Note: If you missed part 1, it is here.

Nearly a thousand books sold and 31 reviews on my first book (out of four). By my calculations, it takes roughly 32 books sold for me to garner a single Amazon review. In comparison, I glanced at Dan Brown’s 2017 novel Origin. If it sold a million copies on Amazon, then it took him 38 books to garner a single review. The initial printing was 2 million, so this is probably a good seat-of-the-pants guess. Doing this exercise for other bestsellers puts my figure above in the ballpark of the best-selling authors. Now I just have to figure out how to sell a million copies (or even another couple of thousand).

From talking to other writers, reading online articles, and my own experience, one thing is clear: It is difficult to get reviews! I’m talking about honest reviews from people who read your book, don’t know you personally, and haven’t been given some incentive to post a review (there are all kinds of schemes out there to game the Amazon review process).

I’ll admit that some of my early reviews came from acquaintances. But about half or more of the 31 reviews for my first book came from people I don’t know.

Note: The current Amazon process to approve book reviews is an attempt to ensure unbiased reviews. If the reviewer can be identified as having a personal relationship with the author, then the review will be denied posting. How might they know this? They look at addresses of the reviewers, similar names, evidence the reviewer might have been paid, and on and on. You can be certain they will not release exactly how they do it. Best to read their Customer Review Guidelines, if you have not done so. People spend an inordinate amount of time gaming the review process, and Amazon has a tough job in this area.

The good news: Based on reviews from people I didn’t know and reviews on Goodreads, I would say my writing skill is in the 3- to 4-star level. Not bad for an honest rating and a self-published writer with no track record, doing it all on his own.

Goodreads, you say…

If you don’t know about Goodreads (owned by Amazon), you should. Why? It is known to be the place where real readers go. And Goodreads has approximately 90 million registered members as of July 2019 according to Statista.

My experience is that Goodreads’ reviewers are more critical, more savvy about literature, and in general, they read more books than the average Amazon reviewer. That said, expect to get a bit lower ratings on Goodreads than Amazon, and yes, Goodreads’ ratings tend to only be star ratings w/o corresponding reviews. For instance, for my four books, my Goodread’s rating is 3.71 out of 5 stars while my Amazon rating is around 4.3 out of 5 stars. Bottom line: It’s a good place to get a better idea of how your writing rates among people who spend a lot of time reading (though in most cases you won’t know why they rated your book the way they did).

So…spend some time encouraging people to leave Amazon reviews, but realize they are very tough to get. Also, sign up for an author page on Goodreads and put some effort into it. I have an author page on Amazon, but not as sold on spending time there.

What about those pesky bad reviews?

Don’t sweat them (unless they are the majority and then you have an issue)! I’ve received two 1-star ratings out of 116 total ratings (combined from both Goodreads and Amazon). One was a “one-tap rating” (see next section) which means they left no comments. The other 1-star was the one displayed above.

So what? That’s fine. Not everyone will or should like my writing. It is interesting to note that the person who left this review had reviewed only one item on Amazon–ever (my book). It’s certainly possible that this person signed up on Amazon simply to give me a bad review (I have a few enemies in the world), or he/she is not an avid reader. At least I know she bought the book on Amazon (thank you!). Either way, even if Stephen King wrote the review, it’s OKAY to get bad reviews. Mr. King received ~250 1-star reviews on The Institute (yea, yea, he received over 2200 5-star reviews, but you get my point. 🙂 )

I’ll be bold enough to claim that if you never get a bad review: (1) all your reviews are from people you know, or (2) your book wasn’t deep enough to rankle someone and keep the faithful coming back and back. Books are about conflict, and they typically offend, upset, or turn-off someone.

If you are getting mostly 3s, 4s, and occasional 5s from people you don’t know, pat yourself on the back, stand tall, keep going. You are a good storyteller!

One-tap ratings…

Another recent change to keep in mind: Amazon now allows both ratings and reviews. They are testing a “one-tap rating” that allows customers to give a star rating without a corresponding review. I’m not in favor of a star rating w/o a corresponding review, because I have no idea why the person rated my book they way they did (this is a problem on Goodreads). The very first one-tap rating I received was a 2-star. Had no idea why the person didn’t like the book. I don’t expect to get all 4- and 5-star reviews, but I would like to know why people like my books and why they do not.

It’s simple algebra, but not at Amazon…

The rating you get from Amazon is not a simple algebraic average of all the reviews you have received. Interestingly, I went back and forth with Amazon on this very issue several months ago. I wasn’t upset at what they were doing; I was upset that they weren’t telling anyone. And voila, a link appeared under the star rating chart in the not too distant past explaining how they calculate the ratings. The link text reads:

“Amazon calculates a product’s star ratings based on a machine learned model instead of a raw data average. The model takes into account factors including the age of a rating, whether the ratings are from verified purchasers, and factors that establish reviewer trustworthiness.”

Thanks Amazon for being up front about this.

That’s probably enough for part II. I promise I’ll put together part III w/o a long delay. My plan is to discuss advertising: what worked for me and what did not.