Pete, aka Beetleypete, is one of Amazon’s top reviewers, with an impressive rank of 3,212 out of the 10,000 top reviewers. When he saw my post on Theo Rogers’ book, How to Get Good Reviews on Amazon, he kindly shared his review in a comment. I’m posting it here, as I feel it will be of great interest to authors:
“I have just read Theo’s book this morning and have the following observations. As an Amazon reviewer myself, he has got it EXACTLY right. It is specific to Amazon, to answer other queries, but Theo is a very experienced reviewer and what he says about the ‘Amazon Jungle’ is 100% correct, from my own less detailed findings.
This book is mainly about what not to do when soliciting reviews for books (or products) on Amazon, as well as good advice on how to approach the same thing correctly.
Free today on Amazon – click to download
Anyone who is already marketing or considering selling via Amazon should definitely read this short book first. It gives a priceless insight into the thought-process of the reviewers and explains the voting system, and reviewer rankings far better than anything else I have ever read. He gives inside knowledge about the various shills and tricks used by some people and companies, and detailed information on how to avoid being lumped into these unpopular groups.
Some of his best tips in the book should be known by anyone wishing to sell anything on Amazon, especially books:
- Do not solicit reviews from family and friends who do not usually review anything else. It will be obvious to both Amazon, and to the top reviewers too.
- Do not encourage anyone to leave a negative response to reviews that are unfavourable. This is known as ‘Negging’, and also becomes obvious.
- Avoid getting involved in a group of writers who all post rave reviews of each others’ work. These are known as ‘Circles’ and are also easily detected.
- If you want to contact the top reviewers, look at their profile page for contact details. If they do not have an email address, they might have a Facebook page, blog address, or their own website.
The book is full of gems like this, and really is a ‘must read’ for sellers. Use the valuable links he provides, to increase your knowledge of just how the Amazon review system works.
If you enjoyed the review, check out the happy meercat’s review, too! Also, don’t forget to check out Amazon’s own review guidelines (thank you, Olga and Micki)!
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I read this book over the weekend. The tips and advice are quite good. Also, I like how well Theo explains the thinking behind his suggestions. He makes a good case for standards of professionalism, which I think is a must for all self-pubbed authors. I would recommend it for sure.
Thank you for sharing that, Paula! Standards of professionalism is one of my mantras as well. Having read your book, I know it’s one of yours, too 🙂
Thank you for linking to my review :).
🙂
Thanks for this info. Wasn’t sure if I’d take the time to read “How to get good reviews on Amazon,” but now I’m definitely going to take a look.
I’d love to hear what you think of it 🙂
Thank you, Nicholas for your insightful posts. They’re much appreciated. 😀
Aw, you! Thank you 🙂
Thank you both for the tip and review. Question: does the publication of the book about 2 years ago in a quickly shifting environment diminish the validity of the advice?
From what I hear, most of it is pretty accurate even now 🙂
I’ve always wondered about #3 because I see it so often. Does Amazon actually penalize for that or is it more that readers will perceive it as bad form?
I don’t think that Amazon needs to penalize you for these, since it is reviewers who will. And that can be far worse 🙂
Definitely. There’s no forgiveness on the Internet. Some people will hunt those authors to the ends of the Earth.
I’ve not personally run into any problems in reviewing for ‘friend authors’ and haven’t seen these authors have problems reviewing for each other. However amazon does have a strange system and sometimes it detects that people are friends and I’ve heard of amazon deleting so called ‘friends’ reviews. The fact I’ve never encountered it though makes me wonder whether it really is amazon’s system that does this or whether it’s because some people have complained. There’s really no way to tell. Plus I am on the UK site and the system might be slightly different there.
That’s a good question. I’ve had some people contact me that their reviews are rejected and they have no reason. These are blog followers that I interact with, which would be weird for an Amazon system to pinpoint. Maybe it’s a combination of reports and the system.
If reviews have been rejected when trying to post them I’d definitely advice everyone to retry posting them. Sometimes amazon will post a review it previously rejected if you just omit one or two words. Sometimes it seems to dislike my reviews if I use one word too many times and in one case I’ve heard somebody re-post a review by changing nothing and the system accepted it.
I once posted a review, it got ‘stuck’ for a few hours and then after a few hours I was told it was rejected. I then reposted it taking one word out and it was instantly accepted and instantly posted.
The machine that accepts or rejects reviews is automatic so don’t take it to heart and tell everyone to try again. Sometimes it’s a computer program misbehaving. Tell your blog followers to try reposting their reviews or rewrite a sentence here and there, more often than not it will be accepted 🙂
Some tried again while others settled for Goodreads or their blog only. It’s rather disheartening to submit one and it get rejected. Many people, not only with me, don’t even know why they get banned. I do worry that me telling people to try again can be misconstrued as pushing for reviews. I lost a 5-star a year ago because somebody thought a person was related to me, so I get really iffy on doing anything in regards to reviews.
That’s really weird with the one word removal
Unfortunately amazon’s own system is a bit messed up. Even experienced amazon reviewers who’ve been doing it many years complain constantly at how unfair amazon is in deleting reviews. I had one book review deleted I didn’t even know it had been deleted until I one day looked the book up. I have no idea why that review was deleted or why it was only deleted on the UK site and not the US site.
I can understand you not wanting to push for reviews though, who knows how amazon link people together.
It’s an eternal mystery. Right up there with Area 51 and why people say Almond Milk instead of Almond Juice. 😀
It’s white. It’s milky. You “almond juice” people make me sick (you were saying the other day how everything on the Internet ends up with a fight?)
I shall win this debate with the dictionary definition of milk:
an opaque white fluid rich in fat and protein, secreted by female mammals for the nourishment of their young.
If it was all about color and consistency then white paint could be called ‘Wall Milk’.
You mean you *don’t* call white paint wall milk?? Huh! *whispers* what a weirdo…
Stems from being told not to eat it. Not a good idea to call something food when it’s not.
Is that oil-based or water-based paint? (The question being along the lines of an African or a European swallow, of course).
Neither. In America, we only use lead-based. It helps the brain meats stay soft and mushy like a baby’s behind. 😛
That does explain a lot, actually 😀
Thanks for the tip!
That’s happened to me (in the US shop. though). I’ve also received an “unable to post this review because you two are friends” error once 🙂
I have never seen that error 😮 !
Amazon does seem to detect that if you ‘like’ more than 3 of somebody’s reviews you are classed as a friend and therefore the votes don’t count or get deleted but I don’t know how else amazon detects friendship.
Oh, right! That kinda makes sense, I guess…
It’s amazon’s way of stopping fan and troll voting. amazon is good at stopping trolls voting down reviewers reviews but the flip side is that if you like somebody’s reviews too much then your ‘likes’ won’t count. Even more daft is the idea that one negative vote cancels out 3 likes/helpful votes….Nothing at amazon makes sense really! I’ve been a reviewer there for about a year and a half and nothing ever makes sense! lol And they’re always changing the system so who knows what we’ll be discussing about amazon next year! 🙂
I had no idea about the ratio between up/down-voting! Wow…
Yep, that’s why amazon reviewers get so angry/competitive in the forums sometimes (and authors should never ever visit those forums asking for reviews-it’s an unpleasant place). I try to not let it bother me though and let my reviews speak for themselves. No point in getting worked up over something we cannot change :).
Words to live by. No wonder you’re a happy meerkat 🙂
Thanks, Nicholas. I have put up a linked post on my blog today.
https://beetleypete.wordpress.com/2016/07/17/nicholas-rossis-my-guest-review/
Regards, Pete.
Thank you, Pete! And special thanks for your kind words. It takes one to know one 😉