Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion

Do you have any ideas of places where our readers can leave reviews without signing up or buying the book?

I recently gave away hundreds upon hundreds of free PDFs of my latest book in hopes that the readers would leave reviews.

I received a lot of wonderful emails from people (some were very emotional), but essentially no one took the time to leave reviews on Amazon, which I requested. I received A LOT of emails from people that told me that Amazon would not let them since they did not buy the book from them. I have left reviews on Amazon for books I had for years and never bought on Amazon. How come I was able to?

My readers did not take the time to leave reviews on Goodreads either. Maybe because they had to sign up for an account?

This is very frustrating. I would not mind bad reviews. Anything.

Once again, do you have any ideas of places where our readers can leave reviews without signing up or buying the book?

I think you have to have bought something on Amazon before you can write reviews - but that something doesn't have to be the item you're reviewing.

People can of course write reviews on their own blogs, or as posts on social media sites (especially Facebook). Try Googling your book title regularly to see if anyone's talking about it.

Unfortunately, the bottom line is that only a small fraction of your readers will bother to review your book. That's just life. Think of all the books you've read in your life - how many of those did you review?

Perhaps they've not even read it yet - how recently did you send the books out? A friend who bought my book on its first week of release only read (and reviewed) it the other day - three months later!

Why don't you ask some of the people who emailed you whether you can pull quotes from their messages to use in your own marketing posts? It's not ideal, but it's better than nothing, and they might make the effort to post an Amazon review as a result.

Just a few thoughts.

I think almost everywhere you can put a review up needs someone to sign up first.

Maybe the trick is to give the freebies to people who are already members of Goodreads or who you know have book blogs or put reviews of books on their blogs.

One statistic is that for any non-targeted marketing campaign a 1-2% conversion rate (where the action you hoped for is carried out) is fairly typical. People who send out questionnaires will find hardly anyone returns them.

The more involved the action required the less likely the outcome will be realised.

There is also a big hesitancy from people lately to review books due to some people insisting reviews from family or friends or even someone you might have stood next to in a lift once are somehow 'cheating'.

It is all very frustrating. I feel for you :(

It's not just non-targeted marketing that can have low conversion rates. We recently sent out a reader survey with the magazine I publish. It was only sent out to our members and student members, and we got a total response rate of 4%. And that was good.

It's frustrating, but you have to manage your expectations. The brutal truth is that the only person who really cares about your book is you. The moment you start expecting people to care as much about your work as you, is the moment you set yourself up for massive disappointment.

There are several groups within Goodreads that you can join and participate in, that have reader/reviewer programs (i.e., Making Connections, Nexxus and I'm sure many more). The moderators post your book in a genre thread and readers request a copy for review. The idea is that if a reader requests a copy of the book, and then doesn't review it, that reader cannot continue to request other books. So it helps to keep the intent of the program valid and you'll (hopefully) acquire some reviews. I have a few of my books out there through these channels because they seemed to be the only ones with any type of monitoring system in place that you can keep track of, and have a little faith in.

Of course book bloggers are always a great source, but you have to be sure that you select those whose site and audience fit your genre, and be willing to wait awhile to get into their schedule.

Good luck!
Jaye Frances

All great points! I would also like to say that for many readers, writing a review is laborious and time consuming. In other words, they would rather "do" something else, even if it means vegging out in front of the boob-tube. [Let's be honest.] Like Andrew said..."The brutal truth is that the only person who really cares about your book is you." Though a reader may like it, what would be their incentive to write (and post) a public review? It is one thing to read (receptive), it is another to write (active).

Another point to consider:
Personally, I have read a few books lately that I have "liked" (not "really liked") - which means that they would have received a 3-star rating according to the Goodreads rating system. I am hesitant to rate a book as 3-star for obvious reasons, so I have been reluctant to write reviews for those titles. (Make sense?)

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply. I appreciate it. There clearly is no way to know what stops people from writing reviews. It truly is amazing how often I see very good books on Amazon that have 1 review. Seriously. 1 review. How does the author and publisher even allow this? It really is an amazing situation.