Book reviews can establish credibility for your self-published book

It's a no-brainer, and it's right there in black-and-white in all the popular self-publishing books: Get your book reviewed, and sales will follow.

And by golly, it's true: book reviews will get you sales. Only problem is, there's a new way of getting reviews for your book, and none of the self-publishing books tell you how to do it. Keep reading, and I'll tell how it's worked out for me.

First, let's review the conventional wisdom on how to get reviews, the advice repeated in all the well-known self-publishing guides. They instruct you to get a few hundred review copies of your book printed, prepare a press release packet, and mail it to every newspaper reviewer in the country. And if your book is specialized, you should also rent lists of the names and snail-mail addresses of the appropriate magazines and journals in your field, sending them the same packet.

All this would be fine if it really worked, but I don't think it's the most practical way today. Consider the way I solicited reviews of my first self-published book, "The Home-Based Bookstore".

I published my book directly through Lightning Source/Ingram in November 2005. I was concerned that mailing hundreds of complimentary review copies of my book would result in very few newspaper reviews, given the specialized topic of my book. Also, it would be expensive, and I worried that many of those free books would show up for sale on Amazon Marketplace.

And let's face it, newspaper reviewers are getting bombarded with thousands of self-published books these days begging for publicity. Most of those books are going straight into the trash can. It's no secret that most self-published books aren't worth reading, and so they don't get to first base with traditional media outlets, who have less space than ever for offbeat coverage.

Still, I knew my book would have no credibility unless someone besides me was making the case that it was worth reading. I've been burned buying self-published books and e-books that weren't worth the money, and I figure lots of other people have too.

So here's what I did: I went on Amazon.com and looked up a previous title that had been published covering my book's topic. That book was published a few years ago by a small independent press, had sold resonably well, and received about 45 customer reviews on Amazon, mostly favorable. I contacted the people who reviewed that earlier book, sending them this message:

Dear XXXX:

I got your name from the Amazon book review you wrote about the 2002 book "Selling Used Books Online" by Windwalker.

I recently self-published a book on the same topic, "The Home-Based Bookstore." If you think you might be interested in reviewing it (no obligation of course), I'd be happy to send a complimentary copy if you'll reply with your snail mail address.

Best Regards,
Steve Weber

How did I make contact with these people? Clicking on an Amazon book reviewer's name takes you to their Amazon "profile page." There, you can click the link "Invite as an Amazon Friend." A pop-up form appears, where you can enter a message similar to the one I've described above. You don't see the person's e-mail address, but Amazon forwards your message to that person's registered e-mail address.

I was a bit selective on the people who I asked for reviews. For example, a few customers gave negative reviews to the previously published book, some of them simply stating they were unhappy that a book on the topic had been published. Most likely these folks never even read the book. Needless to say, I left them off my list.

Of the 40 people I did contact, I received three quick replies, and within a couple of weeks my book received positive reviews from each. Immediately, I noticed a dramtic uptick in sales of my book. Earlier, when my book had no reviews, it sold at the rate of one or two copies every few days. But after receiving those positive reviews, my book began selling five to 8 copies per day. Clearly, those positive reviews had given confidence to shoppers who were considering my book on Amazon. At the same time, I noticed that my sales picked up on Barnes & Noble's Web site, and people began placing special orders for my book through brick-and-mortar bookstores.

My success with these first efforts gave me another idea: What if I contacted a whole lot more people who might review my book? In exploring Amazon's book-review system, I had noticed that a list of "top reviewers" was maintained on Amazon's site. The top reviewers are ranked according to how many "helpful votes" they receive from other shoppers who read their book reviews on Amazon. I began contacting these Amazon "top reviewers," using the same method described above. Again, I was a bit selective on who I contacted. I scanned the recent reviews, and if a person tended to give negative, harsh reviews most of the time, I left them off my list. I didn't need anybody to trash my book simply because they relished dishing out criticism. And many of the Amazon top reviewers weren't appropriate for my book (nonfiction how-to) because they reviewed only fiction, movies or music.

So of the top 500 Amazon reviewers, I contacted about 300 where I believed there was a chance they might be interested in reading and reviewing my book. I received a response from about 40 of those folks, and it's resulted in about 25 positive reviews on Amazon's site so far.

This effort involved about three days of very tedious work, plus the expense of mailing complimentary copies to the people who responded. Was it worth it? You betcha. It got me the best kind of advertising for a book: free advertising. Two months after publication, my book is in the top few thousand in Amazon sales rank. It's the number-two bestseller in its category, Business & Investing > Small Business & Entrepreneurship > Home Based.

That's pretty darned good for a self-published book with no marketing money behind it. It just goes to show that word-of-mouth is the best advertising for books. With my book particularly, which appeals to online shoppers, online reviews are very influential. But I suspect that a lot of shoppers in brick-and-mortar bookstores also make some of their buying decisions based on Amazon book reviews.

Everything I've mentioned above is very anecdotal, but there has been a rigorous academic study on this topic. It found that book reviews on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble have a definite impact on sales on those sites -- positive reviews led to bigger sales, and negative reviews hurt sales. You can read the full text of the report here, thanks to the Yale School of Management.

Good luck with your publishing efforts. If you have a story of your own, I'd enjoy hearing about it: Write to me here.