Support for Indie Authors discussion

FYI: This comment was not a means of advertising my book.

Understood. Very interesting and thank you for sharing these stats. Your experience suggests that people love getting things for free. NetGalley provides free access to books, and a reader would 'pay' for this by leaving a review. So I am guessing the review take-up rate is higher on NetGalley.

Which leaves the question - are reviews helping sales? The amazon algorithm takes 'number of reviews' into account as input, I think, and that helps visibility of your book in the insite search engine. So I am guessing that anything that stimulates amazon reviews (and perhaps GR reviews) increases visibility of your product, and by extension sales.

Just my musings - I dont necessarily have a point here.

Mark Hebwood wrote: "Very interesting statistics, Christina. I am surprised - the top percentile of all books on amazon puts you in quite a lofty part of the distribution. Still, how did you get your data? Did you look the authors up individually, or is there an analytical tool that is free to use?"

First, my words you quoted are from two years ago. For those who didn't see it, here is my whole post:
Something else to keep in mind and it has been said often: Reviews do not increase sales. More often, sales increase reviews.

There are several members of this group who are selling books like hotcakes. All are hitting the top of their genre and in the top 1-5% of all books on Amazon. None of them have a significant number of reviews and the one thing you might notice is that the reviews they have are verified purchases.

Seeking out reviews may provide us with some validation and you might be able to use quotes from said review in promotional materials, but do keep perspective. Earlier today, I saw on Facebook someone making the claim: "It's a fact, reviews sell books." Be wary of 'facts' without any proof.

I used no tool to get this information other than sales rank. At that time, Amazon had about 2 million books in the Kindle store. Currently,that number is closer to six million. 1-5% isn't as lofty today as it was back then, so what I meant by that would be closer to the top .5% or higher, meaning books who sat for months in the top 5k overall. Looking back, some of those books are still selling, some have tapered off. Some now have tons of reviews, some don't. There is no correlation between these two stats. It's all random, but I'll repeat what I said above: the top reviews are all verified purchase.

Mark, thank you. And I do believe reviews help sales. Readers are more likely to buy a book if it has a higher number of reviews, because that proves a lot of people bought it too. BookBub won’t even promote your book if it has less than 24 reviews and under 4 stars, because I think they have their own statistics they go by. Every time they’ve turned me down, they mentioned reviews as part of their method of accepting books in reference to if the book would do well. Anyways, that doesn’t mean reviews always increase sales. I think Christina mentioned she knows of authors who have more reviews than sales (if I’m remembering what she said correctly). But we don’t know that author. She may have lots of lots of friends reviewing. In my case, 90% of my reviews are by the public. That’s the only way I feel accomplishment, when strangers like my book lol.

Oh, I just read Christina’s entire post. Perhaps I misunderstood. That’s all very interesting.

I am entirely new to the world of self-publishing. But I am getting to the point where I think the following observations may be reasonable:

Anything that increases the visibility of a book potentially increases sales.

Visibility can be achieved by several means, for example peripheral content (blogs, blog contributions, podcasts, videos, interviews, website etc), advertising, SEO. And if the number of reviews flows into the amazon algorithm that drives search engine responsiveness to inputs it seems obvious to me that reviews contribute to visibility.

Still, as usual in marketing, nobody has a clue what drives what, and to what extent :-). Seems reasonable to target all marketing and PR tools at your disposal equally, and see what comes out.

Just to share one insight I have had: amazon sales rankings are a little fickle... For one thing, they are not a parameter in the amazon algorithm so do not matter directly. But importantly, they are not absolute rankings. They are relative to all other sales - as the vast majority of books on amazon sell few, if any, copies on any given day, this metric is extremely sensitive to new sales. I sold 35 copies of my book in its first month, and that got it into the bestseller section of the subgenre I am in. Cool. It has since disappeared... :-)

Mark, still, that’s something to be proud of. I actually don’t understand the ranking system, to this day, and I self-published in July of 2017. I’m doing a free promo right now, and I’m looking at my Rank over time graph on Author Central Best Seller Rank. The last few days I’ve been ranked on the #1 line for all current free books. It’s ranged between #142, 160, and 307 today. Does that mean that during this promo I’m ranked within the #1 best sellers?

I want since July of 2016

I meant*

Carro wrote: "If you are someone who starts writing because you've always wanted to..."

I would hope that someone would take the time to read some books on writing, take some classes, etc. I've read several books on writing and have taken a few classes. They always emphasize the importance of having others view your work. Most of the classroom time in three courses I took in college were reading and critiquing the works of classmates.

Dwayne wrote: "Carro wrote: "If you are someone who starts writing because you've always wanted to..."

I would hope that someone would take the time to read some books on writing, take some classes, etc. I've re..."

Well, again, you have to know such things exist.......:) I wrote on and off in my teens in exercise books, just for myself at that stage. My only writing tuition was my school essays (I did have a very good English teacher). At that stage I had never heard of writing courses or books on writing.
Since then I have heard of both. I have dipped into some writing blogs, have bought a book on writing SF and dipped into it and not been on any courses. What I find helpful is critiquing other people's work online in active writing forums and seeing other peoples' critique of the same passage. Also analysing sections of published books that have impressed me to work out how the author achieved the impact. All of that trains the analytical facility. I am getting better at seeing what is wrong with my writing - and what is right. I have a beta reader I occasionally ask to read things - only when I am sure they are as good as I can make them and they have the time. The number of oopsies found each time are getting smaller.
There can also be the thing of too much input - you can keep changing things to respond to critique and go round in circles or not develop your own voice.

It is a good thing to want to improve, but I feel that practice is what is needed. You can study "how to" until the cows come home, and listen to all sorts of critiques, but sooner or later you have to find your own voice, and you can't do that by studying or listening to others. I think reading a lot, so you know what you like, is a big help, and sure, a writing group is helpful, but only if you are prepared to look them in the eye and say, no, that's not for me. You have to be your own voice, or you are wasting your time.

Ian wrote: "It is a good thing to want to improve, but I feel that practice is what is needed. You can study "how to" until the cows come home, and listen to all sorts of critiques, but sooner or later..."

Yep. Goes without saying, Ian.

Okay, let's all get back on topic.

Ian wrote: "It is a good thing to want to improve, but I feel that practice is what is needed. You can study "how to" until the cows come home, and listen to all sorts of critiques, but sooner or later you hav..."

Ian you are right on the money!

Leah wrote: "I meant*"

I know you meant 'meant' when you said 'want'... :-)

I don't think amazon rankings mean much - unless they propel your book to #1-30 (from memory) as that means your cover is shown when you click on the subgenre.

For what it's worth, I think this is how they are calculated: Amazon calculates a time-weighted sales index for each book, and the index numbers are ranked. So if your sales are relatively stable, your index number will not change much from day to day. But if your sales numbers decrease sharply, and stay down, your index number will decrease, too.

I suspect most books on amazon do not sell any copies on any given day, so the index numbers of those books will decline on those days. Books that are selling on those days will see their index numbers increase and hence the ranking is disproportionately sensitive to these sales - their index number goes up, most competing index numbers go down.

Christina wrote: "Mark Hebwood wrote: "Very interesting statistics, Christina. I am surprised - the top percentile of all books on amazon puts you in quite a lofty part of the distribution. Still, how did you get yo..."

Thank you very much, Christina.

Sorry, I broke the rules. One review in ten free offers seems normal.

as a reviewer and blogger, I agree with Prakaash visibility is important so the book get at least considered. I usually try a lot to help lots of indie authors, sometimes I do have to say no, however is usually more a matter of time than anything, since I open and the fusion my blogs I have receive a lots of request, made some request of my own and it usually works that way I trying to help every indie author be a review or an interview or something else so the book get considered on the great scheme of things and from there usually it's pretty downhill since the readers come by themselves.

Prakash wrote: "My [book]... is set to release..."

No self-promoting. Thanks.

Sorry Dwayne! If it was treated that way.
I would appreciate if the comment was allowed and I was asked to edit that.
Anyway, thank you.

Mark, it appears you are labeled “Best Seller” if you fall within 1 - 100.

Dwayne, sorry to keep drifting off topic.

Prakash wrote: "Sorry Dwayne! If it was treated that way.
I would appreciate if the comment was allowed and I was asked to edit that.
Anyway, thank you."

And we would appreciate it if people would follow the rules. We used to try leaving the comments and asking people to come back and edit. People seldom did. I don't waste time with that anymore.

... fall within 1 - 100. So strange that it keeps cutting off sentences in here.

Dwayne, did you mean “people didn’t”?

@ Leah - "people seldom did" means that nearly all the time, people didn't come back and edit. So very occasionally they did edit, but not often.

Leah wrote: "Dwayne, did you mean “people didn’t”?"

People seldom did come back to edit. Thank you Carro. We're not here to try to correct one another. I'm about to close this thread if people can't keep on topic.

by Christina
"everything said on Goodreads is public. Complaining about reviews and how people review is exactly the type of thing that may put readers off your work or worse, get a mob to go through and trash everything"

I read this a couple days ago and it has bugged me since. This thread is about getting reviews, but I guess other authors should only be given good reviews. I would think that if 'readers' of the 'mob' type think that one author is giving another (their favorite) author an honest but bad review, it could result in the trashing of the first author's entire body of work simply because they gave an honest review.

I have read stuff with three 5 star reviews that were filled with so many errors it was hard to get through and once through it had no plot or character depth. If I had paid the $3.99 that it normally sold for I would be mad that nobody was honest enough to review it right and warn me.

I know we live in a "This person made me mad, let's make them famous" type of bulling world, but now I see it would be safer for me to view this as "How to discourage people from reviewing due to fear" kinda thread.

But hey, reviews don't sell books so who cares if a 'mob' gives your best work 1 star...

Mason wrote: "But hey, reviews don't sell books so who cares if a 'mob' gives your best work 1 star... "

Reviews don't have anything to do with the point I was making. An author's reputation, however, does. We've seen this happen countless times before:

Someone makes a comment/reacts to a review/says something publicly without thinking of the consequences. A lot of people react irrationally and begin to trash the author in the only way they know how: by writing reviews. The author gets upset and begins fighting very publicly with the reviewers. Goodreads comes in and bans those who are violating their terms, including the author, who now has no power over their own profile.

This has ruined more than a few careers and by warning you all, I'm trying to avoid something happening here, be it one reader who decided to give you a pass or a goodreads influencer who brings in thousands to give their opinion of you.

But again, this is getting off topic and I can only give so many warnings to be mindful of what is said in a public forum. Getting back to the topic at hand, it's easy to dismiss anything I say because I'm not a household name and I don't have any books that have reached any magical number of reviews, so let me quote bestselling author Annie Bellet:

"Sales means readers. Readers mean reviews. Reviews are the end of the chain, not the start. More reviews is more social proof and reviews are great, but they will NOT get you magical visibility marketing. Not without SALES to back them up."

This is just part of a great thread in the subject that you can find in her Twitter feed dated April 6th.

@Christina, I’ve seen authors get trashed through bad reviews too, after the author constantly attacked and belittled people on Facebook threads. It’s always a good idea for an author to act professionally, even on social media.

I've gotten three books out there, including one published by Simon & Schuster. I am also a member of a rather well-known author's group in Sarasota, which has included authors that most readers are familiar with. I can tell you from my, and their, experience that reviews usually do very little for sales, even when they appear in national publications. And whenever I see a review in the media, I start checking Amazon's rankings over the next few days. There is rarely any indication of increased activity. I'd be interested to hear of contrary opinions.

Dennis wrote: "I've gotten three books out there, including one published by Simon & Schuster. I am also a member of a rather well-known author's group in Sarasota, which has included authors that most readers ar..."

I agree that reviews do little for sales, especially on goodreads as i dont think readers who buy books go to goodreads. those who go to goodreads usually want a free book/giveaway and many of those dont usually read and write a review.

The only time I noticed a review was helpful to sales for me was when my local newspaper published a 4 Star review of my debut. I think I got over 10 reviews on that Sunday. Otherwise, I do believe reviews help make a book look more legitimate as least. But that’s just my opinion, and I am still a rookie in the writing world.

Darn it! I meant I got over 10 sales, not reviews.

Joed wrote: "Christina wrote: "Something else to keep in mind and it has been said often: Reviews do not increase sales. More often, sales increase reviews.

There are several members of this group who are sel..."

I see that many have stated that reviews do not sell books, and I am interested to know the rationale for this statement. I find that I depend on reviews for many things that I choose to buy these days, especially if I am going to buy it online. And I am always interested in others opinions when I am choosing something to read. I am new here, so I find myself questioning the veracity of this assertion that reviews don't sell books. I am gladly willing to be enlightened, so please proceed to enlighten me.

Michael, I feel the same way about reviews.

Leah wrote: "The only time I noticed a review was helpful to sales for me was when my local newspaper published a 4 Star review of my debut. I think I got over 10 reviews on that Sunday. Otherwise, I do believe..."

Hi Leah...how did you get the local paper to review your book?

Folks. This is becoming a circular argument. Evidence has been presented, dismissed, argued, repeated, etc over and over. Please take a moment to read all of the comments before posting the same question over and over.

@Carmel: I just decided to send the paper an email asking if they did book reviews for local authors. It turns out the Online Producer there is a self-published author herself and was forwarded my email. She responded to my email and said she’d read my book. It turned out she liked it and emailed me to tell me she had decided to write a piece on it for the Sunday paper!

It never hurts to reach out to your local paper. Sometimes you luck out!

I did not mean to imply that reviews are worthless. Every public mention of your book is one more small weight added to your side of the teeter-totter (do they still call it that?). The hope is that eventually some sort of tipping point is reached and things start to pick up a momentum of their own. It's rather rare when it happens, and there's no magic formula to make it happen. I've always figured that 95% of my promotional efforts were a waste of time, but since I never knew which they would be, they were necessary to get the 5% that weren't.

Michael wrote: "I see that many have stated that reviews do not sell books, and I am interested to know the rationale for this statement."

You have to get sales to get readers and readers to get reviews. It doesn't happen the other way around. It is possible that reviews might influence a potential buyer, but how did they happen upon your book in the first place? If you have a thousand reviews on your book, a potential buyer won't know about them until they discover your book somewhere. You say you depend on reviews when you shop online. I assume you were already looking for the product before you found the reviews, right?

Looking at my own work, I do not have tons of reviews on anything. The items that have the most reviews sold really well when they first came out, got some reviews and the sales stopped after a bit. The stuff that sells consistently have few to no reviews.

Leah wrote: "@Carmel: I just decided to send the paper an email asking if they did book reviews for local authors. It turns out the Online Producer there is a self-published author herself and was forwarded my ..."

That is very cool for you! Thanks for the response. Our local paper seems to publish reviews done by folks at the library, but I will look further into it. :)

Leah wrote: "@Carmel: I just decided to send the paper an email asking if they did book reviews for local authors. It turns out the Online Producer there is a self-published author herself and was forwarded my ..."

Great! I have just sent your post to myself, as a marketing idea. Thanks for that and well done to get that review!

@Carmel @Mark Awesome!

I look at reviews as a way to see if I missed anything. I realize that I will not please others all the time. I write for myself and love to share what I write. If I get 1 bad review I read and dismiss, but if 3 unrelated people all same the same thing I revisit it thinking they noticed something I need to check out.

If someone leaves a review as long as they actually read the book I am grateful that someone actually took the time to read it. I wish I knew the real answer on how to get reviews, I mean Amazon is getting picky of reviews. But I see a real review as a gift that someone actually read my books.

Douglas wrote: "I look at reviews as a way to see if I missed anything. I realize that I will not please others all the time. I write for myself and love to share what I write. If I get 1 bad review I read and dis..."

I agree with everything you just said, especially the part about three people making the same comment.

If I get 1 bad review I read and dismiss, but if 3 unrelated people all same the same thing I revisit it thinking they noticed something I need to check out.

I suppose, if it's a mechanical error, typo, something like that. Also, is this three people out of three? Three out of ten? Out of one hundred?

I intermittently make my way through a long list of blogs that review my genre. Some I found through the indie view and others through going through Goodreads, looking at the top reviews for books similar to mine and contacting those reviewers through their blogs. Adding some personal message in the email helped me to get their attention. Some bloggers want to feel like you care about them otherwise why would they care about your book.... Last week I spent hours going through a long list given to me by a blogger who said she couldn't review for me but gave me a helpful list to check out. I worked my way through hundreds of blogs, targeted those who were reviewing or I thought would want to read it. In total, I emailed 80 and got 5 responses so far - 3 of which were yes. Prior to this time, I think I've had a total of 8 other bloggers who've accepted (that was back when I first released the book in 2015). It's tough - but the reviews in the past resulted in more exposure and more people adding the book to their TBR list. It's a long process but I need to get this exposure and the only other option is through paid services that I'm not so sure are worth it,

My stats for a free promo appear pretty close to Leah's (just under 1000 downloads and 2 reviews). I almost wonder if it is worth bothering.

Leslie wrote: "just under 1000 downloads ... I almost wonder if it is worth bothering."

Sometimes I get five downloads. Sometimes two. Sometimes twenty. Once in a while around a hundred. Never had a thousand. And if I get one... it's worth it. Yes, it's worth it.

Dwayne wrote: "Leslie wrote: "just under 1000 downloads ... I almost wonder if it is worth bothering."

Sometimes I get five downloads. Sometimes two. Sometimes twenty. Once in a while around a hundred. Never had..."

I hope we are not talking at cross purposes, Dwayne. Leah ad I were commenting on free downloads and as we know many people will take anything if it is free, so unfortunately one can't read (sorry about the pun) too much into the numbers vis-a-vis how "wonderful" the public thinks one book is! It's free, they grab it, simple. Possibly one can read something into where one advertises/promotes the free offer though.

Possibly I'm being greedy to suggest that the main reason for giving one's hard work away for free is in the hope of getting some reviews? Having it read by those who are not interested in either paying for it or reviewing it does nothing for either my wallet or ego. Hence my comment.

.

There's a great deal of things I would never take, even for free. If someone downloads your book, they were interested at least for a moment. Maybe they'll never read it. Maybe they'll never review it. But, they were interested for a moment. You had one thousand people interested enough to take your book. To me, that's something to be happy about. How long ago was this promotion? I usually don't read books the same day I buy them. Sometimes it takes months to get to it. I don't always review what I read, and when I do it can take, again, months before I get around to it. If reviews are the reason you write, be patient. It may take some time before you see more.

We're all different and we all have different reasons for writing. For me, reviews are nice, but it's not the main reason I write. It's not the reason I give anything away. It's a nice bonus, but I never expect anything in return. My only hope is that when my work is read, it is enjoyed on some level.