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To narrow our field of reviewers, we
asked readers to send us a link to their review of The Beam: Season One. Not only did this show us that we were sending the book to people who actually left reviews (we didn’t want to waste them on non-reviewers), but those people were also likely to leave good reviews for Plugged, because anyone who’d read the full first season of The Beam would likely enjoy Plugged. As a bonus, this encouraged a new wave of reviews on The Beam from people who’d read it but hadn’t yet left a review. They wanted to get Plugged, so they left a review for The Beam. Unsurprisingly, most of those new reviews were
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Treat reviews as another kind of funnel,
sending qualified reviewers to your bigger products. The word is qualified, not duped or bribed. If your
When a book is permanently free, you can’t remotely control who downloads it. Some of the people who download it will be an orbit away from your ideal reader. If they hate it, there’s nothing you’ll be able to do. For this reason, we don’t like this approach for our more important products.
When the KDP Select program was viable, we might (might) have made one of our $9.99 products free from time to time in order to boost sales, but we wouldn’t today. Some writers don’t care who buys their work, reasoning that all sales are good. Long term, we disagree. We only want people who will love our most expensive products to buy them. Thanks to the structure of our funnels, readers who buy up to our full bundles have
When Lexi’s products went free, she could count on 20+ reviews and an overall 4.9-star average, within the first few days. In her case, the huge boon of social proof from those reviews might be enough to consider the occasional mass-broadcast giveaway.
Give Review Copies in a Controlled Way
Origins
Saga, we’d send them Origins. Then we put a CTA describing the offer in the back of the Full Saga book.
This was a highly controlled way to give out our review copies, because only people who finished the entire Full Saga would ever see the offer.
He hit 99, donned his ridiculous cap, and danced to Soldja Boy on YouTube. His fans LOVED it. This isn’t just about the reviews; it’s about bonding with your readers and showing your human side. Make your readers laugh, and they will love you. Sean danced like an absolute idiot to Gangnam Style when Z 2134 cracked the Top 100 overall on Amazon. You can die of vicarious embarrassment here. He has since apologized to humanity.
Keeping in mind that you want to always incentivize those who are most likely to leave you good reviews, what would be a good incentive for people who really love Whitespace? The solution is simple, so long as you’re willing to do a little extra work — to write an extra story to give out to people who will leave a review.
Fans of a series want more of that series.
For The Beam, we told our readers that we’d write Season Two when there were 100 reviews on Season One, thus allowing us to reach the all-important three-digit review threshold where our book would seem “officially proven” in the eyes of more and more potential buyers.
They understand that 100 reviews is a satisfactory way to show us that more Beam is something with sufficient enough demand to divert our other projects
you can do the same thing with a short story. In the world of Yesterday’s Gone, the alliterative, profane serial killer and psychopath Boricio Wolfe is a hands-down fan favorite,
What Would Boricio Do?, A Very Boricio Christmas,
Sean and Dave spent money they didn’t have on a promotion that didn’t work. You must be very careful with giveaways. The problem was twofold. First, the audience for their promotion wasn’t specific enough, and they therefore got mostly people who only wanted the prize, not people who cared about their books.
And second, it was a monetary gamble. Giving away digital products like e-books is free, but giving away a tangible prize can be expensive.
At the end of all of our books, we include a small paragraph that briefly explains how much reviews matter to independent writers, then we ask the reader to leave one for us. We include a clickable link that will send them to the review page on the platform the book was compiled for. This will net you some reviews, but
you can also ask more directly. Whenever someone sends me an e-mail or a Tweet or a Facebook message about how much they enjoyed one of my books, I check the book’s reviews, and if they haven’t already left
politely ask if they could and often give them a link. This may seem a bit forward, but it works. And remember, this is a person who liked your book enough to take the effort required to e-mail or message you, so the chance...
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Last week's freebie generated only two reviews, so I have to pull back this week. Delivering free smut each week is super expensive for me. One of the biggest reasons I do it is to generate reviews. Two simply isn't enough. Hopefully I'll get more reviews this week and can put a few additional titles out there for free next week.
If you’re giving your books away for free in exchange for reviews and aren’t getting them, your readers aren’t keeping up their half of the bargain. You’re within your rights to respectfully call
