Do you really need more than 5 reviews? List of review sites. One technique to get 80-100 reviews around release date

[Quantum]

Do you really need more than 5 reviews?
This article has a list of review sites with the author's results.

...reviews are far less important for books than [for], say, socks or a new television. That’s because fiction quality is far more subjective. And, also, all other elements aren’t equal. A book with zero reviews and a genre-relevant cover will trounce one with a terrible off-genre cover and a hundred glowing reviews.

What are reviews good for?

* Reviews allow you to qualify for promo sites. This is the real reason to bother—many advertisers have requirements of either 5 or 10 reviews, at 3.5 – 4-star averages.
* A distant second: Social proof is a thing.
* A good critical review can improve your craft.

Are review sites the most effective method?
And going with review sites are not the only way nor necessarily the most effective. Try these:

Method 1: Ask ‘em in the back of book
Method 2: Build an ARC (advance review copy) team via your mailing list

(http://nicholaserik.com/book-review-m...
Most recent update: March 2017)

One technique to get 80-100 reviews around release date

"Science fiction romance and adventure romance author, Anna Hackett, regularly has 80-100 reviews on her books within a few days of release..." through ARC reviewers. (This topic starts at 40:30 of the podcast.)
(http://www.marketingsff.com/putting-t...
Most recent update: 16 August 2016)
(linked from https://janefriedman.com/book-marketi...)

Thoughts?

[Neil]

I think that once an author hits 10-15 reviews they get an average rating that reflects a cross-section of readers and that is what I mainly look at if I'm browsing. I don't think anyone has the time or inclination to read all reviews posted (especially if a book has 80-100 in the first days after publication) so if others are like me read they one or two top ratings and one or two lowest ratings along with the blurb and make a judgement from there.

[Christian]

I think books need more, than 5, even the 10-15 bracket seems low to me.

I can't help but be wary of Indie books with 10 or even 15 reviews with 90% of them five star reviews.

Even classics like LOTR, wheel of time, A Song of Ice and Fire to name a few don't have that kind of unanimous praise. I've read very good Indie books, but nothing that comes close to those, and a global rating above 4.2/4.3 is VERY rare. For me, that's alarm bells going off indicating proxies/close relations have made a marketing push and I can't rely on that.

Above the number of reviews, I think I'm looking more at their dispersion. It's unavoidable, some people will hate it (I've had a friend qualifying Wheel of time as a LOTR rip-off, and he DNFed it. I didn't agree, but it didn't change that man's opinion one bit) and some people will find a novel meh while others will rave about it.

If a novel has a little bit of everything in its reviews, that's what makes its rating credible in my opinion.

[Quantum]

Christian wrote: "I think books need more, than 5, even the 10-15 bracket seems low to me.

I can't help but be wary of Indie books with 10 or even 15 reviews with 90% of them five star reviews.

Even classics like ..."

but still, in the article (which, btw, has a lot of good info other than what I quoted), the author states:

"a book I recently wrote had a single three-star review for over a week. During that period of review ignominy, it sold around 10 – 12 copies a day. Many trad-pub books, particularly more literary-skewing fiction, have averages of around 3 stars."

[Nat]

I tend to look at the 2* and 3* reviews on books, especially by indie authors, because I'm curious if it's been well edited. I avoid the lower/ranty reviews because those are just trolls. And the 4/5* can be friends.

I do think more reviews are good for a book. If you choose between two books of the same genre and one has 300 reviews at 3.5* and one has 7 reviews at 4.5*, you might pick the one with more reviews, just because you might assume those 7 are friends.

Thanks for the article!

[P.K.]

Alex wrote: "Do you really need more than 5 reviews?
This article has a list of review sites with the author's results....reviews are far less important for books than [for], say, socks or a new television. Tha..."

[P.K.]

Thanks, Alex for those links. They didn't open out for me with the Hackett and Friedman links but I found the Nicholas Erik piece very useful and generous and I will certainly use his experience. There were parts of it that I found contradictory. He seems to say that reviews are only useful for getting into promo sites. While I acknowledge the truth of that he then says 'a book with 15 reviews will probably be purchase over one with none' Good point; that's another reason for getting reviews.
Then he states ' A book with zero reviews and a genre-relevant cover will trounce one with a terrible off-genre cover and a hundred glowing reviews.' That's predicting a massive importance to a cover. I know we had a thread about the importance of covers that didn't get very far but, hell, that statement would take some supporting evidence. Do readers, especially of e-books, think a cover makes any difference to their choice? But, otherwise, great stuff.