Publishing E-Books For Dummies

No One Is Reviewing My E-Book

A new, potential reader who comes across your e-book will want to take a look at its reviews. For some readers, simply noting the star rating will suffice; others will be eager to read at least one or two reviews, and will take note of the total number of reviews. All else being equal, the more reviews you have (and the better they are), the more books you’ll sell.

You can’t simply wait around, therefore, and hope that readers will review your e-book. You may well have plenty of more-than-satisfied customers — but they won’t necessarily take the initiative to write reviews without a little prompting.

During the launch of your e-book (or even beforehand), ask friends or online contacts if they’d like a review copy of your e-book. Explain that you’ll give them free copies, and in return, you’d be grateful if they’d write short reviews. Many, many indie authors do this — and traditional publishers send out review copies to newspapers, related magazines and journals, and bloggers.

After you do that, encourage readers to leave reviews by occasionally prompting them via social media. For example, you could write a blog post highlighting some early reviews, asking anyone else who has read the book but not yet reviewed it to add their opinion, too. If you receive e-mails or read tweets (on Twitter) from happy readers, ask them to take the time to write quick reviews on Amazon or Goodreads. (These two sites are the most likely places for potential readers to ...