Are ARCs against Amazon’s terms? Amazon’s own wording, quoted below, says you may give readers free or discounted copies of your book, but you may not demand a review in exchange or try to influence it. The Kindle Unlimited rules are less clear, and I go through them further down. If you’ve been following me
Getting more book reviews is critical for authors – without at least 10 reviews it’s hard to even give your books away for free. Unless you already have a platform, you should shoot for around 20 before you invest in book marketing, promotion or advertising. But how do you find reviewers? What should you say
One way to find more reviewers for your book is to look at what’s selling in your genre, see who has reviewed them, and then reach out to those people. When I started publishing fiction I did my own research. It’s easy: you just go through all the reviews, and copy down any contact information.
Quick Answer Amazon deletes reviews when it detects a relationship between reviewer and author, incentivized reviews, or patterns that look like manipulation. UDPATE – also read this: Are advanced reader copies (ARCs) for book reviews illegal (against Amazon’s terms?) Amazon has been doing review purges for some time, but today was a...
I see a lot of indie authors begging for reviews (and feeling stupid for it). I hate begging for stuff. I hate asking friends and families for reviews, giving out ARC copies, and then knowing specifically who should be but isn’t reviewing my books. Trust me, I’ve been there. But I stopped that nonsense years
2018 UPDATES: Amazon has been doing “purges” of reviews and a lot of authors have seen hundreds of reviews deleted. Read this to keep Amazon from deleting your reviews. Also for a while Amazon was displaying the review with the most comments on top, instead of those voted most helpful… but that didn’t seem to stick...
Tonight I read with interest two posts about Author Ethics. This one by Jane Steen on selfpublishingadvice.org argues that while indie authors often lament (and admit to be challenged by) quality issues, the equally important issue of Author Ethics is ignored. The concept of “Author Ethics” refers mainly to bullshit book reviews; a...
It’s important to get a lot of reviews on your book’s sales page. But it’s even better to get blurbs from famous authors, or authors of other books. I’m going to teach you a free and easy secret to getting blurbs for your self-published book. Are you ready? Here it is: ASK This isn’t advice
A couple nights ago I met up with Hugh Howey Fan Fic writer Wes Davies over pizza and beer in Tainan, Taiwan; as indie authors we discussed marketing and pricing strategies. The best plan (I continue to affirm) is cheap or free – especially at the beginning, and especially as a lead-in to a series.
Recently a lot of my creative friends have been raving about “The War of Art” – a little manifesto about art, creativity and creative production by Steven Pressfield. It’s an inspirational book that’s popularity is based on the fact that it tells would be authors and artists the New Age message that...
How to advertise your book and why you should. There’s a self-published book being advertised on Facebook called “Replenish the Earth”. The cover is ho-hum. The first time I saw it I smirked, thinking the author was throwing their money away. The 10th time I saw it, I bought the book. Why? Exposure creates interest
I put out my self published non-fiction research book about a year ago. I did almost everything wrong. I’m starting to come to grips with what I should have done, which I’ve arranged in the following 3-step plan for those who can benefit from my mistakes. 1) Distribution. The book has to be OUT
