna61524*** · 04-03-2021, 09:07 AM

Thank you monsur. I appreciate that.

@GalaxyQuest2: Thank you, GalaxyQuest2 for the post and reps. I believe I got your question and the answer was "Yes" but with that one stipulation. Thanks for liking my shares.

Thanks

Layna61524

***Ricky P*** · (This post was last modified: 04-06-2021 01:37 AM by Ricky P.)

A detailed response from @Layna. Please give full reps to @Layna.

How to get not only positive, but full five-star reviews for a book sold on the Kindle store.

It appears to be a very straightforward question, for which I will try to give a befittingly straightforward answer.

There were many ways to go around it previously, whitehat and blackhat, but I will keep it current to 2021.

Consider this a TLDR of my post below but in 2021, blackhat techniques do not work at all on KDP. You can use the TLDR to decide whether to read further or not.?

I will show you a 3-step process and go into quite a bit of detail as well, but before that the first step must be treated as a precondition to getting positive reviews on any Amazon product. Here goes..

STEP 1: Write a Good Book

Your book has to be good! So what is the definition of a "good book"?

A book that is free of typos and grammatical errors, written in good English, and is written to market i.e. it is what the customer in your niche wants to read and finds it enjoyable while reading it.

If anyone tells you that you can easily get 5-star reviews for a cr@ppy book and wants to show you how, he or she is selling you something that is too good to be true. If your book is not good, no matter what you do, you will not get genuine positive reviews.

Purchasing reviews for Amazon products is a pointless waste of money.

Buying reviews is actually futile because most paid reviewers really mess it up by giving reviews that look fake, and those will not be published anyway. There are paid reviewers who will actually go through the book and write a +ve review, but they are difficult to find.

Besides, if Amazon finds your reviews purchased and/or fake, it can put your account at risk. Once you lose your Amazon KDP account, you will never get one again, no matter how hard you try.

I suspect that Amazon keeps a database of fake reviewers recording their IP and Mac addresses. It is also possible that they may have blacklisted entire areas or regions that are known to have a large number of paid reviewers, on the basis of IP addresses.

STEP 2: Get Friends/ Family To Review Your Book

This is only a partly possible option now, and more on that a few paragraphs below. But the problem here is, that most of them may not read the book and then leave a very short review that might make it look like it comes from someone who has not read the book.

Having read the book is the key for leaving legit reviews, on the basis of which Amazon decides whether to publish those reviews or not. The reviewer must have read the book, something that is easy to make out from the review.

"Thanks, I liked it. Nice book" or similar short reviews will never make it to a published Amazon review page.

So if you decide to take help from family/ friends, make sure to ask them to read the book and then leave a nice review. Writing a long review and referring to something in the book in the review makes it seem genuine. For Amazon, a book review has to provide some value to prospective customers.

Here is the important part, the reason I mentioned that it is only partly possible to follow this step now. None of those of family, or friends, should be linked to you on social media.

Amazon considers your social media connections your friends, and once discovered, will not publish their reviews. Amazon has their own ways to find that out, using software programs or manual reviewers.

However, as of now, if you try it, your account will not be at risk. Just that those reviews of friends and family will not be published.

Amazon will know that your mom tried to write you a review, but will not publish it. Because they know that your mom will never leave you a bad review even if your book is horrendous. :-)

STEP 3: Request Your Customers For a Review

This is the best way. It's a very simple technique but most effective when it comes to obtaining good reviews. In reality, it is the only easy way in 2021 to get lots of positive reviews.

At the end of your book, include a request to write a review on Amazon. A lot of authors do this but there is a correct way to do it which I will describe below. Most get it wrong so pay attention.

First of all, thank the reader.

"Thank you for reading [name of book]!"

Secondly, make a request, with a condition(if...).

"If you liked my book/ enjoyed reading my book(or my story if is fiction), please write a review by clicking on the link below(for ebooks only)."

Do not say "good review" or "positive/5-star review", for that would be taken as soliciting, which you don't want to do.

Also, don't start a rant or start whining about how hard you worked to get your book out. Keep it brief, as above.

Thirdly, give them a direct link.

Include a direct link to the review section so that the customer only has to click on it to leave you a review right there and then. Here's how you can get a direct link.

When you purchase a product on Amazon, it gives you a clickable button that says "Write a Product Review". This is the same link, for your book, that you need to put at the back of the book, but only if it is a Kindle ebook.

If it is a physical book then you need to be more innovative and either put a shortened link or redirect using a domain name, which could look professional and customized e.g. nameofmybookreview.com. So your request in this case, will be as follows:

"If you liked my book/ enjoyed reading my book(or my story if is fiction), please review it at/ by going to nameofmybookreview.com."

So when the reader types nameofmybookreview.com into a browser it will automatically redirect to where the feedback is to be given on Amazon. If they are logged into Amazon it becomes seamless and they will land on the exact page, and if they're not they will be taken there after logging in.

If you follow what I have written above you can be assured of getting many positive reviews, provided of course your book is good.

Bonus Tip:

There are agencies, who for a fee will hunt for genuine reviewers who have a known interest in reading books in your niche, contact them and tell them about your book. You might have to send them the book, or make it permafree on KDP. You can do a google search or check out the threads on Writers Cafe on KBoards for names of such agencies.

To Conclude:

You see, the tough part is not to get those positive, 5-star reviews. The toughest part is Step 1 above - publishing a good book that deserves a 5-star review!

Anything else is besides the point, and you might as well move on to the next shiny object.

PS to the readers at large. There are terms like "permafree" and "KDP" used above that are specific to the publishing business. If you want to know more, please use google search for more info., since this post was specific to the question asked and should in no way be considered a book publishing tutorial.

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