- You already know you need Amazon reviews for your book
so I'm not going to spend any time
telling you why you need them.
Today we're going to talk about who you're going to get
to review your books without begging friends and family.
Stick around.
(light rock music)
Hey, I'm Julie the Book Broad with Book Launchers,
a California-based company that will help you write,
publish, and sell a fantastic nonfiction book
that boosts your business and achieves your goals.
Now, before I dive into today's video
I have to give a huge shout-out
to some fabulous Book Launchers YouTube subscribers.
Thank you so much for being here.
Teacher2Mommy, ElegantSpicy, MissAmber, and Michael Hess.
You guys make my day with your shares
and your comments and your thumbs up,
so thank you so much.
When you think Amazon reviews,
you're probably thinking about asking
all your friends and family to review your book.
If that's what you're thinking
check out this video right here.
Besides the fact that it's absolutely no fun
to beg your family and friends to write reviews,
the reality is it can also be depressing
how few of them will do it.
When I asked my friends and family to review my first book
before I understood Amazon algorithms,
well let's just say a lot of them said they would do it
who didn't and a lot of people ignored me completely,
it was pretty heartbreaking.
Today I'm going to save you the personal heartache
that comes with finding out how few of your friends
are truly going to support you when your book comes out
and we're going to institute a no-begging policy
and here's who you're going to ask.
But first, a slight warning.
Getting Amazon reviews is going to be difficult
a lot of people will ignore you
and a lot of people will say they'll do it and they won't.
So you're just going to have to be patient and persistent
but here are the four categories of people
that you're going to ask for reviews.
Number one, numero uno, current Amazon book reviewers.
This strategy is for people who have more time than money
or you have the money to hire people to do it.
(laughs)
Because it's time consuming.
Many Amazon reviewers enjoy getting advanced copies
or free copies of books so that they can review them,
and because they do that
they like to make their contact information public.
So you can find somebody who has reviewed similar books
to your book and potentially contact them to review yours.
Now Amazon does not make reviewer contact information public
so the reviewer themselves has chosen to make it available.
My profile, for example, has a link to my personal website
where people can and do contact me directly
to review things.
I'll use an example.
We have a client who's written a leadership book
so when we work with him to get Amazon reviews,
this is what we could do.
We're going to look for people
who have reviewed a book like this one.
Extreme Ownership U.S. Navy Seals.
Now, what you're going to do is click on Reviews
and when you do you're going to see there's two choices, okay?
There's Top Reviewers and there's recent reviews.
Top Reviewers are simply people whose reviews
have been most liked by Amazon readers.
The recent reviews are people who've recently reviewed it.
So for me
I'm probably going to start by going through recent reviewers
in order to find somebody
who is recently interested in this topic.
But top reviewers are often people who avidly read
and avidly review books as soon as they come out.
So going through both
is probably going to be what you want to do.
But let me tell you,
this is needle-in-a-haystack kind of hunting.
Probably one in 100 reviewers
actually has their contact information on here.
So you're going to click and click and click and click
and find nothing most of the time.
But you will find some people and these people
are people who probably want to review books like yours.
If I was serious about this strategy
I would hire somebody on fiverr.com
to create a list for me.
And when I get them to create the list
I would want a website or a way to contact them,
a note of what book they had reviewed,
and I would even get them to copy and paste
their specific review into the spreadsheet.
Also another strategy, Author Marketing Club
has a list of reviewers you can contact.
I haven't used them.
It's a for-fee list but I'm just saying,
that might be less painful and that reviewer list
might be fruitful, hard to say.
Group number two, your clients.
Your clients probably love you
and they're a good fit for what you're teaching, I suspect.
So they're the best potential folks to do you a favor,
read and review your book.
You can even get them on board early
and give them some incentives
for being an early reader of your book
to help create some hype.
Maybe create a private Facebook group training
or access to something else you normally reserve
for premium clients.
Number three, colleagues and quote/unquote "competitors',
people in your industry. Who do you see at events?
Who talks to the same audience as you?
Even if you do what they do, why not be friends?
We can all use more friends, can't we?
You want to be my friend?
(giggles)
No, okay.
There's almost always a way to support each other
while serving similar people and hey,
they might write a book someday too
and you can then support their launch.
Number four, mentors and other people you pay
for guidance and support.
This excludes anybody who works on your book with you.
So your editors, your writers, designers,
if you hire Book Launchers, we can't review a book
that we've worked on
according to the Amazon Terms of Service.
Understandably, these folks who've worked on your book
would have a bias given their involvement
but if you're paying someone to get business coaching
or possibly you've paid a lot of money to your HR consultant
or accountant, ya know the list,
they might be a good fit to read and review your book
and maybe they can even recommend it
to other clients they have that are just like you.
So this is the four types of people you can contact.
And I'm curious, who else would you put on your list
to be possible Amazon reviewers?
Go ahead and share that in the comments below
and then make sure you've subscribed to this channel
so that you'll catch the next video on what to say
to ask them to review your book.
And make sure, did I say turn the notifications on?
Make sure you've turned those notifications on
so that you get notified when that video comes out.
New videos every Friday and when the video comes out
the folks who comment on the video the day it's released
will be entered to win some fun prizes.
So go ahead,
comment on your best Amazon review getting strategy
and I'll see you on the next video
with my how to ask for reviews.
(light rock music and beep)
Oops, (laughs)