Laser focus on selling a niche product not only produces great book sales but permits the self-published author to ignore many unproductive industry best practices. Self-published authors are working hard to implement a good marketing plan to reach new customers. There are great elements of a marketing plan to include writing articles, blogs, podcasting, creating ads on amazon, building communities and more. For the most part, a great product with great marketing equals great sales. Even better, where authors are trying to reach a niche audience, scalable marketing is a must. However, spamming book reviewers should not be part of that plan.
Is asking for book reviews a bad practice?
Have you visited a website and been asked to provide a review three seconds into the visit? How about going to the store and being asked to review your experience at the automatic check out? It seems we can’t get away from businesses asking for reviews. If everyone is doing it, how can a marketing plan be set apart?
Capturing reviews may be popular marketing strategy recommended for self-published authors, but does it help? Yes, if the reviews are organic to the customer base. Organic review requests that work are experienced by authors who solicit customer reviews within the pages of the book, through the author\’s website, newsletters or other subscriber events. If this is working for you, then keep doing it. The rest of this article recommends caution if using a highly recommended but somewhat controversial marketing tactic of eliciting contact information of non-organic Amazon reviewers.
I like the word, elicitation. It relates to my risk management business and we try to bring awareness of elicitation practices.
According to the Cambridge dictionary elicitation is:
the process of getting or producing something, especially information or a reaction.
In this case, elicitation is acquiring Amazon reviewer contact information for the purpose of soliciting reviews.
Allow me to explain:
Popular teachings pass the message that self-published authors require book reviews to sell book. This may be true and reviews are helpful, but should only be asked of those who have purchased, read and thought highly enough of the product to review it.
However, the current gurus teach that authors should cold contact outside reviewers and convince them with a gift to review their book. These are not customer readers, but elicited to review a book they would not normally read. Self-publishing books and courses teach that the success or failure of any book depends on whether customers provide a book review.
To be fair, I see no problem with an author requesting within the pages of the book, in a newsletter, website or other organic location, that those who have purchased their books to leave a review. However, it should end at that point. A self-published author should put most marketing efforts in book writing and sales, not on the unbalanced effort of soliciting book reviews.
A good marketing plan includes finding customers with similar likes, experiences, tastes, and interest in the book subject. These are the customers authors should seek to engage to interact with, sell to and potentially request to provide a review.
The issue with chasing reviews is that outside of the marketing plan, most sellers do not know who purchased books at the online bookstore as stores do not provide that information. As a solution, some teach that the author should put significant effort into going outside of a good marketing plan, which is counterintuitive.
Some lessons include searching online book sales pages of similar books, finding these reviewers and using provided contact information to email clever messages asking for a review. Alternatively, authors are led to purchase a revolutionary software or service to spit out a list of Amazon reviewers and their email addresses. These reviewers are considered as “leads”. The problem is though the contact information is provided, they are not leads as they never consented to be contacted for such purposes.
With Amazon.com, product reviewers register to leave reviews. That way when they leave a review, they are viewed as legitimate and from verified customer. The issue is that Amazon publishes the contact information but doesn’t necessarily mean that the reviewers have consented to the contact.
Tricking a system causes unwanted results and nullifies the reason for the algorithm. Actually, algorithms are by nature very smart, so attempting to trick them leads to temporary lackluster results. Additionally, repercussions could lead to Amazon implementing mitigations such as making contact information unavailable or totally excluding reviews from the algorithm criteria. This just enforces the point that chasing reviews is contrary to the spirit of the review in the first place.
Here are a few reasons why self-published authors should not ask for reviews:
1. Traditionally published authors don’t do this; it’s amateur
2. Tricking an algorithm doesn’t help, especially if based on artificial and unsustainable results
3. Reviews should be something a reader feels compelled to do, not out of coercion. If your product is worthy, people will rate it.
4. It interrupts purposeful marketing efforts you are already pursuing (non-organic reviewers shouldn’t be considered a customer base or market)
5. It’s counterintuitive diverting an authors valuable time that should be focused on book sales
Hopefully this helps the self-published author with developing the ever important marketing plan. It is ok to ignore what others are teaching and focus on what really works. Keep in mind that most self-publishing teachers are doing what they think is best for the market. However, there are some “best practices” better left untouched.
Hear my podcast, Book Based Business Incubator for more discussion of this topic.