How well are you doing getting reviews from your Kindle free days?

[Riley, Viking Extraordinaire]

Okay, I have a book with over 60 reviews on it, before it will be released on Amazon. I'm hoping at least 50 of them are kind enough to move their reviews to Amazon.
I will let you all know the results of said experiment.

[Christina]

J. Riley wrote: "A few of those people reached out to me asking about their 'disallowed' reviews. I engaged Amazon tech support and was told "since these people follow you on Twitter, they obviously know you. Amazon's policy is that reviews are not allowed from people who know the author."
Yes, the Amazon review policy states that friends and family should not review as they would not be unbiased, however, I've never heard of Amazon claiming twitter followers are people who know the author. I find it unlikely that was the reason. Did the reviewer disclose that the book was won in a sweepstakes? Because it is far more likely that the review was removed if it lacked the necessary verbiage.

[Riley, Viking Extraordinaire]

Because it is far more likely that the review was removed if it lacked the necessary verbiage.

This. My book monster reviews a lot of books on Amazon, with authors I meet here, on twitter, and on facebook. All they need is a simple *The author provided me this book for an honest review* or *I won this book in a giveaway for an honest review* or some such.

[Riley, Viking Extraordinaire]

J. Riley wrote: "Christina wrote: "J. Riley wrote: "A few of those people reached out to me asking about their 'disallowed' reviews. I engaged Amazon tech support and was told "since these people follow you on Twit..."

Then I don't know what to tell you. Amazon does things however they want to do it. All you can do now is complain, and hope you have a sales rep who feels your pain.
All I know is people who have left me a review are mutual follows on twitter, facebook, here, or in the blogging community. My reviews still stand.

[Owen]

J. Riley wrote: "So as someone who has a lot of experience. I am asking the question of you. Given this experience has happened to me with the two books I have published to date, what conclusions would you gather?

What suggestions would you offer to correct for valid reviews being deleted by Amazon?

Please understand, I am not flaming you here. I really would like to find a way to fix this. ..."

No worries -- I do not take this as a flame in the slightest. This issue arises in any system that has to make such judgments, whether it's determining what is a valid reviews or screening for a disease. The thresholds are adjusted by how the risk of a wrong answer is perceived, and they are complementary, meaning that lowering the risk of a false positive raises the risk of a false negative.

In Amazon's case, it's pretty clear that they are willing to tolerate removing a lot of valid reviews to protect what they see as the integrity of their system. They view the cost of doing so as low, so valid reviews get removed by mistake all the time. The corrective fallback is for people to contact customer support to try to get the valid review reinstated, and I see you had an unsatisfactory experience there. Personally, I've only been in that situation twice, and both times, Amazon reinstated the review they had removed or blocked. So I had better luck than you did.

Therefore, I don't see this problem being "fixed". Amazon is not going to change their review policy because valid reviews are getting removed. Amazon knows the value of those reviews for driving sales.

The only way to "fix" this issue to understand what Amazon knows: reviews are weak sales drivers. Losing valid reviews may hurt us personally as authors, but they don't hurt our sales.

[T.L.]

I confess I've not read all the comments, so apologies if I'm repeating here...

A lot of online stats reckon you get 1 review per 1,000 readers.
A shocking statistic, I know.

The problem I found (& I know others have) is that when you give a book away for free there's a large contingent who only download the book because it's free. But then it sits on the Kindle unread indefinitely.

There's also the value that people place on it. "I got it for free so not worth anything."

I personally find the Countdown Deals better (sell at 99c).

But if you want to get review numbers up, the only real way is to find book bloggers and give them a free copy. There are plenty who will write an honest review in this fashion (but it will be honest; not necessarily good).
I found this website useful as it lists the genre so you don't pester the wrong people:
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&...

[E.P.]

Melvin wrote: "By the way, how do you guys get so many downloads? I'm lucky to get over 50."
Hi Melvin--I ran a free giveaway a couple of weeks ago and got over 2500 downloads, to my complete shock. I tried several different advertising techniques, so here is my (entirely anecdotal) wisdom:
1) I did an ad on Freebooksy.com. That was by far my biggest day. However, the ad cost $100, FYI.
2) My second biggest day was when I sent out an email to a listserv I belong to related to the subject of the book.
3) I did some other paid ads with promo companies that advertise you on Facebook and Twitter. Probably the best group to work with was Fire & Ice Book Tours. This kind of advertising was much cheaper than the Freebooksy ad but much less effective; however, I still had over 100 downloads every day of the promotion.
4) I posted about it on this site (which was free).
5) I posted about it on Twitter and Facebook (which was free).
6) I told my colleagues who are interested in this kind of thing about it (which was free, but only led to a couple of downloads).

So what I gathered is that if you want a lot of downloads, getting an ad in one of those email newsletters like Freebooksy, Bargainbooksy, and so on is probably your best bet, but it will cost you money. If you have a pool of people you can target with direct emailing, that's also a good approach. Other people may have had other experiences, but here are my two cents. I hope it helps!

[Justin]

The last time I did it I promoted my free days on 24 plus places. I probably could have had more but it gets tiring writing the same information over and over. If your a member of Author Marketing Club they have a tool where you promote once and it sends out your free day to all the sites they have listed.

I would say the more sites your alert to your free days, the more likely you are to get reviews. When I did it I did manage one review and the person enjoyed the book very much and left a friendly review. So yeah, the more places you promote your free days the more likely you are to get reviews.

[Christina]

Here's my take, I've done a free giveaway using kdp select for 5 days straight. I got one review and that was after 35 downloads.

I feel as indie authors, we know reviews are like gold so we're just really wanting those reviews. Hoping and wishing...

I totally get it. It's frustrating. Has anybody heard of a self-published author named Chandler Bolt? He has a program called Self-Publishing School? Well he says he has a formula to help indie authors always become best-selling authors and receive tons of reviews.

I've wanted to sign up for his program but I don't have two grand just lying around. It seems to be worth it and that he's telling the truth because if you look at all of his books on Amazon, TONS OF REVIEWS and best seller status. Again he's self-published so maybe there is A MAGIC formula or a special method?

Just my take...some indie authors are doing really well.

[Christina]

Christina wrote: "Here's my take, I've done a free giveaway using kdp select for 5 days straight. I got one review and that was after 35 downloads.

I feel as indie authors, we know reviews are like gold so we're j..."

Let's be honest and a slight bit cynical for a moment: the way to become a bestselling author is to write how-to guides for indies claiming that you have a formula for success. If there truly was a one size fits all solution that would make bestsellers out of all authors, don't you think we'd have all tried it by now?

Logically, only a small handful of authors can be at the top. With more people publishing daily, that percentage drops. There are no cheat codes to success. Not even for $2k.

And again, as Owen has pointed out so many times that he really should change his name to Cassandra: reviews do not sell books. Reviews are an indicator of past sales.

[G.G.]

I'm waiting for someone to write a long book and charge $$$$$ for it and at the end explain their success: Charge $$$$$ to people like yourself who want a quick solution.

No but seriously, something similar happened in the past...not with book but with other products. Just to say, when someone wants to sell you instant success...think about it twice, and thrice.

[Owen]

Christina wrote: "Well he says he has a formula to help indie authors always become best-selling authors and receive tons of reviews...."

This is lamentably common. Look a little deeper and you'll find the dross beneath the brass plating. I've checked out any number of these claims, including an author who claimed to use "science" to write a book the would be "bestseller". Based on this book's ranking and history, the author didn't apply that "science" to this book (they only book they had listed), since it was not selling notably well.

I've checked out other claims, though few have had the hootspa to charge $2K for their advice. I haven't yet found one who's own books show statistically significant success over other similar authors, some of which do no self-marketing at all. In fact, most of them underperform WRT to their peers.

There will always be people preying on the desperation of others. That desperation makes people gullible, even tho the evidence is right there for all to see. Take care and avoid that road.

Owen aka Cassandra

[Owen]

I'll offer a case in point here. Yes, it's just two samples compared. but there are many more for those who choose to look. These are the current stats on Chandler Bolt's most successful book on Amazon (in terms of reviews) and another book released by an indie author at around the same time.

Bolt:
Publication Date: January 20, 2015
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #31,958 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
Publication Date: February 6, 2015
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
565 reviews

Other author:
Publication Date: February 6, 2015
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,537 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
420 customer reviews

I happen to know that this other author did no self-marketing at all. None. This is his first book. Yet his book has been in the top 10,000 at Amazon for over a year.

But the guy charging $2K for his method, who has written numerous books, can't achieve the same thing. For being a "bestseller", his rank is not impressive -- we have authors in this group (I know 2 personally) that have had their first book out for almost a year who are doing just about as well at this point.

So be diligent and skeptical. [Cassandra out]

[Christina]

Thank you GG, Owen and Christina good advice and info...

[G.G.]

Tamara wrote: "I guess you have to have a real good story to get the word of mouth working!"

Or people who read it that talk about books to other, which is not everyone. I read a lot and I'm ashamed to say, in real life i don't do word of mouth. I have no one to talk about books. A lot of people could be like me. Those people might be the ones who are attracted to your book. Does that mean your story is not 'real good'? No...it only means it doesn't get the attention of people who talk a lot about books. :/

Starting with a strong base of book loving friends surely makes a huge difference.

[Ruth]

I'm doing free days right now and am very happy with the downloads (I had a BookBub) and KU pages read already. I've gotten two reviews so far: a 2 star and a 1 star (she wrote that she stopped reading after two pages because I used a modern texting term in a medieval romance. To me, it's a term first used 1200-1250AD....).

[Cynthia]

I am new at this, but in the past couple of months, I have not gotten reviews from the free days. I hope that will change, but nothing yet!

To get reviews, I would approach bloggers who serve your niche for reviews: romance, fantasy, etc. This is what I'm working on. I hired a publicist who primarily focused on finding reviewers, and that was somewhat useful. But you can do this yourself.

[Knockin']

C.B. wrote: "8000? I was super happy that I got 50!"

Yeah, I think she was pretty happy with 8000, lol. 8000 seems unreal, so to me, 50 is awesome! Congrats.

[Knockin']

J. Riley wrote: "I have done free days, KU, giveaways, the lot. On the rare occasion that I do get a review, Amazon likes to censor it on me stating the reason being the reviewer knows me.

Right now, my book Fragm..."

I totally don't understand Amazon's policy on friends and family leaving reviews. Are they saying that a friend isn't capable of providing an unbiased review? It's insulting.

[Christina]

Okay folks, it looks like there have been plenty of good answers here, but we've been keeping an eye on things and we feel it's time to lock this thread before it veers off into the negative.
Thank you all for your comments.